While I admit that I am probably one of the last people on earth to watch Wedding Crashers, I will say that I had it in my possession for over three years. I bought it previously viewed for $5 at Blockbuster a long while ago. It was never a question of if I would watch Wedding Crashers, but just a question of when. When discussing the best comedies of all time, many people (especially people my age and younger) will list Wedding Crashers in the first two or three movies they mention. When I tell them I haven’t seen it yet, I get the response, “Of all the movies you’ve seen, you’ve never seen Wedding Crashers?” So, much like the movie I most recently reviewed (The Green Mile), my expectations for Wedding Crashers were almost unrealistic. However, much like The Green Mile, the movie lived up to the hype. I’m not ready to put it into a top-five comedy of all time, but I will safely put it in the top ten.
Category Archives: Romance
Date Night (2010)
I’m not the biggest fan of romantic comedies despite what my VHS movie collection of the 1990s might suggest. I’ll be the first to admit that despite all of the crappy romantic comedies (i.e., just about every Ashton Kutcher movie), there are some good ones. I’m a big fan of movies like (500) Days of Summer, Notting Hill, and The Money Pit. Date Night falls right in line with those movies. The most significant difference between Date Night and the other three is that it’s not quite as heavy. Not that the three movies that I just mentioned are by any means downers, but they do have slightly more sentimental moments than Date Night.
Crazy Heart (2009)
Roger Ebert said it best in his review of Crazy Heart about lead actor Jeff Bridges’ performance when he said, “The notion of a broke-down, boozy country singer is an archetype in pop culture. We’ve seen this story before. The difference is, Bad Blake makes us believe it happened to him.” It’s such a simple statement, but so true. Bridges (Tron, The Big Lebowski) gives the performance of his legendary career and, rightfully so, his first Academy Award win. He is the highlight of a very good, albeit flawed, movie.
The Reader (2008)
There are interesting comparisons between Stephen Daldry’s (The Hours, Billy Elliot) 2008 film, The Reader, and Lone Scherfig’s 2009 film, An Education. Both movies revolve centrally around the emotions a young person feels when they capture the allure of a much older member of the opposite sex whom they find to be sexually attractive. In An Education, it is Peter Sarsgaard’s character, David, who is wooing a young and impressionable Jenny (Carey Mulligan), influencing her so much that she is willing to sacrifice her future for him. In The Reader, it is 36-year-old streetcar conductor Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet – Titanic, Revolutionary Road) taking a liking to 16-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross in his debut performance). I would be interested in learning if An Education was filmed before or after Scherfig had watched The Reader.
Blue Valentine (2010)
Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine did nothing but further enhance my opinion that 2010 has been the best year for movie releases in my lifetime. Blue Valentine was one of the few movies of 2010 that I did not see in the theatre, and I can only imagine the impact it would have had on me had I seen it on the big screen. It is a raw, emotional antithesis of the ideal life. As the movie ends, you will be grateful that what you have just seen does not parallel your life and hope it never will.