romance | the m0vie blog

The X-Files – Our Town (Review)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

A rare “monster of the week” script from Frank Spotnitz, Our Town could be seen as a mirror to Humbug. Humbug seemed to mourn the way that eccentric little communities seemed to be fading into history in the nineties – the loss of unique and distinct little hamlets. Our Town seems to offer a counterpoint, suggesting that perhaps the intrusion of the outside world into these tightly-knit communities is not a bad thing.

Inspired by the classic Spencer Tracy film Bad Day at Black Rock, Our Town sees Mulder and Scully investigating a small-town disappearance that eventually leads the duo to uncover a horrifying secret at the heart of the local community.

Fresh bones…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: america, bad day at black rock, cannibalism, capitalism, cgd, chicken, consumerist, d avid duchovny, Food, food processing, frank spotnitz, gillian anderson, health scare, mad cow disease, meat, nostalgia, papau new guinea, ritual cannibalism, romance, small town with a dark secret, small-town america, the x-files, x-files | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Imzadi by Peter David (Review)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

As far as tie-in novels for Star Trek: The Next Generation go, Imzadi is the big one. It’s Peter David’s magnum opus for The Next Generation – a wonderfully clever character study that allows David to bask in the character dynamics of the show, while playing with big ideas and grand themes. It’s very easily the strongest Next Generation novel published while the show was on television, and remains a strong contender for the best Next Generation novel ever published.

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Betazoid, Imzadi, love, pad, peter david, Riker, romance, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, Troi | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

The vampire genre has been around for a reasonably long time. The literary genre that was formalised by Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the dawn of the twentieth century, even if it drew on a rich selection of local beliefs and superstition. And yet, despite that, there really hasn’t been too much radical done with vampires in recent times. The last attempt to do something a bit provocative and game-changing with vampires occurred with Anne Rice’s discovery that you could easily shape vampire narratives into creepy romances – a technique refined by Stephanie Meyer to considerable commercial and popular success.

As such, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive is fascinating because it manages to push the archetype a little further. It builds off those sorts of vampire romances and vampire fantasy epics in order to tell a more novel sort of story. Only Lovers Left Alive is a wonderful piece of mood based around two powerful central performances, taking one of cinema’s oldest monsters and finding a way to make them interesting again.

Only Lovers Left Alive is the most original vampire movie in what feels like an eternity.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Detroit, horror, jim jarmusch, non-review review, only lovers left alive, review, romance, Tilda Swinton, tom hiddleston, undead, vampires | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Pitch Perfect

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Darren

This movie was seen as part of Movie Fest, which is as much of a joy this year as it was last year.

Pitch Perfect seems like a recipe for a disaster. It’s a college pseudo-coming-of-age comedy set in the competitive world of acapella, with a women’s group fighting to break “the acapella glass ceiling.” (We’re told – by a commentator described as “a misogynist at heart” – that “woman are about as good at being acapella singers as they are at being doctors.”) However, the film is a joy to watch, a light feel-good film with a wonderful charm and a bright wit about it, brought to life by a fantastic cast working off a wry script. It’s never too heavy, and it never insists upon itself, but it’s engaging and fun in a way that makes it hard to resist.

Anna-phonic sound…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: acapella, Anna Kendrick, Breakfast Club, Brittany Snow, elizabeth banks, film, Jason Moore, John Michael Higgins, Movie, music, musical, non-review review, Pitch Perfect, review, romance, universal | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Hope Springs

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Darren

Hope Springs is a fairly unambitious romantic comedy that is very clearly chasing the silver dollar. Featuring two veteran performers playing a couple struggling through a mid-life crisis, Hope Springs feels like an attempt to demonstrate that the careers of romantic leads don’t necessarily end at forty. It is, on that level, quite pleasing to watch – there’s a proud sense that David Frankel is refusing to leave hum-drum romantic comedy to young actors who seem barely out of puberty. However, the problem is inherent in the premise. Hope Springsproves that romantic comedies aren’t exclusive to younger casts, but it also demonstrates tat very few of the familiar quirks, conceits and plot devices are that much more endearing when delivered by actors old enough to remember a world before mobile telephones.

Well, they’ve made their bed…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: EconoLodge, film, Hope Springs, katherine heigl, Marriage, meryl streep, Movie, non-review review, Relationships, review, romance, Romantic comedy film, Steve Carell, tommy lee jones | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Stupid Crazy Love

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Darren

Stupid Crazy Love suffers a bit from being a tad inconsistent, fluctuating between compelling character drama and well-observed romantic comedy. It isn’t an issue that movie fails at either of these, it just runs into a bit of bother bouncing between the two extremes. The ending might be a little trite, and a tad conventional, but the movie manages to raise some interesting ideas along the way. Still, it allows Steve Carell his best big screen appearance since The 40-Year-Old Virgin and makes for an alternatingly side-splittingly and heart-breakingly affecting movie.

