It’s almost ten years since we saw the romantic comedy film ‘Runaway Bride’, and we had pretty much forgotten the storyline. So it was a good one to choose for an evening in when we were both quite tired.
Richard Gere plays a journalist called Ike. He writes a regular column in a newspaper, which is usually somewhat negative about women. He usually leaves it to the last moment. He’s trying to find something new when he gets chatting to someone in a bar. This stranger tells him about a young woman called Maggie, in his home town, who has run away - he claims - from seven potential bridegrooms, leaving them at the altar.
So Ike writes his article without checking for accuracy, and the newspaper is sued. He loses his job, but someone else suggests he go and meet Maggie and find out the truth.
Maggie (Julia Roberts) has only, in fact, run away from three marriages. She is now engaged to a sports coach called Bob. He thinks she has been panicking so he has been helping her with guided visualisation and deep breathing. Ike meets Maggie’s friends, and interviews her former fiances, and gets to know her family… she initially dislikes him intensely, but gradually realises that he’s a nice guy.
Inevitably there’s an attraction… but she’s engaged to Bob, and convinced he is the one for her. And her wedding is just a few days away. The venue is booked, caterers arranged, and a large guest list invited. Ike realises that Maggie is something of a laughing-stock in the town, and that she’s also quite insecure.
There’s a lot of humour in this film, which is cleverly scripted, and has some nicely choreographed incidents too. There’s also a more poignant side, as we begin to see the people Maggie has hurt; we also see something of why she is so afraid of commitment. We hadn’t remembered any of the detail, so could not recall whether or not she eventually goes through with a wedding, and (if so) to whom.
It’s very well-made; there’s great chemistry between Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and some good (albeit caricatured) support from Maggie’s friends and family. It’s rated PG, which is rare and refreshing in this kind of film, made in 1999. There’s no nudity, no overt intimacy, and only scene including minor violence. Even the language is very mild. While the storyline is unlikely to be of interest to a child, there’s nothing inappropriate for younger viewers.
Definitely recommended for a light evening’s viewing.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
It’s almost ten years since we saw - and loved - the 1981 film ‘On Golden Pond’. We vaguely remembered the story and characters, although we had forgotten most of the detail. It’s a film about an older couple, one which I can remember finding slightly stressful the first time we saw it, as I kept thinking some tragedy was about to happen. This time, although I couldn’t recall how it ended, I felt more confident that I would like it all.
Henry Fonda stars as the somewhat grouchy and outspoken Norman. He and his wife Ethel (Katharine Hepburn) have gone to stay in their holiday home by a wonderful lake. Norman has some heart problems, for which he takes medication, and he’s also starting to get a bit of memory loss, which disturbs him more. But he’s approaching 80 and Ethel, ten years his junior, is determined to celebrate.
Their daughter Chelsea has agreed to visit, along with her new man - a dentist called Bill (Dabney Coleman). Norman and Chelsea have a very tense relationship; she is very sensitive, and feels as if he still treats her like a small child, despite her being an adult with a career and a string of relationships. It’s suggested that she has trouble staying in a relationship as she never resolved the tensions she feels with her father.
Chelsea and Bill bring Bill’s 13-year-old son Billy Junior (Doug McKeon) with them. He immediately clashes with Norman, but his outspokenness and teenage angst appeal to Norman’s natural cantankerousness, and he’s able to handle Billy much better than anyone else. And when Bill and Chelsea leave for a conference, young Billy and the elderly Normal forge an unlikely bond over fishing.
The casting is superb; Chelsea is played by Henry Fonda’s daughter Jane, with whom he apparently had a tense relationship anyway. The scenery is fabulous, the pace gentle but never dull. There are some terrific lines, mostly from Norman, which made us laugh out loud and there are also some very poignant moments. There are underlying ‘lessons’ about how to handle difficult family members; Chelsea resents the fact that her father gets along much better with Billy than he ever did with her - or so she feels, full of resentment at the way he behaves.
