Tag: Melanie Lynskey

I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

Melanie Lynskey stars in this tongue-in-cheek vigilante movie and Netflix original about taking charge of your life and standing up to jerks.

I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore Poster“I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore” is reading my mind. Not quite a year back my apartment was robbed. Someone walked into my living room while I was asleep one room over and grabbed my phone, wallet and guitar, then walked out. The cops were quick to point out that there was no sign of forced entry, so I must have left my door unlocked that evening. And I also didn’t have renters insurance. Tough luck, be more careful.

Some time later, I even got a notification from Find My iPhone that my phone had been located. It was just a few blocks away! I can see it!

Macon Blair’s film imagines what would happen if, unlike me, you didn’t just pass along the information to the cops and did nothing, but instead took matters into your own hands. It’s a tongue-in-cheek vigilante movie from a guy who played an equally hapless vigilante in Jeremy Saulnier’s “Blue Ruin.” “I Don’t Feel At Home” takes its character through cathartic growth, but it also comments on the frustration people feel when the world seems to be imploding around them. Continue reading “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

There’s something all those coming of age stories have forgotten over the years. For some, discovering what you love comes with a feeling of regret. How different would I be if I found all these great things sooner? Would I be smarter? Would I be more honest? Would I have put up with so much abuse? Where would my life be?

These are questions we should ask as teenagers, but for some it comes later than others, if at all. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” shows just how difficult that can be for people so young. But because it celebrates youth, music, love, rebellion and discovery, it’s a film that allows us to see and understand the world a little better. It’s a rare film that can help us grow.

The movie is based off a cult teen novel of the same name, and although it only came out in 1999, the book has for some meant as much to contemporary youth as “The Catcher in the Rye” has for so long. With how defensive today’s kids are about adapting their favorite novels into movies, something with such a passionate following could not have been directed or written by anyone other than the book’s author, Stephen Chbosky.

Thankfully he has made his book into a film, and he’s made a lovely one. Rather than stage it as a collection of anonymous letters like his novel, the film follows many of the punches of a standard coming-of-age drama. It lacks the narrative simplicity of “The Breakfast Club,” the indie charm of “Juno” or the visual splendor of “Rushmore,” but it matches all of those in endearing characters, confident dialogue and timelessness. Continue reading “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”