I’m becoming more and more sensitive to media exploiting my generation’s sense of nostalgia. Not just media, anyone, -place or -thing wanting my money will most assuredly play some Arrested Development over a loudspeaker and expect me to swoon (and spend). And as most people say about “their” decade when their nostalgic bubble bursts, the 90’s just weren’t that cool.

I say all this in response to tonight’s viewing of The Wackness, which I predict will woo audiences with its hiphop soundtrack and offhand references to Zima. Although it certainly doesn’t flatter the mid-90’s NYC scene, it will nonetheless spur its audiences to engrossing discussions along the lines of “Where were you when Cobain kicked it.” They will be so spurred, I think, that they will forget to critique the film at hand. And although mid-90’s-NYC is not the point of this film, it certainly is a main character.

In actuality, the film asks a fairly serious question: why bother going through the crappiest parts of life in sobriety? I’ve put it flippantly, but the question gets bandied about as two men seek sex and order in their lives with little success in either pursuit. The result is an off-kilter (but now that’s the status quo, so I suppose it’s on-kilter) friendship between two unlikely dudes. It’s sincere and worth the journey, I think.

And okay, I might buy the soundtrack. It’s dope.

John Connolly doesn’t want you to think he’s telling an original tale. He knows you’ve heard all the stories ten thousand times before. He knows you pretty much know how it will end. And yet, you saunter along through the gruesome and unwholesome until his predictable ending comes to sit in your lap. This book was more interesting to talk about with other readers than it was to actually read, but I enjoyed it all the same.

I laughed, I cried, I had sudden urges to tie things around my head.

Son of Rambow is basically a buddy flick with two kids: angel and demon. The space where they connect is pure contagious fantasy and it makes each of them more real. The children’s acting is exuberant and honest, the visuals are euphoric, and most scenes prompted rolls of laughter. Way too much fun to pass up.

Would love to see Edward Norton in a movie where he doesn’t have to underact until all the mystical pieces come together. Also, constantly wondered when Jessica Biel’s upper lip was going to explode.

Otherwise, enjoyable, beautifully made, plot-driven movie with enough “big moral questions” to add some weight and make a person feel like the two hours in the seat was an investment. I quite liked it.

Jazzy, virtuosic singing. Shows off her incredible talent.

The man is brilliant. Each of these stories remains distinct, real, and complicated. The intro doesn’t connect to the rest of the book but I’ll forgive that for the quality of the stories. Some great characters that will stick around in my head for a good while.

A completely internal plot, with several hard-to-swallow Romantic (Wordsworthian) conceits. If one leaps, one enjoys, but I often had a hard time leaping. Why, for example, does Midwester Ida B. have a southern speech pattern? I suppose Hannigan is going for a sort of folksy, farmy patois, but I’m not buyin’ it.

Some of the writing is absolutely gorgeous, but I couldn’t stay beneath the surface of the sort of magical-realism attempted.

Juno isn’t a new story, or even a new take on an old story. What it is, however, is a heightened version that respects the struggle of a child having a child.

Juno is ultimately several love stories in one, but I love that the movie doesn’t give in to the obvious (and I think, over-exposed) emotions of teens falling in love with their babies and keeping them forever to raise them in an alternate lifestyle. You and I could name a dozen movies that create this sort of The Baby Is A Blessing After All story.

Poo on that. Juno is a kid. She’s flippant, irrational, smart, dangerously independent and honest. The film constantly shows us a very young girl making what she thinks are black-or-white decisions and never quite grasping that the world doesn’t work that way.

Films like this one can end up preachy, or end with soft-focus lenses and hopeful futures. This film delivers something else; a childhood abandoned, altered and regained, a family teetering and stabilized, and a very sweet look at a young relationship, all somehow de-cheesed. In the end you can’t be sure if the character is more mature, or if she’s moved on, or if her future is at all brighter than if she’d chosen differently. You simply have to accept her story, as she seems to.

Oh, and there’s this cool, inexplicable furniture obsession that ties the whole thing together. I think.

I am so relieved to find that this movie was not parade of issues, but an intimate portrait of real human beings who happen to be family. Huffman’s character isn’t strong enough to crusade for her rights and beliefs, although she’s intelligent and informed enough. She is a full person, not just a representative of a micro-culture, with layered insecurities.

Her acting is phenomenal. She goes beyond the mannerisms and complex dress of a conservative transexual to the very core of a person making hugely difficult choices.

I was impressed by Kevin Zeggars’ ability to play off of Huffman, as well. Where he could be merely brooding and confused, he presents a fully human, hurting, reactive man-child who is aware of “the right thing to do” and can’t always surface from his pain to do it.

Not a new plot, not even new characters, but so lovingly and fully accomplished.

The story was far more complex than I expected. Reminiscent of The Gospel According to Larry in some ways, vast in its scope, it comes home to this very solid, complicated family. I read it one satisfying night.