Jan. 08, 2003 - 4:48 pm
this was a big indie film that came out last year and was actually totally deserving of all of the praise it got. it's currently number 90 on the IMDb's top 250 list. this was my second time seeing it, and yeah i guess that it did make a little bit more sense this time around. if you haven't seen it before, it's a bit confusing to begin with. for those of you who live in the Knoxville area, this film is currently being sold for $9.99 at Best Buy and i highly recommend that you jump on that.
it's about a semi psychotic teenager named Donnie Darko who sleepwalks and often sees a huge scary bunny rabbit that tells him to commit violent acts of destruction. he also comes in contact with forces that influence him to attempt to travel through time and affect the lives of others in violent ways. he lives with his mother and father and two sisters who all love and support him, but he still feels quite alone in the world because of all of the scary forces that seem to be forcing their way into his life. surprisingly though, there's still a large amount of happy and comedic elements to this film. it's both light hearted and deep at the same time. it's strange and unsettling, but seems to hit the nail right on the head. i guess we all want to scream out and destroy the world at some points in time.
one of the unfortunate truths about this film is that it was executive produced by Drew Barrymore. an "executive producer" is usually someone that contributes a lot of personal money to the production of a film, so i guess that's how she weaseled her way into playing one of the characters in the film. she plays one of the teachers at the school. not a huge role, but i'd definitely prefer not to see her at all in such a good film. she only weakens it. i for one believe Drew Barrymore to be one of the worst actresses in Hollywood. she is entirely overrated and i hope to never see her face again. she is a moron. if you watch the deleted scenes from this film, you'll see evidence that she can't pronounce words and is a slobbering fool. out of her mouth, the everyday word "rabbits" becomes slurred into "rabrts". i guess it's hard for the director to tell her she's a moron and reshoot the scenes where she can't pronounce words when she's paying for everything.
the deleted scenes and special features from the dvd are pretty enlightening though. you find out that Donnie was actually taking placebos and that his medication wasn't actually doing anything for him. you also see that when Patrick Swayze comes out and calls the crowd "mongrels," he's actually calling them by the name of their school mascot. he's not just being an ass. i'm also interested to see Watership Down (1978) since they watched that in class in one of the deleted scenes. seems like an eerie film, and i know the novel is supposed to be very political. i'll have to pick that up soon.
this movie is just awesome in pretty much every aspect. and it really makes you question a lot of things about reality, religion, and life. and it has tons of great movie references. i love the way that Donnie wears the skeleton Halloween costume just like the villain guys from The Karate Kid (1984). and then they even go riding on bicycles late at night just like in E.T. (1982). i'm still looking for the reference to The Prisoner (1967). the IMDb says that it's in there somewhere, but neither my mom nor i could pick it out before. i have no idea on that one.
now for a couple of side notes. i also made another interesting discovery with my friends Colin and Czyz yesterday at Best Buy while looking through the dvds. apparently you can either get the new crap film Unfaithful (2002) in either the special edition widescreen version or the fullscreen version which features "NO BLACK BARS." could our movie-watching population be any more idiotic? they don't even know what the term fullscreen means. apparently research has found that it has to be further explained to them. and this once again very clearly points out the fact that they value losing part of the picture, along with the fact that they can't count to 10.
one more thing. i don't know if anyone else has actually gotten fully prepared to start their first day of work at a new job (having quit their previous job in preparation for the new work schedule) and then been sent an email saying that they cannot hire you because of a technicality, but that's what freaking happened to me today. that's the most unprofessional thing i've ever heard of. how am i supposed to pay rent dammit?