Quarter Life Crisis Movies, The Prestige, Snoop Dogg

I turn 25 today, so, naturally, I’ve got a piece in The Washington Times on quarter-life crisis movies. The piece covers The Last Kiss, The Science of Sleep, Mutual Appreciation, and my favorite movie of the year so far, Marie Antoinette. The basic idea goes like this:

Reacting to the increasing instability of work, romantic relationships, and marriage as traditional social norms and roles dissolve, these films capture an essential uncertainty about how -- or even if -- one ought to progress beyond the consequence-free frivolity of childhood. Tentative, anxious and obsessively self-analytical, these quarter-life-crisis movies embody the self-contradiction of their generation: They're coming of age films about the refusal to come of age.

You can read the piece online* or, better yet, pick up a copy of the paper. When you do, make sure to check out the introduction of The Washington Times’ Film Snobs Only page on the inside of the Show section. It’s got part of my article and two wonderful pieces by Kelly Jane Torrance. Obviously I’m pretty biased here, but I highly recommend it.

Also, I’m in NRO with a review of Christopher Nolan’s slightly muddled but highly entertaining dueling magicians flick, The Prestige, which pretty much does everything I wished The Illusionist would’ve done.

The Prestige arrives packed with more dirty tricks, dark secrets, and unexpected revelations than a hotly contested congressional race. And, like those electoral battles, even after you know how it all turns out, it can be rather difficult to determine exactly what happened and why. Yet even if the story occasionally appears to do the impossible, there can be no doubt that it’s often a breathtaking spectacle to watch. Director Christopher Nolan’s fiendishly plotted movie about dueling illusionists is a masterful bit of cinematic wizardry that is both intimate and epic — like using sleight of hand to make an elephant vanish.

A final note: Happy birthday to Snoop Dogg and Michelle Malkin.

*Due to a technical snafu, there’s no byline yet at the online edition, so you’ll have to take my word that I wrote it. Or, as previously suggested, pick up the actual paper.