Archive
REVIEW: Only You (1994)
Directed by: Norman Jewison
Produced by: Robert N. Fried, Norman Jewison, Charles Mulvehill, Cary Woods
Written by: Diane Drake
Edited by: Stephen E. Rivkin
Cinematography by: Sven Nykvist
Music by: Rachel Portman
Starring: Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey, Jr., Bonnie Hunt, Joaquim de Almeida, Fisher Stevens, Billy Zane, Siobhan Fallon, John Benjamin Hickey, Tammy Minoff, Adam LeFevre
Year: 1994
I’ve never seen this movie before recently, though I was completely aware of its existence, as it’s been in my mom’s collection since I was a kid. I was never very interested in seeing it at the time because it was a “chick flick” romantic comedy, and I was a boy and not having any of that (though I made plenty of exceptions at the time to justify calling me a hypocrite). Through a number of circumstances, however, my mom ended up buying the movie a second time – a habit she has because, like her son, she has a very large library of movies and sometimes raids the bargain bins, but, unlike her son, she doesn’t keep tabs of which ones she already owns very well. As a result, it’s not abnormal for my sister and I to come visit now and then and point this out to her, and, because the movies are opened, they can’t be returned, either, so we end up taking the copies off her hands, regardless of whether we really wanted the movie in the first place. Read more…
REVIEW: (500) Days of Summer
Directed by: Marc Webb
Produced by: Mason Novick, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mark Waters, Steven J. Wolfe, Scott G. Hyman
Written by: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Edited by: Alan Edward Bell
Cinematography by: Eric Steelberg
Music by: Mychael Danna, Rob Simonsen
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Maile Flanagan, Yvette Nicole Brown, Richard McGonagle
Year: 2009
“The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Except you Jenny Beckman. Bitch.”
The opening lines to the movie – unspoken, but probably the loudest statement this film makes – sets the tone for the remainder of this quasi-romantic comedy. Reportedly inspired by a real relationship experienced by screenwriter Scott Neustadter, (500) Days of Summer is clear right from the start (heck, even from its title) that this is not a story about everlasting love, but rather a season in passing. In fact, as if that point weren’t clear enough, yes, the girl at the center of the film is, in fact, named Summer. She’s a pretty girl who floats into the life of Tom, our film’s leading man, who is immediately smitten by Summer when she is introduced to everyone at work as the boss’ new assistant at the greeting card company Tom works for (another canny element playing with the theme of cheap, temporary sentiments). Summer is, as I said before, very pretty, seems quite nice, and she shares the same taste in music as Tom, even going so far as to make the first move when she notices this coincidence. Naturally, the two decide to hang out together. And, also naturally, there’s a big misunderstanding about what all this means. Where have you heard that before?