There are some tense scenes, a few fishing incidents where I had to turn away rather than watch, and a great deal of love, albeit often badly expressed. It’s a character-based story which allows blossoming friendships and healed relationships, but the problems and anxieties of old age are not hidden or glossed over. It’s thought-provoking and revealing, and we both thought it a wonderful film.
Rated PG, perhaps for the very mild language and a couple of tense scenes, but it’s unlikely to be of interest to anyone under the age of about twelve or thirteen anyway. Probably most interesting to people in their fifties or older.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
Last year when I put the loosely biographical film ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ on my wishlist, Amazon recommended another film, confusingly called just ‘Christopher Robin’. The reviews weren’t quite as good but it sounded interested - if a tad weird - so I added that to my wishlist too. I was delighted to receive it (as well as the other one) for Christmas last year.
We watched ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ about six weeks ago, and thought it an outstanding film, well worth seeing. Then we watched ‘Christopher Robin’ last night. It was good that we left a few weeks’ gap since of course the characters were played by different actors. This is a Disney story rather than having any reality in it, other than some rapidly shown drawings from AA Milne’s classic books.
This film opens with the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood, presumably CGI versions, having a goodbye party for their friend Christopher Robin as he is sent to boarding school. But there are no scenes from school. We next meet him as an adult (brilliantly played by Ewan McGregor). From this point all is fictional: he is known as Mr Robin (rather than Milne), and he works for a luggage factory. He is married to Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and they have a daughter called Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).
Christopher has forgotten his childhood friends, and what used to matter to him. He is caught up in his work, albeit reluctantly at times. We meet him as he’s about to take his wife and daughter to their cottage for the weekend, only to discover that he’s expected to work hard to find some way of cutting the company’s expenses.
There’s a rather strange mixture of realism and fantasy in this film. Since the image on the front of the DVD shows it, it’s no spoiler to say that one of the childhood animals - who walk and talk in the hundred acre wood - emerges into London and finds his old friend. But Christopher Robin is not entirely pleased to see him, particularly when people around him start noticing that he has a talking stuffed animal.
There are some cleverly choreographed scenes as chaos takes over the household, forcing Christopher to travel down to the cottage, where his wife and daughter have gone on their own, to try to restore his old friend to his natural surroundings.
Of course the storyline is rather predictable. Work contrasts with family life, not just for Christopher but for his daughter who is very academic and is soon to be sent to boarding school. She doesn’t really know how to play at all. It’s classic Disney, and becomes more so as the film progresses. There’s a villain - Christopher’s boss - who is really quite unpleasant, but is ousted eventually, and there’s a happy ending when everything falls nicely into place.
But despite there being no real surprises, it’s surprisingly cute, amusing at times, and even poignant towards the end. It could provide a good reminder to serious folk that it’s important to play, that families matter, and that we should not forget our childhood stuffed animals.
The rating is PG, which seems about right; there’s no bad language, no innuendoes or even partial nudity. There are very brief war scenes but nothing too scary. Perhaps a very sensitive young child might be worried by the scene involving a ‘heffalump’; maybe some young children wouldn’t really appreciate the theme of a man absorbed by work and neglecting his wife and daughter. But for anyone over the age of about eight or nine, who doesn’t mind some bizarrely surreal scenes, I would recommend this.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
It’s nearly ten years since we watched the film ‘Steel Magnolias’, and we had both forgotten what it was about. However my husband remembered the first scene as soon as we saw it: a man shooting birds out of a tree while preparations for a large wedding are going on around him. I had no memory of that, but as the film progressed I recalled the climax to the story, and also quickly grasped the general theme.
It’s good that I remembered roughly what was going on, as I had a very hard time, at first, tuning into the strong accents from the American South. Julia Roberts is the main character, Shelby. She’s quite young (this film was made in 1989) and it’s her wedding that’s going to happen the following day. We quickly learn that she and her fiancé Jackson (Dylan McDermott) have had an argument and she said she wouldn’t marry him. But they make up… although she clearly has some reservations.
