I have a big problem with the complaints about Mal. I don’t think the point was “Here’s an emotional love story to tie everything together. Please care what happens between them.” The point was more about convincing us that he was invested in her. It didn’t matter that we were as the audience, what mattered was that it seemed believable that he really cared about her and that that was a legitimate explanation for his behavior. Personally, I felt like that worked. I didn’t care at all about Mal, but DiCarprio’s caring for her felt believable to me, which made all the Mal sequences not insufferable. I don’t like the idea that everything in a movie should be about making us part of the movie. Sometimes we’re supposed to be outsiders and we don’t need to feel what the characters feel for each other.

Also, I don’t see how you could’ve ended it any other way. I think the movie thrived on how ambiguous reality can feel (in the context of dreams). I think saying whether or not it was really a dream would’ve been cheap. Saying it was a dream would’ve come off as a weak pointless twist. And saying it wasn’t would’ve wrapped things up too smoothly. It didn’t feel to me like an Oh-shit-was-all-that-real type ending as much as an acknowledgment of what was being said throughout the entire movie about dreams.

I’m thinking how much fun it would be to drive up to New York and hang out with all the cool people on here, using my charm and wit to go from someone who comments never to “Hey, that guy was pretty fun”.

But then I remember how I’m not nearly as suave and cool in reality as I am in my head, and realistically, I’d mumble my way through a few pleasantries before getting nervous and making a confused and vaguely racist conversation starter like “Mexicans. Am I right?” and then I’d have to leave early.

Why does Dexter keep getting shafted? I’m sure Mad Men is a perfectly good fictional dramatization of real world boring events that already happened 40 years ago, but come on. Dexter. It’s gotta be one of the most original and well executed premises for a TV show ever. And they really deserve some make-up awards for not even getting nominated their first season.

Also, meant to include this in my previous post, that wasn’t really a review. It was a diatribe about people who like Crank and how the commenters have been treating this review with a short plot summary and a small rant thrown in for good measure. I think the movie deserves the usual quality write up as much as everything else.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the rape scene. In fact, and I know I’m not alone here amongst my family and friends, I think it’s funny. It’s funny in the same way that Sean Connery electrocuting a guy then going, “Shocking” is funny. it’s not that a man died by electrocution or that a woman was being raped, it’s the context and tone of the situation. It’s clearly separated from reality enough that any empathy one would normally have is meant to be cast aside. Whether or not that occurs is one thing, but that’s obviously the intention. You can argue whether or not they pulled off the humor in the scene, but it seems melodramatic to call it reprehensible.

Rape is always a touchy issue and many people think rape related humor is reprehensible, but I think murder is far far FAR worse than rape and is humor can be found there, then it should be able to be found in rape as well. I think the only danger is people’s ability to differentiate reality from fantasy and recognizing that the scene in Crank is far removed from the real world and is by no means an okay thing to do. What he does in that scene is awful; it’s only okay because of the absurdity of everything surrounding it (and also because it’s entirely fake and practically beats you over the head with it’s movie-ness).