Synecdoche, New York: Not as rewarding as Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine, but the Charlie Kaufman brand of weirdness is out in full force and I did enjoy the staggering insanity on display. Grady Tripp has nothing on Caden Cotard. I could only shake my head when it became apparent that he'd built a duplicate warehouse inside the warehouse-stage that housed his neverending play solely for the purpose of verisimilitude. Or built a larger warehouse over his original one. Actually, I think both happened. It seemed like his production had actually eaten the city by the end. Ultimately had some difficulty enjoying the movie as a drama, though. The more surreal touches (the burning house) were more just random here, as opposed to actually helping to propel the story forward. Also, if Caden had invested 10% of the effort he applied to his art on actually living his life, he wouldn't have had so many damn problems in the first place. This was probably the point of the movie, but it's harder for me to sympathize here than in, say, Adaptation, in part due to scale: we see most of the main character's life here and he barely changes at all. Still a neat movie, just not Kaufman's best work.
Hancock: Well, it was half of a fun movie. If it was all just about the title character's rehabilitation, I would've been fine with that even if it just led to the expected, uplifting Hollywood ending. He was enough of a douche at the beginning that that process probably could've been strung out for the movie's full runtime (with interruptions for the obligatory superhero hijinks). It would've been watchable, if still routine. Instead, the movie went badly awry when it tried to introduce backstory and mythology. Guys, you're writing a movie about a superhuman drunk; you seem okay with the light comedy that demands but you just do not have the chops to turn it into anything more complicated. Oh well, at least it got Jason Bateman a paycheck.
