Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Recent Movie




 
I don’t do a lot of these ‘cause I don’t go to the movies very often, only about once or twice a year.  It’s not so much the price of the movie that keeps me from seeing more –it’s the cost of the pop and popcorn.  One simply can not go to a movie without getting them and when the charge more for the popcorn than they do for the movie – POPCORN for pete’s sake – well, I boycott the movies unless it’s a special occasion or a movie I can’t wait to come out on DVD (notice I don’t say Neflix – I’ve no idea how that works really)
Such was the case yesterday, my day off from working the weekend,  when I went to see The Longest Ride – it was both.  A neighbor took me as a long delayed birthday present and – hello – Scott Eastwood.
 
So about this
 I may be old but I’m surely not dead.  Scott Eastwood – hello – (sorry – I just can’t type his name without the hello added to it)plays the role of Luke Collins a cowboy and bull rider.  He suffered a deadly injury and shouldn’t be bull riding anymore but he’s a stubborn one and is mounting a comeback on the bull riding circuit.  He meets Sophia Danko an art student at the local college when she and a bunch of her sorority sisters head to the local rodeo even though initially she doesn’t really want to go.  Their eyes meet when he’s bucked off a bull and his hat is knocked off and she hands it to him and he tells her to keep it.  They meet up again at the local watering hole and can we say – SPARKS FLY.  Heck, even I thought her gorgeous and sweet and wished we could hang together.  The only thing keeping me from developing a deeper girl crush was hello- Scott Eastwood.  Sophia is reluctant to get involved though as she has her life planned out and that means she is leaving the college in a couple of months to take an internship in New York City and any potential relationship would be so hard to maintain.  But she does agree to go out with him and can I just say that EVERY GIRL should have that kind of first date.  Talk about romantic.  And when this really hot cowboy – hello – Scott Eastwood –
is walking across this university campus – well, my heart went pitty pat.
There is such a real connection but again – timing sucks.  They are on their home from the date and it’s pouring rain when Luke spies something on the side of the road and discovers there was an accident.  Ira Levinson, played brilliantly by Alan Alda is rescued by Luke and Sophia but he also wants a box saved.  When he gets to the hospital, Sophia wants to stay to make sure he’s OK (see – girl crush).  When he wakes she shows him the box of letters she’s saved but he’s too old and his sight too bad to read them so she begins reading them and thus begins a series of flashbacks of a young Ira and his love Ruth and their story set in the 1940’s.  The actors who played a young Ira and a young Ruth were perfectly cast, especially I think Oona Chaplin who played Ruth.   It was sweet and tender and sad and it really added a lot to the movie.  I didn’t realize it going it, but this is actually a two story movie, half of it between Luke and Sophia and who they can overcome their difficulties and half between Ira and Ruth and overcoming their difficulties.  It’s sad in places, real sad in a couple, but it does have a very good happy ending.  A coworker had seen it and recommended it to me.  I asked her if it had a happy ending – not how it ended or that I wouldn’t see it if it didn’t –just that if it wasn’t a happy ending I needed to brace myself.  And myself didn’t need bracing so that’s a good thing for the romance lover in me.  The love scenes in this movie *sigh* well – I have a mood calendar at my desk that I change every day depending on how I’m feeling when I come into work.  Today I chose Addled and showed my coworker who recommended the movie.  Even though she’s just newly married, she got it – heh, heh, heh.
This is another Nicolas Sparks movie.  I’ve never read his books – and don’t intend to start, but I’ve seen some of his movies and they can be quite wonderful.  I liked the Notebook, have Safe Harbor downloaded in my Ipad though I haven’t watched it yet and LOOVVEDD The Lucky One – very romantic and who doesn’t find Zac Ephron easy on the eyes – though not as easy as- hello- Scott Eastwood.
I think part of my fascination with Scott is he‘s the son of Clint Eastwood and my oh my did I have a crush on him when I was just a young thing and he played Rowdy Yates, the strong silent type cowboy on Rawhide.  Combined with the awesomeness of the theme song, it was a great show for its time and helped lead me to my lifelong love of Westerns.  And after a brief sojourn into other genres, I’m back with the westerns.  Back in the days of Rawhide, believe it or not you young’uns, TV was black and white so we didn’t get to see the piercing blue eyes of the Eastwood men, but oh my stars were they on full display in The Longest Ride (and let’s not even get started on the PERFECT chest with PERFECT manly chest hair.)
For me, this was the PERFECT romance movie and I’ll be getting a copy as soon as I can when it comes out.  I think it’s almost finished it’s run with all the summer movies coming out, but if not, I urge the romantic in everyone to check this movie out.  It gets a very, very well deserved and hearty thumbs up from me.
 


