Stranger than Ferrell

In theaters Friday: Apocalypto, Blood Diamond and The Holiday.

New on DVD: Miami Vice, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Idlewild and The Oh In Ohio.

Apocalypto looks like a must-see. It has already earned a positive review in my head for originality alone. I should have a review of it up next week. And if Leonardo DiCaprio’s South African accent in Blood Diamond sounded any worse, I’d have to lock him in a room with native Charlize Theron until he got it right. Leo would probably enjoy that though.

Review: Stranger Than Fiction (Spoiler warning!). Fans of director Michel Gondry, or those who like his work, but want something a little less abstract or “arty,” should dig this one. And, though I saw it with a friend, I imagine it is a pretty quality date movie too.

Directed by the talented Marc Forster, it stars Will Ferrell as Harold Crick, a repressed, obsessive-compulsive IRS investigator without a creative or spontaneous bone in his body. He has no real friends or hobbies outside of work. He goes to bed every night at 11:13. His life is scheduled, precise and solitary.

Things change, though, when he begins hearing a voice in his head. The voice is that of a British woman narrating his seemingly mundane actions with all of the flowery third-person omniscient prose that billows out of straining author’s heads to envelope otherwise ordinary literary circumstances with rich creamy subtext.

Emma Thompson certainly plays against type as that voice, that is, as the neurotic author with an unbearable 10-year streak of writer’s block. It turns out Harold Crick is the lead in her new book which she will finish just as soon as she figures out a poetic way to kill him off. I love that this conceit is never explained, only accepted and run away with like a kid with a brand new kite.

Thompson’s author is played much more for humor than for character (which is normally Ferrell’s territory, though not here). Consequently, despite a few laughs, she comes off as over-the-top more often than not. Fairing better is Dustin Hoffman as the English professor Ferrell turns to when he deems a psychiatrist to be of no help for his problem. Each of Hoffman’s scenes is hilarious. His tone and delivery, the “business” of his character–whether its pouring coffee back into the pot or eating pudding when he should be paying attention to Ferrell—is all quirky and entertaining stuff. Hoffman could go on forever playing these types of comedic, supporting roles, but can someone please write a movie with him in mind? Come on, Wes Anderson? P.T. Anderson? Some writer/director not named Anderson? Come up with a Dustin Hoffman starring vehicle and let him loose.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is excellent too, as Ferrell’s nemesis-turned-love-interest. The actors play off each other so well, especially in a scene in which Ferrell tastes a homemade cookie for the first time. As a kid, Ferrell’s mother only ever gave him store-bought cookies (artificial), but even when they are at odds over a tax audit, Gyllenhaal’s baker makes some fresh chocolate chips (genuine) just for him. This act of kindness signals his awakening.

Ultimately, and here’s the SPOILER, I believe the movie is about shattering the superficialities and artificialities of life, like Harold Crick’s beloved digital wristwatch shatters in the end. Harold Crick represents most of us who walk through our jobs and our shallow relationships. We walk through walls, practically, never stopping to do enough self-examination to realize who we are and what life is truly about. What saves Harold Crick in the end is not his acceptance of death per se, but his willing acceptance of his life’s purpose, which in his case just happens to be death. When he tells the author that her book (and his demise in it) is beautiful and should not be changed, Thompson realizes that someone as self-aware and humble as Crick deserves to live. His willing sacrifice for a young boy brings real life (and love). “I’m fine,” a body-casted Crick tells his girlfriend in the hospital bed. And on every level but the physical, he is.

If Crick had just gone through his solitary life as an unknown, unloving taxman because that’s what was working for him, he would have lived a terribly unexamined life, and ultimately, one empty of discovery and passion. Like Harold Crick, no life philosophy, guru, relationship or religion will ever work for us if we believe in it because it works for us. You have to believe in it because it’s true. It has to be true. Because what emotionally “works for you” will change with moods, circumstances and time, and it will never help you really deal with your own death or the death of the people you love. But when Crick faces death and makes peace with the purpose of his life, he aligns himself with a universal truth, and this becomes his salvation. The truth is “stranger than fiction,” and sometimes, the truth hurts.

Heady stuff for a Ferrell flick, but it is presented in a pretty enough package and it’s baked without a trace of preachiness. Spoon maestro Britt Daniel recorded instrumental songs for Stranger Than Fiction, and some classic Spoon tracks fill in the gaps. I loved it when my all-time favorite Spoon song, “Vittorio E” swoops in during the culmination of Act 3. Who cares if it sounds like what Stephen Malkmus had breakfast? It’s brilliant, and it works so perfectly with the sequence.

Maybe you’ve seen Stranger Than Fiction, too, and think I’m overrating it. If so, leave some feedback below. I’d like to know what you thought. And also read here as Premiere counts down the 20 most overrated movies of all time.

Everybody excited for Spiderman 3? Good, well, it may be the last with Tobey Maguire. Reading about this controversy on the Internet is pretty funny. If I see one more fanboy post to the effect of “I just can’t believe anyone else in the role of Peter Parker/Spiderman,” about a movie featuring well, a web-swinging, crime-fighting “Spider Man,” I’m might lose it. Like Kyle MacLachlan says in Blue Velvet, “I love ya, but you’re gonna get it.”

Here is the first part of a very candid and honest Q and A with Sylvester Stallone. No, I don’t particularly like his movies (except for the brainless entertainment, the kitsch factor, and when I’m training to fight a Russian champion), but I definitely respect him a lot more having read this.

And finally, will the great Peter Jackson (that’s sarcastic hyperbole) direct The Hobbit? Frodo weighs in on the whole feud right here.