Archive for the 'Romance' Category

Run Fatboy Run

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 17, 2008
in British, Comedy, Feel Good, Marriage, Romance and Sport
. 0 Comments

When I saw that Simon Pegg was involved in another film, how could I say no?  Especially when said movie was called Run Fatboy Run?  If you’re not not sure who Pegg is, you might recognize him from his collaborations with Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  One surprise was to see the film was directed by David Schwimmer.  I’ve never been too hip on his acting skills.  He just always seems to play Ross from the TV show Friends.

Anyways, back to the movie.  This reminded me a lot of About a Boy.  The plot really isn’t the same, but there is a child involved and a man is trying to impress a woman.  Oh, and there are the British accents as well.  Pegg plays Dennis Doyle, a bit of a loser, who had the girl of his dreams but freaked out the day of the wedding and literally ran off.  Libby, played by Thandie Newton, is said girl who several years into the future is now set to marry Whit, played by Hank Azaria.  Doyle sees there only one thing he can do to prove he’s more of a man than Whit, and that is to run a marathon.

I’ll agree this film may be a bit cheesy, but it’s one of those “feel-good” stories, and probably something most of the family can enjoy.  With the holidays coming up, I always start thinking about movies that aren’t too annoying that would be appropriate to watch with the family.  There are some usual Pegg antics and hilarity in here, especially with his Indian landlord.  Hank Azaria has been good in every role I’ve ever seen.  Strong cast, good story, and funny to boot.  You should probably check this out.

Rating: ★★★½☆

Mongol

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 6, 2008
in Asia, Assassination, Based on a true story, Biography, Drama, History, Romance and War
. 0 Comments

Here’s an amazing story that has really been needing a film - Ghengis Khan.  Mongol is an amazing film that chronicles that story of Temudjin, who eventually became known as Ghengis Khan.  One reason this is somewhat feasible is because there are many written accounts about this man and how he ruled the Mongols.

The story is really amazing how the young son of a slain ruler is kidnapped, enslaved, and jailed - yet never gives up.  He just keeps getting back up.  I can’t really comment on how Temudjin really was, I’m sure the peoples he conquered weren’t exactly happy to be conquered.  He seemed to be just in what he did though, and he didn’t forget those who were kind and who helped him.  Some parts of the film really personified “an eye for an eye.”

I’m not exactly what language was being spoken in the film, but I assumed it was the native Mongol tongue.  That’s always something I enjoy about films.  Not so great though for those of you who detest subtitles.  To that I say you should get over it cause you’re missing out on some good films.

One aspect I wasn’t sure what to expect was the war factor.  I’m glad to say this wasn’t turned into an action flick.  That would be interesting to watch, but this was mainly focused on Temudjin’s life and his relationships with people, including his best friend who eventually became his enemy.  Definitely rent this and check it out if you’re into historical films, like history, or are into Asian culture.

Rating: ★★★★☆

August Rush

Published
by
Chalupa
on November 6, 2008
in Drama, Music and Romance
. 0 Comments

I had high hopes for this movie.  It just looked so “feel good.”  That’s probably why I was disappointed with it.  The cast was promising touting big names like Robin Williams, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, and the talented Freddie Highmore.  It also looked like it could be good like the popular indie flick Once.

I think the hardest aspect for me to buy in to was the magical realism portrayed in the story.  You have a very musically talented man and woman who fall in love and “make a baby” one fateful night.  The girl’s father decides she doesn’t need a child because she has her career as a cheloist.  So the baby boy is given up for adoption and has been living in an orphanage.  So one day the boy is exposed to music and he turns into Mozart on steroids.  He believes the music he creates will bring his parents back together and reunite them as a family.  That’s what made me roll my eyes at this movie.

Performances were ok.  Everything seems very much like a Charles Dickens’ story.  Highmore did pretty well and the music was interesting.  You have to remember though, that musicals rarely float my boat.  They’re just not my thing.  Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get into the story very well.  I’d be interested to see what other think.  I’m kinda feeling like maybe the movie wasn’t so cheesy, but just not my style as with Across the Universe.  I’d love to hear any thoughts anyone else has.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Raising Victor Vargas

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 4, 2008
in Comedy, Coming of age, Drama, New York and Romance
. 0 Comments

I’m not really sure why I added this one to my Netflix queue.  I think it was suggested to me as something I might like.  Writen, directed and produced by Peter Sollett - you might recognize his name in conjunction with a new film coming out, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist starring the ever-funny Michael Cera.  I wasn’t really sure what to think of this film.  I think part of the confusion was with the title.  Raising Victor Vargas would imply it might be about Victor growing up or his parents raising him or something.  The story starts off with Victor being ashamed everyone in the neighborhood knows he’s dating a “fat chick.”  So he heads to the pool with his sidekick to try and change his reputation.  We eventually get clued in to his interesting homelife and his grandmother who is raising him.  So I thought maybe the story would be centered on the grandmother, but it wasn’t.  I want to say I didn’t understand the point of the story, but that just sounds bad…even though I still feel that way.

