The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The funny thing about watching a movie about being in high school is that you can't really tell how authentic it is, because your perception of what's being presented is colored by your own experiences within that very same scene. This pitfall opens especially wide when the movie in question depicts being in high school during a timeframe when you actually were in high school. So it is with me and this movie. A lot of what I saw here rings true, given my contemporaneous memories. Then again, I don’t inhabit that world where everyone was molested, so I can’t speak to that side of the equation. Mostly, the strength of this film lies in likeable characters who make your time with them charming enough so that you really care about what happens to them. So if you make the extra effort to judge this flick and its characters on their own terms, I think you ultimately will come out ahead.

Party Monster

Engaging and entertaining in a bizarro world sort of way. The biggest problem is that, while stars Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green do a good job, they're just too lightweight to carry a story with a lot of dark undertones. The dissonance between their characters and the underlying ugliness does the story a disservice. Give it a try if you really like 'the weirdness.'