Genius of Reinvention: Matthew McConaughey

I loved EdTv growing up. The main character is an average Joe who is contracted by a television network to follow him around 24/7 by a camera crew. All of his personal relationships and family downfalls are aired for the world's entertainment. He becomes a major celebrity with college girls watching him every week together huddled in their dorm rooms, and temporarily he seems a hero to all of closest buds.

Before our culture eventually embraced the chaotic crazy world of crazies showing us every minute detail of their ordinary lives, the movie then seemed like a preposterous future. Today no channel is without a show about someone arguing with their friends, getting drunk, competing for cash, or showing off their ridiculous obsessions. Now, the movie seems less than special. Except to me it always has been because it brought Matthew McConaughey into my sphere.

He became my king of the big screen. His southern drawl, his good-natured spirit, his ability to play a normal guy with vigor and passion unlike I'd ever seen drew me immediately towards such an average character. McConaughey wasn't the first movie movie star I fell in love (John Travolta) nor the one that I declare to be my husband one day (Leonardo DiCaprio), but he was the biggest underdog.

Everyone seems to love McConaughey, or on some level, always did. Do you remember when he and Kate Hudson hit out of the park with How To Lose a Guy In Ten Days? It's your average chick flick of two people using each other to get ahead in their own careers, and then their "quirky" ambitions allow them to fall in love. Their chemistry was magnetic, McConaughey showed off his pecks, and the movie was a huge hit. Even before this chick flick that put him on every woman's radar, he was then building a career with popularized Dazed and Confused and Contact.

As a celebrity-loving culture, we often take severe notes over when we consider an actor or actress have hit their peak and 'fallen atrociously from grace'. Usually this happens in the course when someone's choices seemingly go from A+ material to something that may not even be worthy of a F- ranking.

A major tide turned for the Texan cowboy and his rom-com place in Hollywood: it went all over the map. In The Wedding Planner, Failure to Launch and Fool's Gold, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past he was attached to portraying a charming manboy who could swipe the panties off his love interest three thousand miles away. Every character slighted differently  but the scope his career took didn't reach expectations. Most people only remembered those movies and thought that's as far as he could reach.

Though he was never far away from movie making - he's made at least one almost every year since the 1990s - Hollywood and McConaughey made himself "a comeback kid" in 2011. After a "rough" decade of varying dramatic roles (several that I loved) like Two for the Money, Reign of Fire, and We Are Marshall, he finally gained notoriety in some better executed indies.

Suddenly taking notice of this electric presence on-screen, critics and audiences agreed he had finally made a return. With roles like Killer Joe, Magic Mike, Mud, and most recently The Dallas Buyers Club, how could anyone possibly ignore him. Throughout genres, he's carved an image of anti-hero. He was trying to catch lightning with more dramatic roles and he caught several bolts finally lighting up the world.

Similar to action stars like Nicolas Cage, we as audiences don't expect actors who take on blockbusters to have the level of intellect or intelligence they show when they are gifted with the opportunity to show it. They become servants enslaved to our pop culture expectations that they only have one side of their abilities whether it's blowing things up or being a shirtless sex god.

Though the material may range for McConaughey's carefully crafted talent, no one can deny the enigmatic spotlight he carries in every motion picture. That brimming smile, his thick accent, and that palpable energy. When he talks, he's on fire. You're hooked to his every charismatic and charming word. During his SAGS award acceptance speech, most people only heard Neptune and wouldn't let it go. I was watching someone with passion for his craft which was finally being taken "seriously".

Nowadays, actors are so immensely chillaxed about their life and career they barely have any personality orr energy. Everything seems to roll so lackadaisically off of people's shoulders, nobody seems to be affected either positively or negatively by their success, failures, and triumphs. Everyone is riding on neutral. Except Matthew McConaughey - he's soaring and always has been.

Wild (2014)

Photo Credit: Wild / Fox Searchlight Pictures

Experiences have a way of building up inside of us, especially ones that are traumatic such as repressing the loss of a loved one or causing pain onto others as a way of trying to deal with our own. We also make choices that feel are beyond the point or opportunity to be reconciled.

At the tender age of twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed loses her mother unexpectedly to lung cancer. Faced the absence of the glue that held the family together, Strayed is alone and overwhelmed with grief. Suffering from a heroin addiction, sleeping with multiple partners, and divorced from her husband, she attempts to reconcile her bereavement by trekking Pacific Crest Trail - a 2,650-mile hike spanning California to Washington.

Raw, vulnerable and transformative, Wild is a rare unfiltered film centering a female protagonist and her quest for redemption. Based on the best-selling memoir (one of my favorite books last year), director Jean-Marc Valle's latest film brings the author's journey to life with organic showmanship.

Valle's vision for Wild treads deep into the visceral absorption of grief, compassion, and self-acceptance, and how nature can gift or we can give ourselves the opportunity to examine how we may be lost. It's almost a dizzying experience to become so enraptured with the unvarnished vulnerability which Strayed not only exposed to us in her memoir but how the director captures her story without kid-gloves. Strayed's torturous physical quest shoulders the haunting memories that consume her, and through finely-paced flashbacks, has the unique ability to make us lose ourselves in that sorrow. Though the cinematography is breathtaking, the environment is never a forced idyllic paradise. The story's conflict itself is not about the obstacles Strayed faces on her travels, nor even making it one from destination to another, but the inner journey she is forging one step at a time.

