Saturday, June 26, 2010

Movie Review: Cry us a "CYRUS"

CYRUS (2010), is the kind of movie I hope to see when I hope to see a movie about real seeming people working their way through the awkardness of a tricky wolrd in which other people are both necessary for individual happiness and expertly complicating that happiness in each other's lives.  Written and directed by brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, the film quietly makes full use of its' actor's (John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei and Catherine Keener) capacity for acting real. This is a good thing.

I laughed out loud -- frequently and with unembarrassed gusto, and I am not the kind of movie goer who is often accused of being jovial, easy to mind-tickle or heart-pull. The film is a complex unpacking of difficult themes, such as:  old love lost and new love found;  parental expectation and disspointment; and the tricky paths we stumble down in trying to integrate other people's stumbling into a dance. Without giving anything away, CYRUS is about how everybody is freaking-out all the time. More importantly, despite our freaking-out, CYRUS suggests that we all work pretty darn hard to make it through the day, beacause, in the end we need each other.

One last note on the film:  it manages to work all of this out for the viewer in a far more satisfying and less obtuse manner than this response to it.

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