Posts tagged Charlie Tahan
Love is Strange “Downer Movie”
Oct 6th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
LOVE IS STRANGE stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as two gay men who have been living together for years and have been partners for even longer than that, and it is about what happens to them after they can finally get officially married.
The movie begins with the wedding ceremony for Ben and George, which is held outdoors in New York City and attended by their families and friends.
At the reception afterwards, held in the roomy apartment that Ben and George own together, Kate, played by Marisa Tomei, who is married to Elliot, Ban’s nephew, makes a toast and says, “May this marriage last forever and beyond.”
Well, unfortunately, their official marriage causes problems for Ben and George, because George, who teaches music at a Catholic school, loses his job, and their loss of income forces them to sell their apartment and move out.
So, while they are looking for another apartment, Ben moves in with Elliot and Kate, where he sleeps on the bottom bunk in the bedroom of their teenage son, Joey, which causes privacy problems with Joey and his friend Vlad.
George moves in with two policemen friends of theirs, who are also gay, and he sleeps on the couch in their living room.
Now, Kate is a novelist who works at home, Ben likes to talk, and he doesn’t realize at first that his talking to Kate is interrupting her concentration and getting on her nerves.
As Ben tells George, “Sometimes when you live with people, you know them better than you care to.”
Ben is a painter, but when Kate suggests that he do some painting to keep him busy, he tells her that he can’t work if someone else is around, because he can’t concentrate.
George is also having difficulties with his new living arrangement sleeping on the couch, because the policemen have a lot of parties and a lot of friends over for activities that don’t interest George at all.
Now, you might get the impression that this sounds like a pretty depressing movie, and you would be right.
Even though other incidents break up the main complication of Ben and George looking for a new place to live, and even though something lucky happens for them, it gets even more depressing.
LOVE IS STRANGE is a downer movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Love is Strange – Movie Trailer
Oct 1st
After nearly four decades together, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) finally tie the knot in an idyllic wedding ceremony in lower Manhattan. But when George loses his job soon after, the couple must sell their apartment and – victims of the relentless New York City real estate market – temporarily live apart until they can find an affordable new home. While George moves in with two cops (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez) who live down stairs, Ben lands in Brooklyn with his nephew (Darren Burrows), his wife (Marisa Tomei), and their temperamental teenage son (Charlie Tahan), with whom Ben shares a bedroom. While struggling with the pain of separation, Ben and George are further challenged by the intergenerational tensions and capricious family dynamics of their new living arrangements.
“Nights in Rodanthe” What’s the Point?
Oct 2nd
What’s the Point?
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
NIGHTS IN RODANTHE is the latest film to be made from a novel by romance novelist Nicholas Sparks, and if the films are true to his novels, then I would have to say that Sparks has a problem with endings.
The film doesn’t have a problem with casting, as once again Richard Gere is teamed with Diane Lane in a love story.
However, you have heard of a “meet cute”? Their characters “meet long.”
Rodanthe is a little village on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the film begins with Adrienne Willis getting ready to leave her home and go to Rodanthe for a weekend in order to take care of her best friend’s home, which is a bed-and-breakfast smack-dab on the beach.
But when her estranged husband arrives to pick up their two teenage children, he surprises and shocks Adrienne by saying, “I want to come home.”
Meanwhile, we see Dr. Paul Flanner finish selling his house in Raleigh and traveling to Rodanthe for the weekend, and we see how just getting there is an adventure.
Paul checks in, saying he might stay as long as four nights, and because he is the only guest, he takes his food from the dining room into the kitchen to eat with Adrienne, saying that he doesn’t want to eat alone.
Well, we can all see where this is heading, can’t we? And when a storm hits and they secure the house against it together, they are drawn toward each other even more.
Now, there is a back story for Paul, and he is in Rodanthe for more than just a weekend vacation, but this serves only to slow down the inevitable ending, right?
Wrong! The back story creates the ending, which is completely unexpected and not true to everything that comes before it. It is not so much a cheap ending as it is a “cheat” ending.
The film is manipulative, because it wants to create a specified feeling in the audience, but it goes on much too long and has that cheat ending.
In fact, you could even say that it is too schmaltzy and has an unsatisfactory ending, but all in all, we have to ask ourselves, what is the point of movies and stories like this?
NIGHTS IN RODANTHE left me asking “What’s the point?”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
