"Zero Dark Thirty" - Film Review

“What other cases have you done besides Bin Laden?” –CIA Director

“Nothing … I’ve done nothing else, sir.” -Maya

When people at my college learned that Osama Bin Laden had died, many gathered at the library, the building at the center of the campus. They sang patriotic songs loudly and poorly and drank openly and unquestioned by the administration. It was a boisterous, unrestrained display of patriotism. I didn’t participate in this. I remained in my dorm room, changing little of my regular routine. When I learned how people were reacting to it, I was a little unnerved. Yes, Bin Laden had been responsible for countless deaths and unforgivable tragedy, but everyone seemed to be unphased by the violence necessary to achieve the means to this end. When I stated my particular (and apparently unpopular opinion on the subject), I got a lot of fuming glares and judgmental, unthoughtful comments. See for me, Osama Bin Laden had become a ghost, a boogey man. It had been a decade since the attacks of September 11^th, and he was the farthest thing from my mind. Of course, I was relieved, even pleased. But so many of the events, policies, and actions post-9/11 have been exhausting to bear on the country and our citizens, and killing Bin Laden felt like trying to put a bandaid on a flesh wound. It was never going to truly be healing, and Zero Dark Thirty takes little satisfaction or pleasure in his death. 

But Zero Dark Thirty really isn’t about Osama Bin Laden. In fact, at its heart, it’s much more of an exacting character study of its protagonist Maya (a magnificent performance by Jessica Chastain). CIA agent Maya’s obsession with (and it totally is an obsession) finding Bin Laden continues to wear down on every fiber on her being, and she slowly becomes consumed by the case and nothing else. We can see it in her face: she’s increasingly tired and harrowed; sad and weary, and Chastain knocks every single scene out of the park. It’s a goddamn near perfect piece of acting. By the time Bin Laden’s been found and killed, there’s no pleasure in it. Maya has spent 12 years of her life (and her whole career as part of the CIA) trying to nab this guy that once she has, she doesn’t know what to do with herself now that it’s finished. The film ends with her whole life in uncertainty and her deeply disaffected.  

Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow was an incredibly well-suited choice to direct the film. Coming off of some of her career’s best work in The Hurt Locker, where she brought impeccable realism and purpose to the story of a bomb squad detailed in Iraq. In the steady, capable hands of Bigelow and with a searing script by Mark Boal, the film goes step by step through the procedural work that led up to Bin Laden’s demise. Like the best historical dramas (All the President’s Men comes to mind), it makes something we already know the ending to deeply interesting and intense. Having gone step by step to learn just how Bin Laden was tracked down, it makes the Navy Seals stealth operation all the more heightened and intense (especially with Alexandre Desplat’s pulse ponding score set to it).

Not only is it deeply relevant and thoughtfully crafted, but carried by such strong performances, not just by Chastain but a cast of great supporting performances, including Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, and Chris Pratt. Zero Dark Thirty is one of 2012’s brightest, most gripping, most vital films. 

Grade: A    

30 Rock - "Game Over" - Review

Shows will almost invariably reach a point where they’ve lived too long, but remain on the air because they’re critical darlings or have great ratings. 30 Rock never had impressive ratings, but it was able to tell the stories Tina Fey and co. wanted to tell about the crazy characters residing at 30 Rockefeller Plaza season after season. Telling stories with a zippy pace and plenty of jokes that mixed highbrow and lowbrow, the series proved itself one of the funniest shows on television, but even the best of shows can outstay their welcome and the show’s 6^th season was arguably its weakest. The show had become too broad, too cartoonish, awfully repetitive, and lost sight of its characters (Jenna could become terribly grating and Kenneth could descend into a caricature of a redneck at times). When the series officially declared its 7^th season at last, the show was given a new sense of purpose that has made the 7^th season one of the series best seasons. The show feels like its aiming to sendoff its characters with satisfying resolutions, including, so far, two equally weird marriages, a surprisingly funny funeral, and what appear to be plans for Liz Lemmon to get a baby (or older child as this episode now suggests). Oh, yea, and it’s also wickedly funny!

Doing reviews like these where we get all high and mighty, and overly academic about what makes something good can make us lose sight of what makes a show good. 30 Rock isn’t just daring in its style, format, and jokes but it’s also often incredibly funny. With such well-defined characters in the main cast to play around with, the show is nailing some of its funniest stories to date. 

