A Fathead American In A Better Parisian World

 Fat Head directed by Tom Naughton (2009)

In A Better World directed by Susanne Bier (2010)

I watched both of these on Netflix. Fat Head actually prompted me midway though, to drop watching and go get my free birthday burger at Red Robin, and I'm grateful for that, because if I hadn't seen the guy about to chow down on a massive Wendy's double cheeseburger, I wouldn't have tasted the Red Robin's beautiful Blue Ribbon burger. So good.

The documentary itself is a little harder to swallow. The guy is a pompous jerk. He was offended by the suspect methodology of Morgan Spurlock attacking McDonald's in his documentary Super Size Me, so what does he do? He uses a same kinda load the deck process so it will deal out the answers he wants - that you can lose weight eating fast food. Sure you can, so what? Yeah you showed that bastard Spurlock.

Petty and silly and dishonest. He did share some food wisdom, but most of it was garbage, and especially his libertarian stance was annoying.

A more thought out and better criticism on this blog here.

Then I watched A Better Tomorrow? No, In A Better World. Damn, it works much better and is more memorable in the original Danish title Haeven - which translates as Revenge.

This is what won the 2010 Best Foreign Language Oscar. I've finally seen all of them; Biutiful, Dogtooth, Incendies, and.... ooops I actually haven't seen them all - Outside The Law is the outlier. Still I totally wouldn't have picked this if I'd been on the jury and watched all 5. It's kinda trite and melodramatic. The acting is good. The fact that one family is Swedish, living in Denmark and were victims of xenophobic bigotry, was lost on me until it was literally happening on the screen. But the plot was meh.

I'm slamming on this after the fact, and disliking flaws in the plot, but that really was the weakest part. It resolved very cleanly and all happy like. Joe made a point of saying Denmark has such an equitable, cooperative and pleasant society that it's hard for them to make a movie with conflict. They had to go to Africa to create a real bad guy and he was over the top evil. I didn't like the symmetry of the Big Man sociopath in the unnamed African country and his brutal murderous violence contrasting with that of the schoolyard bully in Denmark. The one vigilante kid reminded me of a nascent Batman. I wonder if that was intentional, a little joke maybe, naming his character Christian because the vengeful boy looked like Christian Bale. Probably it was more to do with the judgemental, rigid, and punitive beliefs held by most Christians.

I guess even in the "better world" there is nasty inhumanity. I dunno. It was pretty good. I just think Biutiful or Incendies was better.

I started watching An American In Paris. I like musicals. But the plot kinda squicked me the way it has dancer man Gene Kelly, aggressively pursuing the girl. It's merely a sign of the times, and demonstrates how openly sexist things you used to be. I guess they still are. I'll hold back my judgement until I watch the whole thing.