(500) Days of Summer
(500) Days of Summer
My oldest son gave me this movie for Christmas. We watched it last night with his two brothers. It’s about this young man, Tom, (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who was also Tommy in the TV series Third Rock from the Sun) who fell in love with this girl, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn’t believe in labels and relationships. The movie tells us about the 500 days of their relationship, but not in chronological order. It’s a funny and sweet movie. And I think it was neat to watch it with my three boys. They all like it, even the youngest one, who’s only 11 going on 12.
Across the Universe
Across the Universe
This musical film is a feast for the ears and eyes, especially if you like Beatles song. The main characters are named Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood, she’s all grown up). You must have already guessed why those names – Jude as in Hey Jude and Lucy as in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It was set in the turbulent 60’s amidst the riots and the Vietnam war. The most memorable scene for me was when they sang Let It Be. I’ve heard for the first time some of the Beatles songs that I have never heard before. And I just fell in love with them.
Thirteen
Thirteen
Thirteen is co-written by Twilight’s Nikki Reed (Rosalie) and Catherine Hardwicke (director). Hardwicke also directed Thirteen, so please don’t judge her just based on the first Twilight movie. Thirteen is about Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) who was a sweet innocent 13-year old with pigtails at the start of the movie. But on her first day of junior high, she noticed how Evie (Nikki Reed), the hottest girl in school is getting all the attention and she did all she could to be her friend. But Evie was a bad influence on sweet Tracy. Evie encourages Tracy to steal, have body piercings, tattoos, sex and drugs. Great performances from the actors, especially from Holly Hunter who plays Tracy’s mom. It was also interesting to see a very young and cute Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) as one of Tracy’s nicer friends.
Push
Push
This Dakota Fanning starrer is an interesting sci-fi action thriller based on the writers’ assumptions that there are people working for the government that can see the future, as in psychics. Like how else would somebody know that some person is smuggling drugs at this place on that date? The characters in this movie have paranormal abilities, like telekinesis, psychic abilities, and the even the ability to change the future. The scariest ones are the Bleeders. They have the ability to emit high-pitched sounds that cause anybody who can hear to burst blood vessels and eventually die.
Get Smart
Get Smart
I love Steve Carell. I think he’s a classy funny guy. I enjoyed watching this movie. The boys loved it too. In this movie, he works for a U.S. spy agency as an analyst but has wanted to and has been training to become one of the agents. An opportunity came for him and he got promoted as an agent and he was partnered with the famous Agent 99 who he didn’t know was this gorgeous agent played by Anne Hathaway. Cool spy agent devices. Kind of like James Bond, only funny.
Driving Lessons
Driving Lessons
It’s nice to see Rupert Grint play a role other than Ron Weasley. In Driving Lessons he plays Ben. He works as a companion to an eccentric ex-actress, Evie, played by Julie Walters who plays her mum in HP. I didn’t recognize Julie Walters in this movie because she’s usually larger as Molly Weasley in the HP movies. Ben is a shy boy and has a strict Catholic upbringing, but after hanging out with Dame Evie that summer, he grew up and learned how to stand up for himself. This is a nice coming of age story.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a copy of December Boys anywhere here in Winnipeg. It’s the one that stars HP himself, Daniel Radcliffe.
Ballet Shoes
Ballet Shoes
When I found out that the three primary cast of the Harry Potter movies also filmed other movies, I thought that it’d be nice to watch them play different roles.
The first one I rented was Ballet Shoes starring Emma Watson.
It’s a good family movie. Emma plays the oldest of three orphans raised as sisters, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil. It is set in the 1930s and is based on a children’s book of the same title. Pauline wants to be an actor, Petrova wants to fly an airplane, Posy wants to be a ballerina because the only thing her real mother left her were a pair of ballet shoes. The film basically tells the viewers that “Dreams do come true.” I think young girls will enjoy watching this movie.
New Moon: My Movie Review
I watched New Moon with my girl friend this past weekend. We talk about the books that we read and the movies that we watch but this is the first time we ever went to the movies together. It was nice.
I like New Moon. And I love Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black. He’s cute, he’s hot and “he’s sort of beautiful.” 🙂 Now I find Taylor more appealing than Robert Pattinson. I apologize to Rob’s fans. Not that I don’t like him. But just look at the bulked up, dark and smiling Jacob and then turn to the pale, slender, and always brooding Edward Cullen. Don’t you just want to turn your eyes to Jacob again?
Robert is a lot more good looking without the pale Edward make-up and the restrained look. I’ve seen him on The Ellen Degeneres Show and yes, I did find him appealing on that interview. He was smiling and laughing and he’s sort of humble. And I like that kind of personality in a person, celebrity or not.
