Movie Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I watched this movie two Friday movie nights ago, but then, you know, life, and now I'm finally getting around to it. Fun!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower tells the story of a group of friends, but really, just three friends. We first meet Charlie as he's about to embark on his freshman year of high school. He's nervous, because all kids are nervous, but also because he's kind of a loner with no friends. And he has some hinted-at psychological issues that has his parents and siblings occasionally addressing him like he might combust.

In his shop class, he meets Patrick, an outgoing senior, and Patrick introduces him to Sam, Patrick's best friend/stepsister. The three hang out at a football game, and then a dance, and then a party, where Charlie inadvertently eats some pot brownies and opens up to Sam: his best and only friend killed himself the previous summer. Patrick and Sam and their group of misfit friends adopt Charlie into their circle.

Interspersed with happy events from the present are hints at dark moments from each of their paths. Patrick is open about his sexuality, but his boyfriend Brad, a big-shot football player, is not. Brad professes his love of Patrick in private, but when his teammates tease Patrick at school, he says nothing. Sam spent her own freshman year sleeping around with upperclassmen, a result of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child from her father's boss. And in addition to his dead friend, Charlie has even more skeletons in his closet.

Still, things go swimmingly for awhile. Until Charlie realizes he has the hots for Sam right around the same time as another girl in their group, Mary Elizabeth, decides she has the hots for Charlie. One Sadie Hawkins Dance later, he has a girlfriend he doesn't really like and the way he ends the relationship is epic. On the outs with his new and only friends, Charlie begins to deteriorate.

It goes on from there. The movie is a clever pairing of happy-go-lucky coming of age high school story (Speeding through a tunnel! The power of music! First kisses!) with the darkness of reality. We all have our secrets - the outcasts, no matter how outgoing, as well as the perceived "popular" kids (see: Brad; Charlie's sister in an abusive relationship). The final message, though, is one of perseverance and overcoming even the darkest of days, and unlike a lot of teen movies, getting in a petty fight with your friends is NOT the darkest of days.

I wish I had read the book, and I probably still will at some point, but the fact that the book's author directed the film strikes me as a good sign that it's pretty loyal to the story. I didn't recognize many of the actors (I know Charlie was the kid in the Percy Jackson movies and Patrick was the boy in We Need to Talk About Kevin but I haven't seen any of those), and those I did recognize were very different from than their traditional roles. As Sam, Emma Watson was very much not Hermoine Granger; Paul Rudd was almost unrecognizable from his goofy self as Charlie's supportive English teacher. And since the last things I've seen Dylan McDermott in were the first two seasons of American Horror Story, I'm just glad I got through this without an image of him doing something that burns into my brain (pleasuring himself, breastfeeding, you know, the norm).

I still don't know what I just watched...

Before a couple weeks ago, I had never heard of Flowers in the Attic. Apparently, it was THE seminal naughty book that girls hid from adults for the '80s and early '90s, but that was a bit before my time.

It seems like most generations have one of those books. To show you how my own pop culture brain works, it always makes me think of the "Library Cop" episode of Seinfeld, where middle-school-aged Jerry sneakily takes out, and then doesn't return for decades, the sexy Tropic of Cancer. I was took young for that, too. In fact, I can't think of what my generation's forbidden titillation was. I remember Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret being a little risque, but that was because it talked about puberty and periods. Not exactly what every hormonal preteen rushes to read about (at least not for fun).

So, I didn't know Flowers in the Attic, but I don't live under a rock and I read and saw countless things leading up to Lifetime's film version that aired last week. And not just blurbs in Entertainment Weekly, but people I know eagerly anticipating it. I saw the descriptions of the general plot and knew it was sexy and forbidden to those tweens a couple decades ago, but other than that, I just tuned in out of curiosity.

Oh. My. God.

What did I just watch? I have no idea, but frankly, I'm shocked the Foxworth family has lasted this long considering all its inbreeding. I've never thought about incest in my life as much as I did this past week. Yeeeeeeeech.

To the other under-rock-dwellers who missed the Flowers in the Attic phenomenon, it is the story of the Dollanganger family: perfect Dad, perfect Mom and four perfect kids. Did I mention they're perfect? Because they are, indeed, quite perfect.

Until Dad dies in a car accident. Then Mom's true identity as a trophy wife becomes extremely evident to her and oldest daughter Cathy, as she has no money and no skills to get a job. Also, the parents have been charging all that perfect stuff they had so they are actually homeless and possessionless, too. But they're still pretty, thank goodness.

So Mom packs up the kids and heads to her parents house. Nevermind that her parents disowned her when she married Dad and that the kids, until now, didn't even know they HAD grandparents. Oh yeah, and their last name is actually Foxworth. Mom hadn't mentioned that yet? MY BAD.

