One thing that has really come to bother me in the world of cinema is the way that movies condescendingly stomp all over "boring" personal values with long, arrogant, didactic films--and how critics consistently eat those films up with a spoon. Like American Beauty. Yeah, you're old, you live in the suburbs, you're bored with your life. We get it. Everyone gets it, because nobody likes their job. Do you really think any kid grows up wanting to be an Associate Program Assistant to the VP? (I'm sure it's a fine job, but does anybody really?) No. Who doesn't want a more exciting life? I think it's incredibly insulting that Hollywood implies that if you're not living for the moment, then you must be a soulless, ambitionless automaton.
On the contrary, people who keep slogging through life and boring jobs because they want their kids to have opportunities, well, I think that's admirable. A lot of people have plenty of courage and plenty of ambition, but also an ability to consider another person's interests as paramount to their own transient unhappiness. That doesn't make them stupid or close-minded.
Revolutionary Road is another one that grinds my gears (basically, Leonardo DiCaprio is married to Kate Winslet, she's bored with living in the suburbs, he works a boring job, she wants to move to Paris. I was going to say more and spoil the entire movie, but since it just came out, I'll refrain). I know the movie tries to tell you that if you settle down and opt for security, you are boring and useless and secretly dying inside.
I don't know about that. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I would really like to have a place that's all mine and a home to return to, rather than flitting from city to city everytime things get familiar, and renting out flats with 168 tenants' worth of ejaculations and pubic hairs in the carpet.
But to each his/her own, I suppose...
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