Chick Flick Reviews » Featured

Life As We Know It

Natalie — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:00:50 +0000

It’s about time! A must see chickflick!

Holly (Katherine Heigl) is a caterer who runs her own bake/sandwich shop and has dreams of expanding it into a restaurant some day. Of course she wants to find Mr. Right, but she’s a little busy. Messer (Josh Duhamel) is working his way up to become a network sports director and he’s more into having fun than being in a relationship. Their mutual friends, Peter (Hayes MacArthur)Â and Alison (Christina Hendricks), suggest that they go out on a date. However, their date winds up being a total disaster. For most people bad dates are no biggie because typically they never have to see that awful person again. Unfortunately for Holly and Messer that’s not the case.

Peter and Alison wind up getting married and have a little girl name Sophie. Essentially, Holly and Messer are stuck in each other’s lives as they are both best friends with Peter and Alison and are godparents to Sophie. They manage to coexist when absolutely necessary, but basically they can’t stand each other. Holly and Messer are eventually forced to put there differences aside in order to take care of Sophie after Peter and Alison are killed in a car crash. They have no choice but to work together in order to juggle their own lives and do what’s best for Sophie.

I really enjoyed this movie. In fact, I want to see it again. I laughed out loud and even got a little teary-eyed at times. The movie is well balanced. Sure, it’s mostly a comedy, but I think they wove in some real heart as well. Young and older adults will probably appreciate this movie more so than say teens. It touches on those areas that people worry about when it comes to starting or having a family. It’s funny enough though to entertain a younger crowd. I definitely recommend this movie and will be adding it to my chickflick rotation once it’s available on DVD. It’s in theaters Oct. 8th, so be sure to check it out!

Never Let Me Go

Christine — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:43:48 +0000

As children, Ruth, Kathy, and Tommy attend a strict English boarding school, learning about how to best take care of their bodies and their purpose in life.Â The children are raised to believe that they have a mission of being donors.Â TheyÂ are model “clones,” technically without real parents.Â The story is narrated by Kathy (Cary Mulligan) and as adults, she, Ruth (Keira Knightley), and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) endure an awkward love triangle, one that torments Kathy for most of the film.Â Kathy eventually finds purpose in becoming a “carer”one who assists and takes care of people as they complete their donations, eventually ending in their death.Â As Ruth and Tommy come to completion of their donation, Kathy reflects on this journey called life and prepares for her purpose.

Based on the novel with the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go is a story with a twisted sense of love and death all put together.Â Acting was powerful and professionally displayed, however, I am sad to report that the story fell short for me.Â I feel this concept of life, love, and death was somewhat mutely displayed.Â I suppose this was the whole idea of the film, but still felt like this idea could have been heightened to a new level.Â Scenery was equable and serene.Â Beautifully portrayed and would be considered an H&M emo fantasy.Â It’s a devastating, yet beautiful story, however, I found myself remotely bored throughout the film and wishing it would end already.Â Never Let Me Go created a new emotion to it’s audiences, one that is unique and disturbing all in one.Â I give it an average star scoring, only because the story fell flat, even though it had unique potential.Â As you can see, this movie is hard to describe and it seems I have a like/dislike for it.Â If you saw it, let me know what you thought!

The Town

Natalie — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:00:39 +0000

This film is set in Charlestown, a rough Boston neighborhood known for producing generations of criminals. Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), his long-time friend Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) and two other guys from the neighborhood are professional bank robbers. Doug is the brains behind the whole operation and so far their crew has been able to avoid the law. However, Jem is becoming more erratic and during their latest heist, he takes a hostage, Claire (Rebecca Hall). Realizing that Claire may now know enough to put them in jail, Jem is ready to take care of the problem, but Doug insists on being the one to fix the situation.

Doug tracks Claire down and his intentions are to find out just how much she knows. Unbeknown to Jem, Doug starts spending a lot of time with Claire and he begins to fall in love with her. In the meantime, FBI agent Frawley (John Hamm) is in contact with Claire and is using her to piece together the evidence and is slowly but surely building a case against Doug’s group. Feeling the pressure, Doug is convinced more than ever that it is time for him to change his life, but Jem and a very influential neighborhood crime boss won’t let him. Can Doug free himself of this town and way of life? Will he be able to stay one step ahead of the FBI? And once the truth is revealed, will he still have Claire?

