Romance

Romantic Comedy Triple Feature

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Fools Rush In, The Wedding Planner, Made of Honor
  • IMDb: link, link, link

Fools Rush In / The Wedding Planner / Made of HonorThis Romantic Comedy Triple Feature collects three relatively recent romantic comedies in one set which is perfect if you need to torture your boyfriend but not much good for anything else.

Made of Honor is a pretty bland reversal of My Best Friend’s Wedding with Patrick Dempsey discovering he has romantic feelings for his best friend (Michelle Monaghan) after she asks him to be the maid of honor at her wedding. Read the full review.

The Wedding Planner isn’t that much better starring Jennifer Lopez as a wedding planner who falls for the one of her clients (Matthew McConaughey) and ruins his impeding wedding to his fiance (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). Home-wrecking has never been so sickly sweet.

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The Light Between Oceans

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Light Between Oceans
  • IMDb: link

The Light Between OceansIn the hands of a less talented cast The Light Between Oceans would be a tedious disaster. Soap opera dressed in drag as high drama, the manipulative tale is made watchable by its choice of leads Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander in what feels very much like a story predestined for Lifetime television. Still, a talented cast can only do so much with the sordid, and extremely predictable, source material.

Adapted from the novel of the same name, Fassbender stars as Tom Sherbourne, a WWI vet who takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on an isolated island. Falling for the daughter of one of the men who hired him for the position, Tom and Isabel’s (Alicia Vikander) life on the island is full of tragedy, but the arrival of a shipwrecked boat promises a new start for the couple. To do so they will make a choice which will not only affect themselves but a woman they have never met (Rachel Weisz) for years to come.

At more than two-hours no amount of pretty (but never quite amazing) scenery or closeups of Vikander and Fassbender can prevent the lull which director Derek Cianfrance can not seem to avoid.

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Mother’s Day

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Mother’s Day
  • wiki: link

Mother's DayFollowing the pattern of his last two films (Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve) director Garry Marshall‘s Mother’s Day is a cookie-cutter ensemble dramaedy set around a particular holiday. Filled with paper-thin characters who all can be described by a single characteristic who are marginally connected through themes of mothers and their daughters, Mother’s Day is a lazy film filled with sitcom humor and blase drama that asks the bare minimum of its cast. If it were a meal, Mother’s Day would be a lukewarm McDonald’s extra-value meal that no one bothered to put under the heat lamp. If it were a color it would be beige.

The stories include divorced mother (Jennifer Aniston) of two sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink) struggling with the news that her ex-husband (Timothy Olyphant) has married a much younger woman (Shay Mitchell), grown sisters (Kate Hudson and Sarah Chalke) hiding their romantic relationships from their conventional parents (Margo Martindale and Robert Pine), a widower (Jason Sudeikis) and his two daughters (Ella Anderson and Jessi Case) struggling to move on a year after his wife’s death, a career-minded Home Shopping Network star (Julia Roberts) with what passes for a dark secret in this movie, and a waitress (Britt Robertson) unable to commit to her boyfriend (Jack Whitehall).

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Notting Hill

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Notting Hill
  • IMDB: link

Notting HillRecently re-released on Blu-ray as part of Universal Studios “Best of the Decade Series,” 1999’s Notting Hill romatic comedy featuring the unlikely pairing of a Hollywood star (Julia Roberts) and British book store owner (Hugh Grant) is a watchable, but not always entertaining, piece of romcom fluff helped by the performances of its two leads (but not always the script by Richard Curtis).

Asking an interesting question of what happens when a celebrity falls for a nobody, the film rather quickly gives up any attempt to say anything original while falling back on the clichéd romcom roller-coaster template complete with a final act break-up and ridiculous last moment romantic gesture to bring the lovers back together. In comparison with other movies of this genre (see the filmogprahy of Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl), Notting Hill isn’t awful but it’s far from one of the best films of this decade.

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Blue is the Warmest Color

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: La vie d’Adèle
  • IMDB: link

Blue is the Warmest ColourAdapted from the graphic novel by Julie Maroh by writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche, Blue is the Warmest Color examines the sexual awakening of a French secondary-school student and the journey her first lesbian relationship will lead her on over the next few years.

In its best moments Keciche’s film captures the perfect mix of emotions between the young Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and the more experienced Emma (Léa Seydoux) creating a completely believable and natural love story where passions run extremely high but whose differences lead to problems down the line.

The film doesn’t immediately start with Adèle and Emma. Instead we get Adèle’s attempt at a heterosexual relationship with a cute young classmate (Salim Kechiouche). Feeling something missing, Adèle journeys into a gay bar with friends where she meets Emma for the first time.

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