pieces of april

So I had movie night last night and again tonight. I started with Pieces of April , which I didn't really know much about. I knew that Katie Holmes and Oliver Platt were in it, and that was about it. My upstairs neighbor watched it a while back and said it was really good, but I don't really take her movie advice seriously. After all, she thought Van Helsing was (in her words) "like the best movie ever". Granted, I never saw Van Helsing, but what kind of bullshit movie has Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, a werewolf, AND Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Exactly.

I won't give away too much, but I will say that if you haven't already done so, go rent Pieces of April tonight, or put it at the top of your Netflix queue. Now! Katie Holmes isn't really even the best thing about that movie, although she does a good job. Patricia Clarkson is awesome as her mother, Oliver Platt does a good job as the father. Pretty much my favorite, though, was the job that Derek Luke did as her boyfriend. Without giving any details, I'll just say that this movie is funny, touching, and very real. It was done on a very low budget in 16 days with name brand actors, with hand-held digital equipment. In this respect, it's very similar to Full Frontal, which was one of my favorite, and one of the most underrated movies of 2002.
Oh. As an added bonus, there's lots of music by the Magnetic Fields and Stephin Merritt. In fact, Stephin Merritt wrote a song specifically for the movie. Much of the movie is unscored and has no music, but all of the music comes from Merritt. The Soundtrack is quite nice, and features some otherwise unreleased stuff. Anyway, I really liked this movie, so I watched it again tonight. Interestingly, the second time through, I was mesmerized by different things and different characters.

Seriously. Rent this movie. Today.

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