some movies i've seen recently:

Moon - starring sam rockwell and kevin spacey. just saw this indie sci-fi film (yes, i just used the word film) at the sunshine cinema on the lower east side. going along with my recent preoccupation to find the weirdest movies i can, this one didn't let me down. it's essentially about a man (sam rockwell) working on the moon who discovers he is a clone. thus begins his journey to discover what it means to be a clone and what it means to be a "real" person. if your life has been lived by someone else, and that someone else is you, does your life have any real meaning? put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Mulholland Drive - possibly the weirdest movie i've ever seen. i thought i'd love it, and didn't. any movie that uses a dream as its basis for the bizarre just doesn't cut it with me (one exception: the wizard of oz). sure, my dreams are weird as hell. but if i put them all in a movie and then woke up at the end, i don't think even i would want to watch it. i did appreciate david lynch's underlying critique of hollywood, as a disillusioned place where dreams are consistently broken.

Vanilla Sky - i still can't quite decide if i liked this movie. penelope cruz, jason lee, and cameron diaz were fantastic. i'm not a tom cruise fan and, for the life of me, can't picture him doing anything other than jumping on oprah's couch and calling matt lauer "glib." despite that, i did like the Life Extension/Lucid Dream plot turn, though i didn't fully buy it while watching the movie. similar to mulholland drive, it seemed like a cop-out, though a theoretically interesting and mentally stimulating one.

Adaptation - i certainly wasn't expecting what i got with this one. i loved the first 3/4 of this movie. nicolas cage was, surprisingly, very, very good as both charlie and donald kaufman. charlie's inner turmoil was relatable, and his relationship with donald hilarious. meryl streep is arguably the best actress of her generation (and perhaps one of the best of all time) and did not disappoint. her character's relationship with john laroche (chris cooper) was nuanced and imperfect and completely believable. i felt, however, that the movie seriously declined into far-fetched territory when streep's character began snorting orchid drugs and trying to kill charlie and donald. um, she's a highly acclaimed author for the new yorker, really? anyways, the meta meta meta aspects of this movie were right up my alley. in reality, the movie is written by charlie kaufman and based on the book "the orchid thief" by susan orlean. in the movie, charlie kaufman is adapting the book "the orchid thief," by susan orlean, into a movie. fiction and nonfiction collide perfectly and the audience never knows what's what. i mean, the real charlie kaufman put the name "donald kaufman" on the Adaptation script and dedicated the film to him. donald kaufman does not exist.

next on the queue: being john malkovich

also really want to see: it might get loud

after that: the girlfriend experience, food inc., the september issue, and valentino