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Sympathy for Delicious (2010)
Impressive directorial debut
I saw a screening of this movie at Sundance 2010. I was very impressed with Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut. I told him afterward that it seemed effortless. He laughed and said it was anything but.
Sometimes with first-time directors (though he's had some TV directing experience), there are jarring points that make you realize you're watching a debut. But there were no such moments for me with this movie.
Christopher Thornton, who also wrote the script, was great. He explained after the screening that he developed this with Ruffalo after Thornton complained that there are no good roles for paraplegics.
Though I was told beforehand to expect a dark film, it really has more moments of levity, which Ruffalo said was intentional.
It's a film worth seeing!
Blue Valentine (2010)
Good acting, weak directing
I saw this film at Sundance 2010. Great performance from Ryan Gosling (especially) and Michelle Williams.
Biggest flaw is that although the director said at the screening that he went back and forth himself feeling sympathy for the two main characters, I and many other women at the screening felt NO sympathy for Williams' character. Her character seems to use and discard men for no good reason.
Also, the director said he was inspired by the second "Godfather" movie for creating parallel story lines separated in time. However, the contrasts in the flashbacks and contemporary story lines aren't drastic enough. It made the flashbacks too confusing. If you spend time in a film saying, "Wait, what's this right here?," which I found myself doing several times, there's something wrong. "Oh, so when Gosling's character has glasses, that means it's a flashback?" There wasn't a great enough time span between the flashbacks and the flashforwards to be coherent.