Tag Archives: movie reviews

THE INTERN – Two Thumbs Up and a High Five

The Intern movie posterYou may remember from this post that I’ve been waiting over four months to see The Intern, ever since I first saw the trailer. John thought it looked funny, too, so we went to see it yesterday. (It opened Friday.) It was SO GOOD!!!!!

Starring Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, 70-year-old Ben has decided retirement is too boring so he applies for a job as a senior intern at a super-successful Internet fashion startup company owned and run by Jules, a woman trying to balance everything in her life with limited success. The differences between the older characters and younger characters felt realistic, yet sweet and funny as they all tried to learn from each other.

The Intern movie still photoWriter/director Nancy Meyers had so many opportunities to follow other filmmakers who try to make their characters believable by making them “raw” or “realistic” – and she didn’t take them. This movie will not leave you with a bad taste in your mouth at the end. It was so refreshing to see people making bad choices and then recovering from them rather then wallowing or taking the easy or selfish way out.

Everything about this film is smart and funny and clean. It’s not a romantic comedy, of course, but it’s a great comedy with some unexpected romantic elements. (Hint, gorgeous Rene Russo is older than she looks, and her and De Niro’s characters make you feel like getting older is still going to be fun.) The audience in our theater laughed a lot, and there is a heightened joy when you share laughter, so that made the whole experience even better.

I wanted to see The Intern again as soon as the credits started to roll. Like Saturday’s review of The Age of Adaline, this one is 5 stars, two thumbs up, and a high five. 😀 I am absolutely buying both of these movies on DVD! LOL! Please, give yourself a relaxing break and see them – and take a friend!

The Age of Adaline – A Must-See Movie

Age of AdalineI wish I could remember who told me to see The Age of Adaline – so I could hug her! I’ve been busy so I don’t remember watching the trailer when the movie came out in April. Also, reading the description on IMDB made me think this was some slow, boring, “literary” type of movie, which I’m rarely in the mood for.

But the other night John was out with his friends and I walked by a Redbox at the grocery store and didn’t see anything else that I wanted, so I said, why not?

I am so glad I rented this movie!!!!

Actually, at the moment it ended, I was NOT glad I rented it because I wanted to watch it again! 😀 But it’s on my Christmas list now. 😉

The best part was that there was no “Nicholas Sparks moment.” A couple times I had to brace myself thinking, oh great, this is probably the scene where someone dies and the whole thing is ruined. But it didn’t happen! And a couple times I braced myself thinking, oh great, this is probably where so-and-so is a royal jerk and ruins the tone of the whole movie.

But it didn’t happen!

In fact, I really enjoyed every character, and all the aspects of the plot line. It was a really wonderful story, and well done in every way. The only thing that took me out of the enjoyment of the moment was me worrying that the writers were about to ruin it. In fact, I figured this must be based on a book since it was so well done and that seems to be how we get some of the movies I’ve enjoyed the most the last few years. But when I looked it up, no, just two great screenwriters. I want to hug them too!  😀

If you have a chance, definitely see The Age of Adaline! It’s absolutely 5 stars to me. I can’t wait to see it again the second time, this time without worrying something is going to ruin it. I’m going to love it even more. 🙂

Netflix Picks: 1-star Movies I Watched

In my newish Friday column, the question is – is there anything good on Netflix?

Unfortunately, when we first got Netflix, there were so many movies I wanted to see that Netflix didn’t have. So I started watching movies I hadn’t heard of that looked like they might be fun. I found a few that were so bad, even I, lover of most movies, couldn’t finish them. Since tomorrow is the 1st, I figured today is a good time to give you my list of 1 star Netflix movies (Hated It, per their ratings system).

The first one was The Ramen Girl with Brittany Murphy. I really like Brittany and I really wanted to like this movie. It was set in Tokyo and had almost all Japanese characters. At first, I thought I just didn’t understand the movie and that’s why I wasn’t liking it. But by the halfway point, I couldn’t take the scummy English-speaking creeps Brittany’s character was hanging around, even though I was intrigued by the Japanese characters. Mostly. In the end, I fast-forwarded to try to figure out where the good part was. Netflix doesn’t fast-forward that great, so who knows, maybe I missed the good part. 1 star

Another one that I tried was Love and Other Disasters. Yes, again I thought I’d found a fun and funny Brittany Murphy movie. Again, I was so wrong. Or not. Was I just in a bad mood? Or was it because it seemed the entire movie was based on one little misunderstanding? (Boring plots are based on simple misunderstandings. Bleh.) Or maybe because it was set in the European glamour magazine world. (Yawn.) The trailer looks funny! I just watched it again to remember what this movie was about. I remembered that this is one of the movies I didn’t finish because I so disliked it. I might try it again when I know for sure I’m in a perfectly great mood. But all I can tell you is that I disliked it enough at the first viewing to not finish it and to give it only 1 star.

