The Brothers Bloom

Two brothers start their lives as con men early, but younger brother Bloom eventually wants out of older brother Stephen's elaborate stories. As one last con, Stephen chooses a wealthy "epileptic photographer" as the mark, who also happens to be a beautiful girl. The brothers take her off on a trip around the world as part of the con, disguising themselves as smugglers. I can't say much else about the actual plot of the film because it's too delightful to watch it unfold.


As far as con movies go, this one is about the brothers, played by Ruffalo and Brody, rather than the con itself--or maybe to be more precise it's more about the con's relation to the brothers. The story follows the structure of a fairy tale with a strong focus on the nature of storytelling with a strong story to back it up. The final mark, Penelope (played by Rachel Weisz), loves making pinhole cameras and discusses photography as a mode of storytelling, claiming "The more it tells you the less you know." The Brothers Bloom adheres to this line. By the end of the film, not all the questions of background and future are answered perfectly, but only so far as to make sure that it remains a story. The film is in no way to be taken as a representation of reality, and it makes sure the audience knows this. For example, if the immediately rising and setting sun doesn't take you a degree away from reality, perhaps the saturated colors and old world suits of the title characters may finish the job.

In my opinion, the brilliance of this film comes in the details. Because we stay with Bloom's point of view the audience spends most of the film in full knowledge of the direction of the con, but we also get slowly let in to the inside jokes of this world. The con men say so much that on first viewing there is no way to catch every word, but the repeated lines and themes really pay off at creating a world. Jokes involving sugar bowls and camels give way to graffiti and dramatic irony upon repeated viewing, which is a difficult feat for a con movie. It doesn't rest on plot twists, though it certainly has a few.

The nuts and bolts of this movie build on all the traditional rules of the con movie, but the actual execution accomplishes something entirely different. There is a built in sense of expectation for how the ending twists of this kind of film will play out, and there is a point about 2/3 of the way through this movie where it could have taken that route, but instead, this film houses unique characters and allows some of the major expectations to pay off early and become a driving force rather than a result, yes I'm mainly talking about the love story.

The perfect con is one in which everyone gets exactly what they want, and I certainly got what I wanted out of this film.

Thelma and Louise

I'm wrapping up my film club's series on duos, and I included Thelma and Louise because, as always, we were short on females in the films. Now that I've seen Thelma and Louise, this choice was either perfect or remarkably inappropriate to serve that purpose.


Thelma is an uhhappy housewife who takes off for a weekend away with her more savvy waitress friend Louise. In her attempt to let her hair down and enjoy herself Thelma gets herself into a bit too much trouble, and the two girls end up on the run from the cops for a series of crimes (each one leading to another). The film unfolds as a wonderful road film full of interesting characters and escalating encounters.

In films, Westerns in particular, women typically fit one of two roles: the angel or the whore. The beginning of this movie seems to set the women up nicely in those two roles, but these identities are entirely gone before the first reel of the film is over. Neither woman fits a category, but the men they encounter on the road are most often caricatures of types of men, almost all of whom are misogynists and bums, with a few positive exceptions to balance out the field. Even Brad Pitts role as the attractive drifter reverses not only the old female identity of the hooker with a heart of gold (the charmingly polite thief), but the film reverses the camera's objectification of the female form by instead lingering suggestively on Pitt's chiseled features and equally chiseled muscles.

The women make the choices. They set the stakes. They have the power to mess things up, fix things, or just keep running even though the whole predicament of the film revolves around the fact that Thelma and Louise are up against the male dominated world of law enforcement. Even the cops have little power against this duo. Thelma and Louise are certainly female leads, but everything about this film is about reversing the filmic stereotypes of men and women without undoing anything about the identities of men and women as distinct genders.

Also, the film is really fun, even while it hurtles toward one of the most famous endings of all time.

Paper Moon

It's hard for me to watch Ryan O'Neal in anything other than What's Up Doc, especially another exploit of Peter Bogdonovich's, after seeing a few hundred times, but I was pleasantly surprised by how different a character he plays in Paper Moon.

Moses Pray shows up at an old friend's funeral only to have her child forced on him to transport to the child's aunt in Missouri. The girl, Addie (played by Ryan O'Neal's actual daughter Tatum O'Neal), is an outspoken and remarkably clever tomboy who still wants to emulate the femininity of her mother. Moses, on the other hand, is a slick but only moderately talented con man selling bibles to widows, and though he claims not to be Addie's pa, she never believes him.


Moses soon realizes how helpful Addie can be in his line of work and the two travel together accumulating money and growing in friendship and respect. They travel on a less than reputable woman and her black assistant girl for a while, but Addie and Moses work best as a pair. It's hard to really root for a criminal, but with the sympathetic influence of Addie, the pair becomes both more successful as criminals and more likable. Set in the Depression, there is something saddening but delightful about Tatum's performance as Addie. She certainly steals the film and turns it into something really striking and enjoyable. Even as a child she has that wonderful quality of contradiction that can make for a good actor. She is already a very pretty girl, but truly looks more like a boy for most of the film. She's the kind of impetuous kid you'd hate to deal with in real life, but has so much spark and pugnacity that you can't help but love watching her on screen.

The film follows that rambling structure of most journey films. Sometimes the inevitable destination of the trip seems the only thing holding the story together as it wanders through episodes and characters, but the relationship between not-exactly father and daughter is enough to keep the film on track.

Where the Wild Things Are

After growing up loving this classic children's book I wondered how the story would fill an entire movie. The book features an unruly kid who's room turns into a magical world. He becomes the king of its inhabitants, the wild things, and then returns home for dinner. The movie definitely follows the same story, but with so much more meaning and action.


Max is the youngest child with divorced parents and and older sister, none of whom seem to have enough time and energy to really devote to Max, who is a wild and imaginative boy. He runs away after a fight with his mother and sails to the land of the Wild Things. He becomes their king in an effort to avoid being eaten, but the balance of the situation remains slightly tense throughout the film. It's all too big for little Max to handle on his own.

The most striking element of this film, aside from the absolutely stunning visual quality, is the way it seems so in touch with the imagination of a child. It's not really a film for children, certainly not young ones, either because they would be scared or bored, but the rules of the world are the rules of a child's game. I can remember thinking that way--claiming that I can slip through the cracks and that if you have a machine to seal the cracks my double recracker will break through and nothing in the whole entire world can undo that, so there. I win. Also, the characters of the imagined world are fantastic and bizarre, but each display qualities of the people Max knows (different people at different times). The film credits Max with a range of emotions that recent children's movies aren't willing to ascribe to children. Max is lonely, angry, scared, and clever; his acts his age, but even children can feel and interact meaningfully with their surroundings.

The plot is a little slow and odd, but there is always so much to look at on the screen that it doesn't matter. Because the Wild Things aren't just computer generated this film feels substantial. It's real and tangible and full. Animations just can't hold the story told here. The casting of Max and the Wild Things' voices is great. The whole film is something really unique that works to tell a simple but relatable story.