2 Reviews: "Running with Scissors" and "Borat"

As you can tell, we've been on quite a movie binge lately. (All the best films come out between the end of summer and the Christmas season, so we take full advantage of it when possible - last year we saw all the major Oscar contenders)

"We're starting a shrine, Agnes. A shrine."

My pick yesterday was Running with Scissors, because even though I've given Augusten Burroughs a hard time on this blog and at Swallowing the Camel, I loooove Brian Cox and Annette Benning. Turned out to be a great film. But, if you don't like The Royal Tannenbaums, Harold and Maude, and movies that deal frankly with mental illness, you will hate it. Benning plays a tortured poet who wants to be the next Anne Sexton (never a good thing), and ends up going batty. Terrific performance. She hands her 13-year-old son Augusten over to her shrink, Dr. Marion Finch, (Brian Cox), for safekeeping. The subject matter is potentially depressing, but the film's quirkiness and the dark, laugh-out-loud humor prevent it from getting there.

"Eccentric" does not begin to describe the Finch family. Mrs. Finch spends her days watching Dark Shadows and eating kibble. The elder daughter, Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow) dresses like a Victorian spinster and communicates telepathically with her cat. Dr. Finch is full of such helpful advice as, "If you don't want to go to school, Augusten, then you should attempt suicide." I've adored Brian Cox since he played the headmaster in Rushmore; since then, he has portrayed Goerring in a remake of Judgement at Nuremberg (to perfection, I might add), the rich father in Matchpoint, and a sad old man in the disturbing film L.I.E. He was also the first actor to play Hannibal Lecter. He's hands-down one of my favorite actors working today.
Annette Benning's performance was, in my opinion, Oscar-worthy; maybe she won't get snubbed this time, even though the film has gotten pretty dismal reviews. Fingers crossed.
I also totally enjoyed the acting of Evan Rachel Wood as the younger daughter, Natalie. She managed to be hard and child-like, scary and sweet, all at once.

It's hard to say how much of Augusten's 2002 memoir of the same title is actually true, but he did win a lawsuit filed by members of the late Dr. Rudolph Turcotte's family, for presenting them as ''an unhygienic, foul, and mentally unstable cult engaged in bizarre and at times criminal activity."

"Een my country..."

Now, Borat. Longest line-up since the opening day of Spiderman.
The first 40 minutes of this film were entertaining in a Jackass sort of way, but after that I began to feel like I was watching a Perfect Strangers marathon gone awry. Seriously, it was like the world's longest Yakov Smirnov routine. And I can see why the people of Khazakstan are pissed. The Stupid Foreign Guy is a staple of comedy, but most comedians give their Stupid Foreign Guys a fictional country of origin, not only to avoid lawsuits, but out of basic human kindness. The speaking-in-tongues scene was also troubling for me. I know people who've had life-changing experiences speaking in tongues, so as funny as it looks on-screen, I don't appreciate someone faking this and taking advantage of people of faith. Uncool. Leave that sh** to the huckster televangelists.
Though Borat does have its moments, Sasha Cohen repeatedly takes something that's funny for 30 seconds, and stretches it out for at least 5 minutes. For the last half hour of the film I was actually looking at my watch, and I never do that. Really, I don't understand why this is a hit. It's like Cohen is shouting gleefully in our faces, "Look how stupid and perverted foreign people are! Look how stupid and mean American people are! Look how stupid and perverted and mean you all are for buying tickets to this movie!"