However Shelby’s mother M’Lynn (Sally Field) is, in my view, the star of this film. We first see her fussing about everything being perfect for the wedding, and then being overprotective of her daughter. But then gradually we discover why. She has an extremely expressive face, and while I didn’t agree with everything she said or did, I could empathise with her strongly - all the more towards the end, during and after the climax of the film. I had forgotten when this occurred, and what situation prompted it, but knew how it ended.
M’Lynn and Shelby live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. And the theme of the story is the strong supportive nature of these people, particularly six very different women (with names so strange that I didn’t know what they were until I looked up the cast list on iMDB to check for the actors). Dolly Parton is superb as Truvy, the town’s hairdresser and beautician. She gossips, and flirts, but feels things deeply and is very caring.
We meet her near the start of the film interviewing a young and nervous girl called Annelle (Daryl Hannah) who desperately needs a job. Annelle is a bit of a strange character and had the accent that was most difficult to understand. I never entirely believed in her.
The other two main characters are two older women: Clairee (Olympia Dukakis) and Ouiser (Shirley Maclaine). These two have a love-hate relationship and provide a lot of the comedy in the film. Ouiser is grumpy most of the time (often with reason) and Clairee likes to stir…
The main story, which begins with the day before Shelby and Jackson’s wedding, takes place over the course of a little over a year. Emotions run high at times, but are interspersed with plenty of light relief and a great deal of warmth. Yet there’s a depth to this film and the incident towards the end, which shocked me the first time I saw it, seemed inevitable this time. And it’s very well done, as is the aftermath.
All in all, we thought it a well-made film, a better than average ‘rom com’. The rating is PG; there are some sex references but nothing explicit, and no violence - even the bird-shooting is done with blanks. I don’t recall much ‘strong’ language although there are plenty of mild expletives. However it’s unlikely to appeal to anyone below the age of about twelve.
According to one of the 'extras', this film was inspired by a true story.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
Sometimes I see a review or recommendation of a film, and know it’s one I’m going to like. I added the 2017 film ‘Gifted’ to my wishlist some months ago, and was delighted to receive it for my recent birthday.
The star of this film is seven-year-old Mary, perfectly cast by Mckenna Grace, who was nine. She’s sweet and feisty at the same time, her timing is impeccable, her range of emotions is excellent. Her subtly expressive face made us smile, even laugh aloud once or twice.
Mary is an extremely gifted child who has been brought up and educated by Frank (Chris Evans - also perfect for the part). But as the film starts, she’s about to start first grade at a local elementary school. Frank wants Mary to make friends, and to think of herself as normal. She is very reluctant, and on her first day distinguishes herself by her astonishing mathematical ability.
Thankfully Mary’s teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) recognises that she has a very gifted child in her class rather than seeing her student as being rude or obnoxious. But Frank is unwilling to have Mary enrolled in a school for gifted children. We learn that Mary’s mother was also supremely intelligent but something of a social outcast, and very unhappy, and Frank doesn’t want that.
Into the mixture comes Evelyn, Mary’s grandmother, who wants Mary to be pushed, to ‘reach her potential’. Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) is elegant, narcissistic and unprincipled, and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. She is beautifully contrasted with Roberta (Octavia Spencer) who is Frank’s landlady, and also Mary’s best friend. Roberta wants what is best for Mary, and loves spending time with her.
So there are legal battles and emotional scenes. Through the film there is the continual question of whether it’s better for this delightful child to pursue her evident talents, to the exclusion of everything else, or attempt some semblance of normality. That’s exacerbated by the fact that she finds it hard to get along with other children, preferring adult company, and loving complex maths concepts and problems.
The acting is so good and the script so believable that we were very quickly drawn into this film, wondering at times if it was based on a true story (apparently not). We were rooting for Frank, appalled and yet impressed at Evelyn. Although she is evidently self-centred, and cares little for Mary as a person, she can - at face value - offer her a much better life.
There are boats, and a one-eyed cat; there’s some humour, and some delightful scenes with Roberta. There’s a love interest for Frank, but it’s quite low-key and never really resolved. There are also some highly-charged scenes between Frank and Evelyn, and between Mary and Frank, moving us almost to tears at times.
