Beaches 2 or something more? Maybe somewhere in between. Miss You Already tells the story of two lifelong best friends who have been there for each other at every instance of their lives. Jess (Drew Barrymore – Charlie’s Angels, The Wedding Singer) and Milly (Toni Collette – The Sixth Sense, Little Miss Sunshine) have been nearly inseparable since Jess transferred into Milly’s first-grade class in London after moving from the United States. As the pair approaches her 40th birthday, they are infused with a situation that no one can ever prepare for. Yes, this is both a friendship movie and a cancer movie. Yes, it will try to try to guilt you into tears. But, while the acting is not great and the story predictable, something about the movie keeps you interested when a lesser movie would have lost you completely 45 minutes in.
Category Archives: Genre
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
In a day and age where it seems like a new superhero movie is getting released every other week, it is hard for an average mainstream moviegoer to know which ones are worth watching, which ones to skip, and in what order you should watch these movies. This is particularly important with the Marvel movies and even more important with The Avenger movies. I have done my best to see The Avengers movies as they’ve been released, but I haven’t always been successful. It certainly has not helped that Marvel characters who aren’t Avengers (like Spider-Man) are starting to appear in movies featuring The Avengers. It’s only a matter of time before all of these other Marvel characters (Ant-Man, Deadpool, etc.) start appearing in each newly released movie. At that time, it might be time to give up. Don’t even get me started about the future when either Marvel or DC buys the other out, and we get characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Thor, Captain America, Flash, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, Hulk, etc., all end up in the same movie. It won’t occur for a while, but when this market becomes stale many years from now, there will be too much money sitting on the table not to do it. Of course, the purists will also be upset by those who write the comics (though they most likely already are), but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that money speaks.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Perhaps one of the most unconventional sequels of all time, 10 Cloverfield Lane assembles almost no resemblance to 2008’s cult classic Cloverfield other than maybe its name. The movie takes place in rural Louisiana, while Cloverfield takes place in New York City. We never truly know how much 10 Cloverfield Lane will be in the future, but we can assume it’s as soon as a couple of days and as long as a couple of weeks. Cloverfield was a shaky camera-found footage film about aliens invading the city. 10 Cloverfield Lane is not that. It’s more like a spin-off than it is a sequel. An alien invasion is a possibility for how these characters find themselves. Still, it is just one of the possibilities described by Howard (John Goodman – Flight, Barton Fink), the film’s antagonist. Goodman might be better than he ever has been before. It certainly is his darker role and the first movie in many years (King Ralph, anyone) in which he has played a starring role.
San Andreas (2015)
Not being a guy who is really into the disaster film genre anymore (I turned off movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 before I was even a third of the way in), I was more than tentative to give San Andreas a chance. It’s a genre that once interested me in my younger days. I enjoyed movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Cloverfield while loving Titanic (my favorite movie of 1997), The Impossible (my favorite movie of 1992), World War Z (my second favorite movie of 2013), I Am Legend (my second favorite movie of 2007), War of the Worlds, The Perfect Storm and, shamefully, Armageddon.
Man on the Moon (1999)
Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot do. He can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He does it with 1999’s Man on the Moon, which, with all due respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie I’ve had on my watchlist to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me).