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Nov. 26 movie: Before Sunrise. What a sweet movie. But before I talk about it, I have to say that we tried to watch American Movie first, but turned it off after about a half hour. I heard it was funny, and assumed that meant "laughing with" funny, a celebration of a kooky amateur filmmaker. No, actually it was too cruel to even be "laughing at" funny. It was funny the way kicking someone in the nuts is funny.

Anyway, Before Sunrise. This is another one of those "can't believe I hadn't yet seen this" movies. We've had the DVD from Netflix sitting around for ages, but I've been resisting watching because I thought it would be talky and boring, like a slacker My Dinner With Andre. (Call me a philistine but I found My Dinner with Andre insanely boring. I can produce my own painfully clever dinner conversation, thank you very much.) But I was totally wrong about Before Sunrise. It was talky, yes, but also engaging, funny and sweet, and very romantic. There were a lot of great moments in the film, but I think my favorite is the scene early on where they're in a listening booth, playing this horrible American singer-songwriter, and Ethan Hawke wants so badly to kiss Julie Delpy, but every time he looks like he's going to, she turns her head the wrong way so he pretends like he wasn't. So sweet!

The ending was great too. I like a movie that doesn't wrap everything up in a neat little package, that leaves things somewhat open-ended and makes me care enough about the characters to spend time thinking about what happens to them after the movie ends. Of course the existence of Before Sunset means that they do meet again. Speaking of which, I need to add Before Sunset to the Netflix queue.