Heathers

This weekend, while browsing Youtube, I discovered that someone has posted the movie "Heathers" in 12 parts. I had been wanting to see this movie since I heard about it probably years ago on VH1's "I Love the 80s". Given that it was a Sunday on a three-day weekend, I thought, "Why not?" I loaded the first part of the twelve and started watching.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end, despite the grainy, 80s film and the bizarre, morbid events that happened every ten minutes. The basic plot of the movie is that there is a girl named Veronica Sawyer and she basically abandoned her other friends to be with the Heathers, the late 80s "Mean Girls" of Westerberg High School. She meets a new guy at school named JD and he's a little... off. Within the first twenty minutes, JD pulls a gun out of his pocket and shoots blanks at two guys giving him a hard time in the cafeteria. But this doesn't faze Veronica (or the Heathers, to be honest). Apparently, pretending to shoot someone with a real gun was sexy in the 80s. Now, they'd just be derranged.

But as events in the movie progress, there are real deaths that are passed off as suicides until Veronica decides she's had enough. She's not getting what she wants out of the deaths of these people, she just feels horribly guilty. But JD can't get enough of these murderous thrills. The movie is intense because it keeps you wondering who's going to die next. It's a murder mystery that isn't really a mystery at all. You know who did it but no one besides the two main characters know. It's like your own little movie-long secret.

The climax of the movie is as intense as it is surprising. All I can say is that this movie would never be made these days. With fake school shootings, teenagers committing mass murder, suicide scandals, raging language and bombings, "Heathers" crosses boundary after boundary until you feel like you are watching something utterly taboo. It's a rollercoaster ride of murder, suspense and twists and turns.

What I really liked about this movie, though, is that despite all the morbidity and copious amounts of death, there was no real gore. Even in the climax of the movie, there is minimal amounts of blood and gross things you would find in movies nowadays. This is probably one of the reasons that a movie as sick and twisted as "Heathers" found a place on my favorites movies of all time.


Here's a trailer. It's a really weird trailer. I'd Google another one if I were you.

August Rush

Yesterday afternoon, I settled down into the basement with my parents to watch a movie. My brothers were out and about, playing with the neighborhood kids and so what do we decide to watch? August Rush, an amazing movie rated PG.

The basic storylines of this movie is that a kid named Evan Taylor who runs away from a boy's home and ends up in New York (it is where the music leads him). He meets a kid named Arthur and a man named Wizard (and other, name-less characters) and discovers he has a huge musical talent. There is also the story of his parents, Lyla and Louis, who meet one night while both escaping a party and they fall in love and make a baby. In the present, while Evan (their son) is in NYC, they are in Chicago and San Francisco, unaware of the whereabouts of the other, being sad and not musical anymore, until Lyla decides she wants to find her son after news from her father and Louis wants to find Lyla after reuniting with people from his old band.

There are many moments in this movie that makes you want to yell and scream at the characters and their circumstances because they are SO CLOSE to the truth and yet so far. But there are many sweet moments, many cute moments and many heart-wrenching moments. If you happen to have a heart, you might want a box of tissues. But, as you can predict from the PG rating, everything is happy at the end. But instead of having a cliche vocal-realization moment or a cheesy epilogue, the film has a very classy finish with an unspoken acknowledgment between Lyla, Louis and Evan.

But because this movie is basically half-a-musical, there are many songs to be had. And they are amazing! Some of things Evan/August does with the guitar is magical and many of the vocal performances are terrific. The cello parts with Lyla are also incredible. I don't know of Freddie Highmore (Evan/August), Keri Russell (Lyla) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Louis) actually did their instrumenal or vocal performances, but if so, they are outstanding. (I personally don't doubt Meyers' performance, but I doubt that Freddie Highmore is truly a musical prodigy and that Keri Russell has been a life-long cellist, but it's a vague possiblity.)