Last night’s episode was mostly about Jack. Having stepped out from underneath the burden of his mother’s oppression, he finds himself with new found confidence just in time to compete with his nemesis Kaylie Hooper, the granddaughter of Hank, the CEO of Kabletown (played wonderfully by Chloe Grace Moretz). It being his 70^th birthday and all, Hank decides that it’s time to make Kaylie CEO; she’ll serve on the board of the company until she graduates college, while Jack runs the company until she comes of age. Jack knows he needs to get the upper hand on her. He hires out Steve Buscemi‘s weird, cross-dressing PI to track her, and befriends his old archenemy Banks (a welcome return of Will Arnett) who appears to have information to blackmail her. According to Banks, Kaylie is not in fact Hank’s granddaughter and her father is in fact gay. Jack seems to intend to use this information to take the CEO position. But wait! Tableturning at its finest takes place in the final act. Kaylie made up this information to trick Jack and make lose him the position. And just when we think the crafty Kaylie has one-upped Jack, Jack shows his hand and lets her know that he went along with it the whole time to distract her. “The only thing Hank cares about more than family is birthdays,” Jack tells her, and Jack distracted Kaylie long enough to get Hank a gift and make her forget about it. 

Liz was dealing with some baby stuff in the background of the episode. The always amusing Dr. Spaceman (Chris Parnell) somehow tracks Liz to Westchester (where she’s gone to avoid his antics) and recommends she start taking fertility shots to improve her chances of getting pregnant (which only serve to make her hormonal and heighten her emotions). Liz wonders whether it may even be worth having a kid at her age. Won’t she just be in her seventies by the time they’ve even gotten out of college? She considers adopting instead; first a baby, but the adoption wait list for that is too long (she’s only just moved up from the “lesbian adopter” folder to “found a man comma living a lie”) and then later a kid that’s a few years older (“If you can take care of me, you can do anything,” Tracey says with unexpected inspiration). We end the episode with the prospect of Liz getting a kid in some form very soon. And ya’ know what, this being the final season, I’m totally cool with that. Liz has been hopelessly single and … well … hopeless in general really. But she’s finally starting to get some well-deserved happiness. Jack and Liz are both getting exactly what they’d hoped for in this final season, and that’s totally alright. If the show continues to be this funny and stays true to its characters and gives them the endings they deserve (in its own weird fashion that only 30 Rock can manage), than the show will surely be missed. Only four more episodes of 30 Rock left everyone. 

Stray Observations:

-The final plot of this episode involves Tracey trying to direct an equally crazy Octavia Spencer in a Harriet Tubman movie (“You’re gonna re-write the script to let me walk through walls,” she informs him). Tracey attempts to act like Liz Lemmon but discovers Liz has a much harder time putting up with his shenanigans than he could have imagined.

-Liz once starred in a play described as “too confusing to be offensive”
-Hank on his mother: “She wanted to be cremated, and died in a fire. How considerate”

-“That’s the age I started Kabletown, got married, and had my first white child”

-Jack gives a business card to cheer up a crying Liz Lemon that says, “There. There.”

-The fertility shots are making Liz oddly emotional: “Just like poor Nixon. He did good things in China”

-“Okay, I don’t know why you had to be a woman” “That’s for me to worry about”

-“How much time have we wasted on scheming and gravel voiced entendres?”

-“How gay is he on a scale from gay hunting to hunting bears?”

-“For every Little Orphan Annie there is a Russian dwarf pretending to be a child”

-“I’ll be NBC’s head of publicity. You’ll never see me. I’ll be on a beach somewhere”

-“I’m desperate for approval. I would have been a Nazi”

-“I happen to have some powerful friends at the Maury Povich Show”

-“She tried to solicit sex from a police dog”

-No, Kenneth this episode. How does everyone feel about that?

Grade: B+

The Office - "Lice" - Review

As a fan of The Office, I’ve come to accept its diminishing returns in quality. While early in its run, for me, it used to be required viewing. That sentiment no longer remains. The series, on the one hand, has burned out all the story it really needed to tell. Michael Scott and the Jim-Pam relationship were the two things at the heart of the show. Now Michael is gone, and Jim and Pam are together, and it begs the question: why do we keep watching the show?

