She’s All That

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/1999/shes_all_that.html

 

This week, I watched the 1999 film, She’s All That, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook. She’s All That is about a guy named Zack who makes a bet that he can turn even the dorkiest girl into a prom queen. To prove this, Laney, a girl who is obsessed with art and has few friends, becomes Zack’s new project. He gives her a makeover and turns her into the school’s “it girl.” Laney soon begins to find herself in competition with Zack’s ex-girlfriend Taylor, not only for prom queen, but also for Zack.

This movie is kind of cheesy and predictable, but it definitely has a certain charm to it. It’s very funny, and Laney’s dark, yet unique and honest personality make the film feel real. It also isn’t too heavy, and has a lighthearted and fun ending. I would recommend this movie to just about anyone. It’s not a chick flick, and I think anyone would like it!

The Rebound

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/2009/rebound.html

The Rebound is a Romantic Comedy starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Justin Bartha. It’s about a woman named Sandy who moves to New York City after finding out that her husband has been unfaithful to her. She finds an apartment about a coffee house, and begins to befriend one of the young waiters, Aram, who works there. Sandy asks Aram to babysit her two kids a few times, and he soon becomes her official nanny. As the story progresses, Aram and Sandy become friendlier and friendlier, and the two soon become involved. The main issue throughout the film is that Sandy is in her 40s, and Aram is only twenty-four.

The film is very funny, and (especially for a movie on Netflix), it is surprisingly great! This movie would be the perfect date movie. It has a great love story, an interesting plot, and it’s very funny. Anyone would enjoy this movie. I watched it with my boyfriend who enjoyed it a lot as well, so it’s definitely not just another chick-flick. This movie has substance. It is entertaining, funny, and smart.

Guess Who

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/2005/guess_who_ver2.html

Last night, I watched the 2005 film, Guess Who, starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac. Kutcher plays a man named Simon, who is going home with his girlfriend, Teresa, to meet her family. If that weren’t scary enough, Simon is also very worried that her parents will not approve of him, because he is white, and Teresa and her family are black.

Meanwhile, Simon is also having problems with his job. Having a job is a very important quality to Teresa’s father, so Simon lies to Teresa and her family after he quits his job, right before the two of them leave to meet her family. This causes more conflict later in the film.

This movie is a comedy, but it also brings up a lot of very important social issues that aren’t so often brought up in most movies. While watching, I even felt a bit uncomfortable at times by the awkwardness that the characters were feeling on screen. Overall, though, this movie was very interesting and funny, and it brought up some important issues that were interesting to see unfold. It was also interesting to watch a movie that brings up the struggles that inter-racial couples go through everyday. This movie also had some very cute scenes, and a lot of meaningful moments. I think just about anyone would be able to appreciate this film.

A Little Bit of Heaven

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/2011/little_bit_of_heaven_ver7_xlg.html

 

This week, I watched the movie A Little Bit of Heaven, starring Kate Hudson. Hudson plays a woman named Marley, who feels she has no need to fall in love. She has close friends, and a good job. She is perfectly content with her life exactly the way it is, until she finds out she has terminal cancer. After this happens, things in Marley’s life begin to change drastically, including her feelings toward love and relationships.

I liked A Little Bit of Heaven very much. It’s a super sad movie, but I tend to really have a thing for sad movies. Although the main concept of the movie is sad, the ending is happy, and Marley has a spunky and fun personality that lightens the mood of the film throughout.

I would definitely recommend this movie if you ever need a good cry. It’s nowhere near as sad as The Time Traveler’s Wife for example (one of my all-time favorite sad movies), but it still made me tear up a bit. I would not consider this movie a total chick flick, even though it is a love story. I think just about anyone would enjoy this movie.

