Youth Without Youth

This weekend's movie choice was Youth Without Youth. Their plot outline is that it's a love story wrapped in a mystery.

Mystery is a very good choice of words for this one. In fact, it was so much a mystery that the mystery was never revealed. I guess you have to be one of those high IQ types of people to understand this one because I totally did not get it.

This was the longest two hour movie I've ever seen. There were a couple of times when I started to doze off but I was afraid if I fell asleep I might miss something that would explain it all. Unfortunately, that never happened...

Personally, I didn't care for this one but I'm sure there's some highly intelligent person out there who would be happy to disagree with me...

The Eye

This weekend mom and I decided to go see The Eye. This one's been out for a while and it looked like a movie that we would enjoy, but we just never got around to seeing it.

Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) is an accomplished concert violinist who has been blind since a childhood tragedy. Sydney undergoes a double corneal transplant, and her sight is restored. But soon afterwards unexplainable shadowy and frightening images start to haunt her. Are they a product of her imagination, or something horrifyingly real? As Sydney's family and friends begin to doubt her sanity, she believes that the images are part of the life experiences of the deceased cornea donor, and she's convinced there is a message she is supposed to be receiving through all of this.

This film considers the ramifications of newfound sight more thoughtfully than you'd expect. Overall, The Eye is a tense, shudder-filled movie with suspensful scenes that make it passable, if not wet-your-pants scary.

The Other Boleyn Girl

This weekends movie choice - The Other Boleyn Girl.

Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson co-star as the infamous Boleyn sisters, who use passion and persuasion, delusions of grandeur and deceit to vie for the love of King Henry (Eric Bana) and advance their family’s status.

Their father, Sir Thomas Boleyn and his brother-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk suspect that Henry, convinced that his aging queen, Katherine of Aragon, will never provide the male heir he so desperately desires, will soon be searching for a mistress. Their first idea is to offer the headstrong, dark-eyed Anne as a candidate for the king's consort and maneuver her into the monarch's line of sight. Upon meeting her, Henry is momentarily intrigued, but she's too much of a handful. Instead he fixates on Mary, the sweet, gentle sister -- it doesn't matter that she's already married.

The stage is set for a lifelong rivalry between the siblings.

The Boleyn family is installed at Hampton Court Palace. Together, Henry and Mary conceive a son, but it's not long before Henry's eye begins to wander again, this time back to Anne: After an imprudent secret marriage, she's been packed off to France, where her brazen manner has supposedly been toned down. Now she's back, and Henry seems to like her much better and the machinations that eventually sever England's connection with the Catholic church and Anne's head from her shoulders begin.

Vantage Point

Vantage Point stars, among others, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, and Forest Whitaker. Quaid and Fox are secret service agents assigned to protect the president (William Hurt) while he makes a speech in Spain. Quaid is the old agent whose lost is nerve and probably should have retired, who has only recently been reinstated after taking a bullet for the Chief a year earlier.

Whitaker is an American tourist, who happens to be in the crowd with a camcorder when the president is suddenly shot, he thinks he has captured the terrorist on film, and for no apparent reason gets it into his head that the best way to help the Secret Service is to chase after them on foot with his camcorder.

The movie introduces each character one at a time, following them right up until the attack and then shortly thereafter. Then it stops, literally rewinds and shows us the same thing from a new character’s perspective, following that character until he too reaches a predetermined cut off point.

With each replay, different pieces of the puzzle are revealed helping us piece together the circumstances leading up to the deadly tragedy. The final picture is a surprisingly captivating, edge-of-your-seat experience.

Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe was the movie of choice this weekend.

The movie starts out as one thing but it metamorphoses into something different. This romantic comedy/drama is structured in such a way that the outcome does not feel predetermined.

On the same day Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) receives the divorce papers from his wife's lawyer, his 10-year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), has had her first sex-ed class at school, and is bursting with questions: Why do people have sexual intercourse if they don't want a baby? Did you have sex with anyone other than Mom? How did you meet Mom anyway, and were you ever in love with anyone else? Will finally agrees to tell Maya the whole story of how he met and fell in love with her mother, but he's going to change a few key details, like peoples' names - it'll be up to Maya (and the audience) to figure out which of the three major "suspects" Will will eventually marry. It could be Emily (Elizabeth Banks), Will's college sweetheart, Summer (Rachel Weisz), an old friend of Emily's, who is a little on the wild side, or a fellow co-worker April (Isla Fisher), who doesn't think much of marriage but thinks a lot of friendship. With the exception of occasional breaks in the "future" with Will and Maya, the story progresses in chronological fashion. It details Will's relationships will all three women and, until late in the proceedings, leaves open the question of who Maya's mother is.

Please pay attention to the PG-13 rating on this one...it has some very frank sexual dialog. Since I'm just a few years older than 13 **ah-hem** it was okay for my mom to take me to this one, and we both enjoyed it.

Hannah Montana

Hanna Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert in Disney Digital 3-D.
Not much to tell about this one, the name says it all. Her concert tickets sold out in under 10 minutes, something I don't think anyone expected to happen, but it looks like Disney has the right idea - turn it into a movie, and they will come.

This was the most well guarded movie I have ever seen. First they reviewed our tickets, then thay gave us our glasses and instructed us to make sure we take our ticket with us in the event that we go to the restroom because we would need it in order to get back in. WOW!

My daughter is one of the MANY who is crazy about Hanna Montana but didn't get to go to her sold out concert (me, fight THAT crowd, are you kidding me?? HA!). When she learned that there would be a movie she asked if I would take her. To make matters even more interesting, they only released it for a limited time in theaters - I think they like to watch mom's and dad's jumping through hoops trying to please their children.

It was released last weekend and I thought about taking her, but the tickets were selling out hours in advance and, once again, I wasn't willing to fight that crowd. However, she has done really well in school for the past two weeks - bringing home E's in conduct, an amazing feat - and so I thought I would reward her with a surprise trip to the movies.

I called a good friend, who also has a Hannah Montana Crazed daughter, and we set our plans in motion. Saturday night was the last night it was playing and we decided to go to the latest showing possible (11:20 pm) in hopes that it wouldn't be too crazy.

A great time was had by all - despite the late hour - and the God's must have been smiling down on us, because we were the only ones in there! We had the whole theater to ourselves.

27 Dresses

This weekends movie choice, 27 Dresses. Mom and I have been talking about seeing this one since we saw the previews. We finally got around to seeing it and the only disappointment I have is that we didn't go sooner. What a great movie!

Katherine Heigl stars as a codependent, perpetual bridesmaid whose sister steals the man of her dreams and then expects her to plan the wedding.

Meet her real match Kevin (James Marsden), a cynical New York journalist who meets Jane at a friend's wedding and considers her plight perfect for his popular "Commitments" column.

Perfectly Predictable, Delightfully Delicious. We loved this movie!