Lost weeks...

So I've had a trying couple of weeks and it's been hard to get on here and just to watch movies in general. They are my cure all but grief and the pain of losing someone close can't be healed quickly. You'll walk through life and love a few and when one of those people goes, it can blow up your life. Suddenly writing a blog is not as important. Sometimes you just have to circle the wagons and be with your loved ones until the storm passes. I am moving in a positive direction but loss forces you to take a hard look at the life you lead and I found myself doing that today while watching a YouTube video on the movie Groundhog Day. The reviewer said and I agree that the movie is about life for an extremely unhappy man. You go through the motions and do your routines but it is all the same. Days become months and like Phil in Groundhog Day, you just keep reliving the same moments over and over again. It struck a little close to home because I've been doing that for the last 5 years. 

I started this blog as a way to do something productive while unemployed. I kept doing it because I liked it and I always come back to the cinema in my times of need. One of those life shattering losses happened when I lost a girl (as so many good films start.) I named this blog Mr. Unhappy's Movie Blog because I once had an idea for a horror movie about a character named Mr. Unhappy who would leave his victims with his last bit of wisdom before killing them. Mr Unhappy sez: Blah blah blah. It seemed like an interesting way to end my reviews. My last bit of wisdom to my reader. So I used it. Funnily enough, at the time I was deeply in love and happy beyond belief with a girl named Kate. I knew that this girl had changed me in ways I wouldn't understand. I was hopeless from the moment I saw her, on the arm of another man, and I knew that I couldn't hope to have her as my girlfriend. So I became her friend. Just another way to keep her in my life. 

As happens in romantic comedies, I became good friends to the point that I considered her one of my three best friends in the world. Before I even had hopes that she would like me, I allowed her into that inner sanctum of my heart reserved for family and those special friends you would defend to the death and take a bullet for. So I was happy and content. No unhappiness, no annoyances, just banter, good fun and someone who I genuinely loved as a person. Her compassion, her love of animals, her inner sweetness covered by a layer of hatred for the world. Like me she'd seen too much pain and put up walls to her heart. The night she kissed me and I found out I could have her as my friend and love of my life, I was ecstatic.  It gave me hope. 

I started this blog as a way to show her how great she made me feel. To want to put myself out there and become something was my goal. I've failed in that and my Groundhog Day's have gone on and on. But the intention was pure. I wanted to give my heart to the world again. I wanted to believe in love and it's magical power to make the world better regardless of how many assholes and jerks there are. I wanted to create something from my knowledge of movies and my love of cinema in general so I could give something back to this one woman who made me feel the happiest I've ever been. And then she broke up with me. Not only broke up with me but left me feeling like she only barely tolerated my existence. This person who I had shown everything rejected me and that broke me in ways I cannot describe. Do you know how hard it is to trust someone so completely as to open up your heart and show a side to yourself that few if any see and to have it so thoroughly rejected that you feel ashamed and petrified to be your true self again because there is something wrong with you. Something to be ashamed of and she saw it. She penetrated your soul and found you so unworthy that talking to you became a chore to be done. And I miss her...to this day. I miss my friend and confidant and a girl who made me laugh or attempt to grow a beard. A girl who took me out of my comfort zone. The type of girl you'd skip anything for just because she asked.

I had a friend once tell me that sometimes a person is just always the brown shoes. You'll put them on and wear them once and a while but you'd never want to just wear those shoes. It's never an easy thing to admit about yourself. Neither is living with the shadow of something that happened five years ago and being miserable and lonely and trying desperately to find someone new so you can forget but having that new person see something wrong with you again. I'm the brown shoes. I'm never gonna be the guy you see and instantly fall for. I'm never gonna be the guy you wanna be with proudly and openly. I'm the dependable guy who you throw away because I clash someway. Maybe I snapped at you in a moment of anger. Maybe there was a misunderstanding or maybe I just never had you. I know this isn't super movie related but isn't any relationship somewhat movie related in that movies are idealized versions of our lives. I've been stuck in a Groundhog Day of my own making trying day after day to get Kate to love me or notice me or simply be my friend. That's cinematic. That's compelling...to me at least. That's the kind of story that leads me to a dark room, with a good friend...to watch the flickering stories and feel their head on my shoulder. To gasp with and hide from the scary moments with. No matter how much I love movies and I do love them (even awful bad ones like Snakes On a Plane or Rocky V or Short Circuit 2) I will always want to share that love with someone I love. Movies will be better, popcorn will taste better and the chattering idiots talking during the movies will seem a little less annoying. Sure you'll still want to stab them with a dull butter knife (as many times as it takes) but you stab them together. Like all couples should.

