The Language of Films is Universal

[I finally saw Little Miss Sunshine after prodding from everyone from my mother on down. Yes, it was good. Yes, it was funny sitting next to Sean and gasping simultaneously "That's NOT Redondo Beach! It's Ventura!" And, yes; that California Avenue offramp from the northbound 101 will mess you up every time, if not quite as badly as it did our heroes. (Seaward Avenue is also problematic; Ventura in general is hell.) Favorite performance? Alan Arkin as the grandpa.]

[This makes three movies in three years (Sideways, Transamerica, and Sunshine) that really hang together for me. Why hang together? Well...each was really wonderfully written. The dialogue made me want to keep going, to know what each of these groups of characters was going to find to say to one another next. Each used a relatively new cultural preoccupation (middle class wine-appreciation; transsexualism; kids beauty contests) to show how little new there really is under the sun, or as Jerri Blank puts it: "The faces may have changed, but the hassles are just the same."; each was a road movie; each affirmed, in the end, the value of family and/or one's closest friends, although in very eccentric ways.]

[I haven't been going to the cinema much in the last year or so, but maybe if I only catch the good ones, it doesn't matter so much.]