Beauty and the Briefcase

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/tv/beauty_and_the_briefcase_xlg.html

 

An awesome movie that I recently found on Netflix is Beauty and the Briefcase. This film stars Hilary Duff (aka, my childhood idol), who plays an aspirating writer named Lane, whose dream it is to write for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

When Lane finally gets her first chance at Cosmo, her task is to go undercover and join the business world in order to find an eligible bachelor that has all the qualities on her checklist that would make him qualify as her perfect man. Along the way, Lane meets a few men that stand out in particular. These men are Michael McMillian, who plays her boss, and Matt Dallas, who plays her co-worker. The last man Lane meets is Liam, who is played by Chris Carmack. Lane meets Liam outside of the business world though, and therefore cannot use her relationship with him for her article.

There are a couple really interesting plot twists in this film, and it kept me interested the entire time. Beauty and the Briefcase is an ABC Family original movie, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I found it very enjoyable. While this movie may seem like a chick flick, I think just about anyone would enjoy it. It’s funny and has an interesting plot; and come on, who doesn’t love Hilary Duff?

Management

Photo Credit: https://www.movieposter.com/poster/MPW-49882/Management.html

 

This week, I watched the romantic comedy-drama Management, starring Jennifer Anniston and Steve Zahn. This movie had a really rough beginning. It was awkward and weird, and most attempts at being funny were not very funny at all; however, by the second half of the film, I found myself to be very interested, and I actually ended up enjoying the movie a lot.

Management is about a man named Mike who works as the night manager at his parents’ motel. One night he meets a guest, Sue, who is staying on business, and after sharing a one-night stand, Mike falls in love with Sue. He basically stalks her the entire first half of the movie or so, and it gets pretty weird. Eventually though, Sue comes around and they start hanging out. After a while though, Sue realizes that Mike’s life is going nowhere, and she needs someone who will truly be able to take care of her.

Jennifer Anniston does a great job in this film (as always), and Steve Zahn is almost too good at being awkward, but he usually seems to play weird guys in movies (Daddy Daycare for example). Overall, I liked this movie. It was somewhat on the weird side so it is understandable why it isn’t very popular, but once you give it a chance it gets funnier, deeper, and better overall.

I think just about anyone could appreciate this film, whether they are male or female. Like I said, it is a little slow at first, but after a while it becomes much funnier and more relatable, and it surprisingly turns into a pretty good movie by the end. I would definitely recommend watching it.

Love, Wedding, Marriage

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/2011/love_wedding_marriage_xlg.html

The movie I watched this week was one of my favorites that I’ve watched for this blog so far. The movie is the 2011 film, Love, Wedding, Marriage, starring Mandy Moore and Kellan Lutz.

Love, Wedding, Marriage is about Ava and Charlie, newlyweds who were inspired by Ava’s parents’ loving and healthy 30-year-long marriage. All is well until tragedy strikes when Ava learns that her parents have decided to get a divorce due to her father’s past infidelities. Ava and her sister, Shelby (who is played by Gossip Girl’s Jessica Szohr), decide to intervene and attempt to stop the divorce of their parents. Ava is especially passionate about keeping her parents’ marriage alive because of her job as a marriage counselor, and makes this goal her number priority. This however, begins to take a toll on Ava and Charlie’s marriage, and Ava soon realizes that she has been fighting for her parents’ marriage, when she should have been making a better effort to fight for her own.

I really loved this movie, because rather than depicting marriage as a perfect happily ever after ending as most movies do, this one instead began with a marriage and showed how hard it can be to make one work.

This film is a romantic comedy that most women would find enjoyable, but most men probably would not. It’s definitely a chick flick, so ladies, maybe save this one for a girls’ night in.

Little Black Book

This week, I watched the 2004 film, Little Black Book, starring the late Brittany Murphy. Murphy plays an aspiring broadcast journalist named Stacy, who is in a relationship with a man named Derek. Stacy becomes concerned when she realizes that Derek is strangely secretive about his past relationships, and refuses to speak to her about any of them. With encouragement from a friend from work, Stacy begins creeping though Derek’s cell phone (AKA, the “little black book”), and finds the numbers to his 3 ex-girlfriends. Using her job title as associate producer of a daytime talk show, Stacy contacts each girl, asking for an interview. She makes her way through each of his exes, learning more and more about Derek with each encounter. Stacy finds herself in all sorts of lies, and makes many surprising and somewhat depressing discoveries along the way. This film also takes a few unexpected twists and turns that keep you interested and on your feet.