(Minor spoilers ahead.) Read more…
Review: “Steel Magnolias” (1989)
Directed by: Herbert Ross
Produced by: Ray Stark, Andrew Stone, Victoria White
Written by: Robert Harling
Edited by: Paul Hirsch
Cinematography by: John A. Alonzo
Music by: Georges Delerue
Starring: Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, Tom Skerritt, Sam Shepard, Dylan McDermott, Kevin J. O’Connor
Based on the play by Robert Harling
Year: 1989
Steel Magnolias is one of those films I used to automatically think about when I thought of the term “chick flick.” It may well be one of those movies, like Sleepless in Seattle, which helped make me aware that movies can become so “gendered” and that there’s such a stigma attached to them that, if you just happened to like the film and not be part of the target demographic (i.e., women), then people begin to… well… “question” you. And I think I knowingly let this affect my enjoyment of the film and would overtly express my disgust for the film whenever the prospect of putting it on arose. Of course, I was probably ten around that time, but that stigma tainted all my future attempts to watch this movie with my mom, who happens to be a huge fan, even though I knew that, secretly, I found much to enjoy about it. And, even then, having been long since out of the house, time has also certainly taken its toll on my memory as to what it was that I enjoyed. Read more…
Review: “Dirty Dancing”
Directed by: Emile Ardolino
Produced by: Linda Gottlieb
Written by: Eleanor Bergstein
Edited by: Peter C. Frank
Cinematography by: Jeffrey Jur
Music by: John Morris, Erich Bulling
Starring: Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes, Kelly Bishop, Jane Brucker, Jack Weston, Max Cantor, Lonny Price
Year: 1987
It speaks to a film’s popularity when a single song can instantly remind you of the film, even if you haven’t seen it. For this movie, the song that most people think of is the Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes duet “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” the declaration of love in the form of a cheesy 80s pop ballad that inexplicably serves as the catalyst for the film’s final dance number, despite the film being set in the early 1960s. Oddly enough, this wasn’t the song that reminded me of this film’s existence and necessitated its inclusion into Girly Movie Month. The credit for that goes to yet another 80s pop song, “Hungry Eyes,” which similarly finds its way into the film as one of many anachronisms that likely served to make the film more palatable to the 80s teen audience the film was aiming for at the time of its release. Read more…
Review: “The Notebook”
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes
Produced by: Lynn Harris, Mark Johnson; Toby Emmerich, Avram Butch Kaplan (executive)
Written by: Jeremy Leven (screenplay); Jan Sardi (adaptation)
Edited by: Alan Heim
Cinematography by: Robert Fraisse
Music by: Aaron Zigman
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, James Marsden, Jamie Brown, Sam Shepard, David Thornton, Kevin Connolly
Based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
Year: 2001
Nicholas Sparks adaptations have become something like an annual event, it seems. Sure, it’s not actually true, but it feels true, what with all the films attempting to cash in on this film’s success as a tear-jerking romance novel adaptation. It all started with Message in a Bottle in 1999, and then there was the Mandy Moore film A Walk to Remember in 2002. The biggest film in this series of cloying romantic fantasies, though, seems to be The Notebook, a film that even romantic movie haters had at one point or another assured me is actually “a pretty decent movie.”
Now, I admit that I had basically pecked out portions of story from this film based on scenes I had caught glimpses of while on various trips back home, mostly when my oldest stepsister was still living at home. There were probably two or three good efforts thrown in there, too, of me actually trying to honestly follow the film with them before something else caught my attention and I wound up not following through with it. When I started Girly Movie Month this month, however, I knew that this would ultimately have to be reviewed, being basically the girly movie that comes to my mind when I think of the term “girly movie.”
Having finally seen the film all the way through in one sitting, I feel as though I can honestly sit down with anyone who may have told me in the past that this was actually a “decent” film and tell them to their faces: “You are so full of it.” Read more…
Review: “Bridesmaids”
Director: Paul Feig
Produced by: Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, & Clayton Townsend, Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig (co-roducers), Paul Feig (executive producer), Lisa Yadavaia (associate producer)
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm
Written by: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo
Music by: Michael Andrews
Year: 2011
After years of making “movies for guys” like Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Knocked-Up, Judd Apatow, famed producer and director, teams up with director Paul Feig, comedian Annie Mumolo, and, of course, Saturday Night Live star Kristen Wiig to finally make a movie aimed at the ladies. And, I have to say, it’s surprisingly high quality!
The hype for Bridesmaids, at least for me, seemed to come out of nowhere. Despite a strong cast and crew, calling a movie “The Hangover for women” isn’t exactly going to inspire confidence in me in the same way that saying that the decidedly non-diet Dr. Pepper Ten is “not for women.” It’s stereotyping in the worst possible way, and actually does its product a disservice, no matter the quality of the one it’s being compared to. I was actually put off by the push to compare the two movies. The Hangover was a good, entertaining movie, period. Bridesmaids, though I can see the comparison, is not The Hangover for women, but it is also a good, entertaining movie in its own right. Read more…
