Oh. My. Goodness.

I…

I mean I… it’s just… just…

So awesome. After years of recommendations, I just watched Donnie Darko for the first time. It felt like a combination of American Beauty and Twin Peaks (second season). Deeply freaky. So surreal that “surreal” doesn’t quite capture it. I’m still in a melancholy, sad, happy, blissed mini-mood from it. More reasons it’s awesome:

• Best 80s soundtrack I’ve heard in a very long time. Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears… great stuff.
• Drew Barrymore is every brainy teenage boy’s fantasy English teacher.
• Mary McDonnell can do no wrong.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal is pretty awesome, too.
• Come on, it’s got Patrick Swayze as a creepy new-age feel-good guru. Also, blast-from-the-bast Katharine Ross as a very expensive therapist.
• Wonderful depiction of combined teen horror/loneliness/angst, and even a less-creepy-than-usual treatment of teen sex.

This movie may well be good enough to break my R-ban for (I mean for owning; I already broke it by watching it). On the other hand, it has a pretty steady stream of crudeness. Not sure I want to own that. But anyway, it rocked on. I loved it.

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