This independent film, is truly a tragic love story. There really is no other way to describe it. With beautiful visual shots and stunning landscape displays interspersed throughout the film, director, Jane Campion, captures the famous poet, John Keats’s (don’t worry, I’d never heard of him before either) short lifetime of rise and fall.

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In celebrating on closing on our first house, and shortly after (I’m actually talking hours) beginning work replacing some old wiring resulting in a mess (it could be much, much worse), we opted to watch an old classic on homeownership and the pitfalls of that glorious title, The Money Pit.

Walter Fielding Jr. (Tom Hanks) is a lawyer working for some odd musicians, some of which dressed very poorly in drag, and is dating Anna (Shelley Long) and trying to talk her into “making an honest man out of him,” but as she was married before to Max (Alexandar Godunov) and has since divorced, she has a sour taste in her mouth of marriage and says she doesn’t need a piece of paper from the state of New York for them to be together. Or maybe she’s just afraid of commitment? Read More    

Based on  C.D. Payne’s novel Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp, Youth in Revolt tells the story of a geeky adolescent boy on the brink of sexual maturity but unable to act smoothly around any female, therefore resulting in uncomfortable social interactions as well as prolonged unwanted virginity.   Sounds like every other role Michael Cera has ever played, you say?  Well, yes.  But he plays it so very well. Read More    

Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher) works for his dad and doesn’t seem to take life or his job too seriously, which is why his Dad ends up firing him. Joy McNally (Cameron Diaz) is career driven and perhaps a little too uptight, so her fiancee decides to break up with her. Where do you go to forget about being fired (by your dad no less) or being dumped by your fiancee (at the surprise birthday party you threw for him)? VEGAS!! Jack heads to Vegas with his best friend Hater (Rod Corddry) and Joy takes her closest friend Tipper (Lake Bell). Due to a computer glitch both parties are given the same hotel room. Jack, Hater, Joy, and Tipper end up drinking and partying the night away together. Upon waking, Jack and Joy realize they got hitched the night before. Breakfast starts out cordial, but then the bickering begins. Joy leaves the breakfast table and starts playing on one of the slot machines. Jack follows her and after some more arguing the two agree to a quick annulment. Just before they part ways, Jack plays Joy’s last quarter on the slot machine. Sure enough he hits the jackpot (3 million dollars)! Jack insists that the prize money is all his because he put the quarter in the machine and pulled the lever. And of course Joy says it’s hers because he used her quarter and her machine. The two end up in front of a judge (Dennis Miller) who decides that they need to work on their marriage before he’ll consider letting them out of it. He freezes their money and sentences them to six months of marriage counseling with a court appointed therapist (Queen Latifah) after which he’ll rule on their divorce and more importantly, the cash. As part of the judge’s ruling, Jack and Joy move in together. From then on the two of them try every trick in the book to get each other to violate the judge’s terms and forfeit their share of the money.

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When I first saw the previews for this film, it was a movie that I would not have been interested in. My sister went to the theater to see it and said that she liked it so much that I needed to see it, so I decided to order it on my netflix, and I have to agree with her.

Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattinson) seems to live a troubled life. His brother Michael hung himself, his father (Pierce Brosnan) seems to hate his children that he has left, and his sister Caroline (Ruby Jerins) has a lot of trouble making friends at school. We see that Tyler has some anger issues as he gets involved in a fight downtown New York which leads him to getting taken down by a police officer (Chris Cooper) and taken to jail. His roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington) finds out that the police officer has a daughter that attends their school. He suggests for Tyler to get back at the officer by dating his daughter, Ally (Emilie de Ravin). Little did Tyler know how hard he was going to fall in love with Ally.

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Easily this film goes down as one of my all-time favorites. It’s more of a piece of fine art rather than a film for entertainment.

The Virgin Suicides, directed by Sophia Coppola, will leave you with a feeling of numbness and deep depression if watched in the wrong mood, so the feint of heart beware! This film was created from the book of the same name by Jeffery Eugenides, a true artist whose medium is literature. And oftentimes I am disappointed by films adapted from books but this film pays homage to the writer in every possible way painting her picture from the words on the pages of the book just the way I would have seen them, too.

The Lisbon sisters are Mary (A.J. Cook), Therese (Leslie Hayman), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), and Cecilia (Hanna Hall) and are in the thick of their coming-of-age under the rule of their extremely strict and religious parents, Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) and Ronald Lisbon (James Woods) who basically don’t want them to experience their adolescence in any form and keep them locked up like prisoners season-to-season in their home. They’re allowed to go to school, and nothing more. Lux is even, at one point, forced to burn all of her rock albums in the fireplace. This entrapment, of course, leads to their demise. Read More