United States of Leeland

This is a great movie. I love how it shows that everyone involved in the incident and Leeland's life had flaws. You sympathize with him, you know he wanted to do the right thing, but that doesn't make his crime okay. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is still wrong. The chronology could be a bit confusing (showing a girl in a Leeland flashback and having the scene end with her in the present), but there was really no other way to tell the story. If you knew everything up front it wouldn't have been as powerful.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Someone at work had just seen this one and was not amused which got me to rewatch it to see if maybe now that I'm older I'll have a different feeling. Nope. Maybe it's just schadenfreude, but I love this movie. I love that Solondz didn't cop out and make one bit of her life easy. I love the way the little girl dances when they start a home scene. I love how you feel sympathy toward Dawn, but that doesn't stop you from laughing through the whole thing. And I love the way it ends. I thought I might get some new insight rewatching at after at least 5 years of having not seen it, but all it did was reinforce what I'd already known.

Pieces of April

I really liked this one. There isn't much to say about it, it's fairly straightforward. Nothing really unique in the story, dialogue or cinematography, it was just a nice film. The supporting characters were all well-developed and the mother had a great performance.

Little Miss Sunshine

When I first heard about this after Sundance I was really excited. I thought it sounded great, but I never had a chance to watch it until now. And it was a let-down. The movie itself was good, but I think I let the hype get to the best of me. People were talking about how it was so original and that it was the best movie ever. I think those people ruined it for me. It was an indie flick that went mainstream, that's it. It had an indie style and a story that's been told before (the dead relative in the car goes back to National Lampoon's vacation - maybe further). It was good, but it wasn't anything groundbreaking as I had been led to believe.