Movies

I saw two interesting yet odd movies on cable this weekend. The first was Chuck & Buck, a movie about two guys who were friends as kids, but lost touch as adults. When Buck's mother dies, he contacts his old friend Chuck who comes to the funeral. Buck hits on Chuck after the funeral and after Chuck spurns his advances, Buck starts stalking Chuck. Buck couldn't seem to accept the fact that he and Chuck were adults. He still wanted to have the kind of close relationship he and Chuck had had as children. The movie was creepy and compelling and went to a place I didn't expect it to go.

The second movie was a documentary called The Dog about John Wojtowicz, the guy who the movie Dog Day Afternoon was based on. I'd seen Dog Day Afternoon, but I didn't know anything about the real case. The documentary was interesting because it showed what a hot mess Wojtowicz was. He lived for several years after the 1972 robbery and jail and didn't die until 2006. While watching him in the documentary, it was hard to tell if he was being truthful or just bullshitting. I thought it was interesting that of all of the people featured in the documentary (John's ex-wife, his mother, his lovers, his mentally disabled brother, etc.) you never saw his children. I guess they decided they didn't want any part of the documentary and, honestly, who could blame them for staying away from that Dumpster fire.

In other movie news, I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing Call Me By Your Name. Since it's not coming out here until the end of December, I'm going to try and catch it when I'm in NY for work in a few weeks. I didn't care much for the book. I thought it was pretentious and overwritten. In fact, I reread the book earlier this year (and I'm sure I blogged about it) when I kept reading about the movie buzz because I didn't remember much about the book from the first time I'd read it probably seven or eight years ago. I kept reading about that infamous scene with the peach and people speculating whether or not it would be in the movie and I thought, What scene with the peach? Ergo, I reread the book. (I also read how the peach scene is dealt with in the film although I wish I wouldn't have so I could have been surprised.) I read a lot of books (less now than when I used to take public transit on a daily basis and had time to sit and read) and I'm also middle aged, so my old brain can only hold so much information. I can't remember every detail about every book I've read in my lifetime.