At the Foxworth estate, Grandpa, who was especially pissed about Mom's marriage, is dying and Mom thinks her only way to survival is to win him back so he puts her back in the will, something he does on the condition that she never had children with her husband. So she and mentally unstable Grandma hide the kids in the attic for, oh, I dunno, a few years.

Grandma's crazy and abusive in all senses of the word - physically, verbally, emotionally. She's also harboring some deep-seeded jealousy over her daughter's close relationship with her father. Was something going on there? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised. Mom becomes even worse. If you don't want to have the end ruined for you, stop now because I'm going to keep going.

SPOILER ALERT

Mom's visits to the kids go from daily to weekly to "hey, we haven't seen Mom in six months!" She shows up one day and announces she married some guy and they honeymooned in Europe. She brings fancy gifts, and then runs back to her money and luxurious life. Meanwhile, Cathy and oldest brother Chris have gone through puberty and start having sex because, um, they're bored and horny? Oh and it's in their blood because - surprise! - the reason Grandpa disapproved of Mom is because her husband (aka Dad) was actually her half-uncle! Fun!

The two youngest kids stop growing because they don't get fresh air, sunlight, or exercise, and then one of them dies. Turns out Mom has been trying to poison them so she can have her fresh life with her new hubby. Even though Grandpa died months ago and nothing is stopping her from letting her kids back into her life.

Eventually, Cathy and Chris devise a way to escape with their remaining sister and start a life. Together. Because they're in love. And siblings. Still. I double-checked.

And that's it. That's the plot of this beloved novel. I mean...I don't even know. I get teenagers with their hormones and changing bodies wanting to read sexy stuff, but incestuous sex? And the book apparently involves a rape between the siblings, too. Gah! The book also happens to be the first in a series that involves the pair getting married and having (adopted, thank God) children of their own.

A lot of times, it takes me awhile to determine whether I liked a book or movie. I'll read or watch it, then kind of think about it over the next few days before I come to the conclusion, "You know what? I kind of hated/loved that." The more I thought about the movie (which people herald as pretty true to the book), the more icky I felt and the weirder I found the whole Flowers in the Attic phenomenon to be. Maybe you had to be there?

Amusing Side Note: Upon watching the movie, I tweeted, "How was Flowers in the Attic a phenomenon? I mean, incest is fun and all, but what the hell? I need a shower and two hours of my life back." (I know, I'm hilarious, right?) Anyway, within about 30 seconds, I got a notification that Mason Dye favorited one of my tweets. Who the hell is Mason Dye? I thought. Apparently, he played Chris in the movie. Well played, Mason Dye. Well played.

Movie Review: On the Waterfront

Finally, it's what you've been waiting 60 years for: my review of On the Waterfront. As a refresher, this is part of my Greatest Movies of All Time? personal challenge, where I made a list of the hundreds of greatest movies made using a combination of American Film Institute lists and Academy Award results. A lot of them, especially the classics, I had never gotten around to seeing and this was my excuse to do so. Plus, there's my OCD and if something comes in a list form, so help me, God, I'm there.

On the Waterfront was ranked No. 3, behind Casablanca and Gone with the Wind.

Basically, the plot follows Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a dockworker on the waterfront run by mobster Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). In a previous life, Malloy had been a prizefighter, but at the urging of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), who also happens to be Friendly's right-hand man, he threw the fight and pretty much threw away his career.

As the movie begins, Malloy is drawing out fellow dockworker Joey Doyle, thinking that Friendly's goons would put a scare in the soon-to-be informant. Instead, they kill him. Malloy's not super happy that he was used as a pawn to kill someone, but such is life on the docks. He soon befriends/dates Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint), who makes it her goal to figure out what happened to her brother, with the help of the local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden). Father Barry tries to get the dockworkers to stand up to Friendly and work with the police, but the one guy he convinces soon has a case of whiskey dropped on his head. Those slippery ropes!

Edie and Father Barry set their sights on Malloy as someone to testify and his conscience starts tormenting him. Which makes Friendly's men, including Charley, torment him.

The movie is an entertaining one regardless of context, but when viewed in the era of organized crime and sketchy unions (the story is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series about a real Mob-run waterfront in New York). The acting is obviously stellar, too, with Brando at his best.

But you don't need me to tell you that. Here are its bonafides, which is what led to its inclusion on the GMoAT? list:

• Won the Academy Award for Best Picture
• Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor
• Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
• Ranked No. 8 in the AFI list of 100 Greatest Movies in 1998 (and No. 19 10 years later)
• Ranked No. 36 in the AFI list of the Most Inspiring Movies
• Had the No. 3 Most Memorable Quote, according to AFI, for Malloy's "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am" speech.