Romance

Water for Elephants (2011)

7.0/10 on IMDb
60% on Rotten Tomatoes
This is a great romantic drama focusing on the romance that develops between a low-paid veterinary student of a circus and the star performer of the shows.

I haven't seen Reece Witherspoon in anything like this before, and I certainly haven't seen Robert Pattinson in anything other than Harry Potter, so it was very refreshing to see these two as the lead characters.

Actually, I would argue that the movie isn't so much focused on the relationship developing between these two love interests, but rather it's a movie that focuses on the two opposing and dynamic forces of Pattinson's character and Christoph Waltz' character.

While I was pleasantly surprised with Pattinson's acting, it was really Christoph Waltz that stole the show, as is only natural for him. His character is the husband of Witherspoon's character, and he is the boss of the entire circus so he can be really demanding. But beyond that, he is an incredible, angry and layered character, and Waltz just does an amazing job with him. He is SUCH a great actor.

It was also directed by Francis Lawrence, who did a great job. I normally don't mention directors but because Francis Lawrence also did Catching Fire and the two Mockingjays, I had to give him a mention.

So I reckon this was a great film, but only if you're into that whole artsy, romance type of film.


Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

4.04/5 on Goodreads
This was Austen's very first novel published in 1811, preceding Pride and Prejudice by two years. The two novels are quite similar in nature as they look at the love interests of sisters in a middle class family. Both are classed in the 'comedy of manners' genre, and both are entertaining, with Jane Austen's classic satire and ridicule of the people of her time making it an amusing read.

The story focuses on two of the three Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who each have their own love interests and it mainly follows their love lives. Elinor is the most sensibile of her sisters, while Marianne is the most attractive and extroverted of her sisters. Because of Marianne's nature, she isn't the most sensible when it comes to love, friends and just manners in general, so you can see the stark contrast between these two sisters.

However, the novel provides both sisters with difficulties that challenge their abilities to maintain their own sensibility, and these plot twists are done so amazingly that they honestly turn your head in!

Also, like in how Pride and Prejudice you get to have a good laugh at Mrs Bennet, here in Sense and Sensibility you get to have a good laugh at John and Fanny Dashwood, and particularly Fanny's character.

It definitely was not as amazing as Pride and Prejudice was, but it certainly was still a very good read. I will say though that despite it having less chapters than Pride and Prejudice (this had 50 chapters, Pride and Prejudice had 61), it felt like a longer read because the events at the start weren't very engaging, and it was only in about the third volume when the novel started getting very very good.

Some good quotes of the novel:

"Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood. There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanor and a general want of understanding."

(When talking to Robert Ferrars) "Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition."

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

7.7/10 on IMDb
98% on Rotten Tomatoes
And now, the film adaptation.

Let me just say, this is an all-star cast, with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and even Professor Snape Alan Rickman. Hugh Laurie also makes an appearance and heck, it's even got Professor Umbridge Imelda Staunton!

But the weirdest thing is that these people weren't even stars when they were in this film. This was two years prior to Titanic, so Kate Winslet wasn't even known. It would only have been Thompson and Grant that were stars back then I presume.

Anyway, it was weird seeing Emma Thompson as Elinor because, well, Thompson isn't the prettiest of women. It sounds harsh, but whilst Elinor isn't beautiful like Marianne, she's still very pretty. And, importantly, young. Elinor's character is 19, whilst Thompson would have been around 36 at the time of shooting. Since she naturally doesn't look the best, her age didn't help at all.

Even with Kate Winslet's character, she played the impulsive teenager well, but her character is meant to be amazingly gorgeous. Like, AMAZING. And Kate Winslet, to me, has never been a pretty face.

Like in Pride and Prejudice (sorry, I can't help comparing the two), Rosamund Pike is beautiful, so she was a perfect Jane Bennet, and Keira Knightly was a great choice for the carefree and tomboy Elizabeth, but here the cast just didn't match the characters they were playing, except for Hugh Laurie.

The movie itself was okay though. I suppose for that time it was good but I can't remember too much of my first impressions except being completely weirded out by the cast and knowing that I wouldn't rewatch it anytime soon.


About Time (2013)

7.8/10 on IMDb
69% on Rotten Tomatoes
Time travel is one of my favourite topics to explore, if not the most. So it was with great anticipation and hype that I picked this DVD up from the CIVIC store shelf and rented it.

However, I was quite disappointed with this film.

It tells the story of a man who learns that he can actually time travel to any moment of his past to change events of which he did not like. So, he uses this ability to make him find love.

And he does. About 1/4 of the way in the movie.

And then the rest of the movie is just like... boring.

There's no real complication in this film, as there are in most films. It's mainly just incident after incident after incident, but they're all normal incidents that are just side effects of living in general. So it was boring. Because humans go through those incidents anyway and we don't have the ability to time travel or correct our past mistakes.

It was also really slow-paced, particularly because nothing that interesting was happening in his life.

He also had some cringe-worthy moments because he just rushed into a lot of things. He would do something semi stupid and then just time travel back, even if it wasn't even worthy (to me) to travel back.

And sure it had a good moral to the story, but nothing that disastrous or that exciting even happened with him time-traveling, which you would think would happen, since the general story goes that someone travels back in time and does something that changes everything, and they have to fix it and realise that time traveling is just not worth it.

But in this film, that idea isn't really sold very well.

So in short, I would definitely not watch it again.


Dear John (2010)

6.3/10 on IMDb
28% on Rotten Tomatoes
I don't think you could title a blog post "Romance" without including an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks movie.

So this stars Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried as two lovers under circumstances that make it difficult for their relationship to blossom; notably that Tatum's character is in the military and has to go out to Afghanistan for extended periods of time.

It's the typical star-crossed lovers plot that Nicholas Sparks has.

I loved the way Roger Ebert's review put it:

"Lasse Hallstrom's "Dear John" tells the heartbreaking story of two lovely young people who fail to find happiness together because they're trapped in an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel."
It's an interesting plot but it's kind of slow. I would definitely not call it the best Nicholas Sparks book-to-film adaptation, even if I haven't seen any except The Notebook and A Walk to Remember. The ending especially was not how I would have liked it to be; there was an alternate ending on the DVD which I liked better.

So yeh; overall not a great movie.