The series was going downhill long before Michael Scott left (If you don’t believe me, just remember even “Goodbye, Michael” has a really terrible sub-plot with Will Ferrell and Andy trying to make a sales pitch). But his absence made it even more apparent just how the series had lived longer than it ought to. The series is at its best when its people staving off boredom in the workplace or dealing with awkward work situations, and those rarely seem to be the focus anymore. The episode “The Target” where a bunch of the cast builds a tower out of customer complaint cards is an example of the small scale stuff that it could get a lot of mileage out of, but now shies away from.

By comparison, “Lice” feels like a stunt episode. It provides a really contrived way to create humor. May be if it had some big laughs, the show could get away with the premise. Happy Endings is a series with really contrived scenarios but it gets in so many funny jokes that it doesn’t matter. The Office, however, is not good (especially in recent years) at these situations.

We know Pam is going to get caught, and it’s going to end up badly for her. We can similarly see how Darryl’s breakup is going to end up failing. And the third storyline with Jim playing basketball with an, admittedly, great cameo from Dr. J feels so disconnected from everything (while also not being very funny) that it feels like an afterthought. 

When Cece ends up getting lice, Pam accidentally ends up bringing it to the office, and almost everyone gets it (except Dwight, who ends up wearing a hazmat suits, and a few others). Everyone blames it on Meredith and Pam wants to tell her but doesn’t want to people to judge her. But then Meredith shaves her head to get rid of the lice, and there’s simply no going back. When Pam’s mom, on speaker, reveals that Cece has lice, everyone flips out on Pam, but Meredith, always being the one looked down upon by the office, asks her for a drink and an unexpected connection is made.

Meanwhile, Darryl breaks up with Val, claiming he doesn’t think it’s worth it with him working in Philly. But when he plays the sympathy card with fellow liceless co-workers Nelly, Phyllis, and Kevin, they tell Val that she should take him back. And so she does, much to Darryl’s chagrin. 

It all feels very pointless, which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. But this just isn’t a very funny episode of a series we know is capable of being much, much better.

Stray Observations:

-The cold open with Jim biting his lips was similarly pointless and unfunny.

-“How would I feel if I was home, and she was off in the city… go carting with John Stamos”

-Darryl’s smile after his breakup - totally sold by Craig Robinson

-Dwight thinks that for 15 years, no one would be friends with him because he had lice when he was a kid.

-“The only thing that got me through it was pie and Brandi… the singer”

-“This won’t help him. This is muffin not cake” – Great delivery by Phyllis

-Of course, Creed got lice. How is that not surprising? Also, his reaction to getting partnered with Pam: “Oh, stuck with the weirdo”

-Catherine Tate’s monologue about being single was very, very funny.

-“I was re-entering the dating pool… then Kevin asked me out”

-The Erin-Pete thing continues to brew. Andy still hasn’t returned. What do you think of that?

Grade: C+

Thoughts on Season 2 of "The Shield"

 Spoilers on Season 2 of "The Shield" Below:

If The Shield was really good in its first season; then its second season strived for greatness, and didn’t stray too far from it. The series stepped up to match season one … and then some. I didn’t think it possible, but Vic found himself even more embattled than ever before, and this allowed for even better television.

The series had made things blow up in Vic’s face before and it had cornered him before. But it had never stacked the deck so thoroughly against him like it did in the second season. The more Vic pushed back; the more things just seemed to get worse and worse. His wife had run off with his kids. An auditor was scrutinizing Farmington. The Strike Team was selling drugs on the side without his knowledge. His CI Theo was killed, and the drug kingpin who had him burnt to death was out for vengeance. When Vic began beating the hell out of Armadillo in the second episode “Dead Soldiers” out of total frustration at how much had gotten out of his control, I was tempted to give him passing approval. Vic was starting to lose his sense of self early in the season. Without his family to anchor him with a sense of purpose, he was facing a major identity crisis. On one level, Vic does what he does for the sake of his family. 

