Sunday, July 25, 2010

The Kids are All Right


I went to see The Kids are All Right with my friend and her mom. A slight digression--we went to Veggie Grill for dinner and I tried out the organic Mothership wheat beer brewed with spices:


With the promise of spices and "organic" in the name, I was excited to try this wheat beer. Unfortunately it proved disappointing. Apparently though, I was supposed to pour the beer in a glass to get the proper mixing of the spices (instead of drinking straight out of the bottle as I did) so perhaps I should give it another try. My friend had the chili and sweet potato fries, which is exactly what she ordered when we went to Native Foods a few days ago for lunch:

It should be noted that she is not a vegetarian at all and normally avoids these establishments. As a generous friend she makes an occasional exception for me. Anyhoo, for the non-vegetarians in SoCal, she says the chili is better at Native Foods but the sweet potato fries are better at Veggie Grill.

When we went to see the movie, I sat between my friend and her mom. The obvious bright side--I'm right in the middle of the candy-sharing flow: Junior Mints to my left, Twizzlers to my right, with Whoppers in the cup holder. On the flip side, for a movie about family dynamics when kids of lesbians find their sperm donor father, this movie has a lot of naked hetero sex scenes. A LOT of them (and one fairly explicit scene of the moms getting it on). Enough to awkwardly stop the candy-sharing flow.

On a slight tangent, I have to say Mark Ruffalo is really comfortable dropping trou for extended scenes for his characters. Like a young Ewan MacGregor. Or a male version of Kate Winslet. I feel like half the movies I've seen with Ruffalo have featured him bottomless. But regardless, I do enjoy his work (and MacGregor's and Winslet's).

On another note, I was totally appreciating how Annette Bening has not had any work done on her face. Talk about aging gracefully--and gorgeously. I would take her face over Megan Fox's or Heidi Montag's any day. Plus Bening delivers an outstanding performance--a fully realized character where we see her flaws and the emotion she goes through. Thank God for her real face. I wouldn't be surprised if she got nominated for a Globe or even an Oscar.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It wasn't deeply profound but it hit issues and let us watch as they unfolded. It was well-written and the cast, as a whole, was super. Giving this one a B+.

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