Four of Them

I know. Stupid motherfucking title. But I don't feel like giving these two movies their own posts.

-Okay, at the insistance of my sister, who, if possible, loves Joseph Gordon-Levitt more than me (though both of us agree we'll never watch an episode of Family Ties for him). Also, this is some half-assed submission for Sebastian's blogathon (on top of all that shit I got in archives).

-This was perfectly and completely alright. The premise: a young couple (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins) are trying to decide where to move to in New York. For some reason, they flip a coin on it. The movie is a tag-team of what the consequences are for each outcome. One, Yellow, is them going to Manhattan and ending up in a crime thriller, being chased around the city by people vying after a phone they found in a cab. The other, Green, one which is considerably less...interesting, is them going to Brooklyn (I think), with the girl, Kate, telling the guy, Bobby, she's pregnant.

-There are some instances of the universes maybe-overlapping, or at least being winked at, like in Yellow, where the couple takes refuge among a crowd of elementary school field-trippers in green T-shirts.

-The performances are fine, and I like that the script was written without dialogue, and they came up with them on the spot or something. Like, when they find the phone in the cab in Yellow, Bobby says "Somebody is hating life right now". I don't know why, but I can't stop giggling at that.

-Joseph. Dear. Grow out that goddamn beard.

-Note: this is a basic retelling of Oliver Twist, from Dodger (Dodge)'s point of view. It is generally the same. So if I really need to warn of spoilers, then go sit in on a fifth grade English class and educate your damn self.

-Nick Stahl, of Carnivale, plays Dodge, a street hustler amidst Fagin's merry band of, uh, male hookers. Okay. He meets a fresh-faced 'beauty' named Oliver, an orphan (or something) who has run away from a foster home, and introduces him into the whole prostitution-and-drugs thing. Fagin is Fagin, a bit more sympathetic than in the book, though he does beat down Dodge a few times. Nancy is a waitress at a diner the boys frequent, girlfriend of the never-seen benefactor and Fagin's boss, Bill. The whole Grandfather thing is replaced with the Senator, a regular client of the boys who never actually has sex with them (for most of them, he just talks with them about their cocks, but with Oliver, he has him talk about his mother). Joshua Close plays Oliver, now a supporting character to Dodge's sordid tale, a naive, innocent teenager easily sucked in by the apparent kindess of strangers.

-Dude...in the third act, some weird-ass shit goes down. I won't spoil that particular part, because it is most definitely not related to the book, but it is rather disturbing, that whole business. I can't describe it well, anyway.

-Performances are good. Stahl uses that perpetual scowl of his to advantage, anyway. The other actors, Fagin and Nancy and all the other boys, they work with what they get, I guess.

Have a nice, STD-free day.