Jan 9 - "I get so cold. It's desert cold."

Good Dick (2008)
dir. Marianna Palka
starring
Marianna Palka
Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia (TV), 2003-2005)
Mark Webber (Broken Flowers, 2005)
Martin Starr (Adventureland, 2009)


Here's a sweet independant romance about an impossibly awkward girl fascinated by soft-core porn being courted by a homeless video store clerk with a past history of drug abuse. For serious.

This Marianna Palka girl seems AWESOME! She's from Scotland, and moved to New York to act in plays, and then all the sudden she decides she's going to make a movie (She wrote, directed, and starred in Good Dick) which gets accepted into the Sundance Film Festival! Good on you, girl! It's just a pity that she chose a title which prohibits ever bringing this up in casual conversation without a detailed explanation: No, this isn't a sex movie. There's no nudity and no sex scene, not even one that classily pans out the open window.

I really thought this was a good movie, even the side characters seem to have important stuff going on without overwhelming the central plot, which is concise but sincere and touching. My one unanswered questioned was about the guy's motivation for courting the girl. I mean, it's clear he's fallen in love by the end, but at the beginning it's possible he was just looking for a place to stay, because he was living in his car. Was he tricking her? Maybe he just found this lonely, socially inept girl and thought he'd manipulate her into letting him into her life. Because he goes to such great lengths to get into the apartment of this girl who doesn't even wash her hair until halfway through the movie, and then he starts sleeping on her couch, and then he tricks her into letting him sleep in the bed. I'm not positive that his motives were pure, that's all, because it seems like he puts up with a lot of abuse before the end of it, and if he didn't need a place to stay, I don't think he would have stuck around.

Probably no one knows what I'm talking about because no one else has seen this movie. But you should!