Michael Clayton

Went to see Michael Clayton with Dave yesterday. Dave picked me up from work at about 1:30, and we drove over to the AMC theater in Alexandria, only to discover that all the parking in the parking lot we went into were marked "reserved". I guess there's some business in that same stripmall that reserves the spaces during work hours. So we tried to get over to the next parking lot and were forced by the street to get onto a highway going north over the railroad tracks. We quickly got back off that, did a U-turn, and crossed back over the railroad tracks, only to find that there was no exit to get back to the theater! We went down, did another U-turn, and came back up to discover that there was no exit from north-bound either. So we went further south, took the exit immediately before the theater, and ended up going to down other street with no way to get across the little stream back to the theater. It was frustrating, apparently the theater has railroad tracks on the north side and a stream on the south side, and the only way to get there from our highway (as I discovered on a map later) is to be on 495-E a few miles West of us, or 495-W a few miles east of us. So we should have gotten on the highway, gone down 2 exits and gotten off and re-entered the highway coming back. But instead we went to the theater out by Target near crystal city.

Michael Clayton sucked. All the critics on rottentomatoes are raving about it, but it's basically a stupid knockoff of that old John Travolta movie called A Civil Action. It's hard to go into the reasons it sucked without giving the whole thing away, but it did suck. The critics are saying that the storyline is subtle, but it's not really. Unless you really read (a lot) more into the dialogue than is implied by the characters or the story (ie, you stretch). And they're saying the characters are realistic, and I guess they are. The antagonist heistates and maybe tears up a little when she orders someone murdered, and the main character realizes he's a clog in the unethical industry of the practice of law, and it disillusions him. None of it makes the story AT ALL unpredictable. There were no twists, no surprises, and no character development (besides one guy going crazy, which in a way was a development). I give the movie both thumbs down.

Btw, exciting photos from the rafting trip can be found on my facebook profile, if you know where that is.

(I overhear one of my coworkers describing his job)
Guy: First, I find a reference. Second, I read the reference. Third, I make something up that the reference doesn't say and I send out a rejection.