Day 90: Nanny McPhee

A widower is forced to marry again and his children are not at all pleased about it. Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) teaches the children valuable lessons and gets them to stop behaving like little demons.

Nanny McPhee seems like the saddest character. She’s hated initially by the children she looks after and when they eventually realise that she’s wonderful, then she has to leave them. So she moves from place to place and never gets to stay with the people who like her. And she is actually excellent and helps everyone realise what is important. I cry every single time she says this line at the end of the film:  “When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go.”

Right, so, I love this film. Let’s be honest here.

8/10

Day 89: Cockneys vs Zombies

Two brothers, their cousin, their daft mate and the local psycho team up to rob a bank to save the old folks' home. The police are after them until they realise they’ve got a bit of a bigger problem. Zombies. The robbers and their adorable hostage head to the old folks home to save them but the pensioners are pretty badass by themselves.

We see the start of the zombie outbreak: builders stumble across a tomb and they decide to indulge in a little light grave robbing. Sadly for them and the rest of the East End, this tomb isn’t filled with any normal skeletons. Some of them get up and they bite the builders. One of them gets their lips bitten off! It was quite dramatic. Don’t rob graves, kids. That is definitely the lesson I took from this film.

The gang head off to rob the bank but they’re all pretty much hopeless. Well, except Katy (Michelle Ryan). She can seemingly do anything and is pretty badass while she does it. The robbery itself is easy but there are a load of police officers outside waiting to grab them. They grab two hostages and try and escape, only to discover everything has gone mental outside. Zombies everwhere! If you’re going to rob a bank, wait until there’s a zombie outbreak. That’s another lesson I took from the film. I’ve learned so much.

I am so influenced by other people swearing; there’s so much swearing in this film and all my notes contain swearing. The film wasn’t amazing but if you want an easy film with zombies and badass old folk, this is pretty much the one for you. I probably wouldn’t watch it again but I wasn’t disappointed, it was exactly what I thought it would be.

Terry:  If we’re longer than 10 minutes -

Katy:  - Then fucking wait longer.

6/10 

Day 88: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Seven pensioners head to Jaipur, India in the hopes of spending their retirement in a beautiful hotel. When they get there, however, it’s less spectacular than the ad led them to believe but even though it’s not what they expected, it turns out that it was exactly what they needed.

It’s important when you have quite a large cast that you’re given the chance to learn and care about each one, with the focus not just being put on a few of them. Their stories were all interesting and it was good to see how they came to enjoy their time in Jaipur. Well, not all of them did; Jean (Penelope Wilton) couldn’t get into the swing of things but everyone else managed. Even racist Muriel (Maggie Smith).

It must be so difficult to be with someone for 40 years and realise that you are not right for each other. You might’ve been at one point but now you’re in different places and the relationship just doesn’t work anymore. It was quite brave of them to decide to go their separate ways, I thought. It’s so easy to get stuck even when you know it’s not the right thing. Through the whole film you get the sense that you should go for the things that you want and not just let them pass you by. I definitely agree but I think it takes a strong person to really go for it.

For some reason it took me a little while to get into this film but once I did, it was really great. Celia Imrie is perhaps one of my favourite actresses, she always has me laughing. In fact, the lot of them were great in their own ways. It seemed quite realistic, like it wasn’t even really a film but more like how they would have actually been. I think I’d quite like to visit India, despite my fear of large crowds. It definitely doesn’t seem like it’d be boring, anyway.

8/10

Day 87: Rent

A musical story about a group of friends who are fighting against poverty, AIDS, and heartbreak, and trying to survive life in New York City.

The stories are so heartbreaking and I love them so much. But I can’t really talk about it.

10/10

Day 86: We Bought A Zoo

Trying to move on with his life when everything around him reminds him of his dead wife is too difficult, so Benjamin (Matt Damon) buys a broken down zoo in the country and moves his family out to fix it up.

It must just be so hard when the person you love and built a life with dies. And for Benjamin, it wasn’t just his grief he had to cope with, he also had two young children to care for. His son Dylan (Colin Ford) is having a hard time dealing with the loss of his mother and he is acting out at school, eventually getting expelled. Benjamin decides that they need a new start and the zoo, with the huge house next door, is the perfect place to do just that. The zoo is pretty run down though and there’s a lot of work and money that has to go into rebuilding the place but he is confident that it is the right thing and he completely goes for it. I love that he threw himself into it even though he didn’t know the first thing about running a zoo, I think that's the mark of a strong character.

