Candy and a Movie: Movie #54 Love

Love (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541874/

Welcome readers of Brunei, also known as the Abode of Peace. I think that’s pretty darn cool and might have to name my next apartment that. My current on is lacking peace for sure. Let me just get to the obvious, 9/10 times I would not be watching a movie called Love. I would watch it if it was called “I Love Making People’s Face’s Bleed”. I would watch it if it was maybe called “I Love Bacon”. I would even watch a movie called “I Love Not Loving Things”, but not something just named Love because there’s no way that could be good. The thing is, the plot of this movie sounded awesome. Well, at least it did to me. Listen to this: “After losing contact with Earth, Astronaut Lee Miller becomes stranded in Orbit alone aboard the International Space Station. As time passes and life support dwindle, Lee battles to maintain his sanity – and simply stay alive. His world is a claustrophobic and lonely existence, until he makes a strange discovery aboard the ship”. Plus it’s an indie movie so I thought it would have some solid shots and score. Stuff like that.

Things didn’t get off to a great start. Usually you aren’t in for a great movie when you think you are watching the wrong thing the first 10 minutes. Some old dude in the Civil War is in an underground bunker writing a journal. Someone is narrating what the guy is saying and it’s kind of cool stuff but goes on forever. Already bored and a little bummed. The general writing in the journal sends one of the young soldiers out on a journey to check out a discovery from another regiment.

Finally we get to space. Miller is talking to Houston and listening to messages, stuff like that. Once that is done, he goes and does a little jogging on the treadmill. You’re in space dude, how about relaxing a little. It’s like going on a vacation and still going to get your workout in. Not necessary. I don’t even going running all that much when I’m at home and I haven’t gotten fat. It’s all water weight. You’ll be ok for your little space trip, you can’t be eating all that much anyway. Lots of nonfat astronaut ice cream I’d imagine. Then he does a little reading, a little work, and its bed time. He has a nightmare about war. Lots of war so far and it’s starting to get pretty preachy with the anti-war side of it. I should’ve known with it being an indie movie. Is a movie about some guy getting stranded in space just being about some guy getting stranded in space too much to ask for? Why does there have to be underlying, unnecessary themes of stuff like war. It’s super in your face too. Lame. When he wakes up, the radio goes on the fritz a little bit. Later on the day it goes all the way out. Uh oh.

There are weird interviews cut in throughout the movie. The first one takes place right now and it’s some guy telling about how he’s a great story teller and it would be a horrible world without stories. That is all. Back to space where Miller has had no luck working on the radio. He gets frustrated and goes running again. Then a recording comes in saying that some stuff has happened on Earth and he has to stay there for a while. What is the stuff? War of course. Did I say that this was preachy? He can’t answer them back and says out loud “I’m frustrated and stressed”. I guess when you don’t feel like acting, simply stating the emotions that you should be displaying is close enough. Plus I don’t believe him. If you were stranded alone in space and felt “frustrated and stressed” wouldn’t you use some swearier words? I know I would. That leads me to believe that he isn’t mad enough yet. Then he runs some more. Get a crossword puzzle book or something dude, come on.

Something now tells him that the life support systems are breaking down. Maybe if he didn’t run so much, he could’ve preserved more oxygen. But he had to stay fit because you need big muscles to move in the weightlessness of space. To save air, he starts locking off most of the sections so now he basically only lives in the main room.

Another random cut scene with some guy talking about how we can and can’t pick where we want to go in our environment. Guess this one ties in with the whole being stuck in space conundrum. Miller has another dream, this time of the space station blowing up. He is super sweaty and possibly drinking his own urine. He finally snaps and starts breaking things. It’s at this point of the movie that I realized that I should’ve just watched Moon or Sunshine. Both are superior space movies if you yourself are looking to watch one. He whips out a picture of his lady friend, possibly a girlfriend. Pretty nice. She’ll be back later. We see warlike things possibly happening on Earth. He wakes up the next day to smoke everywhere. I’m pretty sure that means there is a fire but he doesn’t put anything out. He fixes something at least. Fire on a spaceship is probably the worst thing that could happen. It’ll burn up the rest of your oxygen. It’s a plot hole, that’s all I’m saying.

Things are back to being boring. He snaps a little bit more and plays around in his underpants. Not a lot of astronaut like work is being accomplished either meaning that his trip will probably be a waste. He starts to hear voices. He then starts talking to those voices. That’s never good. He gets into a spacesuit and goes to the ships core or something. It’s really cool looking with the lights. He pulls out a package from somewhere. Inside is the journal from the Civil War guy. At least that is tied together now.

