I finally got around to seeing Adaptation, which has been recommended to me for about the past year as a flik I should see. It was pretty good, I was amazed by Chris Cooper, impressed with Nicholas Cage but not really with Meryl Streep. As an added bonus, the lovely Judy Greer was in the film as well. I believe I have a slight crush on her.
It is a movie about making a movie about making a movie about flowers.
This is new territory for Hollywood, but old hat to independent filmmakers. One of these, my old professor Jill Godmilow, has been making films and encouraging others to do so for quite some time. But actually, what she and others have promoted is just making a movie about how it is hard to make a movie about [insert subject]. Self-reflexivity in this form is used to point out the weaknesses of the film form, but Hollywood takes it one further iteration, which makes the self-reflexivity a mere gimmick that makes many things in the film into a kind of joke. [Kaufmann does not want to write a screenplay about drugs, sex, violence, etc. but he ends up doing that very thing, which we are actually watching on the screen]. The psychological examinations of the characters are quite interesting, but at times the editing got a bit too sloppy. For instance, the scenes in which Cage as Kaufmann was engaged in conversation with Cage as Donald were a bit obvious. The strength of this movie lies definitely with the screenplay and the acting, other filmic qualities did not impress. Nonetheless, it was something much better than I would usually expect from Hollywood.