I saw Me Before You back in 1991. It was called Dying Young, and Julia Roberts was the star. It stunk. I am entirely joking, but I promised myself I would use this as the first line of this review, regardless. The truth is I didn’t see Dying Young until 2005. That part is true, but the real truth is that these movies aren’t even in the same league. Dying Young wasn’t as poor as I thought, but I don’t remember much about it. On the other hand, Me Before You was an incredibly profound movie I will remember for years. It is also a movie that showcased Emilia Clarke’s range (HBO’s Game of Thrones) and firmly planted her as a leading actress for the next 10-15 years. The film also introduced Sam Claflin to the rest of the world, who had not seen The Hunger Games franchise, where he played the role of Finnick. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of this review, I want to state that every aspect of this tear-jerker blew me away. While it was designed to tug at our heartstrings, it felt completely authentic. It was carried by a superb performance by Clarke and backed up heavily by Claflin, who did just enough to play second fiddle. I remember seeing Brooklyn last year. Brooklyn was a movie that I adored, but I couldn’t understand it when I could hear the sniffling and see the watery eyes of all those sitting near me. In Me Before You, I understood it completely. There are a few quick and funny tidbits related to this movie that I thought I’d share:
- I thought this was another movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book.
- I kept getting this movie confused with Love & Friendship, the Jane Austin novel adapted for the big screen that came out around the same time as Me Before You. But, as I look at these two movies now, the only comparison was that I was convinced I wouldn’t see either film at the time of their release.
- I talked to a coworker about Me Before You, and she spoiled the movie. She told me she didn’t want to ruin it for me, but she proceeded to do just that.
She told me how the movie ended, and I didn’t stop her from doing so. It turns out she never actually saw this movie, but her cousin told her everything she then repeated to me. I look back on that conversation, and I can’t be upset that she ruined it for me because if she hadn’t broached the topic with me in the first place, I might not have seen it and almost certainly would not have seen it on the big screen. I am so glad that I saw it in the theater. It was easily the most moving movie of the first half of 2016 and one in what is now looking like a poor year that likely will hold its spot on my Top 10 Movies of 2016 list.
With his scraggly beard, yellow teeth, foreboding scowl, and deliberate limp, Matthew McConaughey’s (Amistad, A Time to Kill) portrayal of Newt Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War, is a far cry from the same man who was pigeonholing his career a decade earlier by playing the same character over and over in hit or miss romantic comedies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, Fool’s Gold, and The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to name a few. McConaughey reinvented himself three or four years ago and re-established himself as a dramatic leading man with the likes of The Lincoln Lawyer, 
Mads Mikkelsen is most notably known as a villain. Whether you recognize him more as the man opposing James Bond in Casino Royale or as Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s hit show Lecter, he’s adept at playing the bad guy. But, in the most poignant performance of his career and one that earned him praise across the globe, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kind and gentle daycare employee falsely accused of molesting one of his students in the Danish film and Academy Award-nominated foreign language film The Hunt.
Congratulations to all those associated with what will be the biggest surprise moneymaking movie of 2016. Jaume Collet-Serra’s (
With apologies to the extremely funny