For Strayed, many events in her life were beyond her control. As a child, she watched her mother recover from a physically abusive relationship with an alcoholic husband, and as an adult, had to help her mom during her illness. In-between, they were best friends locked in a relationship of perpetual daughterly entitlement and motherly optimism. To help her deal with the loss, Strayed tries to temporarily fulfill her anguish such as quickies, brief affairs, and drugs. The hike becomes a freeing shift from the doubts and remorse that held her hostage to  face what it means to forgive herself and be forgiven.

A great credit to the film's vulnerability is Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern, both who deliver honest and gritty performances as Strayed, and her mother Bobby, respectively. The former portrays her protagonist over a variety of ages from teenager to young adult, all with an intense range of adolescent annoyance, emotional despair, and finally, liberation. Witherspoon's performance is nothing short of refreshing and layered after a few years of her work seesawing between critically praised and scorned. The latter is only scattered in the film primarily in Strayed's flashbacks, but magically conveys a mother's affirming love in her daughter and utmost faith in the world despite the battles she's faced. Not a scene shared between them or filmed separately goes unwasted. Both I dare say are more than worthy of the 2015 Oscar nominations they nabbed.

Quite literally living out in the middle of nowhere, I'm still plagued by the sound of the rest of the world, and sometimes even worse, my own mind. My most freeing moments is when I can silence it all by surrounding myself in nature. Ambitiously, Strayed is in search of, not a happy ending, but a better ending for herself and the one her mother always hoped for. Refreshingly, it's a wake-up call to those who plague themselves with doubts or regrets.  I don't think anyone should go entirely unprepared to hike the coast without training or knowledge of the great outdoors, or that everyone reaches whole peacefulness from a hike, but the story - both the book and the movie - prompts us to ask if could we find ourselves away from the invasive outside world. What if we gave ourselves the opportunity or an adventure to seek what might bother us underneath the surface and let it be?

One of the greatest joys in Wild is that it is decidedly un-Hollywood for a female protagonist to exert so much effort in liberating herself - from essentially - herself, and to do so because of the struggle of losing someone maternal rather than a romantic interest. The intention of Strayed's hike has nothing to do with the Hollywood fare we normally witness in a female character tangled up in romantic interests, materialism, and the outside world. It's not exactly the kind of movie that might attract a lot of attention or praise; a character sorting herself out in the middle of nowhere. But watching a character's candid heartbreak becomes an intensely rich and cathartic drama. A whole relationship between Strayed, herself, her mother, and the ghosts of her past develops, crumbles, and reaffirms itself in a few short hours (for the real Cheryl Strayed almost 100 days) - but it's the emotional and cinematic journey that will rest with me forever.

Rating: ★★★

Have you seen Wild? What do you think?

Wonder Women: Stella Gibson / The Fall

Over the past year, BBC made waves around the world with The Fall. Created and written by Allan Cubitt, it has become one of the vastly most popular crime shows in recent history. Centered around a handsome psychosexual serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) of professional brunette women in their 30s, Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) trails his violent depravity in Belfast, Ireland.

At first, I streamed the show on Netflix because HELLO, DORNAN with a beard. Instead, it was hard not to fall more in love with Gibson and Anderson's precise and gratifying performance. In fact, she inspired me to start a new series Wonder Women, which is my attempt to shine a light on fascinating and versatile female characters.

Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

Photo Credit: Sleepless in Seattle/ TriStar Pictures

Having relocated from Chicago to Seattle following the loss of his wife, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is encouraged by his adolescent son to pour his feelings of grief to a sensationalist shrink over the radio. Across the country, in Baltimore, that very same evening, a newly engaged Annie (Meg Ryan) hears Sam's story and becomes increasingly infatuated that she could be the one for him.

Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle poses us with the question: is someone you never met the one for you? Her main character Annie treks across the country to challenge the safe path she is on and to take a risk on a different kind of partner who may be able to satisfy her expectations (most of it being driven by classic romance movies). It's a brave and sorta hopeless romantic quest because she could end up looking crazy, or it could not work out all. There's a cutesy-allergy sensitive obstacle that stands in Annie's way: her fiance Walter. Currently involved in a relationship she never really questions, until her mother mentions that meeting Annie's father was magic.

As much as I admire Ephron's filmography, Annie's escapade comes off more as stalkerish, and weird, than insatiably naive and quirky (as Meg Ryan wonderfully plays her). Maybe it's worth it to some characters, or real persons, to go out of their way to see if there is another love out there for them...  I couldn't quite fall for her attempt at looking for other romantic possibilities, someone she never met before, when Walter is endearing, considerate, and thankfully, isn't imbued with condescending faults that make his imperfect personality a love or leave him an ultimatum.

