Watched The Door in the Floor last night and I have to say it was one of the better film adaptations of a novel I’ve seen in a while. It was based on the first third of what is probably my second favorite Irving novel (this being my absolute favorite) so I was a little nervous to see what they’d done with it - especially after the severe disappointment with the alleged adaptation of my favorite book. But the general mood is there. It wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned the story as I was reading it. It was better.

Jeff Bridges (who I used to regard as a dork with a famous name but one that was far less dorky than his brother) plays Tom Cole, asshole sexaholic dad, to perfection. I’m not a huge Kim Basinger fan but I think this very well might be the best role I’ve seen her play. While I loved LA Confidential I didn’t really think she put as much into her part in that as others seemed to believe. A former model playing a prostitute? Big whoop. But she was great in this - totally absorbed in grief. And the Fanning child (not Dakota, her younger sibling) is a precious and sweet Ruth. Not much substance there but what’s really interesting is this is only the first part of the story - but it shows how it helped mold the adult she is in the flash-forward second two-thirds. That’s my favorite part about this movie. Usually when a film ends you have to imagine what happens to the characters after the credits roll but in this case you can go read the rest of the book! Brilliant! This was far better than I expected. And that is rare.

Movies almost never live up to my expectations. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a good example of this. I fully expected to adore this movie - seemed like a perfect combination of confusing plotline, pretentiousness, and schmaltz that usually tear right through me. But I’d heard entirely too much hype and, frankly, Charlie Kaufman’s eccentric plot structure tendencies are starting to wear on me a bit. Or maybe I was in a bad mood. Nah. It was entirely too gritty and whiny to be considered optimistic, too blindly romantic to be truly interesting. And I wanted to just slap the shit out of Kirsten Dunst. But that’s nothing new I usually do. This may seem totally plastic but I thought the most interesting part about it was Kate Winslet’s hair as a character device. A lot more interesting than that standard writer’s crutch of using weight as an intrinsic character gauge. Doesn’t mean I like her though: she reminded me way too much of a crazy friend of mine in art school who is doomed to never have a healthy relationship because the minute she gets what she wants she doesn’t want it anymore. I honestly didn’t like anyone in the film. So why would I care what happens to them? Takes a lot of work to make characters sympathetic and interesting at the same time. But it can be done.

Napoleon Dynamite was funny in parts. But what the fuck time period was this supposed to be set in? Has there been some sort of resurgence in trapper keeper, side ponytail, camper van driving sad 80s style that I’m unaware of? Because I totally thought this was set in 1985 until the the references to online chat rooms came up. Even then I kept thinking surely they were referencing old dialup bbs services that were just starting to pop up then. But there were entirely too many contemporary pop culture references to make that stick. Doesn’t matter. Ultimately that was only one aspect in a series of details that made me uncomfortable. I’d heard a lot of comparisons to Welcome to the Dollhouse (talk about a movie that made me extremely uncomfortable) and that really rings true. A mouth breathing nerd shunned by even other nerds with annoying relatives. Man that guy has the adolescent whiny sneer down pat though. The brother blossoming with true love was funny. And Pedro. Pedro friggin rocked. Ok, it was alright but I don’t think I’d make a big effort to watch it again.