The Dark Knight Rises...and so will we

I've always had this irrational fear at the movies of something bad happening.  I never really knew why, maybe because I started going to the movies without my parents at a time when it seemed like I wasn't allowed to do anything without adult supervision. So to be trusted enough to be dropped off at a location and sit in a dark room full of strangers for a couple of hours was both liberating and felt the smallest bit dangerous.

I have had a recurring nightmare since I was 8 or so about a gunman, or gunmen, entering the theater and terrorizing people. In this nightmare, I always try to find a way to escape, and it always ends with myself playing dead. It has always disturbed me how often this dream occurs, enough times that when AMC revealed their "loveseat" style seating years ago, my first thought was not how comfy it would be on a date, but rather the fact that it would make for a better hiding spot than seats that fold up.

Disturbing as these nightmares could be, I always chalked them up to my overactive imagination. Until yesterday.

I have been a midnight movie goer for years, the last being for "The Hunger Games" earlier this year.  I had contemplated it for "The Amazing Spider-Man" or "The Dark Knight Rises" but decided against it because a. I'm getting older, as are my friends, and convincing people to be up till 3 in the morning is not so easy to do these days and b. as excited as I was to see these movies, I wanted to be able to get lost in them, to pay total attention to the action on screen, instead of worrying about falling asleep. Never in my decision to go or not to go to a midnight showing was a fear for my safety while watching the movie. Maybe a little for the drive home afterwards, but never while inside the theater. Until yesterday.

People who know me, know me as the movie girl, the one they are always surprised if they have seen something I haven't.  That is because not only do I see a lot of movies, I see a lot in theaters, including on opening weekend. I'm not timid to go alone, I'm a bit of a snob and require certain rules at a theater, the biggest being no talking during the movie.  I like to be as far removed from my surroundings and as much inside the movie as possible. Latecomers, texters, even the light saber wanded theater employees irk me.

A lot of things bother me about what happened in Aurora; the fact that so many innocent lives were taken for no apparent reason is for sure the most upsetting and incomprehensible. It is blinding, life halting, sob inducing to think about. I have tried to think about other things but it has not been easy; it feels too close. The victims are my peers, people who love movies as much as I do, who don't find it ridiculous to wait online with prepurchased tickets for 5 hours to pack into a theater with no air conditioning to watch something others will wait months to catch on DVD.

However, the link that has really floored me is that the shooter was, on paper anyway, also a peer.  A student that worked in the building next to mine and lived across the street from campus. Someone that I may have come across in passing everyday without knowing. Someone who is now causing dogs to sniff around my workplace "just in case" rooms full of innocent strangers and neighbors and law enforcement officers were not enough potential bloodshed.

With any kind of tragedy the biggest question asked is always "why?' It is the question that always occurs, despite the fact that there is no correct answer. No answer will make this okay. No answer will justify what has been done.

Because of this I will try not to focus on the one to blame. I will try to focus on those that never left that movie theater, the ones at my work that never anticipated being there, lying in hospital beds trying to heal physical wounds, and the ones that made it out trying to heal the emotional ones.

We will all have to get used to a new world at the movies.  A world where purses are searched, fellow movie goers are scrutinized, and wanded theater employees are frequent visitors.

I hate that I was scared to go to the movie theater today. I hate that I was more aware of my surroundings than what was happening on the screen.  I hate the idea that I may have seen my last midnight show ever.  Most of all, I hate that my life no longer feels safe in one of my most cherished places. But I will not let this one person take away my joy and neither should you.

When I was in my first car accident as a teenager, my mom made me drive the same day. And then the day after that and the day after that. She did not want one bad experience to define me, to cause me so much fear that I would no longer enjoy something I once loved. She was also one of the first people I know to get on a plane after September 11th and encouraged me to do the same.  It is hard to imagine all I would have missed out on if  I let fear take over.  I will do the same for this.  I will continue to go to the theater. I will continue to get lost in a world outside of this one.  Will it ever be like before? No. But I recently saw a quote that seems appropriate: "Reality is something you rise above." We will all rise above this.  We will be okay.

Saturday in The Office

During a lazy weekend a few months ago, I caught up with some of my favorite pals from NBC's The Office in some of their more recent independent feature film roles.  Creed Bratton, who plays wonderfully creepy Creed on TV, plays equally creepy on the big screen as Uncle James in Azazel Jacobs coming-of-age tale Terri. Played wonderfully by newcomer Jacob Wysocki, Terri is a teenager that should be full of angst but can't seem to gather the energy it would take to care.  Overweight, living with an uncle on the verge of senility, with no parents to be found, or really friends for that matter, Terri lets us in to his quiet world of quirkiness.  After missing a lot of school, Terri is pulled into the office of Assistant Principal Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly).  Fitzgerald is the kind of Assistant Principal that most of us would have liked, but never would have admitted to it; he genuinely cares for Terri, even if he doesn't always know the best way to go about doing that.

Even discovering that maybe his friendship with Fitzgerald places him in a category that everyone else already did (the dude wears pajamas to school everyday, need I say more?), Terri grudgingly gives in to becoming friends with the other less desirables in Fitzgerald's posse, such as Chad (Bridger Zadina), a kid who constantly pulls out his hair.  When one of the more popular girls in school, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) allows a boy to do a very private thing in a very public place, she becomes an outcast that only someone the likes of Terri can sympathize and reach out towards. 

This is where Terri could become really cliché; the part of most teen movies where the lovable loser gets the girl, is accepted by the cool kids, and becomes valedictorian and prom king. However, this film stays away from the coming-of-age playbook and stays true to life, or at least the life we have been presented.  As the tagline states, "We've all been there."  The scenarios may be different but the emotions are the same.

Roger Ebert declared this one of the best movies of the year in 2011.  I wouldn't go that far.  It's slow paced and kind of trickles into an ending, but if you like movies that do not really take you anywhere but allow you a snippet of an inside look into someone's life for a while, give this movie a shot.

The other film I took in was Michael J. Weithorn's directorial film debut, A Little Help, starring Jenna Fischer as Laura, a dental hygienist who is dealing with the aftermath of losing her husband and trying to handle her 12 year old son. This is no Pam Beesly-Halpert; unless maybe you limit your comparison to the drunken Pam at the Dundies.

That is because we spend the majority of the movie watching Laura try to escape her humdrum life through a can of Budweiser. Not very content with her status quo, Laura falls into an even deeper sense of dreariness once her husband is out of the picture, leaving her alone with her already meddlesome family. To everyone Laura is a screw-up, and her reluctance to sue the doctor in her husband's case in order to provide a better life for her and her son is perfect evidence that without "a little help" Laura would be falling off the deep end with no safety net.

The only person that sees Laura in a different light is her brother-in-law; the other member of the family who tends to try and sneak out of family together time whenever he has the chance. The fact that he would like to spend that away time with Laura is just another issue for her to try and handle. There is not a lot that happens in this movie, but what does occur feels authentic for the characters.

While it could have played off very unrealistic for Laura to go with the lie bratty son Dennis (Daniel Yelsky) tells everyone at his new school about the way his father died; it doesn't. After all the put downs and lack of trust to be able to do anything right that Laura receives from her own family, it's not hard to imagine that fessing up is not high on her list of priorities.

 Like Terri, this could be considered an antithesis to the most fast-paced, action-filled movies out there. Although there is a small glimmer of hope that we are leaving her a little better off than where we found her, Laura's storyline does not wrap up in a pretty little bow. But if nothing else, maybe these two stories will allow the viewer to see their own struggles as survivable.

 Besides, it sure beats a day in the office next to a co-worker like Dwight Shrute.