In real life you don’t want to hang out with someone who’s a drag, so why sit through an entire movie focused on a woman and her misery? It’s one thing to check out a drama in which the main character has an actual problem at hand, but in Helen, the titular character’s issue is confined to her head and not just because she’s suffering with a mental illness. The gravity of her situation is never relayed clearly making it impossible to sympathize with her situation. Helen never seems sympathetic, she seems unjustifiably sad and selfish.
From the outside, Helen (Ashley Judd) seems to have it all. She’s a successful college music professor and lives in a beautiful home with her daughter, Julie (Alexia Fast), and loving second husband, David (Goran Visnjic). But inside she’s harboring a secret and when that secret surfaces, her life unravels. An overwhelming case of depression quickly escalates from short panic attacks to a condition that consumes her every waking moment. She can’t sleep, she can’t teach, she can’t function in the least. Finally David takes her to a hospital where the seriousness of her state is finally revealed. A doctor explains to David, “Your wife is not unhappy, Mr. Leonard. Your wife is ill.”
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Let’s say you were invited to a dinner, but not just any dinner. This is a dinner for idiots and at the conclusion of the meal, you’d have to stand up in front of the entire party and give a presentation to prove the superiority of your idiocy. What would you do?
When studios are delivering buddy comedy after buddy comedy, each one better bring a little something new to the table on top of pouring on the humor. Dinner for Schmucks serves up big time when it comes to novelty; it’s the humor that’s on the sour side.
Who doesn’t love attending events held in their honor? It all starts with baby namings, Brisses or Christenings and then it’s onto birthday parties, graduations and weddings, so why isn’t it the same for funerals? Of course the tradition is to hold the funeral after the individual has passed, but what happens if that person wants to come full circle and be part of their exit ceremony just as they were when they entered this world and during all the milestones they hit as they trudged through it?
There are so many raunchy, sex-driven teen comedies out there, most of which are pure garbage. Miss March? Ridiculous. The whole straight-to-DVD American Pieseries? Junk. I Love You Beth Cooper? I shudder at the title alone. But Fired Up? What was so terrible about that one? In fact, I think it’s quite good. The film is downright hilarious, it has some heart and is entertaining through and through.
People of all ages talk about Beverly Cleary’s Beezus and Ramona books fondly, but that still doesn’t classify the series as one for all ages. The stories are for children, and adults just remember them tenderly and enjoy sharing them with their kids; that doesn’t mean the book-to-film adaptation needs to directly appeal to older crowds as well. If only the filmmakers would have ditched such a deliberate attempt at making Ramona and Beezus adult-friendly, perhaps the film would have been as successful as the source material.
Regardless of whether or not you think she deserves what she’s getting, Lindsay Lohan must be feeling pretty rotten these days and I can’t help but to feel a little sympathetic, even if it’s just the slightest bit. So, in honor of Lohan’s downfall, while everyone else is knocking the once promising actress, I’m going to give her a little credit. In fact, I’ll do so for a film that not only marked the starting point of her demise, but one that got universally panned as well, Georgia Rule.
Why do we dream? Does anyone really know for sure? Probably not, but writer-director Christopher Nolan takes a stab at breaking down the structure of a dream and the influence of the subconscious in Inception. There’s nothing more perplexing than the unknown and Nolan uses that to his advantage. It’s one thing to simply make up a story about a theoretical concept, but it’s another to come up with a scenario and actually make it feel real and that’s exactly what he achieves in Inception. It may be Nolan’s dream world, but it’s so exciting, so disturbing and seems so authentic, you might start to wonder.
In the midst of a summer packed with big budget blockbusters, comes a simple piece from Irish director Lance Daly. Kisses follows the adventures of two kids, Dylan and Kylie (Shane Curry and Kelly O’Neill) after they’re compelled to leave their abusive homes and head off into the streets of Dublin. What begins as freeing and lighthearted fun turns into a nightmare as the lights go down and the dangers of the inner city emerge. However, throughout it all Dylan and Kylie always have each other and that’s more than enough.
Selena Gomez has some bad news for fans of her popular TV series “Wizards of Waverly Place.” The Disney star reveals that when she heads back to set to the next season of the show — it will be her last. Gomez told MTV News she was sad to be saying goodbye. But when we caught up with her as she promoted another project, “Ramona and Beezus,” due in theaters July 23, she also had plenty to be excited about.