PlanetBloopy

David drops out of medical school with one year to go, and suddenly he's a magnet for beautiful women behaving mysteriously. The one thing we expect most from a film is subverted: the protagonist encounters no challenging obstacles nor struggles to overcome (except perhaps his own bewilderment at how things keep working out). I don't care for straightforward comedies, and the movie has the perfect amount of absurdity and off-kilter dialogue to make me laugh while still telling a coherent story. These things seem to be the main complaints others have about it, and yet they're exactly what make it so unique and make me love it so much.

After quitting school, David orders a hot dog plain and the vendor guides him to have all the toppings. From then on his life is barely in his control and he just goes with it until he finds the life he seems to be looking for. A bookstore clerk reveals having dropped out of medical school three years earlier and experiencing similar luck in meeting women, suggesting it may be some sort of "cosmic consolation prize". In real life we may encounter rare moments of serendipity, but the funny and fantastical trajectory of David's fate shows us a whole world of such possibilities that we can only dream of.

As a romcom, Milk & Money is unusual for predominantly being a male's fantasy (without resorting to vulgar 'sex comedy'), but at least it's not entirely one sided. Anyway, to me it's as much about the bigger picture of whimsical, starry-eyed fate and embracing enjoyment of the universe. It's a delight to watch it unfold. The thought that some viewers resent a fictional character who finds success without effort only makes the film's subversion even funnier.

The film is also noteworthy for being the only one of my all-time top 10 movies that doesn't feature death/violence/gore. I guess peaceful wackiness is difficult to do well!

I suppose we should all have an answer when someone asks what the worst/your most hated film is. The Sixth Sense is that film for me. Perhaps it's relevant that I felt more immature than most of my friends who were hooked by it at the time. I actually avoided all spoilers and saw it a year or so later on free-to-air TV when I was about 16. It was marketed as a thriller/horror, but it came across as a boring, depressing drama full of crying to the point that I didn't give it my full attention. I kept the TV on but I stopped caring long before the ending was revealed.

If I'd first seen it as an adult, I might have a slightly different story, but it's too late. The nature of The Sixth Sense means that it only has one chance to be effective and repeat viewings are laughable. When films grow on you and you enjoy little things you didn't discern the first time around, they're the best. So The Sixth Sense truly is the opposite of the best. It's a film where the more you watch it, the more you notice things wrong with it, until that's practically all you can focus on.

It'd be understandable if only bits such as the restaurant scene came across as unnatural. But to me, the most unnatural element is the way Cole's mother treats him. She's surprisingly curt and unmotherlike considering his young age, which only helps to disrupt any suspension of disbelief I had in what I'm seeing. The couple of gross-out/scare moments thrown in are out of place and an insult to horror fans. Such paltry crumbs make me feel that a movie is just scoring marketing points and the real target audience is my wallet or advertising viewership. It's as if they think a sappy drama with a few horror moments resolves to a gritty thriller on average in the audience's mind. I may be mature now, but I still absolutely loathe sappy dramas and these wrongs do a great job of making the film even that much worse.