Once again, cut scene. This time a guy tells us that we don’t know what’s important. He knows though, it’s that everyone wants to be loved. Disagree. I’d take two supreme Doritos Locos Tacos over just about anything. Now we know how the movie got its name.

Miller starts hallucinating and sees his girlfriend in a swimsuit. It’s a one piece but there are worse things to envision. Then there is a shot of him in a space suit sitting at a bus stop. Very cool, probably my favorite thing about the movie. The girlfriend says something’s, “There are no seasons, just time”. It’s kind of cool.

WE HAVE REACHED A POINT

A point of my confusion. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. I could look it up but that would take time. Here is what I think happens. He hallucinates some more and plays himself in cards. The card game is of course war. Frickin lame, enough with the war already! Also, if I was alone for that long, I would’ve started making up invisible friends long ago. He reads the journal and things are still anti war. The guy who wrote the journal died before he could finish it and that makes Miller angry. All of the power goes out. We learn that he has been alone in space for 6 years now. He writes his own journal about how he is abandoning his post because the life systems there can’t last anymore. He gets in a spacesuit and I get back into the movie. My note actually says “Hey look, the movie is getting good. All it needed was just for something to happen”. By something, I meant anything. He gets to the door of the ship, is strapped in and about to pull the cord that will launch him into the vacuum of space and, and, he can’t do it.

This is the very confusing part. We hear audio of someone on the radio saying that they are coming back up to get him. Yay. Also the guy in the spacesuit is now inside a building, possibly a hospital. He sees a picture of a spacesuit there. Then a typewriter from the story teller’s interview. The ceiling of the possible hospital looks a lot like the walls of the spaceship. The astronaut then walks past an exhibit of the space station. Now I think that he is in a planetarium or observatory. He climbs up the stairs and rings a bell at what now looks like a hotel. The next room he walks through is fancy looking. He gets in an elevator and I have 0% of a clue of what I am watching right now. That opens into a brightly lit plain white room with just a door in it. That opens into a room with a TV playing a clip of him on the Tonight Show. Then there is a room of servers. He then finds a book called “A Love Story” by As Told by You (would not read). The first page tells about the Civil War stuff. What the guy in the beginning had sent out to see is a giant crater with a space ship in it. He puts a code into the computer by the book and the place starts transforming. Someone starts talking to him and tells him that he is the last one. Possibly it could be aliens telling him that he is the last human because the war killed everyone on Earth. Possibly he is just hallucinating all of this because that’s what he’s been doing the last 30 minutes. I still don’t know. The voice tells him that connections are the most cherished thing that a person could have. I think being lonely and having your own space ship is cooler than having connections and a Camry.

He leaves the room and is again shown about to launch himself off the spaceship. Then there is just blackness and he is being orbited by a model universe. Kind of like in Red Planet. Music plays and he gets hit by a star or something. A robot then says that this has been an experiment between man and machine. The movie ends. What the crap? Again, I don’t care enough to do research about what really happened.

WELP

Favorite Scene: Him at the bus station in the space suit. More of that, less of bad anti war messages.

Favorite Lines: “I have decided I am not looking for one discovery. I am simply hoping that we have a history worth remembering.”

Rating: 5.5 of the astronaut ice cream bar things. There are something’s I didn’t know. First of all one of the guys from Blink 182 made a new band named Angel’s and Airwaves. Secondly, said band made a movie named Love to go with their album of the same name. Now I get why the movie wasn’t that good. An emotional, claustrophobic sci fi movie should be made by a real director, not be part of a concept album but the guys who made Dude Ranch. Those guys are good at other things, like making music I liked in 6^th grade. Not movies that I like in my 20’s.

Alternate Ending: Hard to say as the real ending could be anyone of 3 things. Let’s say the alternate is the one that I like the most, all humans killed each other and Miller is the last one left. The aliens do experiments on him. That’s probably not the real ending so I didn’t just spoil anything. Though maybe I did.

What I would do if I was the main character : We already know that the treadmill would be unplugged. I’d get right to making up imaginary people to keep me company. The first would probably be imaginary Emma Watson. Than probably Mario Balotelli because he would make being alone on a space ship fun. Then probably another Emma because I can.

What Happens in the Sequel : I just don’t care. It will be so pretentious that it’s made not to be watched. You play by the rules and skip it.