Monday, December 6, 2010

Movie Reviews (and some TV)

It's been awhile since I've talked about movies, but since I've seen 3 in the past 10 days, I thought it was time to do a little reviewing. Let me know your thoughts.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 1: IMAX
Got to see this with my mom, sister, and S in the IMAX theater in B'ham (which is huge, and domed -- the latter kind of made the distortion a bit strange, however). The movie was incredible. I'm kinda glad they ended up making two movies, since they stuck to the book so closely -- would have been a shame to have cut out half the story to have kept it at one film, even though they are going to make oodles and oodles of money this way.

It's amazing to watch the actors grow up like we have, isn' t it? Go back and watch the first film (it'll be on TV a lot this month as part of ABC's "25 days of Xmas"). You really feel like they've matured -- just like Harry, Ron, and Hermione should have done. In this film, you really feel like they are finally THERE, finally ready to take on the true challenges facing them. The emotions were brutal, but honest.
S had never seen (or read) any of the HP movies before. I had him read the Sparknotes on the first 5 books, then we watched the 6th film on the way to B'ham before seeing this movie. Now he's hooked -- maybe I'll be able to get him to read the books, if I can tear him away from him law books. But certainly it won't be a problem to get him to see the last movie with me! I can't wait for it to come out. And in 3D! I'll probably have to see it both ways.
My grade: A- (the minus is only for making me wait 6 months for the next part, good thing I know how it ends)

Love and Other Drugs
The story of a pharmaceutical rep, and the girl with Parkinson's that he loves. Sounds kinda boring when you put it that way, doesn't it? Way more entertaining than that, but only because it's set in 1997/1998, right when Viagra came out, and said pharmaceutical rep was barely making it until he got to sell the magical blue pill. And that girl was anti-love until she fell in love with the guy who was just a player until he also fell in love.

Kind of a cliched love-story, but done very well. Anne Hathaway is fabulous in it, and Jake Gyllenhaal looks great naked (well, mostly naked). I personally thought the stuff with the Big Pharma was pretty funny, but only b/c in recent years it's all changed and they aren't allowed to just give out free pens/umbrellas/lunches/trips to Hawaii anymore, so it was fun to watch them teaching the reps the ways to the doctors' hearts by doing all those things.
My grade: B+

How Do You Know
We got to see a screening of this new movie (with Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson) last night. It's the one where she's a softball player who loses her spot on the USA team, he's some kind of financial person who's being indicted by the justice system, and Owen Wilson plays the baseball player boyfriend she shouldn't be dating. (They do screenings for the press, and then try to fill up the seats so that people are laughing and booing at the right times, so it was free, yay!)

You can probably guess the storyline. Which is the worst part. The other bad parts are that they never really explain the indictment stuff (what he did wrong, or didn't do wrong; I think they don't want you to get bogged down in the details but the vagueness of it was driving me crazy). They also keep hinting at this idea that she's supposed to be depressed for losing her position on the team, but never show you that she's trying to do something else or that she's actually depressed in any way. So that was also extremely vague.

However, the relationships b/w Reese's character and both Paul's and Owen's characters were fabulous, funny and cute and likeable. Overall, it was a cute movie, and if you are looking for a fun romantic comedy then I'd recommend it.
My grade: B-

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