a girl walks home alone at night

[IMDB] [Amazon]

a girl walks home alone at night is a bit avant garde, which is french for "craptasm."  they tried to mask the crappy sets and costumes by filming in black and white--a totally valid tactic, by the way--but it did not work in this case.  black and white is also not useful for hiding bad acting and writing.  the main selling point is that the vampire was genuinely creepy.

a girl walks home alone at night gets one cat of betrayal.  cursed item!

beginners

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1532503

i do not understand why this movie was called beginners, though i vaguely recall that at some point somebody trotted out a tired cliche about all of us being beginners.  i think a more natural name would have been parallels, but i guess that name was already taken, by a movie that came out about five years later. in this universe.

anyway, this story was told with so many parallels that i cannot even.  it seemed like each character was shown to be an echo of every other character, plus they told the story in a slightly-disjointed way that i think was intended to *parallel* the way ewan mcgregor's mother experienced life.  there were so many parallels that i was convinced for most of the movie the girl was going to end up with cancer.

beginners gets two dogs upon which to project your innermost thoughts. i liked that everybody put in a good effort, but it is too bad that the final result fell so very very flat, ie, parallel to the floor.