Big Miracle
Man on a Ledge
Haywire
A Better Life
The Iron Lady
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Joyful Noise
Top Ten Big-Screen Pet Names of 2011
Albert Nobbs
Young Adult
A Dangerous Method
Mainstream Chick’s Year in Review
War Horse
We Bought a Zoo
The Adventures of Tintin
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
The Skin I Live In
New Year’s Eve
The Sitter
Like Crazy
Melancholia

Currently browsing the "Chick Flick" tag.

New Year’s Eve

I just re-read my review of Garry Marshall’s easy breezy chick flick of last year, Valentine’s Day, and guess what? I could easily just change out the holiday – and some of the names from the lengthy A-list cast – and present the exact same review. In fact, just for fun, that’s what I’m gonna do! So here goes, with only slight [modifications]:

Garry Marshall is brilliant. He made a mildly entertaining movie with an A-List cast and a name that virtually guarantees it a place in holiday rerun history. [New Year’s Eve] is like Crash-light. Really, really, really light. It follows a bunch of folks whose lives intersect in various ways as they [embrace, reject, and reflect on all that is New Year’s Eve as the ball is about to drop in New York City].

Life As We Know It

Life As We Know It is far from perfect, but it’s still a good chick flick. Sure, I’m a little biased ‘cause I went to school with the movie’s writers (Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson), but rest assured, I would’ve kept my mouth shut (metaphorically speaking) if I thought it sucked!

Babies

“Oh how cute!” That’s what I found myself saying out loud in the theater throughout the documentary Babies.  (I’d apologize to those sitting around me if they weren’t all doing the same thing.) The film follows four infants from four different parts of the world “from first breath to first step.” It’s like a nature doc with babies instead of animals. There’s no narration, no commentary from the parents, just a series of adorable infant vignettes.

Valentine’s Day

Garry Marshall is brilliant. He made a mildly entertaining movie with an A-List cast and a name that virtually guarantees it a place in holiday rerun history. Valentine’s Day is like Crash-light. Really, really, really light. It follows a bunch of folks whose lives intersect in various ways as they break up, make up, find love or survive singledom on Valentine’s Day in Los Angeles.

An Education

I will admit that as a bored high school student I would sometimes sit in class staring out the window fantasizing about a handsome man pulling up in a fancy sports car and whisking me away to a more exciting life. So I can completely understand how 16-year old Jenny is seduced by an older, seemingly sophisticated man in An Education.

Priceless

The French make breezy little romantic comedies as easily as they do a good cup of coffee. Perhaps it is because it is a more romantic sensibility. Maybe it is just that the language sounds more romantic and the locations are so quaint. But I can enjoy absurd situations in a French film that I could never accept in an American movie. Case in point is Priceless, starring Audrey Tautou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) and Gad Elmaleh as Irène and Jean. Irène is a gold digger staying at a fancy hotel on the Riviera with her rich older boyfriend when she mistakes Jean, a bartender, for a young wealthy mark. He lets her believe he is rich but when her boyfriend catches on and leaves her, the jig is up. She goes looking for her next meal ticket only to be followed by the lovesick Jean. Irène returns his ardor with a vengeance, spending Jean’s every last Euro then walking out, leaving him with an enormous hotel bill that he cannot possibly pay.

The Proposal

The Proposal is the kind of movie you can take your mother to. In fact, I did, and we both enjoyed it. A pretty standard romantic comedy, it was a fun diversion on a rainy day.