There were a series of good, Oscar caliber movies that I neglected to go see in theater because of sports, health, and just play lazy-related reasons, and I have felt left out when people discuss them at great length. But thanks to the brilliant invention of Netflix, I am able to bring this fine cinema into my home to watch and get caught up. The movie of choice last night? Revolutionary Road.

Now, I had no clue what this movie was about going into it. I had heard that it was pretty intense, but I'm no stranger to intense movies, so I certainly was not going to let that derail me. In hindsight, perhaps I should have. I won't give away the movie to those of you who haven't seen it, but I can't make any promises, so you may want to turn away. But this movie was the most depressing piece of bullshit I've seen in quite some time, and perhaps that was the intent, but I still hated it. The main characters were miserable at work, miserable parents, and miserable in marriage. It was painful to watch two people who clearly didn't love each other, attempt to navigate through a relationship that barely got off the ground in the first place. They were both having affairs, but neither one of them seemed to be having "good" affairs. The sex they were having both in and out of the marriages was boring, mechanical and brief*, and the problems they were having could not be solved via an extramarital affair. At several points during the movie, I looked at the clock to see how much more of this misery I had to suffer though. And then to top things off, there was a gruesome abortion scene that just put the nail in the coffin (bad analogy I know) for me.


Now, I know not every movie is supposed to have a happy ending..in fact my favorite movie of all time, The Empire Strikes Back had a semi-depressing ending where the bad guys won, but the scenes leading up to it were so captivating, I barely minded. In this movie, it was clear from the outset that this was going to get progressively worse. And in what is always the barometer for a bad movie, my lady and I had a discussion about marriage and how to NOT make it depressing..not exactly the stuff foreplay is made of you know?

So, for those of you who saw and liked the movie, please make a case for it, and try to make my review and my opinion look stupid(er).

*If I watch the beginning of a movie, and its rated R for sexual content and nudity, I expect to see an explicit, steamy sex scene that's good enough to make me want to pause it, play it, pause it, stop it, take a break, rewind, watch it etc..That alone could have salvaged the terrible opinion I had of the movie, but no such luck.

Robert Glasper featuring Bilal - All Matter