The rating is 12, which seems about right despite the main character being a seven-year-old girl. There are a few instances of ‘strong’ language, and an implied bedroom scene, although nothing explicit. But the emotional impact of the story could be stressful for a younger child, as could the theme of a custody battle of this kind.
There are some extras - short scenes with the cast, which give interesting insights into the making of this film, and also some deleted scenes. We could see why most were deleted, but they were all well done and added a little to the story.
Overall, we both thought ‘Gifted’ an absolutely wonderful film, and would recommend it highly to any adults or teenagers who like this kind of light-hearted yet deep heartwarming drama.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews<
I’m not quite sure why Amazon recommended the film ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ to me, but I’m very glad they did. I put it on my wishlist about six months ago, and was given it last Christmas. We watched it last night, and were totally mesmerised. It’s one of the best films we’ve seen for a long time.
It’s based on the true story of AA Milne, author of the two books about Winnie-the-Pooh and two books of children’s poems. We knew very little about the author before watching this. It’s entirely possible that there were inaccuracies or artistic license taken. But the extras at the end, and a little research done today suggest that, in essence, the film is very true to life.
Young Will Tilston is the star of this film, as the young Christopher Robin. It was his first role in a film, yet he is entirely believable. But the story starts shortly before he was born (after an initial sequence showing his parents, rather older, receiving a telegram). Alan (Domhnall Gleeson) and Daphne (Margot Robbie) are the parents concerned, known to all as Blue and Daff. Alan has just returned from World War I, without physical injury but with quite serious post-traumatic stress. This gives him flashbacks and terrors that his wife finds difficult to deal with.
Daphne is delighted to find that she is pregnant, but the birth is traumatic. She doesn’t know what to expect, and she is devastated to give birth to a boy. She’s terrified that he will go off to war one day, and refuses, at first, to bond with him. Alan isn’t at all sure what to make of the baby either. His handling is amusingly awkward. And when the baby is six weeks old, the parents go to Italy for a holiday without him, leaving him in the care of his new nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald). It seems shocking to us in the 21st century, but was evidently not unusual for a hundred years ago.
Christopher Robin is known as Billy Moon to his family and nurse. He has quite a happy childhood, cared for very well by Olive. He is given many gifts by his parents, including large numbers of stuffed animals who are the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the rest. Daphne likes to play with her son sometimes, and is very good at animal voices. But she’s a socialite and quite selfish, and much more interested in having fun. Alan is a writer who has felt blocked since the war. This causes a great deal of tension between him and Daphne, particularly after they move out of London to the countryside.
Circumstances force Alan to take more notice of his son and the two of them start to bond in some quite moving scenes. Christopher Robin asks his father to write a book for him, and is thrilled - at first - when the book takes shape, illustrated by his father’s close friend Ernest (Stephen Campbell Moore). The film becomes lighter as they play ‘Pooh-sticks’ on a bridge, climb trees and play games in the woods.
The first book, when published, is far more successful than anyone could have imagined. It caught the imagination of the UK public, and eventually the rest of the world. It’s explained as a kind of childhood innocence, something that people are longing for after the horrors of the war, and the resultant depression and widespread starvation.
Then the press get involved, wanting photos and interviews. Olive tries to protect her charge, but Daphne is keen on publicity. As becomes gradually clearer, her son is something of a pawn, drawn into more and more public appearances. As this happens, he feels less and less as if his parents really care for him.
His teenage years are shown only briefly, with some horrendous bullying. Fame has done him no good at all with his peers, and he emerges from school a bitter, angry young man (played extremely well by Alex Lawther). He then signs up for the army, at the start of the second world war, and we don’t know what the outcome will be until almost the end.
It could have been a depressing story. But it’s extremely well made, with acting so realistic that we were drawn right into the film. Our emotions were tugged, feeling for Christopher Robin who really only wants to be loved. He comes across as a thoroughly nice, caring child who is willing to do almost anything if it will make his parents care.
