Posts tagged Los Angeles
“Like Crazy” an Unconventional Love Story
Nov 26th
“Unconventional Love Story”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Like Crazy has a very simple plot: Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back.
Or does she?
You see, complicating this “simple” love story at first glance is something that we all have encountered at one time or another: bureaucratic red tape, which is more serious in this case because it prevents the girl from getting back into the United States so that she can be reunited with the boy she fell in love with.
Anna is British, Jacob is American, and they meet at a college in Los Angeles where she is studying journalism and he is studying furniture design.
They share a writing class together, and Anna initiates their “meet cute” when she leaves a note to him underneath the windshield wiper of his car in the parking lot.
At the bottom of the note, Anna writes, “P.S. Please don’t think I’m a nutcase.”
So, they get together, discover they have a few things in common, and the first time Anna invites him in for a quiet drink, Jacob remarks that the chair she uses for all her writing is uncomfortable.
Then after we see a series of scenes showing them on numerous dates, having fun, enjoying each other’s company, and obviously falling in love, one day Jacob gives Anna a wooden chair that he designed and built for her, and he shows her that underneath the seat he engraved the words “Like Crazy.”
Well, unfortunately Anna’s student visa is up at the end of the school year, and she is scheduled to go back to England for the summer, but young love prevails, they agree that 2-1/2 months is too long for them to be apart now, and so Anna rashly decides to stay and tells Jacob that they can spend all summer in bed.
However, after Anna does return to England, she gets a job with a magazine, but then when she has a chance to come back to the United States to see Jacob, she is held up in Customs because she had violated her prior visa, and she is immediately sent back to England.
They make half-hearted statements over the telephone to be just friends, but they also both get involved with other people.
Like Crazy is an unconventional love story, and I wasn’t crazy about it.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
The Muppets – Movie Trailer
Nov 23rd
On vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world’s biggest Muppet fan, and his friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) from Smalltown, USA, discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets’ former stomping grounds. To stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and raise the $10 million needed to save the theater, Walter, Mary and Gary help Kermit reunite the Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways: Fozzie now performs with a Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets, Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, Animal is in a Santa Barbara clinic for anger management, and Gonzo is a high-powered plumbing magnate.
“Friends with Benefits” Game, Set, and Match
Jul 28th
“Game, Set, and Match”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Friends with Benefits is a romantic comedy that tries to be an unromantic comedy just because of the title.
The title, of course, means two friends who have sex with each other, but without any romantic feelings, and if you believe that is possible, there is still a bridge in Brooklyn and swampland in Louisiana someone would be willing to sell you.
Justin Timberlake stars as Dylan Harper, and Mila Kunis stars as Jamie, the two friends who try to make the title work, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away by telling you that this sort of sexual arrangement is doomed from the start.
When the movie begins, Dylan and Jamie don’t even know each other, and they both go through a breakup with someone that leaves them disillusioned about romance.
In fact, they both use a variation of the same line of “I’m just going to shut myself down emotionally, like George Clooney.”
And this is just one of way too many references to popular culture, movies, and television shows the writers thought were going to be funny, clever, or enlightening to the audience instead of being annoying and distracting to me.
Dylan and Jamie meet “awkward” instead of meet “cute” at a New York airport when she greets him on his arrival from Los Angeles for a job interview.
You see, Jamie is a corporate recruiter, or “head hunter,” and she found Dylan, who is a graphic designer in Los Angeles, and got him an interview to be the art director for a magazine in New York.
Dylan likes the open spaces of Los Angeles and doesn’t really want the job, but he gets it anyway, and then Jamie works at selling Dylan on New York City, because if he quits or gets fired before a year is up, Jamie doesn’t get her bonus for finding Dylan.
After they become friends, they discuss sex, and they decide that two people should be able to have sex like they’re playing a game of tennis, and so they decide to have sex, but without any emotions.
Now, if you have ever played tennis, you know that players do get emotional about it, and the very first score of every game is love-love.
Friends with Benefits is game, set, and match and not worth the effort.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”