Annie all but throws her engagement to Walter aside as if it's not living up to its potential, and Sam's voice over the radio becomes a preemptively created fantasy in her mind of what great love can be. It's sorta the fangirl's ultimate fantasy - to know a guy, find him, and everything works out. Ryan is truly enthusiastic and lively, but her efforts seem to cross the line of being attracted to a guy she never met and overstepping her bounds.

On the opposite end of the line, Sam is guarded and isn't ready to take chances for a new relationship. All he's known is Maggie, and once she's gone, he believes moving across the country will aid his grief. His friends are not hopeful nor entirely enthusiastic he'll find another Maggie but he gives a few dates and the possibility of getting laid a chance - just because everyone suggests he does it. Though Hanks delivers a rightfully sensitive performance, there's never really a deep exploration (as far as romantic movies go) for Sam to identify his loss - which keeps him literally sleepless in Seattle. For the magnitude of love that each character was aspiring to capture for themselves, neither one fully seems emotionally ready. Annie has a hard enough time hiding her one-sided infatuation with Sam from her fiance, it's hard to imagine how her first date w/ Sam will go: Oh yeah, I heard you on the radio and hired a private investigator to trail you out on dates and days off with your son.... Instead, their prospective romance comes off more like my favorite line from the film: Sam: Didn't you see Fatal Attraction?....it scared the shit out of me! It scared the shit out of every man in America!

Taking on the common theme that This Relationship Is Destiny, I didn't feel this iconic story translated very well. Director and writer Ephron tries to emulate this same kind of "magic" found in other films like An Affair to Remember (cited numerously by her characters) by invoking the same type of characteristics both Sam and Annie share: favorite Baseball players, separate friends talking about Cary Grant, believing that touching someone's hand you may know they are the one. There are plenty of cute moments that show how compatible they are with each other, but more of the storyline is Annie forcing her hand, Sam's son making all the arrangements, and Sam balancing his first fling since his wife passed away.

Relationships can be many things; a respectfully familiar yet full of love, lightning in a bottle, a lucky meeting of the minds or hearts labeled as fate, or an adventure in which you move mountains to find ( the latter of which is Annie's heartfelt, if not weird, quest). The possible romance for Sam and Annie never quite live up how Ephron injects the idea of that their meeting is destiny. Every woman wants to fall in love just like in the movies, and there's probably no one more than me that feels heartless for not going gaga over Sleepless In Seattle. Even the classic ending didn't inspire as much magic as it is known for.
Rating: ★☆☆ Have you seen Sleepless In Seattle? What are your thoughts?

Whiplash (2014)

Photo Credit: Whiplash / Sony Pictures Classics 

At the end of 2014 as I was making my Best and Worst of list, a void lingered that I was missing something great; memorable; different; an experience I thought would come with seeing Interstellar  or Gone Girl . Often, no matter how many great or good movies we see over the course of the year, sometimes what we truly count on are the experiences; a movie that makes you remember who you were with, what you were doing, how you felt when something shocked or excited or made your pulse race.

Of course not every movie is going to be a visceral experience, which is cool because they all can't make you feel emotionally cathartic walking out of a theatre on cloud nine or give you something heavy to ponder about for the rest of the day...but when a year doesn't have a marker; a movie that really stands out from the crowd, watching movies for pleasure and for blogging can feel a little bit empty and glib.

Part of me truly wishes I had seen Whiplash last year, even if it only officially ended two weeks ago. Because I don't know what will compare for the rest of 2015.

Jake Gyllenhaal's Climb to Leading Man Material

photograph by Dove Shore

Every six months or so it seems a title of Best Leading Man Ever is passed around. Cleverly, the media tries to distract us into thinking there is only one actor who has ever earned the blue ribbon of being leading man material. But really stardom is a cycle: One month it's George Clooney, the next it's Brad Pitt, or Ben Affleck or Matthew McConaughey, and onwards.

Though the media tries to convince us, there's hardly ever just one man in the limelight, behind the curtain, or capable of having it all. One actor comes to mind who has recently popped up on everyone's radar, and has utilized his nearly lifelong recognition in film with attentive creativity and ambition. That guy, which comes to mind, is Jake Gyllenhaal.

For such a mildly young talent (34 years old), it's difficult to remember that he has been tagged with fame since he was eleven years old. And yet his career has garnered just about the right amount of everything it takes to be successful in Hollywood without becoming a warning label of toxic fame for young Hollywood. His climb to leading man material earnestly means that for as far as his career has taken him so far, he always seems on the cusp of re-inventing himself as a starring actor.

Best and Worst of 2014

It's hard to believe that 2014 is coming to an end and that this year did not afford a lot of viewings of new films. My watch count was an abysmal twenty-something. Of course with the Oscar season coming up there are some contenders that I've missed because they haven't been released yet, and maybe included in a separate list. The overall tally this year surprised me since I hit nearly all of the movies on my to-see list, and plenty just didn't leave a very lasting impression.

I'm gonna ask for forgiveness about the layout of this post. Maybe it's end-of-the-year laziness but this post just would not come together. Feel free to ask in the comments why I chose what I chose. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my personal picks of best and worst of 2014!

Favorite New Fandoms: 
50 Shades of Grey / The Fall
Gracepoint / The Strain