I wasn’t expecting to like this film but it was actually really good. Sappy as anything but I found that kinda nice. And Scarlett Johansson is amazing, so.

“You know, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. Just literally 20 seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”

7/10

Day 85: The Decoy Bride

Super famous actress Lara (Alice Eve) just wants to marry James (David Tenant) in a quiet, private ceremony but the press aren’t having it and they manage to find her wherever she goes. They head off to a tiny Scottish island in the hope that they won’t be found. Katie (Kelly Macdonald) has come back to the island after leaving her cheating fiancée and she is swearing off men. She gets roped into pretending to be Lara to outfox the press and, well, I’m sure you can see what is going to happen, yes?

I’ve always loved Kelly Macdonald and she doesn’t disappoint here. She’s argumentative and loud when she wants to be, and she’s also awkward and adorable when she wants to be. Katie takes a liking to James but playing the decoy bride causes a problem for her and the pair bicker until he saves her life when she almost drowns. He thinks he’s supposed to marry Lara because all the men love her, she’s nice, talented, and she loves him, so if you’re gonna marry someone, it should be her. But then he realises (shock of shocks) that maybe she isn’t right for him and instead maybe the person who is right for him is the adorable Scottish lass. Good choice, Sir.

This film is actually kind of good, I wasn’t expecting to like it but it’s funny. And sweet. My god, when that old deaf couple were dancing in the cottage I started crying. It was just so wonderful, the way they loved each other and were dancing to music that only they could hear.

“A life spent making mistakes is so much better than a life spent doing nothing.”

7/10

More Than Two And Less Than Four

The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

The citizens of El Monte declare war on the author, who they call Saturn, so that they can live free of his continual, invasive presence. While writing about the characters, the author's girlfriend leaves him because he is absorbed in the book. She says that she doesn't want to be associated with it and he must not write about her within it. His sadness at her leaving permeates every page and a few of the female characters leave their partners, for different reasons but the leaving is the significant point. The book follows many characters and has them all linked incredibly well. The woman made of paper might be my favourite of the characters. Every act of physical intimacy between her and the men she cares for always leaves them scarred (they end up with deep paper cuts) and so she moves from man to man, never content because she knows it can't last.

I absolutely love it when the characters in a book are aware of the author and it was so well done here. It wasn't even just that they were aware of him and all we got was there side of it, we also read about his girlfriend leaving him and his bottomless sadness and how he fights back against the characters. Beautifully written.

10/10

~

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

The bulk of the book takes place on a boat over a period of 21 days. Three young boys explore the ship and discover the peculiarities of their shipmates. It was easy to read and at parts was quite interesting but overall, I wasn't that taken with it. It didn't really grab me or make me think in any different sort of way.

6/10

~

The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

We experience moments in the lives of various members of a family in India. And we see how a tragedy can pull apart something fragile. The words and all their combinations were excellent. The descriptions are so well written that it's impossible not to form elaborate images in your mind. Actually a delight to read.

9/10

Day 84: Another Earth

The news breaks that a planet has been found that is identical to Earth, a drunk driver looks up into the sky to see it and crashes head on into a family stopped in their car. While the world comes to terms with this planetary double, two people help pull each other out of themselves and find their place in life again.

The planet, that gets called ‘Earth Two’ in the film (so arrogant), is eerily similar to Earth. When they first make contact, the reporter ends up speaking to her double. Yes, on this planet are doubles of everyone on Earth, and they’ve had the same experiences. This inevitably leads to the question, “if you met yourself, what would you say?” In our lives, a lot of us hope to find someone who can understand who we are and why we are that way, so if you met your double then they would know. I don’t think I’d be able to say anything, it would just be too much of something you never really expect to find.