If you check out the cast list on IMDB, you’ll notice that most of the characters real names are also their character names.  I’ve always though that must make the acting a little bit easier.  The two people I recognized were Melonie Diaz from Be Kind, Rewind, and Victor Rasuk from Lords of Dogtown and I’m Reed Fish.  I appreciated the effort put into accents and vernacular.  It seemed to fit the time and place, or maybe it’s just what I’m used to from watching TV.

Overall I wasn’t really thrilled with this one.  I know movies can just be entertainment; they dont’ have to always teach you a lesson.  This one didn’t seem to have a lesson, there wasn’t any major closure, there didn’t even seem to be much of a character change in anyone.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Across the Universe

Published
by
Chalupa
on July 6, 2008
in Drama, Musical, Romance, Vietnam and War
. 2 Comments

I thought this film looked really cool when I started reading about it and saw the previews and trailers. The concept seemed cool. It was a heavily Beetles influenced love story. I missed it in the theaters and heard some not so great reviews of it. I think I now know why people didn’t like it. This film really seemed like it was trying to copy the success Baz Luhrmann’s success with Moulin Rouge!. The only problem was the movie just didn’t seem to have much direction. Now I know this sounds crazy because how could a movie have no direction when there obviously was a guy called a “director” directing it? I don’t really know the answer to that question, but it just seemed to lack an over-arching vision.

Starring Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess (21) and set during the Vietnam War, this movie follows the romance of an upper class girl and a poor artist. Sounds a little bit like Moulin Rouge, right? The tagline also happens to be, “All you need is love.” I’m not sure why Luhrmann did it so well and Julie Traymor didn’t. This turned out to be one of those movies I had to force myself to watch - and that doesn’t happen very often. Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge fan of musicals. If any of you have seen it and have some thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

The Other Boleyn Girl

Published
by
Lij
on March 28, 2008
in Based on a true story, British, Drama, England, History, Romance and Royalty
. 0 Comments

Ask people what they know about Henry VIII, and you’ll hear one thing: he killed his wives.

People more interested in history will also tell you about his divorce of his first wife, his splitting with the Catholic church, and his major impact on world history because of those two splits, but most people at least know that Henry VIII killed his wives.

In The Other Boleyn Girl, starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, director Justin Chadwick attempts to explore the earlier parts of Henry’s reign. This is before Jane Seymour, before his second and third Catherines, and before he’d begun beheading people because things weren’t going his way.

Eric Bana plays the king, and he does well. Johansson plays the kindhearted Mary Boleyn well, while Portman is at once endearing and conniving. You want to like her because she is strong and unwilling to be trampled, but she’s also self-centered and self-serving. Her fate, though, is still tragic, and her final monologue is excellent.

The story follows Mary and Anne as they are ordered through their lives by the men around them — their father, their uncle, their husbands, and more. It’s upsetting to see them traded as commodities, which is basically how the men in their lives see them. Even Henry VIII, who is either in love with or infatuated by each of them from time to time, is shown as loving them only because they are what he can or cannot have.

Mary is the first sister to become the mistress of the king, who is being driven to desperation by his wife’s inability to give him a male heir. Anne only becomes the mistress of the king later, after she manipulates her way into a better place. This works for and against her.

I liked that the film didn’t try to hard to make you love or hate any of the characters. It did well to show them as human enough that you care for them, but it also showed that they were flawed. Some more than others.

Rating: ★★★½☆

2 Days in Paris

Published
by
nathanshorb
on February 13, 2008
in Comedy, Drama, France and Romance
. 0 Comments

Julie Delpy has proven herself quite well in this past year’s offering, 2 Days in Paris. Not only does she star in it, it’s her directorial debut. But that’s not all, she also wrote it, edited it, and composed music for it. She probably did a few other things as well, like recruiting her parents to play as her parents in the movie. If the movie wasn’t anything worth watching, none of this would be very impressive. But since it’s a more-than-halfway-decent flick, it’s quite an admirable feat.

Delpy takes a cue from the tone that was set in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. But where I thought those movies got lost in lengthy dialogue that didn’t really go anywhere and didn’t really amount to anything, Delpy instead chooses to do something with her movie. (That may be a harsh statement about two movies that were quite critically acclaimed, but personally, I’m still trying to figure out why they were so praised.)

