Plans
Last night I watched The Notebook, which was really a terrible movie. I am leaving open the possibility that I simply don’t understand the genre of sappy, derivative romantic films, assuming that there are enough sappy, derivative romantic films for them to constitute a genre. Perhaps within this genre, The Notebook is noteworthy. Even if this is the case, the defining qualities of this genre as I have defined it suck, and so regardless of The Notebook’s superiority over other films of the same stock, it cannot overcome this underlying suckiness.
I mention this because The Notebook was the second film in my “eight days of Ryan Gosling” movie marathon. Two nights ago I watched The Believer, an imperfect film that is nonetheless much, much better than The Notebook. My original intention had been to write a response, review, critique after watching each of these films. I actually did write a fairly long review of The Believer, which I had every intention of posting here. But it was long and rambling and I began to discuss Nietzsche. And at that point I decided that perhaps my original plan was too ambitious.
So, instead of responding to each of these films, I will simply watch them and digest them. And hopefully after eight days I will have something interesting to say that does not involve Nietzsche.
Tonight’s film is Half Nelson.
