the groundhog day project

It's not just the desk lamp that foreshadows what's to come, of course. When Joe cleans out his desk, he has a copy of Robinson Crusoe , a copy of Romeo and Juliet and a copy of The Odyssey . Isolation, doomed love, and a life-changing journey. This is Joe Versus the Volcano … and this is life itself. Also, Note the repeated lines of dialogue. Not just Joe's line about having seen DeDe and Patricia before. Waturi's phone conversation, the oft repeated "I'm not arguing that with you." Angelica's "I have no response to that." Neither Waturi or DeDe are prepared to really converse, lest they have too much information, too much insight, too much instigation to change their lives. They don’t want to expand. Don't want to grow. Watusi says, "Nobody feels good. After childhood, it's a fact of life." But… The last recap post was day 1065 - socially acceptable insanity and I should do another. I’ll make it quick. I’ve got things...

Roger Ebert ends his review of Joe Versus the Volcano with a great bit: What's strongest about the movie is that it does possess a philosophy, an idea about life. The idea is the same contained in "Moonstruck": that at night, in those corners of our minds we deny by day, magical things can happen in the moon shadows. And if they can't, a) they should, and b) we should always in any event act as if they can. First a note: Roger references Moonstruck because John Patrick Shanley wrote both and directed Joe Versus the Volcano . Second, though, I love especially that last line. That we should always act as if magical things can happen is one of those ideas that so many movies put forth--from the eternal recurrence of Groundhog Day to the hyperrealism of American Psycho , from the time travel of About Time to the deliberate fantasy of Moulin Rouge . And, yes, Moonstruck . Joe Versus the Volcano takes place in a reality where miracles can happen, where desk lamps ...

Once upon a time there was a guy named Joe Who had a very lousy job... I worked office jobs in my 20s. The opening scene of Joe Versus the Volcano is amazing in its satire (and it's awesome that both Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack (who played it relatively straight in Airplane! are in this), workers all dressed in black, trudged through a muddy parking lot, turnstile doors, a zig zag walkway, all to enter a factory that makes medical devices and leaks exhaust into the air. The lighting inside makes everyone look sickly, the hat rack doesn't even work right. It's no wonder that Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) feels like he's always sick. Effectively, he is . His job drains away his life. Or as he tells DeDe (Meg Ryan) (regarding his shoe), "I'm losing my sole."           Strictly speaking, Joe Versus the Volcano is not a bad movie. But, I'm going to end this month of bad movies with it because 1) it was one of the first movies recommended when I asked...