Submarine

This past weekend I've seen my second favorite movie of the year - Submarine. This movie is the directorial debut of Richard Ellef Ayoade who played Maurice Moss in The IT Crowd (add that to your Netflix queue as well) and tells the story of Oliver Tate's (Craig Roberts) two missions in life - Keep your parents marriage from falling apart and be the perfect boyfriend to Jordana. Craig looks like a cross between a young John Lennon and Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. I see a long term movie career ahead for this lad (who btw, is a 21 yr old playing a 15 yr old). Alex Turner does a solo turn here by providing the sound track which really works.

This is not your Mother's coming of age story. I hate the term coming of age anyway. The movie takes place in Swansea in 1986, whose landscapes flucutate between foggy, curving coastline and industrial dump sites, which makes the perfect backdrop for this story. Kudos for the spot on cinematography. These thankfully ordinary looking kids have already figured out that your "friends" can throw you under the bus for their own entertainment at a moments notice. These kids really roll with the school yard punches. Oliver's parents haven't had sex in awhile, he has a really clever way of monitoring this, and he's quite concerned. To make matters worse, the new neighbor New Age Guru Graham, is an ex-lover of his mother. Oliver later learns that his marine biologist dad actually stole his mother away from Graham. His mother is showing way too much interest in attending Graham's psycho-babble seminars. Oliver takes it upon himself to try to mend the marriage and get Graham out of the picture. Oh, and he's got to balance being the perfect boyfriend as well.

This movie was just such a clever breath of fresh air. I loved it!