Week 30: Everything is Illuminated

What a very Elijah Wood year we're having here at the Queue. First we get his creepy cannibalism in Sin City and now we've got him being equally creepy in Everything is Illuminated. Maybe it's just that he's wearing nearly identical glasses in both movies. Oh, and and his jaw is four-feet wide. What is up with that? The thing is enormous.

Anyway, back to the movie. This is a few years old and I always meant to rent it. It's just that every time I got to the description, "An American Jew hires a Ukrainian translator to help him locate the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis....ZZZZZ....ZZZZZ"

Oh, sorry, I fell asleep there. It sounds boring, right? And not a little depressing. But here's the wonderful thing: this movie is delightfully entertaining and funny. Any movie in which a main character is a dog named The Seeing Eye Bitch/Sammie Davis Junior Junior (not a typo, but two Juniors) is all right by me.

Everything is Illuminated was touching and funny and very sincere. And even though Grant couldn't stay awake past the first twenty minutes, I'm confident he would have loved the idea of a blind man and his seeing eye bitch driving a jowly little American Jew around Ukraine.

Liev Schrieber directed and wrote the film. You know Liev. He was the killer in one of the Scream movies. And he was...in...other stuff? Forgive me. He's one of those people you know but can't remember him from anything. Well Liev, I'll remember you for this great little film even if you are totally forgettable in every other way. Which you are.