Have you seen...

"Hello, beautiful." - Don Johnston

Broken Flowers
The movie has the best non-verbal conversations I have ever seen. It is about a story of a Don Juan who has had his time, and he sets off on a journey to visit his ex-girlfriends and find out which one was it that had his child 19 years ago. One would probably expect a lot of reminiscing going on. Awkward moments when they recount bad times and maybe all of them would end up in the bed with him again. Not much was said in this movie. Most of the time, Don Johnston (by Bill Murray) was staring off into space, his thoughts unknown to us. But the little times he spent with the ex-girlfriends, one would know so much. Laura (by Sharon Stone) was the one who would go weak on her knees whenever Don did something sweet for her. A skank. Their relationship was merely physical. Dora (by France Conroy) was the one who loved him, but Don did not love her back as much as he should. And here she is, stuck with a man who is madly in love with her, but Dora just is not as happy as she should be. Carmen (by Jessica Lange) would rather have never met Don in the first place because she could manage life by herself anyway. Their relationship was a sour one, which resulted in her still disgusted of him even all these years. And Penny (by Tilda Swinton). She was the one wearing the pants in the relationship instead. And she still hates him as much as Carmen does, maybe much much more. And Michelle would be the one Don loved out of the bunch. The way he told the florist to wrap the flowers perfectly and they "have to be all pink". The way he walked up to her grave and greeted, "Hello, beautiful", something he never did with the others. The way he sat under the tree by the grave and cried, something he never did with the others.

Good Will Hunting
We will at least run into people like this at least once in our lifetime. You know. Those smart kids but from the wrong side of town. And sometimes, we will hope to be a hero and get them out to the right side of town. In movies, it always works. But in real life, it rarely works. Because. Not everyone sees an intelligent kid when he is cleaning up the offices. Not everyone will give him the benefit of the doubt, put their life on hold just to tweak his messy one right. Not everyone will be this patient. The kid may not even give a fuck what you do for him. The kid may not even listen. And one would spend nights drinking scotch and wonder what is the matter with the kid. One would cry to sleep every night and ask oneself what is not enough, what is never enough, for him. Then. Perhaps one would wake up one morning and decided he is not one's problem to begin with, and move on. What then happens to the kid? He remains as intelligent as he was borned with it, and remains on the wrong side of town since the day he was borned into it.

DVD rentals: Quickflix