Sometimes you want to make a delicious meal. You decide you want to grill some steak, make some potatoes, and throw a little salad into the mix. Sometimes you want to go get Popeye\u2019s because it\u2019s close, easy, and the satisfaction you get from it is worth the following day and a half of constantly wanting to throw up. But sometimes you want something in between. You don\u2019t really know what it is you want, you just know that don\u2019t want to put in too much effort, but also kind of want to feel some sort of satisfaction afterward. You want to enjoy your experience, although not so much that you feel compelled to send an e-mail to your friend that they must watch this movie\u2026 Shit. My analogy is exposed.<\/p>\n
I spent the last few days researching a podcast that James and I recorded yesterday. I took a break each day to eat some mediocre chicken sandwiches and watch a movie, but I didn\u2019t want to watch anything that would engage me so much that I had to write about it. I wanted my mind to stay on the topic of this podcast that we were going to do, so I just wanted to watch some simple – but good – movies. Movies that are formulaic, movies that aren\u2019t hard to predict, but movies that are nonetheless extremely enjoyable. These aren\u2019t movies that make me want to write to people about, but they\u2019re apparently movies that I want to blog about.<\/p>\n
The movies I watched over the last few days are State of Play, Fracture, The Proposal, and The Town. These are movies that I just kind of wanted to watch, and they all turned out to be exceptionally entertaining. I had seen most of them before, some multiple times, but I was still confident that the two hours I would spend with them was not going to be wasted. There is nothing spectacular about any of them*, they just happen to be well-constructed, well-executed movies. Very often these movies are absurd**, but they\u2019re always entertaining. None of these movies will affect you for long after the credits roll, but you will generally enjoy yourself and might even feel compelled to watch them again.<\/p>\n
**The Proposal is 107 minutes long, and from the eleventh minute onward everything is implausible. Fracture is also probably implausible, but it sells everything well enough that I doubt that statement. The Town, however, requires us to believe that oxycodone addicts look like Ben Affleck and Blake Lively.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n People on the internet and\/or in social situations often loudly bemoan how formulaic Hollywood is. Everything has gotten so similar, they say. There are no more original ideas. I won\u2019t argue the first point, and I generally agree with the second*. But the reason movies are so formulaic is because the formula works. These are movies structured like the ones we grew up with, the only ones we really know how to watch. When a fifty-year old who is used to watching fairly linear, three-act movies their whole life, they will likely need to watch a Charlie Kaufman movie like Synecdoche, New York a couple of times to wrap their head around it, or their brain will just melt. Or they\u2019ll just hate it**. Truly original media are always fighting an uphill battle, even with a movie going addict like myself***. And that\u2019s why sometimes I just want to watch a Sandra Bullock romcom.<\/p>\n **This is a completely acceptable reaction for anyone to have.<\/span><\/p>\n ***I couldn\u2019t tell you what the fuck half of my favourite movies were about on first viewing; I\u2019m typically pretty slow. <\/span>Barely related point:<\/em> this post has a lot of footnotes. Embrace it. (Fear it.)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are a couple of these movies every year, and they always have a shelf life of a couple of years. Fracture and State of Play have been mostly forgotten by now, and The Proposal and The Town are both on their way there. In trying to come up with a list of other movies like this, I struggled, and can\u2019t come up with anything before 2007. These are movies that some people remember, but not for all that long. I remember Fracture because I legitimately like it, but there will be something that replaces it in the rotation soon enough. Probably Drive.<\/p>\n \u00a0These movies all have interesting aspects to them, but nothing too interesting. Fracture asks, can somebody really manipulate the law that well*? State of Play looks at the way media affects political and criminal stories without going too deep into any of the ideas for it to feel pretentious**. The Town is a cool action movie that wants to be Heat 2: Boston Boogaloo, leading to an action movie that fails its most interesting themes, but is amicably awesome nonetheless. The Proposal isn\u2019t about anything, other than asking the viewer the hard-hitting question, \u201cCan one person really be this charming?***\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/FP_3524492_Affleck_Lively_FP2_090109-ben-affleck-blake-lively-the-town-set.jpg\" "\\"Blake")
<\/a>*Although the second heist sequence in The Town is pretty stellar.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>*The most original ideas now are just reconstructions of old ideas. There are original ideas left, I\u2019m sure, but we\u2019re all too used to the formula for any of them to be accepted on a mass level. <\/span>Vaguely related point:<\/em> At the peak of their success, Pharrell of The Neptunes complained about how almost all pop singles were written in 4\/4 time, and how this is a detriment to music. Of course, Skateboard P and Chad Hugo didn\u2019t switch their style because everybody is just so used to 4\/4 that almost anything else would seem awkward. While some popular songs break out of the conventional structure, the majority will always be in 4\/4.<\/span><\/p>\n