It's been a while since a "how life is like the movies" post and obviously there isn't a lot of creativity pulsing through these veins lately, so the result of the next 15 minutes of rapid finger motion will hardly be a surprise.

Watching a movie like The Squid and the Whale can paralell The Dark Knight when properly aligned. Certainly there are some differences, but to the viewer, associations can be made and some are more innate than others. As everyone knows, the Joker is characterized both in reviews and the film as an embodiment of a certain part of all of us. Call it the "dark" part or the "real" part, but that's another argument for another time. It's hard to say everyone has that kind of streak in them, but surely some people do. Moving on.

Watching The Squid and the Whale is a little bit of a different animal. It is fairly simple in scope, has no special effects, seemingly unremarkable looking people, really nothing special. But the quality of the film doesn't lie in how spectacular it looks, but pretty much the opposite. It looks real and that's what pins the viewer down for the count. The characters might be a tad sensationalized, but it does more in 80 minutes than most films could do in twice the time.

The difficult and impressive part of it is that an individual can truly see themselves in a movie like TSatW without having to get past the face paint, fast cars and guns of TDK. Sure, at its best, TDK could be an allegory of sorts, but TSatW just goes ahead and makes the idea perfectly clear by unfolding it directly in front of the viewer on the screen.

It is a bit troubling to see pieces of yourself in characters in a movie when the initial thought was how disappointing the characters' behavior is. Usually, the viewer is led to sympathize with a character and therefore sympathize with their own plight, but not always. Of course, everyone has their flaws and all that, but to feel as though you relate to a character in a negative way is a little humbling. It's especially bad when the themes that grab your attention are pompousness, selfishness and pride (the bad kind). So yeah, sometimes watching a movie is an escape to a place like Gotham City that is based on a sensationalized version of the world we live. Other times, it only takes the overly saturated cliche of a family of writers living in Park Slope, Brooklyn to not be an escape from reality, but a one-way trip right back into it.