erin brockovitch and the prestige

erin's a simple feel good movie that's also got nice stuff about stay at home dads that i appreciated. there's just that the crux of the whole thing rests on this number, 335 million. there's a huge celebration over it. but it's actually a super pathetic number before you even count the 40 number that lawyers take out of it. it's a triumphant "true story" about the system working, but one wonders how much actors had to ham up that ecstasy at the end. i hope they did, anyway. the system is fucked, however blindingly julia roberts smiles.

i just watched the prestige which is neat. gotta give this plot a lot of leeway. if you don't think too much the metaphors are killer, but it rests an awful lot on an outrageous premise. but it's a spooky, enthralling premise. i also appreciate all the ugliness—dead birds, broken hands, drowning—the big ugly stakes. life's so much more interesting when things go wrong; i'm thinking again of people being blind in Unforgiven. and the image of all those hats in the field? that's haunting. if only the electricity didn't already look so dated. i was super ready to hate a christopher nolan movie, but this was pretty great.