B and I have watched a couple movies this past week since I could stay up later than usual (no class in the morning!).
Not exactly recent, but we saw Stardust, the fantasy/romantic-comedy movie with Michele Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Claire Danes, and Charlie Cox. While the fantasy universe is not at the same level as Lord of the Rings, it was original and coherent. A number of jokes and surprises made the movie less predictable, and B and I concluded that it was a very fun, take-your-mind-off-things movie, without being insipid.
Going even further back, we saw French Kiss, with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. Somehow I had never seen this movie. Again, romantic-comedy (so you kind of know the end before it begins), but I got a lot of laughs. Kevin Kline did a good job playing a French guy. The movie goes out of its way to show that French people are all sexy, rude, passionate, and smokers, but I chocked it up to when the movie was made (1995). For a movie about France for Americans, it's not that bad. Jean Reno and François Cluzet have small roles, and Timothy Hutton is super young! Kevin Kline is hilarious trying to teach goody-two-shoes Meg Ryan how to seduce a man.
To change things up a bit, we watched Bottle Shock last night. Based on real events, it tells the story of a British wine vendor in Paris who decides to organize a blind taste test comparing French and Californian wines in 1976. I didn't realize this, but in the 70's, Californian wine had yet to make a name for itself and was looked down upon. Bill Pullman plays the Californian winemaker the movie centers around, and the British wine vendor is execellently played by Alan Rickman. A lot more serious than Sideways, it manages some comedy while sticking to the historical basis. There are a lot of beautiful scenic shots of California, although it seems pretty dry for the supposed Napa area. I suspect they just drove up to Paso Robles (the most southernly part of California's wine-making; Temecula doesn't count) which is only 2 hours north of Los Angeles, instead of the real Napa, which is north of San Francisco.
Other than that, we've been watching some of the Un Gars, Une Fille dvd's B bought me for my birthday. I only discovered this show a few months ago, but it's actually kind of old (mid 90's). If I'm not laughing because the sketches are completely us, I'm laughing because the sketches are just like my brother-in-law and his girlfriend.
1 comment:
French Kiss is an old favourite for my sister and I. There are plenty of cliches but it's also funny and fits into one of our favourite mainstream hollywood genres, the break up/eventual triumph and recovery, lol.
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