Chicago Film Fest Day #3

Saw two movies last night. Nothing outstanding, but at least the second one was entertaining and very funny.

Flannel Pajamas – I like Julianne Nicholson and think she’s cute, but seriously, this movie was so bad. It’s basically a two hour deconstruction of a relationship and all the various ups and downs. The beginning is all cuddly moments, inane pillow talk, and making out. The ending is all endless complaining and pointless arguments. The problem is that it’s filmed in a very uninteresting way – there’s nothing to look at (in spite of the fact that it’s filmed in New York City). It’s filmed in super-grainy DV (annoyance). The dialog is over-scripted and rings false nearly the entire time (strangely enough, most of the reviews praise the naturalism of the dialog. NOBODY talks like these people do)! And the characters are disgustingly boring! If I ever met people this uninteresting, I would run screaming from them. If you want to see a movie that imparts more information about how people think and how relationships work within 1 minute than the entirety of Flannel Pajamas, watch The Science of Sleep. If you want to see the movie that gave a jumpstart to this whole genre, watch sex, lies, and videotape (which is infinitely superior to all the talky knockoffs it spawned. Plus, it has young and dreamy James Spader in a mullet).
Just Sex and Nothing Else – This is basically a Hungarian version of Bridget Jones’ Diary. It’s very fun – it’s kind of nice to see a straight-up Hollywood movie that takes place in Europe. The director said the Hungarian film industry is very sluggish, and she wanted to make a light-hearted and fun movie that would bring people to the theaters to see something other than the American movies they usually watch.