Okay, so I finally hunkered down to watch Tideland. A couple weeks later, I'm still figuring out my thoughts, but I'd say it was "okay." I don't hate it, like many did, but I don't love it either. While I understand it and do not object to the occasionally grotesque content, nothing really pushed me one way or another.

The movie begins as Gilliam himself makes a statement about viewing the movie through the eyes of a child and how, while creating this movie, he discovered his own inner child, which was a little girl. The little girl in the story is Jeliza-Rose, a kid whose mother dies at the start of the film, and she's taken by her drug-addicted father to a rundown house in a remote location on a prairie near some train tracks. Her father dies early in the film too, but she actually doesn't catch on to that for quite some time. I thought her interaction with her dad was fun, especially the wig. The girl also meets a couple of odd characters who live nearby. She is too young to understand a lot going on around her, but she is also becoming a young woman, and the dynamics of those two factors cause the audience to be both adult and childlike in response: we fear for her quite a bit, as well as sit back and enjoy who she is.

Jeliza-Rose is played by Joelle Ferland, who is obviously extremely talented. The weight of the movie is on her shoulders, and with the amount of dialogue and variety of moods she portrays, she gives a very winning performance.

I didn't see it on the big screen, but I can imagine that the shots of the sky and fields were great to see. I think the movie looked good in every shot, even the ones that were bizarre.

But even though it looked good, and Ferland was perfect, the movie itself didn't do anything for me (or against me). I thought it was a very slow-moving movie, which seems weird considering how much goes on. And while the girl is captivating, she is captivating amidst a lot of weird stuff that just did nothing for me. It's not that I didn't like the subject matter just because it was potentially offensive-- nothing shocked or angered me (and I actually liked J-R's interaction with Dickens a lot)--I just didn't care for the style of it, finding it just a bit too weird in an annoying way.

I realize that my reaction is a bit flawed. I know that without the story and the weird stuff I wouldn't be able to appreciate who Jeliza-Rose is, but even though her character shines through, the world around her isn't something I want to spend time with, even from her own point of view. And that's the paradox of my response, I guess..

Anyway, I guess I just don't feel as strongly about this movie as all of the other reviews I've read. While I appreciated one particular character, the rest of the movie fell short of my interest, and the slow pacing made it feel longer than I cared for it to be. With occasional sparks of greatness, it will most likely fall to the middle of my list for the movies of last year. (And yes, I'm still working on that list.)

Hello real world, how r u bb?

Also:

I saw a free sneak preview of this tonight. It was as awesome as I thought it was going to be. It even has some of the carnage of Shaun of the Dead and even more great performances. Tons of great British comic actors including Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan in brief roles. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are great together, as always. This film also has the greatest homage to Point Break ever. It's great. Go see it this weekend. I give it 4 out of 5 pickles.