This movie is really good. I was hoping for crazy plot twists like in Gone Baby Gone (which in my opinion didn’t receive the attention that it deserved), but the storyline was just simple and straight forward. Although this is a relatively serious flick, they did throw in some humor. There’s one scene in particular that’s just darn funny. I really enjoyedÂ Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner’s performances. Basically the entire cast delivers and the action sequences have you sitting at the edge of your seat. Despite a less than stellar ending (that’s why I give it a 3.75 out of 5 stars), I still recommend catching this one in the theater.

Knight and Day

Kylie — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:53:19 +0000

Director James Mangold, with successful movies such as Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, delivers again with Knight and Day. Mangoldâ€™s films entertain us. I donâ€™t mind paying to see a movie if I can walk away feeling I got my moneyâ€™s worth, which is somewhat rare these days, but I was pleasantly pleased with Knight and Day.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are both good actors, although Iâ€™m not a huge fan of theirs, the chemistry and charisma the two create in this film makes me want to watch them more often.Â Roy Miller, (Cruise), plays a super spy who meets June Havens (Diaz) in Wichita, Kansas at the airport on her way to Boston for her sisterâ€™s wedding.Â Cameron Diaz plays the somewhat scattered brain June with a great believable performance. Roy secretly slips something into Juneâ€™s bag in order to get it past security. He then joins her on the flight where they begin to chat while drinking mini bottles of tequila. The chatting turns into flirting when June finds herself really liking this charming, handsome man she just met. Then June excuses herself to go to the restroom after turbulence causes her to spill a drink on herself. Roy escorts her.Â Once June is safely inside the restroom, Roy turns around when the handful of passengers on this flight are revealed as assassins who are there to kill him.Â Fights breakout and everyone, including the pilots, are all killed by Roy, except one pilot who was accidentally killed by the other pilot. The next thing you know Roy is crash landing the plane into a cornfield.

The plot has to do with a battery called the zephyr, invented by young genius, Simon Feck (Paul Dano). Everyone wants it, (“good guys, bad guys, and worse guys”) because it is supposedly the greatest energy source since the sun. Roy has to find Simon to get him and the zephyr to safety. Meanwhile, he feels he needs to keep June safe for inadvertently getting her involved in this situation.Â This takes June on a journey to exotic places, where she has no clue how she got there because Roy drugs her for her own good.Â She ends up on high-speed chases with cars flipping end-over-end and even stampeding bulls in Spain.

Itâ€™s all here, action, drama, comedy, and romance. There was never a dull moment. Knight and Day is the perfect movie to see this summer.

Killers

Maribeth — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:00:48 +0000

Killers, starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, is an action/comedy/romance about a licensed-to-kill FBI agent named Spencer AimesÂ (Kutcher) who falls for a sweet, innocent woman named JenÂ (Heigl) while both are visitingÂ Nice, France – he for work, she for vacation with her parents (Catherine O’Hara, Tom Selleck).

After meeting this beautiful woman who leads a seemingly normal life, Spencer (Kutcher) decides it’s time to leave the assassin game and start anew. Â Jen (Heigl) is happy to have finally met her ideal man. Â Spence’sÂ boss warns him that he can’t just walk away, but walk away he does.

Flash forward 3 years – Spence and Jen are happily married, have normal occupations, and regularly discuss property lines and block parties with their neighbors… until Spence receives a little note from his old boss. Â Suddenly, everyone he and Jen know seem to want him dead and will stop at nothing to see it through.

The role of Spencer Aimes is a practical, level-headed change of pace fromÂ Kutcher’s usual impulsive goofball characters. Â It takes some getting used to in the beginning of the film – you may be waiting for his first crack of a joke or inkling of exaggerated sarcasm – but refreshingly, it never comes. Â Heigl’s character, Jen, is the “jokester” between the two when they first meet. Â I found myself “aaawwwwww”-ing at their scenes together because of how well their characters complemented one another. Â A job well done on both parts; if it weren’t just a movie, it’d be easy to believe they were deeply in love. Â Catherine O’Hara and Tom Selleck deserve props for their performances as well, they were fantastic.

The mixture of action and comedy in Killers is a little disconcerting at first – it’s hard to be on the edge of your seat when you’re chuckling at something silly that’s just happened, but it just wouldn’t have Kutcher’s thumbprint on it without the laughs.

Overall, Killers is a great flick! Â I’d watch it again =)

For Parents: NoÂ sensuality, noÂ crude humor; minimal cursing (one ‘S’ word, one ‘F’ word towards the end).