movies
Ended up watching 3 movies over the last couple of days (think im making up for my complete lack of movie-viewing this year!)
-The Holiday
-Swimming Upstream
-Thirteen
- The Holiday (starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law & Jack Black)
If you're looking for something light and fluffy to watch this holiday season then this is the movie for you.
ok so it not the best movie of the year or the best romantic comedy ever but it wasn't a complete disappointment either. Apart from a few scenes where i think Cameron Diaz over did it a bit, it was a pretty well acted movie. The Diaz-Jude Law story was definitely heavier on the romance than the Kate Winslet-Jack Black one - actually Jack Black was used fairly minimilistically in the movie come to think of it. Kate Winslet's storyline focused more on a very sweet relationship she forms with an elderly neighbour who happened to be a prolific screenwriter back in the day.
The movie's been getting a lot of mixed reviews, i think i heard one which said all the funny parts were in the trailer, but i actually quite liked it...and i think the people in theatre would beg to differ with the above mentioned reviewer because there were lots of scenes, not in trailer, which they found very funny and laughed out loud to!
-Swimming Upstream (starring Geoffery Rush, Judy Davis, Jesse Spencer & Tim Draxl)
and no I didn't just watch it because of Jesse Spencer! I heard that it had got some good reviews and that Geoffery Rush and Judy Davis were brilliant....oh who am I kidding, of course I saw it for Jesse Spencer! :D
I am glad that I did watch it though because it was a pretty good movie, I honestly didn't have very high expectations from it going in (and they went even lower when I read in the opening credits that the screenplay was written by Anthony Fingleton himself, the swimmer on whose life the movie is based) but it turned out to be much better than i thought. It was also quite different from what i had thought it would be which was both a positive and a negative. I was expecting it to have one of those big Hollywood-style fairytale endings but it didn't have one - that was refreshing, made it feel more 'real' (for the lack of a better word) but at the same time it sort of left one hanging. From the description and tag-line it seems to be a typical sports movie about a small-town kid, the underdog, overcoming obstacles and becoming a great champion. i think a more accurate description would be that its a movie about a boy with an abusive father, who at one point tells him that he wishes that the son had never been born, (no worries, i didn't just spoil a big revelation for you, its fairly obvious from the first 5 mins of the movie!) and how he discovers something that he is good at and tries to use it to elevate himself in the eyes of his father and find a way out of his troubled life.
Geoffery Rush and Judy Davis are amazing in it and Jesse Spencer did a pretty good job too. A couple of things that really stood out: The relationship between Tony (JS) and his brother John (TD) - its quite heart breaking by the end of the movie, theres an extended cut of a scene in the "Deleted Scenes" section with the two that i wish they had left in the movie because it sums up their relationship so perfectly; and the scenes between Judy Davis and Jesse Spencer - they were supposed to very emotional scenes and both carried them wonderfully!
Great little Aussie movie perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon or for whenever you want to watch Jesse Spencer swim around in a pool! ;)
-Thirteen (starring Holly Hunter & Rachel Evan Woods)
Good movie but in a VERY disturbing way. Don't think I could watch it again but atleast now I know what all the buzz was about. I can sort of see why there was quite some Oscar talk surrounding Rachel Even Woods, she could have easily been nominated instead of Keisha Castle Hughes who got it for 'Whale Rider' (which i also thought was a good movie and a far more uplifting one!)
anyone else seen these movies? ramblings are always welcome :)
-The Holiday
-Swimming Upstream
-Thirteen
- The Holiday (starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law & Jack Black)
If you're looking for something light and fluffy to watch this holiday season then this is the movie for you.
ok so it not the best movie of the year or the best romantic comedy ever but it wasn't a complete disappointment either. Apart from a few scenes where i think Cameron Diaz over did it a bit, it was a pretty well acted movie. The Diaz-Jude Law story was definitely heavier on the romance than the Kate Winslet-Jack Black one - actually Jack Black was used fairly minimilistically in the movie come to think of it. Kate Winslet's storyline focused more on a very sweet relationship she forms with an elderly neighbour who happened to be a prolific screenwriter back in the day.
The movie's been getting a lot of mixed reviews, i think i heard one which said all the funny parts were in the trailer, but i actually quite liked it...and i think the people in theatre would beg to differ with the above mentioned reviewer because there were lots of scenes, not in trailer, which they found very funny and laughed out loud to!
-Swimming Upstream (starring Geoffery Rush, Judy Davis, Jesse Spencer & Tim Draxl)
and no I didn't just watch it because of Jesse Spencer! I heard that it had got some good reviews and that Geoffery Rush and Judy Davis were brilliant....oh who am I kidding, of course I saw it for Jesse Spencer! :D
I am glad that I did watch it though because it was a pretty good movie, I honestly didn't have very high expectations from it going in (and they went even lower when I read in the opening credits that the screenplay was written by Anthony Fingleton himself, the swimmer on whose life the movie is based) but it turned out to be much better than i thought. It was also quite different from what i had thought it would be which was both a positive and a negative. I was expecting it to have one of those big Hollywood-style fairytale endings but it didn't have one - that was refreshing, made it feel more 'real' (for the lack of a better word) but at the same time it sort of left one hanging. From the description and tag-line it seems to be a typical sports movie about a small-town kid, the underdog, overcoming obstacles and becoming a great champion. i think a more accurate description would be that its a movie about a boy with an abusive father, who at one point tells him that he wishes that the son had never been born, (no worries, i didn't just spoil a big revelation for you, its fairly obvious from the first 5 mins of the movie!) and how he discovers something that he is good at and tries to use it to elevate himself in the eyes of his father and find a way out of his troubled life.
Geoffery Rush and Judy Davis are amazing in it and Jesse Spencer did a pretty good job too. A couple of things that really stood out: The relationship between Tony (JS) and his brother John (TD) - its quite heart breaking by the end of the movie, theres an extended cut of a scene in the "Deleted Scenes" section with the two that i wish they had left in the movie because it sums up their relationship so perfectly; and the scenes between Judy Davis and Jesse Spencer - they were supposed to very emotional scenes and both carried them wonderfully!
Great little Aussie movie perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon or for whenever you want to watch Jesse Spencer swim around in a pool! ;)
-Thirteen (starring Holly Hunter & Rachel Evan Woods)
Good movie but in a VERY disturbing way. Don't think I could watch it again but atleast now I know what all the buzz was about. I can sort of see why there was quite some Oscar talk surrounding Rachel Even Woods, she could have easily been nominated instead of Keisha Castle Hughes who got it for 'Whale Rider' (which i also thought was a good movie and a far more uplifting one!)
anyone else seen these movies? ramblings are always welcome :)