Finally, I tried Serious Moonlight with Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. I used to say I love Meg Ryan because Sleepless in Seattle is my favorite movie and I loved her in light, good-hearted romantic comedies. But so many Meg Ryan movies have hard-hearted characters who are mean and self-absorbed. I’m guessing the characters are supposed to find redemption and become better people in the end – at least, that’s the only reason I would write a bitter or mean main character. I don’t know what the filmmakers meant to do, but I had to stop watching this movie about midway through. It was so bitter and angry, and obviously I was supposed to think it was funny, but I thought it was a real downer. I fast-forwarded to try to see what happened, but again, Netflix doesn’t do fast-forward all that great. So I moved on with my life and gave this one 1 star.

Just because I didn’t like these movies, doesn’t mean you won’t. On IMDB (the Internet Movie Database site that I’m linking to), the average rating for the first two is 6.2 stars out of 10, which isn’t too bad. The last movie averages 5.2 stars there. Who knows, maybe you’ll like these better than I did. But you might want to save two hours of your life for a better movie.

Netflix Picks: Mirror, Mirror

In my new Friday column, the question is – is there anything good on Netflix?

I wanted to see Mirror, Mirror as soon as I saw the movie trailer for it in the theaters. I just love Julia Roberts, and she looked so funny in this film. John was absolutely not going to watch it – LOL! – so I had to find time to go by myself. Which I didn’t.

When I saw it in New Releases, I immediately put it in our Instant Queue. I had a chance to watch it a couple Sundays ago when John was busy doing something else. 🙂

It was fun and funny and just what I expected! I laughed at the silliness of it (who doesn’t love Nathan Lane?!), and I loved how different-but-the-same the Seven Dwarfs were. Julia Roberts was as funny throughout the movie as the trailer led you to believe. And Lily Collins, who played Snow White, played her just right! I didn’t recognize the Prince, Armie Hammer, but his portrayal fit in just perfectly with the others.

(Turns out there was a reason Lily looked familiar to me. She played opposite Taylor Lautner in Abduction, which we also recently saw on Netflix. The beginning is probably supposed to appeal to teens because John and I were groaning, but then the actual action/suspense part of the movie got started and we were more interested. It was a good movie, not great, but not bad, and we gave it 3 stars.)

Overall, I enjoyed Mirror, Mirror. Very relaxing and fun, 3 stars (Liked It, per the Netflix ratings).

Netflix Picks: The Warrior’s Way

In my new Friday column, the question is – is there anything good on Netflix?

Last weekend, John wandered through all the various lists of movies on Netflix and just when I thought we were going to enjoy seeing Hellboy again, he suddenly picked something different. I sighed internally and thought, I guess I’m going to get some work done.

You see, The Warrior’s Way seemed to be one of those Chinese swordplay movies. Bleh. So I started working on something on my computer while kinda sorta half-watching out of the corner of my eye.

But the movie captured me almost from the start. It had interesting characters with strange little quirks. Most of it ended up sort of being a Wild West movie, actually. And a baby was a major player – a baby with a totally cute smile that made you laugh.

The actors include Dong-gun Jang (famous in South Korea), Kate Bosworth (I loved her in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!), and the always amazing Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), as well as several more you’ll recognize when you see them.

I got almost no work done during the movie because I watched all but the first few minutes of it. It was so enjoyable! (Okay, there was blood and violence, but I was ignoring it because I was caught up in the story.) The characters were totally likable and I liked that they were all different.

At the end, we were trying to decide if we should give it 3 stars (Liked It, per the Netflix menu) or 4 stars (Really Liked It). We went with 4 stars. If you like this kind of movie, you should totally watch it.

Netflix Picks: The Decoy Bride

We’re trying to save money at our house so instead of having DirecTV (miss it!), we have Netflix for only $7.99 a month. We weren’t sure if, after a while, there would be enough interesting stuff on Netflix to continue to enjoy it, but we’ve been wandering around the lists. Our Instant Queue went from about ten items to just over a hundred in the last couple of months.

The question is – is there anything good on Netflix?

Every Friday I’m going to try to answer that question for you. Today I’m going to tell you about my favorite never-heard-of-it movie to date – The Decoy Bride. The reason I put this film in my queue is because of David Tennant, the best Doctor Who ever!  🙂

But Kelly Macdonald, the main actress in the movie, was also fabulous. I couldn’t think of why she seemed familiar until I went to IMDB – she’s the voice of the girl in the new animated movie, Brave. Yay! Love her!

Now there are a lot of movies out there with great actors that are kind of crap movies. The Decoy Bride is not one of them. It was fun and funny and sweet and romantic! I loved it so much, I left it in my queue to watch it again!

If you like these actors, if you like fun romantic comedies, if you like movies set in Scotland with quirky secondary characters, you’ll like The Decoy Bride.

So far, this is one of the only shows I’ve given 5 stars – I love this movie!