As well as being an excellent film, it was eye-opening as far as the real AA Milne and Christopher Robin were concerned. I had not really thought of them as three-dimensional people before, nor what fame of this kind might have done to an impressionable, cute and young-looking child. Indeed, I hope that the young actor will not suffer in a similar way for his instant stardom.
‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ is rated PG, which is fair, but not necessarily helpful. There’s nothing ‘adult’, nor any nudity, and only the very mildest of bad language. But there are some quite gruesome war shots, and some other scenes or moments that could be disturbing to a young child. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone below the age of about twelve.
However, the scenery is gorgeous, the settings realistic and the pace exactly right to hold our interest without racing through the story. All in all, we thought it a wonderful film. There are ‘extras’ with brief cameos of some of the main actors and a bit more background, which we enjoyed watching afterwards.
Highly recommended to adults and teenagers, though it may change the way you think about AA Milne's children's books in future.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
My husband thought the film ‘The Florida Project’ looked interesting, so put the blu-ray on his wishlist last year. He usually asks for thrillers or fast action films that he watches on his own. But he sometimes adds a couple that he thinks I will like too, and this was one of them. He was given it for Christmas last year, and we decided to watch it last night.
The film opens with some small children - with the slightly unusual names of Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), Scooty (Christopher River) and Dicky (Aiden Malik) - running wild. We see them behaving very badly to some new residents of the area. Moonee, we soon learn, lives in a run-down motel with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), who is a stripper. I found it hard to understand Halley’s accent, but the gist is clear. She loves her daughter, and occasionally they have fun together. But most of the time she neglects her in favour of smoking weed.
The children get in trouble with the new resident, but then Moonee makes friends with her daughter Jancey (Valeria Cotto). Halley has trouble paying her rent and tries various methods of earning money, none of them legal, and some of them shocking. The children are mostly full of mischief (at best), downright obnoxious at worst.
And there’s a hard-working, honest but often frustrated manager of the motel complex, called Bobby (Willem Dafoe). He tries to help people where he can, and be flexible when possible; but he has to do his job. And it’s a very difficult one at times. Bobby stands out as a person of integrity who genuinely cares about the folk he comes across, particularly the children.
There really isn’t much story. About half an hour into the film, we were both wondering where it was going. People were interacting, and day-to-day life was progressing, but there didn’t appear to be any plot. The locations were depressing, and none of the characters were at all likeable, other than, perhaps, Bobby.
However, we kept watching. The film flows well; the children are excellent and believable as actors, though it seemed surprising that Moonee is so bright, given the state of her mother. But their behaviour is terrible - they steal and beg, and cheat… and nobody seems to care.
The front of the blu-ray box claims that this film is ‘pure cinematic joy’, and that every moment is ‘glorious’. I think the reviewers must have seen a different film. There was no joy in it at all. On the contrary, it’s very depressing to think that people might live this way, and that children could grow up with so few morals. We didn’t see any glorious moments, either. Good acting, yes. A good pace, certainly. A few cute one-liners, mostly involving Moonee. But nothing remotely joyful or glorious.
There’s no actual nudity or explicit scenes, but a great deal is said or implied, including a couple of very unpleasant visitors to the complex. And there’s a lot more ‘strong’ language than I am comfortable with. The rating is 15, which I suppose is fair, but I can’t imagine most teenagers being at all interested in this.
As for the ending, it’s abrupt and so open-ended that we couldn’t believe, for a moment, that it had actually finished.
We wondered if the ‘extras’ would help us understand a bit better, but the ‘making of’ film was disjointed and uninteresting. We started watching the ‘interviews’ with cast, which started with lots of commentary from the actress who played Halley. It was interesting to learn that she had never acted before this film, and did a crash course in acting beforehand. But there was no interviewer, and after five minutes of monologue, we gave up.
On the plus side, the film has given us an insight into an American State we knew almost nothing about, and a look at a lifestyle that’s entirely foreign to us. We’ll probably remember images from it for a while. But I can’t imagine wanting to see it again.
Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews
