"I'd like to think there's more to a person than just one thing."

Last week, the Austin Film Society screened The Spectacular Now at the Marchesa Hall & Theatre followed by a Q&A with Director James Ponsoldt and I was lucky enough to attend.

Based on the book by Tim Tharp, this film is about a troubled, hard-partying high school senior named Sutter that gets dumped by his girlfriend and starts hanging out with Aimee, a quiet, "nice girl" from school. He keeps telling himself that she is just his rebound, but eventually they fall in love and she changes the way he looks at his life and his other relationships. 

While the relationship between Sutter and Aimee is the main focus of the story, it is really about a young man who is not happy and uses alcohol to block his pain. As someone who often projects a happier persona and uses movies and television, as opposed to alcohol, to distract me from my life, I definitely identified with Sutter. In one of my favorite scenes, Sutter is talking to his teacher and he says, "I don't see what's so great about being an adult. Are you happy?" and the teacher has no response. Sutter would rather live in the moment than have to think about his future. He pushes away the people that love him and care about him because he does not want them to see that he is miserable.

"Little girls shouldn't be told how pretty they are. They should grow up knowing how much their mother loves them."

Since I have been really bad lately about writing my movie reviews, I have decided to do two in one post. In the past couple weeks I have seen The Descendants and My Week With Marilyn.

The Descendants is about a man whose wife is in a coma after a boating accident. He is having trouble with his youngest daughter so he brings his older daughter home from boarding school to help with her sister. He must figure out how to be a better parent while also dealing with the loss and betrayal of his wife. At the same time, make a decision for his extended family about whether or not to sell a plot of land they have owned through several generations.

It was definitely sadder than I expected it to be, but I also just did not find it particularly interesting at all. Clooney has been getting a lot of attention for his performance in this movie and, while I think that he did a fine job, I did not feel that it was any better than any of his other serious roles. He is a good actor, but I was not blown away by this character. Shailene Woodley, on the other hand, did an excellent job. Her acting skills are clearly getting wasted on The Secret Life of an American Teenager and she could be working on much better projects. I just did not think that this movie was all that fantastic.