Airplane Movie

Flying from the West to East coast last night, the airline gifted me not one but two in-flight diversions. I have a long standing appreciation for Brendan Fraser, so "Journey to the Middle of the Earth" welcomed me as I welcomed it. Luke Wilson is in a tad lower pantheon of liked movie stars, but still, I can't get over Bottle Rocket, ever, so it doesn't matter what smut he acts in. The second of the double feature,"Say Hello to Henry Poole" (or something like that) is a film chock full of all the super cinematic early 21st century movie cliches. From the dramatic half light square composition photography, monochromatic seeming dead suburban colors (this one in blue) and a soundtrack stuffed to the gills with cool contemporary songs played by cool contemporary people, starting and stopping in all the right places, this is one of those music-video-auteur-makes-a-feature sort of affair. The kind of film many post-art-student-MTV-reactionary-creative-types might have wanted to make. All static-framed-long-shot-Gregory-Crewdson-
inspired-longing-to-harken-back-to-a-quieter-more-thoughtful-
perhaps-more-literary sensibility. Or maybe it isn't, but that's how it hit me. Not to say that is a bad thing. It just fits into predictable genre identification.