Film Fridays

I was writing in my journal and I was coming up with my layout plan for this blog, and I came across the fact that I'm so into movies. Correction: film, as it should be called. I don't know why but I feel like "best film of the year" sounds better than "best movie of the year" when they announce it on a commercial.

Anyways, I thought maybe I could talk about films that attract my attention. This month, I will talk about True Story, a dark film that had me glued to my seat.

As I was on a plane back home to New Jersey, I saw that I missed the first hour of True Story (been wanting to watch that movie since before it came out, but I forgot about it), so I wrote it down on my phone and decided to watch another film. When I got home, I watched True Story. It was inspiring and in fact, a true story.

James Franco portrayed the character Christian Longo. Jonah Hill plays New York Times' reporter Michael Finkel. Main point: Christian Longo is accused for killing his wife and 3 kids. Anyways ,Christian Longo is so inspired by Mike Finkel that he takes Finkel's identity, crazy right? Even crazier is that they meet and Mike feels a connection to Longo and it is Longo that lures Mike to write his side of the story. Longo creates this book to send to Mike called "Wrong Turns" which describes his dark life (which I am not going to describe, because spoilers), which immediately glued me to my seat. Something else was that Finkel's wife seemed to be so distraught by Longo's book that it made me start to wonder, what is going on in her head (like seriously, did they not want to show the dark side of Finkel's wife, because that would have been great). But above all times, the scene that hit me the hardest was during Longo's trial, when he ends his story by saying that "it's sort of like a double negative" or something like that, because Finkel taught him about double negatives during one of their meets. It blew my mind.

The following will have spoilers regarding the film. Now about the real story, back in 2001.  Christian does end up guilty for the killing of his wife and kids. Longo ended up being diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder. Explains his "Wrong Turns" book in the film. Also explains the way he acted during the trial. He also did actually use Mike Finkel's identity illegally when he escaped the country. Michael Finkel was a reporter who was fired for writing a report that was considered a lie. Hearing about someone taking his identity (Longo), he goes out to meet him and sees that Longo's a huge fan of his work.  Long story short, Longo is guilty and sentenced to death row. However, he and Finkel still communicate although he is on death row. Finkel later publishes the book, True Story and in 2009 Longo comes clean, saying he did murder his wife and kids. And that's all I have.

Thanks for reading this film friday edition, if you would like to know more about this True Story, watch the film, search it online, you'll find much more information. Also, sorry that this is all dark, but it was the most interesting documentary I've seen in years. See you guys next time.