Into the Wild (2007)

If You Like The Trailer, You'll Love The Movie

I have a feeling Sean Penn and I wouldn't be "best buds". But I loved this movie.

Almost every scene is suitable for framing. I can't recall the last time I saw such cinematography. The movie's appeal is on so many levels for me. It probably will appeal to you on other levels as well.

My surprise hero? Vince Vaughn. This guy can do more with three sentences than most actors with a script. It's a shame we see him mostly in comedies or quirky roles.

The lasting memories I carry with me about this movie are that if you decide to go down "the road less traveled" there's a real chance that you won't be coming back.

Don't waste your time renting this movie. Buy it, you'll want to see it many times.

PS-If the trailer didn't get you, forget everything else I said. August 28, 2008

Was his sister evil?

I ask this because what in the world did his sister do to him for him to treat her that way? I completely disagree with the way he treated his parents as well, he was just a total brat, however I can and do understand. But I again go back to my original question, what did his sister do to him?

***SPOILER WARNING*****

In the end he should have just died when his car was hit with the flood. His parent's would have mourned his loss anyway and been effected the same way without a moose having to give up its life later for absolutely nothing. August 27, 2008

just awful!

Chris is of those people who have had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He graduates from college with honors, no debt and $25,000 left in his college fund account. When his parents offer to put him through Harvard Law and buy him a new car he has a tantrum claiming that he wants nothing to do with their materialistic ways and donates his $25,000 to charity. He runs off to hitchhike and live off the kindness of strangers for a number of months (they feed him, clothe him, employ him, he uses their running water and appliances, etc.). During this time he meets many people who are impressed by his brilliance and insights. All this time his parents are wondering where he is, how he is, and if he's okay, but so is his loving teenage sister. He's decided he's going to go to Alaska to live in the wild so he takes a backpack and wanders around.
He does foolish things like shoots a moose (which weigh anywhere from 600-1800 pounds) for food (it's just him) and all the while he's grumbling about selfish, greedy people and living off the land while living in an abandoned bus with a bed, wood stove, etc. He eventually dies by eating some poisonous berries (he thinks it's the fruit of one plant when it's really another).

Five minutes into the movie, the protagonist shows himself to be spoiled, selfish, and immature and never lets up. The phenomenal soundtrack is the only thing that saves this disaster.
August 12, 2008

Into The Self Indulgent

"Into the Wild" provided nothing more than the story of a boy in a man's body. Idealistic, self indulgent, inexperienced and incapable of coping with the vicissitudes of real life, he ventures into the wild. Before doing that he sends twenty-four thousand dollars to charity and burns his pocket money. Then he becomes a drifter, dependent on others, having to earn money to get supplies to go into the wild. Not sensible. Once in the wild, he lives in an abandoned bus, murders an innocent moose he doesn't have the experience to butcher properly, can't cross a swollen river to get back to civilization, mistakenly eats the wrong plant and dies an agonizing death on the bus. This film was boring. The protagonist's idealism, inexperience and eccentricity are annoying. My only feeling for anyone in the film was for his poor parents and sister. The loss of a child is a penance few bear well. The agony of not knowing where he was for two years is, as any parent can empathize with, a slow, agonizing torture. He rejected his parents and their lifestyle and in the end he achieved the highest revenge he could: he left them with a void for the rest of their lives. The sort of self absorption, selfishness, meanness and recrimination does not rise to an art form. There is nothing noble in what that boy did. August 10, 2008

Best Film of the Decade

There's not much to criticize in this film, it's almost flawless, a seamless piece of art. It's the composite of the True story of Christopher McCandles, The Jon Krakauer novel, the screen play directed by Sean Penn and the sound track By Eddie Vedder. I've never heard a better cohesiveness between a soundtrack and a screenplay than in this movie, it's haunting. Sean Penn uses a chapter format sequence for the movie in the sense of the Krakauer novel and the literary prowess and potential of McCandles himself who may quite possibly have become a great writer had he not encountered the profound and inadvertent course of advents that culminated in his fate. The performances by all the actors were great and the Eddie Vedder songs are powerful. A must see film for anyone who loves dramas about "push the envelope" type personalities. July 31, 2008

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