And one more for the road – hello- Scott Eastwood.
 

 
 


 
 
 
'til later

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Recent Movie - Review

The Lucky One

Synopsis:  Based on Nicholas Sparks' bestseller The Lucky One, Zac Efron ("17 Again," "Charlie St. Cloud") stars alongside Taylor Schilling (TV's "Mercy") and Blythe Danner ("Meet the Parents" franchise) in this romantic drama directed by Academy Award®-nominated writer/director Scott Hicks ("Shine," "No Reservations").
U.S. Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault (Efron) returns from his third tour of duty in Iraq, with the one thing he credits with keeping him alive—a photograph he found of a woman he doesn't even know. Learning her name is Beth (Schilling) and where she lives, he shows up at her door, and ends up taking a job at her family-run local kennel. Despite her initial mistrust and the complications in her life, a romance develops between them, giving Logan hope that Beth could be much more than his good luck charm
Steam Level:  Oh! My!

My Thoughts:  Oh! My!  My job share partner bid for another job at the same place a couple of weeks ago and she got it.  So I had to decide whether to go back full time or see if I could find someone else to job share with.  Since I went part time, things have changed quite a bit.  First of all, when I did go part time I lost all benefits, sick days, vacation time etc.  Since I was diagnosed with diabetes, my expenses have gone up.  I'm having to take more meds (for the time being anyway) I joined a gym and have myself a personal trainer.  On top of that, I seem to have misplaced my glasses and since it's been more than a few years since I had my eyes checked, it's most definitely time for a new pair.  All of this is costing money I'm not making anymore so I decided to go back full time.  I'm much healthier now, have more stamina and more endurance and all this exercise is starting to have a very strange effect on me, in a good way.  I am able to handle stress much better.  The same kind of thing that would drive me batty a few short months ago doesn't bother me as much as it used to.  I start back full time on Monday.

So what, you are wondering, does any of this have to do with the movie The Lucky One???  Well, I've kind of been wanting to see this movie, but every since Message in a Bottle, I've been gun shy of Nicholas Sparks movies.  But I was talking to a coworker today who went to see the movie on Monday.  I asked her, not exactly how it ended, but did it have a happy ending.  She laughed and said yes.  Tomorrow is my last mid-week day off so at the last minute, I decided to go to the show after my workout tonight.  The theatre is nice and close, the timing of when the movie would start vs the time I would finish with my trainer was perfect and I've been having such a craving for movie popcorn, I decided to go it alone and go to the show.

Now we get to the movie :-)

Oh! My!  Now it's no surprise to anyone I love a good romance and this one was excellent.  I LOVED THIS MOVIE.  Yes, yes, it can be argued it's rather simplistic in it's storyline.  I got talking to the girl sitting next to me before it started and she said she didn't like this kind of movie (chick flick).  When it was over and the lights were up and the credits were rolling, I asked her what she thought.  She said it was kind of cheesy and I'm not saying it wasn't, but even as she was saying it, I noticed she was smiling seemed rather happy.  And really, isn't that how we like to feel after we finish a good romance.

Yes, the story was almost step by step and I've no desire whatsoever to read the book as I think this kind of thing would bother me, but Zac Efron, besides being wonderful, wonderful eye candy, brought a lot of character to the role of Logan Thibault (pronounced Teebow which I found amusing).  He made me feel the loneliness and lostness of Logan and the frustration in not being able to tell Beth the truth about why walked from Colorado to Louisiana.  I was very pleasantly surprised at how well he played the role.

And I also loved the way Taylor Schilling played Beth.  She is intimidated and rather frightened of her ex, but she grows through the movie and is able to stand up to him.  Of course there is a misunderstanding between her and Logan - don't romance books have them all the time?  But they both made it believable.   And the chemistry between them - wowzers thought I.  The love scenes weren't too explicit, but very steamy nevertheless.

And Blythe Danner was quite a scene stealer as Beth's Nana.

The Lucky One isn't going to win any kind of Academy Awards.  I'm sure some people will make fun of it - just as some people make fun of romance books.  But at the end of the movie when someone who doesn't like this kind of movie was smiling, well, to me that says it's done it's work of making us romance fans sigh and feel good.  That's what I want most of all from a movie - or a romance book.

Grade: 5 out of 5