The Clique

2008

Director: Michael Lembeck

No actors I previously knew

Rating: three stars

I saw half of this movie on TV - the second half. I thought it was a cheesy, made-for-TV version of Mean Girls. Turns out it was a cheesy, made-for-the-big-screen version of Mean Girls, minus the slutty stuff.

Why oh why do they always have twenty year olds playing twelve and fifteen year olds? It's obnoxious. And what kind of fifteen year old actually knows about designers and fashion to the extent that they did in this film? Seriously? Come on. Except the part where she pretended her Old Navy swimsuit was an Original I-forgot-the-word-she-used-but-it-sounded-Italian, and the other girls were impressed, that was funny.

Bad acting. Nobody is this shallow.

The real reason I think this movie failed for me was because the main character was vastly unlikable. This may be because she looked almost exactly like the main queen bee in my middle school days :::shudder:::

Bright Star

Director: James Campion

Actors: Ben Whishaw (he looks a lot like Marius from Les Miserables but he's not), Abbie Cornish

Rating: Four Stars

This didn't get a five stars because the ending sucked. Spoiler alert!

Actually, it couldn't have ended any other way. This is John Keats we're talking about! Famous Romantic poet, perhaps the MOST famous. His stuff is enough to make any High School English student vomit.

I just don't like sad endings.

It wasn't so much sad, as maddening because the impediments, the main impossibility of them being together entailed how much she was willing to sacrifice. He didn't have any income, and she wasn't willing to live in poverty. It was actually the main theme of the film, class differences. They did an excellent job showing the tensions, not telling them. The best example of this is when the maid-who-got-knocked-up comes back to visit with her forced-into-marriage-husband (John Keat's friend, who due to this sad misadventure was unable to finance Keats, which was almost definitely the main cause of his untimely death). They come back to visit, bringing the baby. Fanny's mom is totally excited and happy to see the baby, but completely and utterly ignores the former maid, even though she's wearing a new hat and is anxious to be noticed. This was a really quick, seemingly unimportant scene; it had little to nothing to do with the rest of the film and its plot. But it was so well done, I'm sure it will stay with me for years. Why were people like that, and are they still? How does this kind of prejudice translate into modern day American society?

Fanny pissed me off. She knew he would die if he left. She could have married him, was even considering it. But instead she didn't. What kind of love is that? Romantic love, that's what. Romantic with a capital R, meaning it's all about gloom, doom, the autumn that cometh, sweet death, oh no, oh no. Cry me a river. Pathetic. It was strangely humorous when her sister goes to her mom and says, "Fanny is asking for a knife." "What for?" "To kill herself with." The other funny part was the mom's reaction to the butterflies in her room; she was disgusted and horrified about there being so many bugs in the house. That's exactly what I would have been like.

I think the mom was really dimwitted. She should have taken a more active role in her daughter's adventures with Mr. Keats. I think Fanny's main flaw was her adolescence; she was so young, so clingy; I really think Keat's Irish buddy was right when he said she wasn't really in love with him, but in love with flirting.

As for Keats' character, he was basically a Mary Sue. If this was supposed to be a tribute to him, they sorely missed the mark. It was mostly a biography of his girlfriend. I didn't mind that so much, but just be warned you won't learn that much about Keats besides the fact that he was really poor and really unlucky.

And now I want to go research how much of this was actually true. This always happens to me at the end of historical British dramas.

Star Trek: the Motion Picture

Director: Robert Wise

Actors I know: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley

Rating: Four Stars

This was hubby's pick. The only reason it did not get a five star rating by both of us was some.....parts............were.........................sooooooo.............................................slow!

For example, the part when they show the New Enterprise, which apparently was a huge deal for Treckies (Trekies? How does one spell that?) At first it was like, "Oh, cool! A spaceship!" And then, it kept going for another five minutes. "Okay, we get the picture." And then, it kept going for another five minutes. "New Entreprise, cool, we GET it already!" And then, another five minutes. Anyway, it lasted a long time. Too long.

This was one of our first exposures to Star Trek, and we were not let down. I was surprised at Captain Kirk's cocky arrogance, but Danny says, "Well, that's his main defining characteristic!" The only one who is even remotely intelligent was Spock.

