Movie-crazy

It's been brutally hot in California--even here in usually cool Santa Monica. Lucky for me, movie theaters provide air-conditioning free-of-charge. (They don't like it when you sleep there, but we're negotiating.) Here's what I thought about...

...Who Killed the Electric Car? Interesting story, and a well-made documentary, but nothing will surprise you if you have half a brain. Guess what? GM is stupid and short-sighted, the oil companies are greedy bastards determined to wreck the world's climate for a couple more bucks, and the Bush White House eagerly fellates them both. However, there's a grizzled pair of inventors that rock, and the smokin' hot Tesla electric sports car. B.

...Little Miss Sunshine. Awesome. Go see it. A.

...Wordplay. Imagine "Spellbound" but with obsessive, shaggy adults rather than cute, stressed-out kids. Once again, well made, but more about the post-Spellbound pitch meeting than a story that really needed to be told. If you worship NPR and especially the NYT, run don't walk. Everybody else: feh.B-.

...Clerks II. Would've been better if the two male leads were more natural in their acting. Luckily, the female lead is appealing, and Jay and Silent Bob are funny as usual. I laughed hard at some jokes; it's loose and outrageous and real(ish), which makes it worth seeing, but probably a rental. B.

And two DVDs:
...The 40-Year-Old Virgin. This could've been flat and cartoonish, a la "Wedding Crashers," "Old School," or "American Pie," but it wasn't. It was quite authentic, which made it tremendously funny and surprisingly sweet. Great screenplay full of excellent touches. Highly recommended. A+.

...The Squid and the Whale. A fine 2/3rds of a movie. Hard to watch, because it was such an unblinking portrait of a self-destructing marriage between two assholes and the children trapped in the middle, but at the same time, I must admit I was fascinated. Unfortunately, the movie ends without resolving anything, and while that may be more "realistic," it's fundamentally unsatisfying. Assuming it's more or less autobiographical, I suspect that since the filmmaker's own life did not resolve neatly, he didn't know how to make the movie do any better without feeling inauthentic. B.