Monday

Having seen Angelina Jolie in Pushing Tin, I decided to pursue her career further. I wondered why she was so highly regarded, except for having incredibly big lips, and a willingness to be half-naked. Thus I found myself watching Girl, Interrupted, for which she won an Oscar. Winona Ryder is ostensibly the star, as she plays an aspiring writer in the 1960s pressured into going to a mental asylum by her parents. The flashbacks to her previous life I found irritating, as well as the narration by Ryder (this is adapted from a novel, as you can quickly tell). It seems to fit every other 'group of people bound together by hardship' story that you've ever heard of (either in prisons or schools etc). You have an array of characters all trying to get over their various problems. Angelina Jolie is supposedly the most interesting of these, but I found her performance fairly ordinary. She just seemed to be playing herself, or the same role as in Pushing Tin, anyway. I was pretty bored by the end, but maybe this isn't a movie aimed at me anyway. The premise seemed pretty trite and shallow: what is normal? are any of us really normal? Anyway, I'm sure some people enjoyed it, but I shall have to continue in my search for why Angelina Jolie is so respected. Incidentally, the film's director, James Mangold, is the man behind the current 3:10 to Yuma, which does look good.