The plot was interesting, despite the supernova space orgasm ending. It was pretty hilarious what the antagonist turned out to be, actually. Weird, though-provoking. Fun. Good sci-fi. I wouldn't watch it again because almost all Star Trek episodes have a similar save-the-universe type plot, so why not watch something new?

Captain Kirk always says Spock's name in this incredibly irritating way, whether he's just realized he's coming on the ship with them, or he's got five seconds to translate the message from the alien in order to save them from destruction. "Spaaawk!" It's so annoying it's funny, and so funny, it's now a family inside joke.

Want a good laugh? Read the wikipedia article about this film.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Director: P. J. Hogan

Actors I know in it: Isla Fisher

Rating: Four stars

The reason it did not get five stars is because the film is so worldly and unbelievably goofy. It's meant to be fun and funny. But in real life, if someone is that in debt, it is neither fun nor funny. And nobody is that laissez-faire about life. Well, at least not me. She just hides in the clothes rack and steals her letter back? Come on, she could probably be arrested for that. But nothing bad happens in happy, feel-good chick-flicks. At least there's no bad scenes that I can remember. I only watched it out of the corner of my eye, since I had already seen it on an airplane before.

Oddly, this movie seems to promote shopaholic-ism. At least in me. It makes me want to put on a fancy outfit and go shopping.

A big inconsistency for me was how the best friend is supposed to help the main girl out with her outfits and style, but then she has the worst style ever in her own bride's maid's dresses. Yeah...sure...

Another thing, if you were an alien and this was the one film you had to inform you about the ways of humankind, the message you'd get is that everybody's lives revolve around beauty and fashion. It was a huge let down for me when it turns out the guy is into that world, too. The only non-NY-glitzy-pretty people are the parents, and the film mostly mocks their lifestyle. This one-dimensional attitude about beauty that all the characters share leaves you to wonder how long after the end of the film will the main girl go back to her credit-racking ways.

But it's a clean, fun, feel-good chick flick. I promised never to make my husband endure it, but I will probably seek it out to watch again in a few years. Makes me want to read the series, actually.

The Young Victoria

Director: Jean-Marc Vallee

Actors I know in it: Emily Blunt

Rating: five stars

This film is a wonderful feel-good chick-flick. Especially when you realize what all the political hullabaloo is about! Seriously??? Wow. What was especially fun for me watching this film was learning about Victoria herself. I know a lot about the time period, but next to nothing about her. And it turns out she has influenced so much of the world I currently live in, it's incredible.

The one thing that was kind of annoying was the bedroom scenes. Fortunately it's completely clean. But they made their point with the first one, why bother showing the exact same thing again? It just makes her seem...weaker...when really she was an amazing powerful woman in an age and country where she was basically the only one.

The biggest inconsistency of the film was how fantastically gorgeous they made Victoria, I mean, Emily Blunt. In real life, not so much.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Director: Oliver Parker

Actors I know in it: Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, Colin Firth, Judy Dench

Rating: 5 stars

We have both seen this movie already, but it was fun to watch again. It's exactly the same as the play, except there is a brief musical interlude that does nothing but add to the hilarity of the film. It's way over-the-top, hilarious. But while some of the film's ridiculousness has to do with the extreme ultra-Romantic expectations of the women, most of it has to do with Oscar Wilde's original text. Who actually accidentally puts a baby in a handbag?

The end of the film is a lot like a Peter Jenning's short story: "The whole thing was building up for this pathetic pun? Seriously?" But in a non-disappointing way.

Who is Pepe?

Danny and I waited (and waited and waited and waited) until a great deal for a projector came along on Craigslist. The price was right, the specs were right, and on the way home, we decided to name this newest member of our family. We settled on Pepe, and here is how:

It's like a cyclops because it has one giant eye.
It is one-eyed.
...one horned, flying purple people eater.
That's too long. Shorten it to "PPE" for Purple People Eater.
PPE is kinda like...Pepe!

Pronounced "Pay-pay".

Since bringing Pepe home, we have become hopeless filmaholics. We were before, too, but it's a lot more enjoyable to watch them on a screen literally as big as the wall (as opposed to a 12 inch laptop!).

This blog will have reviews for the films we watch on Pepe (and maybe some watched in other places as well).