Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!

If you are a tween you will enjoy this.
Nuff said.

If you have a thing for cute nerdy guys then you will like this film. They put in Kate Bosworth so the guys would have a hot chick to look at.

Basically this MIT teacher shows these students how to count cards in Vegas thereby beating the odds. They kept stressing, although this is not illegal it is frowned upon.

The only thing McSmarty TiVo’s is Poker and one of the guys is one of the former MIT students. I used to play Bridge with McSmarty and his College friends but it was not any fun because they all knew what everyone had in each others hand after the biding,plus they could count all the cards. They would yell at me to ” just slough something!” I told them playing cards is supposed to be fun, so I quit and took up cross stitch :P

I give it a thumbs up. If you like the music of The Beatles the did a good job of using their songs and images to tell a story. My fav was, “She came is through the bathroom window.” It’s subtle so you have to listen/watch for it. The male lead Jim Sturgess is such a cutie pie.

We had just watched the film “21” which he was also in but with the addition of the British accent(his normal speaking voice) he became that much cuter :)

I thought that my two kids would be too young for the subjects that they touch upon so I watched it alone. I think I will still wait some time before I let them see it. I find stuff like this opens up some great dialog between us when I least expect it.

And not just because RDJr was in it.

It had some great lines in it.

I’m not sure how much to give away or how to explain it but if you like films with twists and turns and that just don’t follow the norm this one is for you :)

Think Pulp Fiction with a dash of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and you will be kinda close.

to Water Lilies. This is a French film based in the world of teenage synchronised swimming. It’s mainly about the relationship between two girls – Floriane who is the captain of the swimming team and has a reputation to live up to as the class slut, and Marie who is shy and intense, and develops a huge obsession with Floriane. The third main character is Anne who is Marie’s best friend, and very keen on Francois who is the boy Floriane is allegedly going out with. So basically it’s a coming of age story about unrequited love and friendship.

It’s a very atmospheric film, without much dialogue, and unfolds at quite a slow pace. There are a lot of shots in the changing room and in the swimming pool and reading the film reviews written by middle-aged men, it’s clear that some of them felt uncomfortable because of this. I had no idea that synchronised swimming was so difficult – the film really conveys the amount of training and strength required, and also the dreadful conventions involved e.g. the body hair inspection, and the requirement to have a fake smile on your face at all times during a display.

The acting is very, very good – the girl playing Marie really has to show us how she’s feeling, at no point is it ever actually stated in words. There’s one particularly ghastly scene where she and Floriane go to a nightclub so Floriane can pick up an older man – Marie ends up sitting outside curled up into a ball as all her hopes have been dashed.

There are very few adults in the film; it’s told entirely from Marie’s point of view and you almost get the impression she and her friends all live by themselves as nobody else ever seems to be home. Also, there are boys in the film but none of them gets any major dialogue so it’s very much about the three girls themselves, which I found very refreshing.

All in all, although quite poignant, this is definitely one of my films of the year. It’s Celine Sciamma’s first film as a director and I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next.

Thumbs up!

Directed by Paul Haggis, this is about a man’s search for his son who has gone missing on his return from Iraq. Tommy Lee Jones gives an excellent performance as usual.

It emerges that his son has been murdered and at that point the film turns into a murder mystery, with Charlize Theron as a local police officer who helps TLJ find the killer.

There are lots of flashbacks to combat situations in Iraq and TLJ learns some fairly nasty things about what his son got up to over there. The main theme is about how war brutalises people. Quite serious and sad, but good.

Thumbs up!

This was exactly how I was expecting it to be – I enjoyed the TV series mainly for the dialogue and cocktails as I’m not exactly into clothes, and there were some good bits in the film. The story was utterly predictable, with highs and lows and lots of excited screaming and a happy ending. Trashy but fun.

Thumbs down, unfortunately. This is directed by Ben Affleck and stars Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris. It’s about the search for a missing child and is quite bleak. There are several twists and turns and false endings.

I didn’t like it for two main reasons: first, I could hardly make out a word Casey Affleck said (my friend said she managed to “tune in” to him as time went on) but more importantly, it is an incredibly pompous film with lots of Struggle about Big Moral Issues and I was exhausted by the end. Maybe I’m just shallow ;)

music and lyrics… ok so it’s a mindless, goofy cheeseball movie but when you need to zone out for a while and just see a feel-good movie, i think it fits the bill. but i’ve always liked drew so maybe im a bit biased :)

I just re watched The Princess Bride all the way through from beginning to end for the first time.
It is great for young and old men and women. There is romance and action. The kids picked it out for me for Mother’s Day :Read I payed for it at the check out ;)

The tale is actually being read by a grandfather(Played by Peter Falk of Columbo fame) to his grandson who is stuck sick in bed( Fred Savage you know the kid from the Wonder Years,sorry no Winnie in this film guys)

If you pick up the newest edition, you can keep flipping the DVD cover upside down and it will still read The Princesses Bride! Inconceivable!

A little side note-Chris Sarandon is in TPB, was once Married to Susan Sarandon. If you look at the bottom for the IMb suggestions on the link above, Enchanted which was my other film review starred Susan. How odd?
Just a bit of random trivia for ya :)