Gran Torino - 4/10 FRUs

We went into Gran Torino with high hopes. What could be better than a Clint Eastwood movie on a Tuesday evening? Honestly, almost anything.

Gran Torino is about a Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) who, after losing his wife, chooses to remain in his traditionally white, American neighborhood despite the changing demographics. Not only is he extremely unfriendly to his Hmong neighbors, he is racist towards them. Fending off constant visits and morale support from his young Catholic priest (Christopher Carley), Walt spends most of his days on his porch drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, playing with his dog Daisy, and groaning. He groans at least once each scene. One night, the local Hmong gang comes to take his neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) after Thao failed to fulfill an initiation prank (steal Walt's Gran Torino). Walt, believing the safety of his prized vehicle in jeopardy, threatens the gang first with a pretend shotgun molded by the shape of his fingers and then with a real shotgun. The gang leaves and as a result, Thao, his family and the Hmong community revere Walt as a hero. At the insistence of Thao's older sister Sue (Ahney Her), he befriends the two teenagers. Eventually, the Hmong gang led by Thao's cousin seeks its revenge and the movie culminates with the ultimate act of courage and sacrifice.

If you're expecting an Oscar-worthy drama, go home. This movie is an exercise in bad acting and suffers from a terrible screenplay. There is little character development and the story is predictable. That said, Gran Torino does have some entertainment value. Walt's racism prevents him from ever learning the proper Hmong names. Instead, he refers to Thao as "Toad" and Thao's love interest Youa as "Yum Yum." The movie is littered with racial slurs and stereotypes. Once we realized that Walt was full of shit, we began to enjoy the movie a bit more, but not enough. We don't recommend it; we don't even have a sandwich for it.

Perhaps our opinion of Gran Torino was tainted by that particular movie going experience. We chose to sit in the balcony for this movie. While the height of the balcony seemed exciting, it seriously diminished our legroom. Also, it gave us the false impression that we were actually closer to the screen. We tried and tried to hit the screen with our popcorn kernels, but to no avail (we only recommend this if there are less than 5 people in the theatre). In addition, the boys sitting behind us took off their shoes as soon as the movie began. Never have we smelled something so putrid. They claimed the smell came from their "skank Nachos and hotdog," we advised them otherwise. Their only redeeming factor was that they also hated the movie. Like paranoid and psycholtic germophobes, we hid our noses in our sweatshirts to try our best to sieve out the feet stench. If the movie underwent some judicious editing and about 3/4 of it was wiped out, the experience may have been more a bit more pleasant and we wouldn't have had to act like Howard Hughes.

Fast forward 3 hours. The movie ends and Peach and Flo are jumping for joy. So excited to rid themselves of Gran Torino, (not excited to leave their HTT though), they emerge into the frozen New York tundra when Flo notices that she has lost her gloves!!! Her favorite gloves. Trying our best to run away from our Gran Torino experience and everything associated with it, we realize that we must suck it up and return to the balcony and search the tight crevices for the gloves. Alas, alack, our search was to no avail. The gloves were not there. But where could they have possibly gone.........we will spare you the details, but we found them in the nearby grocery store.

Recommendations to our fellow Moviegoers

While each movie going experience is unique, there are consistencies in our movie going excursions that we would like to share with our readers. This post will explain the following our top three recommendations to increase the pleasure in your movie going experience.

1. Apply for a Movie Watcher Card (MWC). This will prove advantageous at your Home Turf Theater (HTT). Benefits include movie accouterments such as free popcorn, vats, tickets, etc. In addition, customer service is more likely to take you seriously if you have a MWC. Make sure to keep your stubs. While we both agree that such "clubs" are generally a scam, we feel that if you are a frequent moviegoer (at least a movie a week), a MWC, or your HTT's equivalent, is cost effective. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy discounts. It took us about two seconds to get over our embarrassment after we inquired about the MWC. Having a MWC is way less strange than working at a movie theatre though that said, for months now, Peach has been pining over a job at the Israeli soap store Sabon.

2. Always bring a good sandwich (or Panini) with you. Seriously, a good sandwich is one of the best things about life. As we consider a good sandwich an essential part of a worthwhile movie going experience, we will do our best to make the appropriate recommendation for each movie we review.

3. The most crucial point so read carefully. Find your favorite food combo and stick with it. For us, it's the No. 2 combo at our HTT on the UWS (acronyms make it easier for Peach who has a spelling problem). This consists of a LARGE popcorn and 2 LARGE sodas which henceforth shall be known as "vats." We've tested all four soda dispensers at our HTT and determined that the sodas which flow from the machine on the right are the best tasting. A good soda helps provide a more enjoyable environment in which to see a movie.

As for the popcorn, this is where things get tricky. I'm sure you have all heard something along the lines of "movie theatre popcorn is the worst thing next to fast food to put into your body." This is absolutely not true. We'll explain: because of NYC's "fight against obesity," we now know that a large popcorn is 636 calories. We like to say that we only eat about half, so the equivalent of 318 calories. Not so bad. Moreover, we each eat half of the half, so that is really only 159 calories apiece. Flo puts claims that this is essentially the same as eating a Nabisco 100 calorie pack. (Flo always takes home the leftover half of the popcorn so that she can savor the kernels throughout the week). Flo also believes that, similar to nuclear radiation that deteriorates over time, popcorn too possesses a "half-life" of its own. Popcorn has a surprisingly short half-life, and the caloric content of half of a bag of leftover popcorn deteriorates at an astonishing rate, and if consumed within one week of the movie on the big screen, that amount is negligible.