This wasn't what I intended to write and I don't have the happy ending with the girl coming to me and telling me that she loved me too and that we should be together. I can't have that ending and at 36 you start wondering if you'll ever have the happy ending. It's so much work and when it's not with that special someone (because that takes work too), why bother at all?  So while I didn't intend on writing this deep, annoying, pestering, thought that makes me look bad, it's what came bubbling up after seeing my Dad lose the love of his life for the second time.  I wouldn't have wished that on him once and if I could have taken that sickness on myself and kept her here I would have because she saved my Dad from loneliness, that's a kindness I can't ever repay and I love her so much for it. 

RIP Mimi Griffin. 

You were a hell of a woman.

Mr. Unhappy sez:  Unhappiness is contagious. Love is too. I wish I had caught the latter.

Some movies you can stream on Netflix...

Check them out...Especially  Fruitvale Station....because Mr. Unhappy sez.

 

A Cage-a thon...it's like a marathon but more baffling

I've always liked Nicolas Cage. He's the type of actor who takes risks with his performances. Some people might not take to dressing up in a bear suit and punching a woman in the face before yelling maniacally about the "bees....not the bees! Noooooooooo!" From being Big Daddy in Kick-Ass (or Ass-kick more appropriately) to being a agent of Satan in Ghost Rider to whatever the hell it was that was going on in Wild At Heart.... I'm on a streaming Thursday so let me give you some films that may or may not be good but definitely have two things in common... they can be streamed on Netflix and they are Cagey...

Face/Off

John Woo takes the insane and makes art from it. Action flows out of slow motion doves and insane gun fights. If someone were to make an action film I wrote, I would want it to be John Woo. He is a master. Face/Off is one of those movies where Nicolas Cage is insane and lively and jumping from place to place because he can. What makes this performance so good is that in the middle of the movie, Cage's role is switched from the amazingly bombastic Castor Troy to the depressed controlled Sean Archer (John Travolta). It is a movie of choices. To see Cage become Travolta and in turn Travolta become Cage is amazing. Small details in each of the performances take on the nuances of their alternate personalities. The movie is a fun action movie with a little heart. When Travolta (playing Castor Troy) tells Sean's daughter how to deal with an overly amorous  boyfriend is priceless and some of the scenes involving Cage as Sean trying to convince his wife that he is her husband but just wearing the face of the man she despises is heartbreaking. There is a lot going on here and it is a must see.

 Mr. Unhappy sez: Cage is both out of control and the pillar of control... the same cannot be said often.

Snake Eyes 

Snake Eyes is the type of movie you've come to expect from Cage. It is strong to start with. An assassination at a sporting event during a storm gives a corrupt detective the chance to solve the case of his life. Everyone is a liar and by the end many double crosses happen. Still Cage is out of control, a cop as a gangster and an out of control addict. The movie is uneven at best (a common problem for Cage movies) and the ending is a little hackneyed. I enjoy this movie and use it to put myself to sleep. Yes it is that type of movie too. It's worth a watch but in the end, it isn't that great except that it is.

Mr. Unhappy sez: Sometimes the world gives you a chance at making a great movie and sometimes you bungle it...this is that story.

The Frozen Ground

 

 

Nicolas Cage is often at his best when paired with an actor with some sort of ability. It is like a good wrestler taking the wild out of control dangerous wrestler and taming him to make a good match. Cage did this with Travolta in Face/Off and here with John Cusak, he is again strong and steady.  Cage is a detective chasing a serial killer who kidnaps prostitutes and kills them in Alaska. Vanessa Hudgens is effective as the whore that got away. It is a good movie but still unmemorable. I don't understand how the movie could have been better but in the end I felt like it could have been better. Still of all the Nicolas Cage movies here... it is one of the better ones.

Mr. Unhappy sez: Typical serial killer movie but a good cast steps it up a notch and makes it one any fan of the subject matter should see. Cage is remarkably controlled and the movie is better for it.

Left Behind

This is a movie that I knew was gonna be bad. Based on a Christian Fiction book and a Kirk Cameron movie of the same title. In it the rapture happens and those left behind are left to deal with the aftermath of not being chosen by God to share Heaven. I think what kills this movie is that the story itself just fails to be...welll... a cohesive story. Sometimes movies just aren't a good idea. I can see why they made the movie (the original and it's sequels made a crapload of money) but this movie is just awful. Not good Sharknado bad but Wicker Man bad. I cannot tell you how bored and mystified I was with this movie. One can hope they don't keep trying to steal good Christian people's money by cranking out a sequel to this pile of garbage. Christians don't know any better. They support it because of God...not because it is good. 

Mr. Unhappy sez: Cage can be good and Cage can be bad and sometimes Cage can be just in a God awful movie.... but more than that...Cage could have been Super...man.

 

You can also see National Treasure, Rage, Joe, Moonstruck (snap out of it), Seeking Justice, Kiss of Death, Racing With the Moon, and Trespass on Netflix.....if you want to Cage till your eyes bleed. Me, I'm good after 4....