Here is our very romantic choice for Valentine’s Evening entertainment that we had along with a heart shaped pizza from Papa John’s. My dream date There is one of these new Blockbuster boxes in our local Duane Reade. Unfortunately it has a very limited number of films available to rent.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I had seen the trailer to this movie which left me cold. When I heard that it received a Golden Globe I was a little more intrigued but little did I know how much I would enjoy watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It is utterly hilarious!

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) wanted to become an inventor since childhood but his inventions never really worked and he wasn’t well respected, not even by his own dad. But things are changing for him when his newest invention, a machine that turns water into food, takes off. Literally: it accidentally flies into the sky where it turns the clouds humidity into food which then rains onto the earth. Pretty neat! What’s even better is that Flint can type in any food that he would like the machine to produce. Right around that time Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a young weather broadcast intern, steps into Flint’s life and bewitches him with her nerdy charms. Naturally, disaster is waiting right around the corner. The food machine gets out of control and starts to produce giant food that it now a danger to Flint’s town. He has to stop it!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has so many quirky little ideas that make it a lot of fun to watch. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time.

Watchmen

Superhero movies are somewhat blending together in my mind. A lot of them are so much alike. Whatchmen is clearly not one of the better comic book adaptations that I have seen though.

Yes, she is wearing latex suspenders...

I won’t write a synopsis of this movie, mainly because I didn’t really get the story. It felt more like an introduction of the comic book characters then a story-line. And I didn’t care about the characters at all. None of the character managed to touch me in any way, not even really engage my interest. Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter) gave a such a terrible performance that I had to think of my teacher, George Loros, who always says that it’s a pity that we can’t sue actors for bad acting (he is hilarious, I wish I could tape him!). I usually really like Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson but this movie brought out the worst in them.

The special effects, fight scenes and all that were fine but overall I don’t think you are going to miss out on anything if you never see Watchmen.

It happens very rarely that I absolutely fall in love with a movie but tonight was one of these scarce occasions. I have literally just come home from the cinema so I am still completely “in” the film and haven’t really processed it. But I thought just this once I want to write a review that is completely subjective.

Normally I only feel that connected to films if they somehow remind me of my life or myself which really isn’t the case with A Single Man. In fact it couldn’t be further away from me. I am obviously not a gay middle-aged man who has lost the love of his life and is about to commit suicide and has some sort of sexual interest in my student. But there was something deeper then the visible story that I connected with. It had a lot to do with Colin Firth’s excellent performance as George. I thought it was an extraordinary moment when he picked up the phone and gets the news of his lovers death. The camera stayed so close (too close, really) on Firth that there was no way to fake the emotion. I am very aware of the fact that for some people it is very easy to cry on command but that is not what Firth was doing. He wasn’t just crying, he was truly but quietly suffering. One of my teachers (George Loros (The Sopranos)) always says that we shouldn’t show all of the emotion that we are feeling and that holding back tears can be more powerful then completely braking down (which he calls emotional masturbation). And for this movie that is absolutely true. This moment (others as well but this in particular) made the character so real to me and I think that is what I could connect with.

A big part of A Single Man is its beauty. It is just unbelievably gorgeous. Like one photograph next to another. Or maybe it is a bit like looking at Vogue Magazine (which I thoroughly enjoy doing, they have stunning photos). But it wasn’t just beautifully framed, the really interesting aspect of it was the saturation of the color. The more pain George feels, the less saturation the picture has and the happier he is, the fuller the color gets. It is done in a very subtle way, not “in your face,” some people might not even notice it and that makes it perfect. Obviously the fashion in this movie is perfect. Firth is wearing gorgeous suits all through the film, Moore gets to wear a truly fabulous dress and even though Hoult is wearing a slightly outrageous outfit, it still looks great. It was always obvious in his Fashion that Tom Ford (who directed this movie) has a real eye for beauty but it is still very surprising that his first film is that stunning. I hope he will continue making films.

The title really does explain the movie. It can not only be read as a single man (instead of being in a couple) but the film is actually about one single man. Everyone else is a side character. I am not even sure what Julianne Moore is doing on the film poster. She doesn’t have a bigger role then anybody else. She is just more famous than Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult. (Hoult is really making it by the way. I just remember him as the boy in About a Boy but we just finished watching the British TV-series Skins and he has a major role in it. I am sure we will see more of him soon!)

I could easily go back to the cinema now and watch the movie again. Or maybe just dress up to the nines with lots of make-up, light up a cigarette and have some gin or whiskey (even though I don’t smoke and don’t really drink gin or whiskey and come to think of it, I don’t even normally wear make-up or fancy clothes) and just listen to a record and enjoy the rest of the evening. Because even though the film is ultimately very sad I went away with a happy feeling. The feeling of having fallen in love with a movie. It happens…once in a while.