Warning: Vats, in combination with any sort of water imagery on the big screen, will create a strong urge to go to the bathroom. Always know where the restrooms are before you start your movie so that you are prepared when it ends.

Revolutionary Road - 8.5/10 FRUs.

While we did not intend our first review to be serious, we saw Revolutionary Road just last evening and as it is a serious movie, we will do our best to be serious.

The movie begins with Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) talking to his future wife April (Kate Winslet) for the first time at a party. Suddenly, time jumps to several years down the road, the mid 1950s. No thanks to Frank's encouragement, April's dream of becoming an actress fades into the overwhelmingly mundane landscape of suburbia. Set in the post-war era that saw the birth of Levittowns as well as modern day suburbia, the movie stages themes of convention, conformity and institutionalism against the desire to be special. Ultimately, Frank and April's struggle is less against the conventional and thus "boring" lifestyle of middle class suburbia, but more in defining their uniqueness. Plagued with the concept that their life is a lie, April convinces Frank to move to Paris and start afresh. It is Frank's "practical" side that sees to the demise of this whimsical plan. At one point, Frank notes, "People never forget the truth, they just become better at lying." Ironically, the only honest character in the movie is John Givings (Michael Shannon), an "insane" Mathematician who has lost his talent due to the shortcomings of science (electric shock therapy hindered his ability to feel and do math). He visits the Wheelers while on break from his institution. His words are as humorous as they are true and certainly applicable to the present day. In all, this movie gets 8.5/10 FRUs.

Also, although neither of us has read the book by Richard Yates, the movie is literary and thus worth watching more than once. The film is extremely well done though quite depressing and at times, disturbing. The movie has a warm up period. Neither one of us was immediately receptive to the characters. The third scene in the movie consists of a heated argument between DiCaprio and Winslet. At the time, their acting seemed exaggerated and unbelievable. We eventually warmed to their characters and in retrospect, the scene is well-played. Like we said, this movie is worth seeing more than once though we advise no more than twice as we want our readers to live happy lives, not ones full of depressing thoughts. Our sandwich recommendation is egg salad without the crust and we best describe the movie as Stepford Wives meets the Twilight Zone with a splash of the Titanic. Or at least that's what Flo says. Peach has only ever seen one episode of the Twilight Zone and although she has seen the Stepford Wives, it was approximately four years ago and it will be another four before she sees it again.

On a completely different note, a series of odd things happened to us tonight while at the movie. Flo nearly ran over two old women on the way into the theatre. She's quite aggressive when it comes to pushing revolving doors. Both of the women had canes and may or may not have resembled the two of us in 50 some years. Once again, the theatre reeked of feet. Almost everyone in the theatre had the flu (why go to the movies when you're extremely ill? sit on your couch at home and watch reruns, seriously, NyQuil inhibits you from experiencing anything remotely rewarding). The kid sitting two seats from Peach fell asleep five minutes into the movie. Over the course of the film, he managed to sprawl over three seats challenging Peach's comfort level. And true to form, Peach managed to propel her phone several rows forward the exact moment the movie ended. If you know us, imagine the two of us crawling around the seats of a nasty NYC theatre searching for Peach's phone by feel. If you don't know us, envision two old Jewish ladies. We both felt things about which we don't care to share. Don't get frisky with the floor of a movie theatre - it will get frisky right back at you! In the end, Peach found her phone and the two girls made it back safely to their apartments (in case you were worried). Oh, and in case you care, every sex scene in Revolutionary Road lasts about 12 seconds and is entirely pants on.

MoviePrunes: the name

This past Friday, the two of us went out with a rather unusual mission. We found ourselves in Murray Hill surrounded by many drunk overaged frat boys. In order to facilitate the awkwardness of the evening, we stopped in a bar for a round of drinks. Given the nature of that evening's task along with the fact that we had just seen the movie He's Just Not That Into You we soon found ourselves engrossed in a conversation about our aging bodies.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago. The two of us went to see Gran Torino on the UWS. As a way to kill time before the movie started, we detoured into a grocery store in search of same fruit rollups. Walking past the produce section, we found ourselves engaged in a discussion on each other's favorite fruits. Right before the movie began, Peach went to the bathroom and had an accidental run in with two old ladies, presumably Jewish, talking about their favorite fruits. We mutually agreed that our favorite fruit of all is the one of the loins. They preferred grapes.

It was on the night that we saw Gran Torino (movieprunes gives YUM YUM two downward facing THUMB THUMBS, FRU rating coming shortly) that we realized our weekly movie excursions were more characteristic of two old Jewish women. It wasn't until our conversation about our aging bodies that we came up with the name MoviePrunes. The purpose of our blog is entirely self-serving. No one will listen to Flo about how much she dislikes Benjamin Button at the office and Peach could always use another outlet for her superficial side. So we're writing this blog for our own entertainment with the vague hope that we'll score some free tickets or perhaps even an entry to a premier. At current, we rely on Peach's student discounts for cheaper tickets. And in case you're confused, we're actually two 23 year old women with pathetic pseudonyms that happen to be Jewish.

This whole entry suffers from performance anxiety.