I’m not sure if I’ve watched too many films or I'm just cynical but whenever I see a happy family I just know that shit is going to hit the fan pretty sharpish. And lo, I was correct. Pregnant mother, father and child are sitting in their car being all cute and laughing and you just know that in 2 seconds they are going to be so dead. Rhoda (Brit Marling) drives straight into them, then she staggers from the car to see the damage. She spots the dead woman, the unconscious man, and then she finds the child has been thrown through the windshield into the road. And we get a shot of the dead child in the road. Jesus. Rhoda herself was very happy earlier that night, she had been celebrating her acceptance into MIT. All over now though.

The film then cuts to 4 years later when she is getting out of prison. She is withdrawn and gets a job as a cleaner in a high school because she doesn’t want to have to talk to many people. When she’s visiting the crash site she sees the father, John (William Mapother), laying a toy next to the road. He had been in a coma after the accident and now he spends his time mainly being drunk and not leaving his house. Rhoda decides to go ‘round and apologise but when she gets there she panics and instead tells him she is a cleaner. She spends the next few weeks cleaning his house and the two end up getting closer, and as a result both become happier and more like the versions of themselves they were before the tragedy. Then they have sex. Right, I so did not want that to happen but inevitably, people can’t just enjoy being around each other. When they’re lying together after, he tells her what happened to his family but she doesn’t say anything. Some time later their relationship reaches a critical point; she has won a place on a spaceship headed for the new planet and he doesn’t want her to leave because he thinks they are close to something special. So she says she’ll tell him a story and if he still doesn’t want her to go after he’s heard it, then she’ll stay. She confesses and he kicks her out of the house. When she gets home she hears on the TV someone discussing a theory about the new planet. The doubles may be exactly like us but as soon as we were made aware of the other’s existence the course of things was changed, and the lives couldn’t run identically anymore. Rhoda sees in this a perfect opportunity to perhaps give John back his family. She gives him her ticket for the spaceship so that he can see if his wife and child are alive on Earth Two. Such a wonderful thing to do, especially considering what an amazing opportunity that would be.

8/10

Day 83: Sex and Lucía

The lives and stories of several people are beautifully told and all are interwoven in interesting ways. Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) writes about what is happening in his life and we see what he writes as his girlfriend, Lucía, secretly reads along. But when she believes that Lorenzo is dead, Lucía takes off to the island that was important to him as a young man.

Lucía talks to Lorenzo for the first time, telling him that his book had a hold of her and wouldn’t let go, and that she loves him and thinks they should live together. She says that he will grow to love her. He looks at her, tells her that he thinks he already does love her and agrees that they should live together. My description of it probably doesn’t do it justice but it was actually brilliant, I love that they did that. I’ve always wondered how interesting it would be to do something like that. They both get completely drunk and head back to his, she tells him to do whatever he wants to her but she can barely stay conscious. For a minute I was panicking that this was going to go terribly but he just lies down next to her and they sleep. In the morning she has a look through the house that they’ll now both be living in together while he sleeps, and then she goes back to bed and wakes him up with sex. Throughout the film there is a lot of sex. A lot. Usually I’m not the biggest fan of sex in films but it was really well done here.

Perhaps the one character that is the most fascinating would have to be Belén (Elena Anaya). She is Lorenzo’s daughter’s nanny and over a short period of time she gets to know Lorenzo and confides in him. Her mother is a retired porn star who is in love and living with a man that Belén finds herself attracted to. She tells Lorenzo that she gets excited by watching her mum in the porn films, and that she has masturbated using her mum’s own dildo while watching her mum on screen. (my notes: "What.") Belén and Lorenzo are looking after his daughter and when she goes to sleep they start to have sex. But then it all goes mental and the dog that lives with them attacks and kills the little girl. Belén is obviously traumatised by it all and she tries to kill herself. It was such a fascinating story. I liked that when she was telling Lorenzo about her secret mum story he was totally accepting and non-judgemental.

Do not watch this with family members or anyone you get uncomfortable around. So much sex, I cannot stress that enough.

“The first advantage is at the end of the story. It doesn’t finish, it falls in a hole. And the story starts again halfway through. The other advantage, and the biggest, is that you can change course along the way. If you let me. If you give me time.”

9/10

Day 82: A Dangerous Method

Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Gustav Jung (Michael Fassbender) are drawn together due to their interest in psychoanalysis. Freud hopes that Jung will take over after he is gone as he believes they share a common understanding about its practice, but irreparable problems occur when Jung wants to go beyond simply discovering mental health issues and wants to try and help people. Throughout their relationship, Jung has a monumentally inappropriate relationship with one of his patients, Sabrina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), which creates additional problems for his relationship with Freud.

