“”This is NOT funny!” Or…
Jocky Mark Wahlberg as Tommy, a student straying from existentialism and going into nihilism? Is he showing his intellect through his scruffy beard? He deserves the criticism that Brad Pitt gets when either of them get to speak big words and political pontifications, and I guess it isn’t fair that both men get that kind of flack. Well, at least he nice to look at especially when he’s beating people up. I always wondered why he keeps coming back to be work with one of the most vilified directors to ever live. It’s like the Skarsgard-von Trier collaborations but with mixed results. In David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees Tommy’s a de facto big brother to Albert Markovsky (Jason Schwartzman), a role reminiscent of the one he’ll altruistically take in The Fighter.
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Meet Jonah Hill, whose father is played by Richard Jenkins. Half a decade or so ago they were pre-fame and pre-Oscar nominations. These shots belong to a sequence that will get their family into a verbal argument with Tommy, which ends in breaking Godwin’s law. There are too many beards in this movie.
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Naomi Watts, the pretty cheerleader with problems.
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I never understood the vitriol against David O. Russell‘s I Heart Huckabees. I still like how subtly minimal the art decoration is reminiscent of Magritte – Dustin Hoffman‘s character even name drops him! His partner is played by Lily Tomlin and anyone who has ever been on Youtube has seen her spats with the equally short fused director. I understand, ‘philosophical comedy’ is a hard sell. It’s a lesser version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both satirizing our notions of therapy. It mistakes philosophy with its little brother in psychology and psychiatry, although I guess you’ll be healed mentally if you newly subscribed to an extreme way of thinking. And in that sense it doesn’t necessarily bring in the ‘philosophy,’ assigning lines of thought like existentialism or Catherine le Bon’s (Isabelle Huppert, in the few and delightful times that she’s glammed up and has her own way of following her clients) nihilism to groups of characters and instead making them fight on different sides of corporate dominance. But I didn’t mind that because I equated everything quirky into funny when I was younger. That until I rewatched it and saw the dream/therapy sequence with Jude Law‘s character having long, stringy hair, letting Albert suckle on him. The camera tilts but I’m not going down there with it!
Okinawa Assault 