Delpy is a Parisian who lives in New York, coming off of a Venice vacation with her American boyfriend and staying with her parents in Paris for 2 days. Voila.

The dialogue here is still as down-to-earth as those mentioned predecessors, and still with plenty of references to politics and art and the world. But here it’s quite funny and entertaining. The chemistry between Delpy and Adam Goldberg is enjoyable.

With this story, you get the inner workings of a relationship, the experience of culture shock, and the visit of the odd parents all in one shot. In each arena, the theme is explored with a rude–or perhaps honest is a more palatable word–sense of reality. Adam Goldberg is left all alone to fend for himself creating a comedic version of Lost in Translation. His facial expressions alone have almost a slapstick quality to them. The dynamic interaction of French and American is probably what this film does best.

While Delpy might tell her audience more than enough in her periodic narrations, many of these moments create beautiful, artistically creative scenes that round out the movie quite nicely.

Somewhere along the way, this movie failed to be a blockbuster hit or an admired art-house offering. But somewhere in the middle it became a fun story and a valiant showing of Delpy’s many talents, and that’s a fine place to be.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Atonement

Published
by
Lij
on January 24, 2008
in Based on a novel, Drama, Romance, WWII and War
. 0 Comments

Atonement is a beautiful film, full of stunning imagery and moments of musical intensity. I see why it recently won Best Picture-Drama at the Golden Globes — it is intense, what a movie critic would probably call “sweeping,” dramatic, heartbreaking, remorseful, and unusual.

The “sweeping” intensity comes from the fact that the film doesn’t spend a lot of time telling you how the characters got from one place to another. The first act takes place entirely over one afternoon and evening, and while it gives you a bit of backstory here and there, you’re pretty much right in the moment. The viewer almost feels the ungodly heat of summer in that act, as the characters try to stay cool. The plot goes back and forth in time a lot, giving you different perspectives on certain events. It’s jolting the first time it happens, but it is done masterfully and becomes a natural part of the flow.

The film is dramatic because it covers such monumental events in these characters’ lives. It shows how little decisions and misunderstandings can lead to life-changing situations. Young Briony, who could perhaps be called the main character, misunderstands and misreads so many moments that she literally destroys the lives of the people she loves, including her sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley, who is amazingly not mouth-gapingly irritating in this movie!) and childhood crush Robbie Turner, played by James MacAvoy, whose roles are getting more and more interesting.

Eventually, Young Briony grows up and is played both by Ramola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave, all three of them dwelling on the same part of Briony’s character: her guilt and how she comes to terms with it. (Yes, how she atones for it.)

The movie is certainly heartbreaking, but the rationale behind that claim is for the viewer to understand. I’m going to guess that many viewers will disagree on where the real tragedy is found in Atonement: in Cecilia, in Robbie, in their relationship, in the war, in Briony’s guilt, or in the moment early on when Robbie accidentally passes his dirty note to Cecila through a nosy Briony, causing the whole thing to change from innocent confusion to less innocent anger.

I would definitely recommend Atonement, and based on the recommendations of my good friends, I’m going to get the book and read it just as soon as I can.

Juno

Published
by
Chalupa
on December 29, 2007
in Adolescence, Audio Review, Comedy, Coming of age, Drama and Romance
. 0 Comments

Liz and I just saw Juno. We did something a little different and recorded our review. Hope you enjoy.

Juno Audio Review

Shortbus

Published
by
Lij
on December 9, 2007
in Drama, Independent, Multiple story line, Romance and Sexuality
. 0 Comments

Not many people I know would enjoy Shortbus, but I did. It was an interesting story with fascinating, memorable characters. The backstory behind the movie is also really interesting. I’ve been a fan of John Cameron Mitchell’s since I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch in a Sevilla movie theater in 2002. Shortbus was his next directorial project, and I am impressed by his honesty as a filmmaker.

I loved the music and the heart of this movie. It’s the story of several men and women who are trying to figure out life, love, and sex. One woman, a sex therapist, has never had an orgasm. She befriends a couple of her patients, who lead her to Shortbus, a club for the “gifted and challenged.” There she begins a journey towards self-discovery, not just sexually, but emotionally, too. The people she befriends are also trying to make it through their lives.

Most people I know aren’t going to enjoy this movie because it’s absolutely full of sex. Not your average movie sex, either. The actors for this film were picked because they were willing to have sex on camera.

I would’ve found it a bit over-the-top if I didn’t know about John Cameron Mitchell’s intention of creating an American movie that features sex in a positive way, instead of in the European tradition of showing it as a negative thing. He also wanted to distinguish between sex in film as art and pornography.

It’s not for everyone, but I certainly think highly of the characters, the story, and Mitchell’s directing.