While the ending of this movie was nothing like how I expected it to be, I really liked it a lot! I would most definitely recommend this movie to a friend. Female audiences would appreciate this film a lot more than a male audience would, (although my boyfriend didn’t mind watching it with me at all if that tells you anything).

One of my favorite parts of this film was Brittany Murphy’s character, Stacy. While Stacy is a bit odd, she is spunky and real, and never hesitates to go after her dreams. There are also many well-known actors in this movie alongside Brittany Murphy, including Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates and Ron Livingston.

Photo Credit: http://www.impawards.com/2004/little_black_book_verdvd.html

Miss Representation

I am not a huge feminist, but this week, I watched a documentary on Netflix that definitely opened up my eyes to the issue of how women are represented in the media. The documentary is Miss Representation. The film is all about how women are portrayed as sexual objects in just about every movie, television show, or website we are exposed to in the United States. It also addresses how women are barely included at all in the film industry, as well as in our government.

Miss Representation is directed, written and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who begins the film by sharing her own personal story about her experiences as a woman and the hardships that she has faced. She speaks about her daughter, and how she dreams of a better world for her daughter, and how she hopes that she will never have to experience difficulties because she is a female.

Throughout the film, many facts and statistics are mentioned that are very surprising and eye opening. There are many things I was not previously aware of, and I found the documentary to be very informative overall. Here are some examples of statistics that were mentioned in the film:

“Only 16% of protagonists in film are female. Only 7% of film directors and 10% of writers are female.”

“Between 1937 and 2005 there were only 13 female protagonists in animated movies. The female characters in G rated movies are just as likely to wear revealing clothing as in R rated movies.”

The statistics and images from movies and music videos shown in Miss Representation were not only informative – they were shocking.

I would definitely recommend this film to both men and women. It is educational but also very entertaining. Throughout the entire film I found myself to be very engaged and interested, which is saying a lot about a documentary. This film would be enjoyable for viewers of all ages to watch and to gain more knowledge on the topic of how women are represented in the media.

 

Photo Credit: http://fan-ntts.ntnow.org/missrepresentation120507.htm

 

The Right Kind of Wrong

This week, I watched the romantic comedy The Right Kind of Wrong. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it certainly wasn’t bad at all, especially by Netflix standards. The Right Kind of Wrong is about a newly divorced man named Leo who falls in love with a girl named Colette on her wedding day. Leo spends the majority of the movie basically stalking Colette until he proves to her that he is a much better fit for her than her stuck-up, rich husband.

While there were not any super well-known actors in this film, the acting was fairly decent. The film stars Ryan Kwanten, Sara Canning, and a few others that no one has ever heard of, but at least they are mostly all good looking, which helps.

While the movie was good, it definitely wasn’t perfect. The plot was very predictable (but then again, isn’t it that way with most love stories?), the camera work certainly could have been much better, and at a few points the scenery was extremely unrealistic; yet somehow this movie was quite enjoyable. While I mentioned in my last post that I am a sucker for a good love story, I also have to admit that I’m a sucker for a movie with a meaningful title. I am not going to give away the significance of the phrase “the right kind of wrong,” but I was touched by it when it was made clear during the film. The story overall has a very sweet meaning that I think most people can appreciate.

This film is solely a love story, so I would only recommend it for women who are into all that cute/romantic stuff like I am. Of course there are many themes and “lessons” to be learned from the film such as overcoming your fears, and coming to the realization that even things that seem impossible are always possible with enough perseverance. As cheesy as it sounds (and it was cheesy – believe me), it really was a touching and very funny movie.

Photo Source: http://www.impawards.com/2013/right_kind_of_wrong.html