Romance Archives - Page 4 of 9 - Movie SmackdownÂ®

Micmacs (2009) -vs- A Very Long Engagement (2004)

June 28, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

An intensely visual director, Jeunet’s imagery remains consistently fresh and breathtakingly original, his fabulous fabulist’s palette uniquely his. Jeunet films have the urgency and half-remembered quality of dreams as they unfold. These tales exist in a rarefied and occasionally twee universe, timeless and with a winsome sense of fun and tricked-out grown-up child’s play even when the underlying subject matter gets serious. The subject at hand is war, and let’s just state the obvious up front – Jeunet’s against it.
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Chloe (2010) -vs- Fatal Attraction (1987)

March 23, 2010 Bryce Zabel 0

If you’ve ever been loved by somebody too tightly, then you know how scary it could be to let someone in your life and then not know how to extricate yourself from their smothering grasp. The trick in erotic thrillers like “Chloe” and “Fatal Attraction” is execution. Too far on one side of the spectrum, they become cerebral. Too far on the other side, they become unintentionally comedic.

Although “Fatal Attraction” defined this genre back in the late 80s, it’s been re-visited over the years in films like “The Hand That Rocked the Cradle” and “Single White Female,” and now it gets brought to life again in “Chloe.” All I can say before we begin is that seeing these two back-to-back is enough to drive the average person to mandatory background checks on all potential lovers. Be afraid, be very afraid.
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Remember Me (2010) -vs- Sheâ€™s Out Of My League (2010)

March 15, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

Twilighters aside, there’s precious little to recommend the largely forgettable “Remember Me,” a pretentious romantic exploitation film that uses recent real life history to hype its otherwise tepid dramatic stakes. Director Allen Coulter (of “The Sopranos” renown) knows his New York tough guy patois better than this venture might indicate; poor Pierce Brosnan gets hung out to dry with the least convincing New York accent in movies since the arrival of talkies. Pattinson plays at-sea and moody, indicating the depths of his grief and misery by smoking cigarettes (unconvincingly) and guzzling beer (equally unconvincingly). His roommate is probably the most annoying little shitheel ever to make it to the silver screen, the unnatural spawn of Hal Sparks and Satan.
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Dear John -vs- The Best Years of Our Lives

Dear John (2010) -vs- The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

February 18, 2010 Sherry Coben 11

â€œThe Best Years Of Our Livesâ€ stands tall as the ultimate and still unsurpassed drama about WWIIâ€™s returning soldiers, made in 1946 by William Wyler from a pitch-perfect script by Robert Sherwood. Director Lasse HallstrÃ¶m enters the love-and-war fray with his effort â€œDear Johnâ€ based on a novel by the very popular (if slightly gooey) Nicholas Sparks. The war in question is a lot more confusing than WWII, and the story is a whole lot soapier/dopier, but the eternal questions remain the same. What does war do to soldiers and their families and the women they love?
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Romantic Comedies To Truly Love

February 17, 2010 Sherry Coben 7

Seems I’ve been relentlessly bashing Romantic Comedies since I started writing for Movie Smackdown. I’m only hard on them because I want them to be better, because I know they can be better. Just in case you don’t believe me when I tell you I love the genre, here is a little (partial) list of romantic comedies I will happily defend, presented in reverse chronological order. All of them are worlds better than the execrable holiday-themed callow crass cash cow currently raking in the moolah at the multiplex near you. Trust me, you’re better off renting and watching any one of these in the comfort of home than taking a chance on finding true movie love in “Valentine’s Day.”
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An Education (2009) -vs- Say Anything (1989)

February 16, 2010 Bryce Zabel 3

Listen up, ‘rents. Being a father is never easy, but being the father of a teenage girl, and trying to get that one right is a true challenge. Both of these films — two decades apart in production dates and period settings — show fathers who, with the best of intentions, get it all wrong, but they get it wrong in exactly opposite ways.

You can care too little and you can care too much. When you’re in the middle of things, it’s not always so easy to see which is which. Believe me, as a father of girl who has just left her teenage years behind, these are matters I’ve thought a little bit about. I keep thinking of the famous Kenny Rogers’ song (“The Gambler,” written by Don Schlitz) that you gotta know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Like that’s easy. Still, what we have here to consider are a couple of fathers who don’t know best, not by a long shot… […]

Valentine's Day -vs- Amelie -vs- Love Actually

Valentineâ€™s Day (2010) -vs- Love Actually (2003) -vs- Amelie (2001)

February 16, 2010 Sherry Coben 7

“Valentine’s Day.” From everything I’ve seen and heard, I’m fairly certain that Garry Marshall is a very nice man, and I know he set out with the best of intentions making this film as did all his friends and associates who helped. No one ever intends to make a bad movie, and smacking this film feels a little like hitting a puppy. This movie sits there humping your leg, blissfully unaware and unashamed of the giant stinking turd it’s left on the cineplex screen. To extend the metaphor past all usefulness, this puppy hasn’t yet been spayed. It takes major cojones (or perhaps hubris) to engage such a weak, ungifted and unsuited company of players in hopes of recapturing the success of “Love Actually.” With a few major exceptions, the actors just plain aren’t good enough to rise above the lame material; most are unable to land any of the marginal jokes or even to remind us of any human beings we’ve met.
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When In Rome (2010) -vs- Roman Holiday (1953)

January 29, 2010 Sherry Coben 9

Featuring precious little Rome and a lot of Antic, â€œWhen In Romeâ€ falls back on every exhausted (and exhausting) rom-com convention in the book. In Rome for her sister’s wedding, a career woman cynically steals coins from a fountain and unknowingly makes five strangers fall madly in love with her. Kristen Bell makes for an adorable lead who needs fresher and smarter material to reach her full rom-com heroine potential. Josh Duhamel stands tall as her love object, slightly less generic than the usual rom-com Ken doll. Thereâ€™s not much standing in their way, no real obstacles, and therein lies the rub. The two meet semi-cute in the first ten minutes, and we know theyâ€™ll wind up together; nothing much happens in the middle to call their happy ending into question. Thereâ€™s much ado about the nothing; pilfered coins, local legend, and enchanted suitors sound like more fun than they are.
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Bright Star (2009) -vs- Impromptu (1991)

January 26, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

Ah, consumption. That most romantic and cinematic of slow fades. Think Camille. Two wildly talented love objects with fatally bad lungs compete for this particular smackdown crown. Itâ€™s Frederic Chopin versus Bright Star John Keats in a death-baiting battle of ill-fated geniuses, fighting for every breath, playing fast and loose with history, and winning lovely lady hearts as they struggle for ours. I dare you to find two more gorgeous grandees, two saintlier objects of obsession in all filmdom. Go ahead. Iâ€™ll wait here.
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Leap Year (2010) -vs- Youth in Revolt (2010)

January 20, 2010 Sherry Coben 6

Cookie cutter romantic comedy satisfies a too-easily edified audience. No matter how formulaic and tepid the sausage, the factories grind out more product to feed the gaping maw; indie films usually attract a more marginal fringe-ier crew, on the hunt for the original, the untold (or even oft-told) story told in fresh new ways. Pitting a humble little indie versus a major studio wide release makes for an inherently unfair fight and one with a foregone conclusion at the box office, but ticket sales wonâ€™t sway this Smackdown. As â€œLeap Yearâ€ bounds onto virtually every available screen and Quirky Indie-That-Could â€œYouth In Revoltâ€ limps onto a fraction of that number, ask yourself: Is bigger necessarily better? Does conventional beat quirky?
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