Synecdoche, Doubt and Benjamin Button

I am clearly only slightly better at updating LowExpectation as a blog than I was updating it as a website. But the pre-holiday weeks were very busy for me, and then I was away for two and a half weeks. Now I am home, back into a normal schedule, and ready to share some minor comments each about the films I've seen in the past month.

Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman)

I've seen this twice. The day after my first viewing, I couldn't think of anything else. The second time was an oddly irritating experience you can read about over at FirstShowing.net. My simple response was that it's like 8 1/2 as directed by Luis Bunuel (and co-written by Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carrier, of course). But now I'm thinking it's better than what that would have literally looked like. I've said this before about other films, but Synecdoche is precisely the film I always wanted to make, a film about everything, particularly everything I've wanted to express about myself and my desire to express everything about myself. Oh, and I definitely appreciate that it features all of my current favorite actresses.

Doubt (2008, John Patrick Shanley)

I saw this the only way I could have enjoyed it, sitting beside a woman who'd spent her entire pre-college education in Catholic school. She laughed throughout. Otherwise, it's only really as good as its performances by Streep, Hoffman, Adams and Davis. John Patrick Shanley has seemingly learned nothing about directing in the 18 years since his last film, Joe Versus the Volcano. Those amateurish camera angles and awkward intercutting between scenes were distracting. He should stick to writing plays.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008, David Fincher)

For a film as magical as this seems to want to be, it completely lacks surprises. I wanted to be amazed, but never was. Instead I was bored up until the denouement, which is overbearingly cruel in its attempt to be sad. A young boy with dementia and a baby dying as if of old age? These are horrible things to watch, and not in a good-sad way. Also, did the film's scenes in the present need to have Katrina as a backdrop? I think I even liked this film's obvious predecessor, Forrest Gump (also scripted by Eric Roth), better. And that's an insult.