In New Moon, Edward left Bella. Heartbroken, she turns to Jacob for comfort. The movie stayed pretty close to the book, although there were a few changes and they weren’t that bad. As usual, it’s exciting to see the characters that we’ve only read about in the books, like the werewolves and the Volturi.
The movie is better than Twilight, as I hoped it would be. I’ve read a movie review of New Moon where the critic had a problem with the acting. It was flat, he said. I don’t even know what that means. I’ll have to look it up. How are teenagers supposed to act anyway? The acting was okay for me.
The only thing that I wish they could have done better was the transformation of the werewolves. One second, Paul and Jacob are human, and the next, they’re werewolves. The special effects are great, but I just wish that they could have shown how they have transformed a little bit slowly so we could see maybe at least a close up of the face changing into that of a wolf’s. After all, this is the first time we see them transform.
But overall, I like New Moon. Can’t wait to see Eclipse. And did I hear it right? It’s going to be shown in June? Only seven more months.
Confessions of a Shopaholic
I had a huge problem when I watched the movie the first time. I shook my head a lot. They squished the first two books into one movie. There are a lot of changes and it seems at times like a totally different story that was just loosely based on the Shopaholic Series. First of all, Luke is the only one who’s British in this movie. Then the movie was totally set entirely in America, mostly in New York. For the most part of the movie, Luke is working at a company called Dantay-West and then she hires Rebecca Bloomwood as a journalist. In the book, Luke has owned his own PR company, Brandon Communications, since the beginning and Rebecca is working as a financial journalist in a different company, Successful Savings, not working for him.
I also had a problem with the casting. I think Isla Fisher fits the character of Becky Bloomwood, but other than that . . . Hugh Dancy is of course, British, so that was a plus. But I pictured Luke Brandon to be a much taller guy and someone who exudes confidence, and at the same time, charm. Yeah, there are a few scenes where I found Hugh Dancy charming. Let’s not take that away from him. And then, Becky’s parents – I think both John Goodman and Joan Cusack look much too young to be Becky’s parents. I have pictured them to be a lot older. They are both retired after all.
Elinor Sherman, Luke’s mother, was mentioned but didn’t appear in the movie. And what about Janice and Martin Webster? They are missing in the movie. They are very important characters in the first book. When Becky realized that they were tricked out of their investment, Becky investigated and exposed their bank. I also missed Becky and Luke’s debate on Good Morning Coffee. These are my two favourite parts in the first book and they didn’t make it to the movie.
Some of the changes that appeared in the movie:
Becky joins a Shopaholic Anonymous group. It doesn’t seem realistic. There’s no such thing, is there? But then again, maybe the producers included this in the movie in an attempt to solve Becky’s shopping addiction. But it didn’t work on Becky. Instead, she sort of influenced the people in the group to go shopping again, which was kind of funny, really.
Becky assumes the pseudonym of The Girl in the Green Scarf. I sort of like the idea, but why green scarf? It is some kind of blue in the book, and she fantasizes about herself as the Girl in the Denny & George Scarf, not the Girl in the Green Scarf. Why did they change it? Green doesn’t really go with most of the colors. I think they should have stuck with blue, which would easily match better with the other colors. I think.
Derek Smeath is portrayed as a mean guy. Okay, Becky’s told her parents that he was a stalker, but that was a lie. She actually got to know him personally and found him to be a nice person. She even referred to him as Sweetie Smeathie in the end.
I read the first book, Confessions of a Shopaholic a second time and also rented the movie a second time, because I wanted to write/finish these reviews. I now realize why the series became a bestseller. It’s smartly written and it’s funny and I think everybody, even those who are not shopaholics, can relate to Becky. And after watching the movie a second time, I realize it’s not that bad. But I still think they should have included Janice and Martin’s story there and made Derek Smeath a nicer guy.
I’ve read that the movie received mostly negative reviews. It came out at a time when the economy is down and there’s financial crisis everywhere. Not a good time to release a movie about shopping and wasting money.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
This movie reminded me of Closer, but only this one is lighter. And unlike Closer, this one is not really about the lies. Relationships and emotions already tend to be complicated so why do people still get involved with people who are already involved with somebody else? In this movie, two women friends who have different views on love fall for the same guy. Vicky has a more conservative approach to love. She looks for a realistic and stable relationship. On the other hand, Cristina is willing to risk her feelings to find passion.
I find the narration weird. It sounded like the narrator is reading from a book, without any feelings at all. So unlike the narration from Desperate Housewives. Although Mary Alice doesn’t seem to tell the story with feelings either, there are changes in her intonation. But then again, Woody Allen must have intended for the narrator of this movie to tell the story like that.
I’m also wondering why the actress who played Vicky (Rebecca Hall) didn’t get, I think, a fair billing. After all the title is Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and the story is about Vicky and Cristina in Barcelona. If you see the billing, you’d think that it was Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson who play the title characters.
My Movie Room 