Beautiful Girls (1996)

Bouncing back to a more recent recommendations from MovieRob, he suggested I watch Beautiful Girls and another one that I’m still looking for.  Luckily Netflix had Beautiful Girls so here we are! I’ve been following Rob fairly recently and he does amazing reviews and he has a side project of currently reviewins Oscar Best Acting Winners and the respective movies. You should definitely go check it out!

Director: Ted Demme

Cast: Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, Noah Emmerich, Lauren Holly, Annabeth Gish, Rosie O’Donnell, Max Perlich, Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino

New York City piano player Willie (Timothy Hutton) heads back home for his high school reunion.  Being with his friends and in his old surroundings, while at the going away to think about the crossroads of his life, career and relationship, he sees that nothing has changed much for his friends who stayed at home. They still have the mentality of when they were in high school and each has their own personal struggles to work out as they all face growing up; making the responsible choices.

Beautiful Girls is a thoughtful movie, possibly more geared towards men as they struggle between the idea of growing up and growing old.  Its pretty refreshing because we rarely get the view of men in this phase and a lot of movies like this are more formed in chick flicks geared towards women.  There’s a lot to love about this movie, especially the cast and character development.

I’m not going to say I understand men very well.  I’m happy most days I somewhat understand the logic of what my boyfriend does.  Its a never-ending process.  This movie was special in that way because I’m not saying that men ALL go through the same thing because that would be unfair but this was a nice way to see things. Giving each of these guys, mostly 4 of them, a bigger, more focused story meshed with the women in their life in a rather balanced way was a good thing.  I understood a bit more of the characters: Willie (Timothy Hutton), Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport) while Mo (Noah Emmerich) had a more solid life set so he was something of a guiding light along with some of the other sub characters.  It was a very subconscious thing but even though a lot of their mentality seemed off to me, along the way I grew to connect in a way where I wanted them to do the “right” thing.

Other than the guys having a good impact, they needed some ladies that could match up to them.  One of the most intriguing one was Uma Thurman’s appearance as Andera.  She was a beautiful girl that they all were attracted to.  The beautiful thing that was also so understanding and for many of them, she also was helpful in an enlightening way.  Another one that I liked was the young Natalie Portman who had sudden and oddly deep but simple conversations with Willie and in many ways, made him understand a few things and question his life.  Another character that was funny was Rosie O’Donnell’s supporting character, especially when she talked about the unrealistic portrayal of women.

Beautiful Girls was great not only for its characters but it had a really awesome soundtrack.  If you’ve seen this, one of my favorite feel good moments was when they all were together and starting singing Sweet Caroline. Its full of these fun moments but was also thoughtful and engaging.  Its a side we rarely see in men and just the thoughts that might go through their heads as in a way, they shift their vision of women as they get older.  The longing to not grow old but also to not grow up.  Thats one of my favorite conversations in this movie where Mo and Willie talk about this exact thing of his “attraction” to Natalie Portman’s Marty as a way of showing that he didn’t want to grow old and Mo says its his way of not wanting to grow up.  See, Mo = enlightening 😉

The essence of the movie really is in this ramble from Michael Rapaport when he goes on about “beautiful girls”:

Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That’s all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels.-taken from IMDB

With that said, I have no idea how I’ve never heard of Beautiful Girls.  Its a pretty awesome movie.  Great soundtrack, thoughtful characters and packed with a nice pace and a few feel good moments.  Its fun and fantastic! I totally recommend you to watch this!

Thanks again to Rob for introducing this to me! He is as awesome as this movie and you have to check out his site.  I linked it on top with his blog name! 🙂

Valentine’s Marathon Kicks off with…

How many of you guessed that I’d be doing a Valentine’s day marathon? Well, I think I probably talked about it here and there, but I don’t remember if I did.  So today, I finally finalized the list.  Last year, I did a Ten Faves Romantic Comedy (which you could find HERE).  No full reviews or anything since I wasn’t really doing many reviews then. So this year, seeing as I am committing myself to reviewing more and seeing that my whole (hectic, for me) Christmas marathon turned out pretty good and I had loads of fun.  I learned to lower my burden of movies and selected randomly from what I own a list for this year’s Valentine’s marathon.  Rest assured..so are new to my collection, maybe not new releases per se but I haven’t seen them so it’ll be a fresh look.  I plan on doing 10 movies for this marathon but the list won’t be revealed, you’ll just have to come back and check it out :).  It’ll have rom-coms and romantic dramas, that sort of thing.

So let’s start this off!

First movie up is FRENCH KISS (1995)! If you’re in Canada and only had bunny ears (like I did and still do), I remember my high school years having this movie come up at least 2-3 times EVERY YEAR.  You’d think I’d be sick of it but somehow it grew on me. Maybe its because I love Meg Ryan but we’ll see later…once I give you all a little plot and details.

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Cast: Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline, Timothy Hutton, Jean Reno

Kate (Meg Ryan), a woman waiting for her Canadian citizenship in Toronto, and Charlie (Timothy Hutton), a doctor in Toronto are engaged.  Charlie has to fly to Paris for conferences and asks Kate to go with her but because of her citizenship issues and her fear of flying, she stays in Toronto until one day, Charlie calls and tells her that he wants to call off the engagement because he’s found the love of his life, Juliette. Kate picks up her courage and flies over to Paris to get back her fiance.  On plane, she meets Luc Teyssier (Kevin Kline) who is French and also puts his vine and stolen bracelet into her bag to cross customs.  Because of that, Luc eventually gets tracked down by an inspector (Jean Reno) who is also a good friend of his. With a few accidents and mishaps, they end up having to cross paths and eventually accompany each other through Kate’s journey in France.

This is a fantastic way to start my marathon because this may not be one of the best romantic comedies widely known but to me, it holds a place in the awesome.  I say that not due to the plot because it is predictable at times but to the cast and characters.   I’ve probably mentioned it before, but romantic comedies are all about the chemistry between their characters.  In this one, Meg Ryan is great at being her scared of everything self, a woman who is scared of change or feeling hurt and the negatives in life.  When she meets someone who appears to be her complete opposite, you just can’t help but to laugh.  Kevin Kline has this charisma when he talks (or maybe its his French accent).  Their debates and his reasonings for everything is plain awesomeness.

For example: When he first meets her on a plane and she panicking about it taking off.

Luc: What do you think, the plane is going to crash and we are all on the ground in a thousand pieces dead? I promise you, if it happens, you won’t feel a thing.
Kate: You’re French, aren’t you?

I grabbed that from IMDB quickly to give you an idea but its not the same with the whole scenario and acting going on.  Plus, I’m starting to notice these trivial things but the glimpse of the TV in the beginning of the movie was a NHL game of Habs/Montreal Canadians as one of the teams playing on the hockey game.  I have a thing against NHL and the team but whenever a Habs game goes on, I still want them to win…secretly.  I’ll explain that another day but back to the last thing about the movie…

The music.   It introduced me to the French version of a song that I extremely adore and not to mention lots of other great songs that went great well with this movie.  So here it is, the French version of Dream a Little Dream of Me (is that the name?) called Les Yeux Ouverts.

This may not be a strong point for a romantic comedy but I’m happy that my Valentine’s marathon started with this.  It was fun and charismatic set in the beautiful France.  Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline was fantastic. Best of all, it was just an awesome feel good movie.  I recommend it with the warning that you have to be okay with a normal story line but in it only for the chemistry.  If that’s the case, you can come out of this happy.

I feel like I watch a lot of movies that aren’t great or haven’t really been popular.

Does anyone know this rom-com? Like it or dislike it? How about a Meg Ryan fan? I know I miss her appearing on screen a lot.