Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“Safe Haven” Might Have Started with Gimmicky Ending First
Feb 24th
“Gimmicky Ending First”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Safe Haven is from a Nicholas Sparks novel, and for those of you out there who are familiar with his novels and the movies made from his novels, I need to say nothing more.
However, for those of you out there who aren’t familiar with them, here goes.
The movie begins with a young woman played by Julianne Hough running through the rain in Boston and getting onto a bus.
The bus makes a rest stop at a small fishing village in North Carolina, but the woman doesn’t get back onto the bus.
She gets a job as a waitress at Ivan’s Fish Shack, and she finds a place to stay, a small cabin isolated in the woods that needs quite a bit of fixing up.
One day a young woman named Jo stops by and says that she also lives in the woods, because she is rustically inclined.
Then we see a policeman back in Boston going through the police work as he tries to track the first young woman down, who is named Katie.
Meanwhile, Katie buys some yellow paint to paint her kitchen floor in the general store, where she meets Alex, a young widower with two children, who is played by Josh Duhamel.
Katie and Alex begin to develop a romantic relationship, and Katie tells him, “I was just looking for a change, and I’ve always wanted to live in a small town.”
In the meantime, you might think that the movie contains a lot of unnecessary scenes, but we also get some flashbacks that begin to explain the situation that caused Katie to run away in the rain in Boston, which point to her as having been responsible for having done something awful.
Of course, there are also scenes that are not too subtle of Katie and Alex falling in love, but she keeps whatever it was she did back in Boston a secret from him.
And then as the audience learns the secret through flashbacks and scenes of the policeman tracking Katie down, you might even begin to think that the backstory is completely gratuitous to the love story going on between Katie and Alex.
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.
Safe Haven ends, however, as if the writer thought up a gimmicky ending first and then wrote the story second.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Quartet” More Than Just the “Big Game” Gala
Feb 17th
“More Than Just ‘The Big Game’ Gala”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Quartet is another in a string of recent movies about colorful, quirky oldtimers, the first film directed by actor Dustin Hoffman, and much more entertaining than you might have expected.
The credit for a large part of that has to go to the cast, which includes Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, and Michael Gambon.
The film is adapted from the 1999 play written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Donald Harwood, and it takes place in England at Beecham House, a home for retired musicians.
Consequently, the film contains plenty of delightful music, as we encounter many of the residents throughout Beecham House doing what they have done all their professional lives: performing music and singing.
One day a new resident arrives, Jean Horton, played by Maggie Smith, who is so well known that when she walks into the main hall, the residents recognize her and give her a standing ovation.
However, Jean is not as pleased to be there as the other residents are pleased to see her, and at one point she says, “This isn’t a retirement home; this is a madhouse.”
Now, a major plot point is a tired, old hackneyed one: The retirement home is in financial difficulty, and it needs to raise money to keep it going, which is achieved every year by a so-called Big Gala performance by the residents to which tickets are sold to the public.
However, this year tickets are down by 60 percent, and the musical director has to come up with a great idea in order to increase the ticket sales.
You see, the arrival of Jean means that all four performers of a famous quartet of opera singers who sang together in the Ritoletto opera by Guiseppe Verdi, the most important opera composer of the 19th century, are now staying at the retirement home.
Unfortunately, Jean exclaims that she doesn’t sing anymore, and that is final. But more important, bad blood exists between Jean and another member, Reginald, because they were once married to each other and the marriage ended very badly, so badly that when Reginald learns that Jean now lives there, he wants to move.
Well, you can see where this is going, can’t you?
Quartet is much more than just “The Big Game” gala at the end, and it is funny and also very entertaining.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Amour” Is Difficult, but Thought-Provoking
Feb 10th
“Difficult, but Thought-Provoking”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Amour means “love,” “affection,” or “passion” in French, and although the film has dialogue in French with English subtitles and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature, it was not submitted by France, but rather by Austria.
The reason is that the director, Michael Haneke, is Austrian, not French, and so one could say that not everything is at it seems with this film, which goes for the simple story itself.
The film was also nominated for four other Academy Awards, Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Actress, and in 2012 it won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, which suggests that this is a well-respected, classy film.
But not everything is as it seems.
For example, you might believe you already know how it ends from reading about it and especially from seeing the opening scene.
But there is much more to it than that an old woman dies.
The woman is Anne, she has a stroke at the beginning of the film, and when she returns home, she says to her husband, Georges, “Promise me one thing. Never take me back to the hospital.”
She is partially paralyzed on the right side of her body, and as Georges begins to care for her at home and as Anne’s condition becomes worse, keeping that promise becomes more and more difficult.
The action occurs almost entirely inside their apartment in Paris, and although other characters come and go, the events consist mostly of Georges’s problems taking care of Anne as her physical condition gets worse.
It sounds boring, doesn’t it, especially since you believe you already know how it is going to end.
But not everything is as it seems.
For example, there are a couple of scenes that end with a planned shock to the audience, and one you might not have seen coming. There are also a couple of scenes that have to have been either fantasizing by one of the characters or the result of the director and screenwriter playing with the audience.
However, after the film is over, you realize that thinking about these scenes adds depth and meaning to the film.
In other words, keep remembering that not everything is as it seems with this award-winning film.
Amour is difficult to watch, but also very thought-provoking.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”