movie review: the motel life (2012) dorff, fanning, et al

small arthouse kind movie with no big special effects
most scenes take place in cramped places like motel rooms or diners or small looking outdoor places apart from some big exterior shots like in vegas or elko nevada on a highway

centres around two brothers whose mother tells them to stay together if she dies before they reach adulthood -- when trying to board a freight train after she dies, it seems the older brother badly damages his leg jumping back down after his younger brother doesn't make it on to the moving train

therefore the character, jerry lee, played by dorff who is possibly the son of the actor in 80s tv show law and order, also a dorff, although unclear, there was also a dorff on golf too i guess, again unclear...

anyway, the jerry lee, missing a leg character is interestingly played by dorff as he appears to be a black american man all the way through the movie, although actually his skin is white, however, all of his facial gestures are that of a black american man who is always getting the short end of the stick, this is especially noticable in his nostrils..... you start wondering if the actor is on drugs while the movie is shooting

the main characters in this movie are kind of low-lifey kind of guys......dorff's guy does a hit and run on a kid, who turned out to be a kind of rejected low-lifey kind of kid as luck had it, and then doesn't own up to it, which is an extremely low-lifey thing to do --- cops come to investigate him and his brother drives him off to elko --- his brother's love interest is dakota fanning's character who he was involved with earlier at some shack in lake taho but you wouldn't even figure out that was how she tied into the movie until near the end as it's not clearly explained near the start of the movie.....

the movie is driven by the performances of the two brothers and the shotlisting which is a lot of visual storytelling however there is not much of a story apart from what's been outlined above: hit and run, flee the law to elko....... there is some cinematic puncuation throughout the movie through the use of almost manga styled cartoon reliefs run over by the non-crippled brother's (frank's) stories which he tells his crippled brother in order to calm him down.... frank is a drunk and, like we say, there isn't much of a story so really the movie is a psychological evaluation of the two brothers relationship at a difficult and trying time therein.... fanning's character seems to have been working as a whore at some point in the movie, or maybe it's only frank's fear that that's how she's turned out..... in the end she's a clean-cut girl living in elko working at some kind of cake store or something like that

it appears that dorff's character will end up dying as he's shot himself in the leg after accidentally running over and killing the kid at the start of the movie........ it's unclear who pays for the considerable healthcare costs that dorff's character incurs and frank must frankly be wondering about that in the closing scene as he watches fanning's character serve cheesecake with a smile

as you can see, there's no conventional big story here and it's more of a psychological evalutation of the two brothers during a testing, challenging period......as such, it's a reasonably watchable movie.... apparently it's set in the 1990s around the time of a mike tyson buster douglas boxing match and douglas wins it (not sure if that actually even happened though, in real life)

it's interesting to note that there are people like this out there, last saturday, driving my cab, my first customers were coming out of a hotel, a young couple..... i waved at them from across a very wide and busy road, figuring they were looking for a taxi, they looked pleased to see me wave and made their way across the busy road to see me, i was smoking a cigarrette and asked them to wait while i finished it and got to talking to them a little, they seemed like a reasonably handsome and healthy young couple but their stories during the ride didn't seem to make sense

the girl was saying that she'd been living at of hotels for the past year or two (extremely expensive in sydney)..... that she was looking for a place for the two of them but couldn't get enough money together for a deposit (?????) - suspect..... then the guy says he has a good job: adverstising company, on the internet, marketing to niche market..... the girl has just said she works at a bar (difficult to make enough money for living in hotels for two years on bar money)...... then i mention a professional prostitute and what they can make, something like that.... the girl says that that is in fact what she does and that she loves her work, it's 'empowering'...... she can make $500 in one hit......
the guy owns up that his company in fact is based on pimping her....... it's also a difficult story to buy, but at least would explain where they get the money to stay in hotels........or maybe it was all bullshit, but it seemed real, the way the ride progressed, that that was, in fact, the truth.........there are such relationships, and it does make you wonder how such a young couple can get along so, with the girl turning tricks and all.... but it's actually a very common ocurrence....... it would be interesting to talk to a professional psychologist about those kinds specific kinds of relationships

i think we mentioned earlier on this blog, the guy i met once in hollywood, with a french date, at his apartment and how he had no legs at all from the trunk down, and got around on a skateboard with his arms...... pretty sure he still had arms...... anyway, sure are a lot of homeless people in america, but they always seem to have much better mental health than the homeless in australia....