MOVIE REVIEW: LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT (2002)

Life or Something Like It is a movie that feels like it is going for Oscar Bait. Instead, by the end of the movie, it manages to undermine its own message while playing into every bad romantic movie cliche that is know. Some spoilers ahead.

Angelina Jolie stars as a hotshot reported. She seems to have the perfect life- dating a famous baseball player and being successful in her own career. However, the plot kicks off with a fortune teller telling her she would die in a week and then predicting some other stuff correctly to make her believe him.

This leads her on a journey of self-discovery. She predictably goes through the motions of realising her relationship is shallow when her boyfriend tries to help her out. I'm still not sure why. She then gets together with a guy she had a one night stand with years ago. She then gets drunk and makes a fool of herself on television, which (of course) gets allot of exposure and a promotion for her.

At the end of the day, the movie just plods along with a generic plot. Even at the end, the whole message is undermined when she interviews a celebrity. Then, for some reason, the celebrity has a break down on air when she is reminded she isn't married. 

This undermines the message the film is trying and failing to send with being happy with yourself. The final message is that, if you aren't in a relationship, you can't be happy. Which makes her even more hypocritical as she is literally getting together with her two-night stand guy.

1 out of 5 waffles or something like them.

Movie Review: A Winter’s Tale (2014)

 All I can say following this movie is wow. It certainly lives up to the hype and will make me appreciate probably every other movie around. Winter’s Tale is a movie that, just when I thought it finds it’s groove, proceeds to promptly lose it and then somehow get worse. The only consolation is that Colin Farrell doesn’t go full paedophile at the end with the young girl he is meant to save from cancer. As a disclaimer, I went into it expecting it to be bad but was buoyed by the new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer that morning which caused me to have a slightly more optimistic view on movies.

A Winter’s Tale is meant to be a love story. And at the beginning we are introduced to our hero, Colin Farrell (or Peter Lake) running from some people. He then proceeds to slit one of their throats, but it is okay because there is no blood and no body. Then we see it is Russell Crowe’s gang chasing him and Russell himself is there, complete with face scars to show that he is evil. But Colin is saved by a white horse who his stereotypical native American spirit guide/foster dad say is his spirit animal.

There is also a girl who is dying of consumption who Colin Farrell falls in love with, plot-amnesia and Will Smith as the devil himself. But at this point I had contented myself that this was one of the worst movies ever and started listing things in my head I would prefer to do for 2 hours:

1.       Watch the Guardians of the Galaxy and Winter Soldier trailers for 2 hours straight.

2.       Cook a delicious roast dinner for that night.

3.       Go on dodgem cars.

4.       Check out my village in Animal Crossing.

5.       Watch 3 random episodes of House.

6.       Go to the beach.

7.       Sleep.

8.       Clean my apartment.

9.       Listen to INXS while bouncing a 2 tennis balls (one each hand, of course).

The only good parts about this movie are Will Smith, playing a cheeky out-of-time devil, and Russell Crowe hamming it up. This is more than offset by a story that alternates between making no sense or, when it does make sense, is so completely stupid it makes JackAss look like it deserves an award for Best Story. But then again, I did expect it to be bad so what am I complaining about. They already got my money and the bad movie didn't disappoint.

1 Cold Waffle out of 5.