Taking things out of the characters’ control brought out the best in the show. Not just out of Vic, but all the major characters. The Dutch’s failures to save a victim brutally physically, and sexually violated by suspects he let go, caused him to sink down into a pit of self-doubt and despair. Danny found herself harassed by the wife of a man she was forced to shoot when he drew a gun on her (all the more complicated because he was an Arab-American who was being racially profiled by his neighbor). First, It costs her the chance to be a sergeant. To make matters worse, to save Vic from being ratted on by Armadillo, Shane and Curtis are forced to sneak in a knife to a person she brought in in order to kill Armadillo, thus getting Danny suspended. She just couldn’t catch a break this season; I felt terrible for Danny. She didn’t seem to deserve this treatment. Eventually she would even get fired over the knife incident, and it was the icing on the cake of a season where she was treated like the writer's proverbial punching bag. Vic and Acevada have earned whatever moral comeuppance is due for them, but Danny (if you disclude her affair with Vic, which is more on him than her) has done little to nothing wrong. 

The series put its characters into wonderful conflicts that highlighted the actors and writers’ strengths. Claudette was pushed to the limits as both Mackey and Aceveda blocked her every attempt to track down the man, Armadillo, who raped a twelve year old. After Julian continued to deny his homosexual orientation, and proposed to a woman he barely knew. Even as Danny attempted to convince him that he shouldn’t hide his feelings, he continued to suppress what he knew, and take reorientation services. (The scene where Julian tell his fiancé about being gay is Michael Jace’s performance at its finest). Covering up his gay identity continued to be a problem within his personal and professional life, and the last image we see of Julian is him lying bloody on the ground having been beaten up by officers who lost their job by harassing him for being gay. Acevada was so concerned for his political career, and still facing backlash after the riot that he found himself constantly working with Vic and allowing him to get away with more than usual. The interplay between the two as Acevada lets Vic take him down increasingly slippery slopes, feeling he has no other choice, created a welcome change of pace in the two characters’ relationship, and opened up some wonderful conflicts (particularly how it brought out the best in CCH Pounder’s great portrayal of Claudette).

CCH Pounder’s Claudette had always been my favorite supporting character. The kindhearted, steadfast detective who’s hopeful but incredibly realistic and grounded. She had always turned a blind eye to Vic and the Strike Team’s questionable activities; she had some inclination as to what they do, but the streets were clean and it hadn’t caused roadblocks for her investigations. That is, until now. Episode 2’s “Dead Soldiers” found her caught between the scheming of Acevada and Mackey, who screwed over every attempt to solve her investigation. Her monologue to the two of them where she lets them know that she’ll solve the case even if she has to get around their machinations is a season two highlight and some fine acting work by Pounder. Claudette ends up one of the few characters to survive the season unscathed. As new police captain to Farmington, I look forward to seeing how Vic manages to finagle his machinations past her scrutiny. 

Season 2 saw the series become more creative and inventive than ever, taking risks and acting with confidence not many series would have in their second season. The brilliant episode “Carte Blanche” had Vic going undercover as a “corrupt cop” to solve a case. The series felt as if it was making a shrewd, meta-commentary on the very nature of it premise. “Co-Pilot” was a structurally ambitious episode midway through the season that jumped the narrative back 14 months to the formation of the “Barn” and the establishment of the Strike Team. The season established drug kingpin Armadillo as the antagonist of the season only to kill him off in the 8^th episode.

Whatever my complaints may have been (and they were few), The Shield has built enough good faith in me and provided enough compelling, memorable drama to set it apart from many other series I’ve watched before and am watching now.

"Django Unchained" - Film Review

Revisionist Westerns have had a good go of it in recent film history. The two most notable examples are Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Oscar winning masterpiece Unforgiven and HBO’s groundbreaking tv series Deadwood. Unforgiven was astounding for its time; it amped up the moral greyness that the Western was capable of, and Eastwood used his well-known persona and iconic stature within the genre to ask questions about the mythos of the films that had come before it. The protagonist William Munny is a reformed outlaw, still well-remembered and infamous for his violence and many murders of innocent people. He’s now settled down, and the woman, his wife, who made him give up his old ways, has passed on; his only remaining interests are his two children. It’s not the most likely of heroes, and Eastwood throws the whole question of the notion of the hero and romance of the Old West into scrutinizing inspection. Deadwood adopts the moral murkiness of Unforgiven but goes one step further: it dirties up everything. The streets of the camp town of Deadwood are filled with mud and muck. And everyone is more foulmouthed than the next, and the F-word is dropped regularly.

Django Unchained is a different breed of Western revisionism. There’s still a clear good versus evil struggle at the heart of it, which aligns it more with older Westerns, but it’s the way the story is told and unfolds that causes it to stand out (I mean, have you ever heard a rap song in a Western?). Django (Jamie Foxx) is freed by German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who is seeking out criminals that only Django knows the face of. Django, happy to be free, helps Schultz track down the Brittle brothers (vicious slave overseers wanted for murder). Grown to like Django, Schultz agrees to help him save his wife from the clutches of the evil plantation owner Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Quentin Tarantino has established a brand for himself: “The Tarantino Film”. No one quite makes a film with the auteur-like grandeur of Tarantino. His films contain pastiche, homage, genre bending, unique dialogue, and slow builds that boil over into immense violence. Many have attempted to re-create this delicious blend that has made him so popular, iconic, and successful, and many and more have failed. Django is another display of how capable and assured the director is, and with the success he’s achieved how willing he is to try ambitious, interesting things that other people shy away from. Django is stylish and cool, but never without substance. It’s excessively violent, but never lacking intelligence. Whether you’re a fan of his films or not, it’s impossible not to stop and take notice of his films. They’re so unlike anything else on the market that they stand out by comparison. While recent works of his such as Ingrlourious Basterds and Grindhouse (and even Django) never reach the dizzying heights of brilliance that made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction put him on the map, they’re still some of the best films of recent years.     

Foxx ‘s stoic, quiet rage and Waltz’s untapped enthusiasm and liveliness, along with an unexpected but memorable turn by DiCaprio as skeethy slaveowner Candie breathe vibrancy and life into an already entertaining film. Django Unchained is a bloody good time and well-worth seeing.

Grade: A-

Cougar Town - "Blue Sunday" - Review

The quirky, wine drenched, awfully titled Cougar Town returned last Tuesday on a new network (TBS). The fate of the series had been up in the air for while there, which was a shame because the series is one of the most underrated comedies on television. Running gags, a sense of place, and a great big heart make stopping in with the Cul-de-Sac Crew required viewing. It may not always go for big laughs but it has such great, well-defined characters that deeply care for one another, and in their own co-dependent way they help eachother through all of life’s problems, no matter how small they may seem. The series returned in top form in “Blue Sunday”.  

Jules Cobb is the center of this crazy group of people. Grayson may begrudgingly accept some of her ideas, but he knows as well as everyone else that she’s the “light” at heart of the show, and “as she goes, so do we all”. I don’t know if I’d call her the "heart" of the show (that role often feels more true for Bobby, and even sometimes Andy and Laurie who are all three so very goodnatured and sweet), but if Jules is feeling the “blues” than it’s going to drag down the whole group (who seem to perpetually be in her home).

 The episode confronts the question of how we deal with our problems. Do we confront them head on or do we run away (in this case quite literally run) from them? 

Bobby Cobb is always literally running from his problems (that’s how he’s gotten by all his life), and when he owes money, Travis tries to convince him to be a bigger man and deal with his problem (Although he ends up running away and crosses paths with Jules who is also doing the same – “It’s amazing I’m normal,” Travis says). Bobby’s partner in crime Andy ran away as well, in this case from work when he wasn’t finished with an assignment. And Ellie avoiding the reveal of what seemingingly unsexy sexual thing her husband Andy did to her while she was out of it on ambien (which somehow the series also makes seems sweet in its own strange way) is its own weird form of running away.

Travis thinks he’s above all this: He’s a “nerd”, as Laurie puts it. He talks through things. But then he’s given the trump card that he can’t talk about: his feelings for Laurie, and we find out that he’s no better than anyone else when it comes to dealing with his problems. When she confronts him, much as he’s been telling his dad is the right thing to do, he instead takes his father’s advice and runs away from his problems. The Laurie-Travis question has been simmering for a long time now, and while they seem oddly well-suited for eachother, the age difference remains a hindrance to them getting together. While Laurie thinks its sweet that Travis has a crush, she really can’t see him as anything more than a sibling (or can she? Is her black army boyfriend the only thing stopping this pairing?). 

But as the A-plot suggests, this kind of avoidance of problems isn’t a good thing. Grayson is getting used to being married to Jules, who has a few tricks up her sleeve of quirks she has yet to reveal. She dreams that Grayson flirted with another woman, which sets her off into a depressed bout (“like dark blue. Like one notch over suicidal,” as Laurie, who had great episode, put it). Ellie keeps telling him that he should simply apologize for the dream, as crazy as that may seem. As Jules keeps descending into unhappiness (pretending to be positive at the behest of her therapist - another example someone avoiding their problem), she blows up over ice cream falling off her cone and onto the ground. Ellie, to the anger of Jules, tells Grayson about how she gets with her “blues”, and he confronts the problem, apologizing for the dream. He may not have wanted to apologize, but he realized that letting problems churn does no one any good. Eventually they’ll catch up to you.

All in all, a welcome return of one of the most delightful tv comedies. New showrunners and a new network have done little to change its DNA. And that's a good thing!

Stray Observations:

-“It feels like it’s been over a year” – Cougar Town gets appropriately meta in its cold open.

-“Are you alcoholics? Are you in AA?” “That’s two questions”

-“I read something” “Story’s really not true” “Alright I heard it”

-“Do I want to find out why my neck is stiff?” “Never”

-Jules likes pulling out Grayson’s old man hairs.

-Laurie really likes monopoly: “I once had a quickie in a backseat cause the guy was named Marvin Gardens”, “That’s why they called me community chest”

-Of course Bobby doesn’t get sarcasm

-Laurie is "lasered smooth hairless": Jules: “I’m gonna need to see that later”

-Another change in phrase meaning by Jules: “Junk in trunk” now = Having emotional baggage

-“He’s so black I feel like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank when he’s on top of me”

-For the delivery of it: “You never don’t pee in there, right?” “No”

-Tom dancing outside, looking through the window as everyone dances inside. - They've gotten some great mileage out of the character
-The fake preview for version of the series that's action packed, soap opera was hilarious. Great cameo by Michelle Williams.

Grade: B+

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" - Film Review

My streak of watching film based on “unadaptable” books continues with The Perks of Bring a Wallflower. The cult novel’s author Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the movie and much of the novels appeal remains intact with his guidance. Like the novel it takes its title from, Perks is a film about all those scary, dark, uncomfortable places life takes us, and with sincerity, honesty and heart it tells a narrative about high school that’s about so much more than high school (the story ends up dealing with a range of topics including abuse, drugs, and sexuality).

Logan Lerman is rather well-suited for the titular “wallflower” role of unreliable narrator Charlie Kelmeckis. Awkward, lanky, friendless as he enters freshman year, Charlie has had a rough go the past few years. His medical history is hinted at enough to give us the sense that he was in a mentally dark place in middle school (most of this relating to an incident involving his dead aunt, which much the like the novel never feels like it fits in with the rest of the story, but unfortunately needs to be told). Charlie flounders around, bullied, misunderstood, and too meek, shy, and mentally scarred to form any meaningful connections. That is until he meets Patrick and Sam. Ezra Miller gives the right amount of happy-go-lucky flamboyance to Patrick, while Emma Watson turns out to be surprisingly well-suited for enigmatic, anti-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sam, who has a lot more shades of grey than Hermione Granger ever showed. The brother and sister begin to see how kind the quiet, gentle Charlie is and how desperately he needs friends, and they bring him into their world where he finally belongs amongst the “Island of Misfit Toys”

It was an early scene that made me realize how good the film would be both as film itself and an adaptation of the book: Charlie tells Sam about how his best friend killed himself. It’s the little beats of the rhythm of telling this that make it work so well. For example, the moment after where a scared, heartbroken Sam whispers to Patrick, “Charlie just told me his best friend killed himself. I don’t think he has any friends” where I told myself: “Woe, this is going to be good”. And it really is in its own idiosyncratic, honest, heartfelt way. The little touches to solid scenes like this are played with emotions on their sleeves and captured by strong performances and a great script. 

Charlie “wallflowers” his way through one situation after another, but fails to actually live life for himself. He just wants other people to be happy. Thus he doesn’t ask out Sam, who he has an undying crush on, because he doesn’t feel it’s what she wants. He dates Mary Elizabeth even though he doesn’t actually have feelings for her (and then goes on in devastating fashion to break her heart). He lets his sister get beat up by her deadbeat boyfriend (and in fact way more and worse things happen to his sister in the book– which is a shame because Nina Dobrev is actually a really good actress and she’s underutilized). And the consequences, both good and bad, of his “wallflowering” are played out with careful attention to detail.  

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a charming, surprisingly good adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s great novel.

Grade: B+