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Tag Archives: love
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) vs. Benny & Joon (1993)
The Smackdown “Two damaged, anti-social people find each other and fall in love” is not exactly an under-utilized premise for movies. The genre is actually pretty extensive, so much so that it would not be entirely inappropriate to wonder how … Continue reading
Posted in Awards, Comedy, Drama, Romance
Tagged Aidan Quinn, Bradley Cooper, Buster Keaton, Chris Tucker, David O. Russell, depression, dysfunctional family, football, Friendship, Institutionalization, Jennifer Lawrence, Johnny Depp, Julianne Moore, love, Mary Stuart Masterson, mentally ill, Philadelphia Eagles, Robert De Niro, siblings, William H. Macy
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The Vow (2012) -vs- 50 First Dates (2004)
Artistic women with memory loss and the men who love them — that’s the premise of both The Vow, out this weekend with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum in the lead roles, and 50 First Dates (2004), starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. These films play against the standard boy-girl movie cliché, in that it’s the guys who know they’ve found their true romantic matches, and the women who, after seemingly falling in love, treat them like they’ve never seen them before. Of course, there’s a reason for that, and it has to do, in both cases, with brain trauma. Love may conquer all, but only if you can remember you’re in love. Continue reading
In Praise of… 50/50
50/50 deserves every bit as much Oscar love as The Descendants which is going to get its share. Both films are about dealing with terrible news and living through those stages of grief and 50/50 more than holds its own in that comparison.
Instead Academy members will probably see 50/50 as a diversion for people in their 20s, as light and comedic, and as another Seth Rogen getting stoned kind of movie. Well, it is actually those things within its frames, but it is so much more. Continue reading
Posted in Awards, Biopic, Bryce Zabel, Comedy, Coming of Age, Smackdown News
Tagged 50/50, Academy Awards, awards, black comedy, cancer, comedy, death, film, Funny People, illness, love, Oscar, review, Seth Rogan, Terms of Endearment
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Anonymous (2011) -vs- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
The Smackdown Is it any wonder that screenwriters, who live in a world of harsh critical scrutiny of their work, credit arbitrations, professional jealousy and writers’ block, would be attracted to stories that humanize William Shakespeare? After all, Shakespeare was … Continue reading
Posted in Drama
Tagged aristocratic, bard, England, love, period, playwriting, Queen, romance, royal, Shakespeare
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One Day (2011) -vs- Same Time, Next Year (1978)
Warning: this Smackdown is not your typical 15-rounder, with a decision coming after only a few hours of fighting. No, this stretches far, far longer… several decades, in fact. That’s because both our contenders span over 20 years in the lives of their central couples. Two long-term relationships outside marriage, each lasting a day at a time, annually, over the decades. Both survive personal shakeups and societal upheaval, but only one can survive this Smackdown. Continue reading
Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) -vs- Dan in Real Life (2007)
Is it better to give than receive? Before you answer, the question’s not asking about sex or birthday gifts but relationship advice. Newly liberated Office-mate Steve Carell finds himself on both sides of that equation in our Smackdown between a couple of romantic dramedies, Crazy, Stupid, Love., opening this weekend, and 2007’s Dan in Real Life.
Crazy, Stupid, Love., with its period at the end that causes my auto-correct fits, is probably the most grammatically irritating film title since Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. Carell portrays boring, straight-laced Cal Weaver, who gets dumped by his wife and taken in as a charity project by Ryan Gosling’s barfly/man/god, Jacob Palmer. In Dan in Real Life, it’s Carell’s Dan Burns dispensing the advice in a newspaper column with the same name as the film, while trying to raise three daughters in various stages of meltdown after the death of their mom and Dan’s wife a few years earlier.
Two depressed guys, two lost wives, two sets of three quirky kids, and two comedies based on a Steve Carell character’s ability to roll with the romantic punches. So it comes down to Cal versus Dan, and it should come as no surprise that no matter who’s giving the advice, love makes a fool of them both. Continue reading
Posted in Romance
Tagged break-up, dating, depression, family, love, relationships, Steve Carell
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Something Borrowed (2011) -vs- He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)
Given that most single guys would be thrilled to have Ginnifer Goodwin as their girlfriend, you have to wonder why Hollywood keeps casting her as the woman who has a hard time finding a decent relationship. She got famous as the immature “sister-wife” Margene in the creepy HBO polygamy series, Big Love. Then she played the girl who can’t find love no matter how desperately she dates around in 2009′s He’s Just Not That Into You. And now she’s back in Something Borrowed as the third corner in a romantic triangle. I have no idea what her personal life is like but we can only hope it’s better than the parts she plays.
Both our films are ensemble rom-coms, chock-full of familiar character traits: earnest, self-absorbed, scoundrel, ironic, clueless, and so on. Some of these are main characters and some are the obligatory wacky friends. There are enough people running around in both films coupling and uncoupling that there seems to be a lot going on even when there isn’t. The idea is to cut from one storyline to another, keep the pace up, get some laughs, find some sympathetic moments, get a few more laughs, and tie up things more or less neatly before they run the credits. Everybody seems to have jobs that don’t really interfere with their pursuit of love and sex. Ah, paradise… Continue reading
Posted in Romance
Tagged book adaptation, comedy, Ginnifer Goodwin, love, review, romance, romantic comedy, sexuality, women
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Source Code (2011) -vs- Deja Vu (2006)
They say love overcomes all obstacles, but time seems to be one of the most difficult. Time and time travel seem made for romance. Maybe that’s because there is a more of a fantasy quality to it than strict science fiction. Finding two lovers who meet across time has been done before, but Hollywood loves to revisit this idea again and again.
This week, our challenger, Source Code, and our champion, Deja Vu, tackle the problem of finding love in the time continuum. In both cases, what starts out as a case of time-travel observation becomes something more of an obsession for the observer. Continue reading
Going the Distance (2010) -vs- Swing Time (1936)
Money’s tight. Jobs are hard to find. Relationships disappoint. Such is the world as we know it. You say recession, I say depression. Let’s call the whole thing off. We go to the movies to forget our troubles, to drown our sorrows, to watch others make sense of this whole sorry mess. Romantic comedy provides a welcome refuge, a few hours in the welcoming darkness where we can rest pretty well assured that no one will die and nothing untoward will befall our hero and heroine, safe in the knowledge that they’ll wind up together at the end no matter how tangled the web of misunderstandings, regardless how high they stack the hurdles. We sit and wait for our happy ending and return again to our little lives at the end, sated and ready for the mundane and the stress life hands us. Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, Musical, Romance
Tagged depression, long distance, love, recession, sex, vulgarity
8 Comments
The Artist is Already a Lock for the Academy Award
That’s right. Everyone in Hollywood already knows The Artist is going to win Best Picture. It has already won top honors at the awards ceremonies for the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice and Producers Guild. Sure there will be Academy Award nominations … Continue reading →