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At the Movies

 There is a great deal of finger-wagging about the rich people who died in the Titan submersible. "Those fools!" "A billionaire misadventure!"


I'd like to think I would never enlist in a project with Stockton Rush--who compared car-driving to his own Titanic escapade--but I certainly know what it is like to make a stupid choice. So: My heart goes out to those folks in their watery grave. I feel for them, especially when a self-righteous NYTimes reader makes sniffy judgments in response to their obituaries.

Over the weekend, Marc and I watched a movie about young people behaving in an idiotic way. It's called "Like Crazy," and the title says it all. A young Felicity Jones is smitten with love; she ignores visa regulations to spend a few extra weeks with her American boyfriend, Anton Yelchin. Anyone with half a brain would say: "Fuck around, and find out...." But who has half a brain among undergrads and grad students? Jones and Yelchin love each other enough to try a painful, endless, unsatisfying multi-continent love affair--but they aren't quite ready for Yelchin to just give up his job and move to England. Yelchin's roving eye leads him to Jennifer Lawrence (like Chris, in "Miss Saigon," he accidentally forgets his new girlfriend's name). Felicity Jones becomes involved with a guy who gives her ugly furniture and insists that she stop drinking alcohol.

This movie made me think of two Maile Meloy titles: "Half in Love" and "Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It." There is a great scene where Jones covertly checks Yelchin's text messages--and finds something apparently compromising. The text is an issue, and the spying is also an issue. Neither half of the couple can form a clear, convincing sentence--because these young people are mysteries to themselves.

I don't mean to oversell this film (it's a film that doesn't know how to use Jennifer Lawrence, and that's just one issue)....but, at times, I felt that someone had been spying on me throughout my teens and twenties, and "Like Crazy" was the end result. That's an achievement, I think.








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