Saving Ryan's Privates...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 40 Year Old Virgin, Crazy Stupid Love, Dan Fogelman, Emma Stone, film, jacob, John Carroll Lynch, Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, Movie, non-review review, review, romance, Romantic comedy film, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, steve carrell | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: No Strings Attached

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Darren

If ever there was a movie that demonstrated that you need more than a single great idea to make a good movie, I think No Strings Attached is really it. It basically takes the conventional romantic comedy and reverses the traditional gender roles that have ben reinforced for centuries. Instead of an emotionally-needy woman being paired with a commitment-phobe man, this time we see a free-and-easy lady hooking up with a guy who simply wants more. In fairness to it, it’s a nice way to distinguish the comedy conceptually from the standard rom-com template, but the problem is that it’s executed in the most mundane and half-interested fashion ever, substituting vulgar and crass jokes for actual humour and development.

Is she stringing him along?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Adam, Ashton Kutcher, black swan, film, Friend With Benefits, Friends With Benefits, ivan reitman, Love And Other Drugs, mila kunis, Movie, Natalie Portman, No strings attached, non-review review, review, romance, Romantic comedy film | 2 Comments »

And They Lived Happily Ever After? Will Gnomeo & Juliet Have a Happy Ending?

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Darren

It started out like Romeo and Juliet, but it ended up in tragedy.

– Milhouse Van Outen

I have to be honest. I studied Romeo and Juliet in secondary school and I just didn’t get it. Not the fancy-ass language or the outdated words, but the appeal of the play. Seriously? This piece of work right here is frequently regarded as one of the romantic pieces of literature ever written? A play about a teenage fling which ends in suicide? Where Romeo falls for Juliet on the rebound and they never get to spend any time together? Where a convenient third-act quarantine serves to lead to the play’s tragic conclusion? I never really got the appeal of the work – I mean, it was good and smart, but it struck me as a lot more cynical and bitter than most seem to think it is. And so this trailer for Gnomeo and Juliet arrives, and I’m wondering – will a whole generation of children end up scarred by the image of gnome suicide?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Characters in Romeo and Juliet, elton john, Emily Blunt, english, Gnomeo & Juliet, james mcavoy, Michael Caine, Movies, plays, pop culture, romance, romeo + juliet, the bard, tragedy, William Shakespeare | 2 Comments »

Wet Blogathon: I Wish It Would Rain Down…

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Darren

This is part of the rather wonderful “Wet Blogathon” put together by Andrew over at Encore’s World of Film and Television, asking bloggers to pick their favourite scenes in the rain. It’s a great little idead and I was delighted to be invited to take part.

Though your hurt is gone, mine’s hanging on, inside
And I know, it’s eating me through every night and day
I’m just waiting on your sign –

‘Cos I know, I know, I never meant to cause you no pain
And I realize I let you down
But I know in my heart of hearts
I know I’m never gonna hold you again

Now I… Now I know, I wish it would rain down, down on me
Ohh I wish it would rain, rain down on me now
Ohh I wish it would rain down, down on me
Yes I wish it would rain down, rain down over me.

– Phil Collins, I Wish It Would Rain Down

Yes, I was quite fond of that in my young almost-emo teen-in-love days – you know the kind, when one little attraction meant the entire world. I’ve kinda gotten over it. Still, there is something inherently powerful about the imagery of rain – water pouring down from the skies. It can represent – as it does in that infamous scene from The Shawshank Redemption – a divine shower, washing the character clean of their sins, evoking imagery of baptism and rebirth. Or it can be heavenly tears – as in Se7en, for example – reflecting the tragedy of a broken world where all you can do is cry. The always wonderful Andrew over at Encore’s World of Film and Television invited me to contribute to a blogathon he’s hosting celebrating the most powerful rain imagery in film – and there’s quite a bit to choose from. There are a rake of moody and gothic applications of rain – a wide variety and more than a few outside choices to be made. However, I am going to betray my inherent sappiness by picking Chasing Amy, which offered an inherently straight-forward and almost cliché application of the heavy rain as a metaphor for turbulant emotion, but did it with such heart that even cynical old me could not resist.

The raining champion...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: baptism, blade runner, chasing amy, cinema, cinema paradiso, encore, encore's world of film and television, getting wet, love, Movies, rain, rebirth, redemption, romance, spider man, tears in the rain, unforgiven, upside down kiss, water | 19 Comments »

Is the Romantic Comedy Dead & Gone…

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Darren

I’m a romantic at heart. I really am. Underneath my cold, cynical exterior beats the heart of a poet. A bad poet, no doubt, but a poet nonetheless. Which is why I find it somewhat disingenuous when my mother or my aunt feel the need to attack me for not appreciating or understanding films like My Sister’s Keeper or The Ugly Truth. It’s easy to joke that “ha, I’m a dude and dudes don’t understand the romantic or emotional drama movies!” and so on, but I think that belies the problem. And the problem is that I don’t like too many romantic comedies because… well, they aren’t good movies (or, to qualify, I don’t believe they are good movies). Read on to hear my reasoning.