Monumentally inappropriate relationship, man alive. She comes to you for help with her issues concerning her sexuality and you help her, but then you have sex with her. And during the sex you actually use what she tells you in the therapy sessions. Dude, just, no. She likes being spanked and it stems from the humiliation she felt at the hands of her abusive father, which she secretly enjoyed. While I’m totally on board with spanking, and humiliation has its place when done in a healthy and consensual way, I absolutely have a problem with him using his knowledge of her mental health history for sexual gratification. Anyway, if that wasn’t all bad enough, he then tries to break it off with her because he doesn’t want to cheat on his wife (don’t even get me started on that noise). Then later they start it up again and then he breaks it off again. You can’t be dragging her along with your problems, especially when you know she is besotted with you and is fragile in that respect. To her credit, she ends up becoming the psychologist that she wanted to become and tries to move on from him. She seems to have been doing better than him, anyway.

While I’m not really a Freud fan, I do have to side with him over Jung with one important point. Freud believed that all you should seek to do is understand the person and their mental health issues, not try to fix them. While Jung believed that just simply pointing out what is wrong with a person shouldn’t be the goal, it should be about trying to help them become who they see themselves to be. For me, the reason I want to do psychology has never been because I want to ‘help people’. That’s not to say that I would pass up that opportunity if it presented itself, I would obviously do my very best to help in any way I could. But primarily, my main interest is in understanding the many facets of the human mind and accepting them all as natural variations. People are so often quick to slap a label on someone and say that this is how they are a deviant of the norm. There is no norm, I think. And I want to hear about and try my best to understand the experience of everyone, with no judgement.

The film itself was alright, I wasn’t especially taken with it. I was expecting it to be better than it was so that’s my own fault, really. I’m not a fan of Keira Knightley but I suppose she wasn’t terrible here. Michael Fassbender’s face is equal parts kindness and danger. You confuse me, Sir.

"Never repress anything."

6/10

Day 81: American Psycho

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) works on Wall Street and spends his time in fancy restaurants with his successful acquaintances but his friendly personality is all a front for the murderous feelings he has inside. As the film progresses, he finds it more difficult to control his urge to kill and he has a bit of a meltdown and confesses all his crimes to his lawyer.

The ambiguity surrounding whether he was actually killing people or it was all in his imagination is quite interesting. It’s good when it’s left up to the viewer to decide what has actually happened. It seems to me that he did kill all those people but he just got away with it because nobody wanted the hassle of properly dealing with something. Like when Bateman goes back to the apartment where he killed lots of women and it’s all painted over and the real estate woman is trying to get rid of him. It came across like she knew what had happened there but knew it would affect the sale of the place so she wants him gone. Money is more important than what happened to the women there. And when he is trying to confess to his lawyer that he killed everyone and Paul Allen (Jared Leto), the lawyer thinks he is kidding because he had lunch with Paul. However, everyone keeps getting each other’s names wrong so it’s more likely that the lawyer just didn’t care enough about who he was having lunch with to get the name right.

I liked the use of mistaken identity to show how similar all the men are. They’re always confusing each other for someone else because they all look practically identical, they’re all going to the same places and they’re all doing the same job (they’re all vice presidents, according to their business cards). It’s difficult to tell anyone apart because they’re all doing so well at being the same. Nobody has any facets to their personality that aren’t replicated in everyone around them, they all come across as shallow and money-driven. None of them really listen to each other, which you can clearly see when Bateman has his various outbursts (like saying how he likes to dissect girls). What he says is usually ignored or dismissed as a joke. Nobody really cares to listen to anyone else, so they don’t take him seriously.

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don’t know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.”

7/10

Day 80: Shark Tale

Living at the bottom of the reef is hard for a fish with his sights set on something higher, so when an opportunity presents itself to Oscar (Will Smith) he goes for it. A shark is killed and he takes credit for it, becoming the shark slayer that his town/reef needs. But things get difficult when more sharks turn up and he is expected to deal with them. My mistress, John, picked this film and he wanted to be mentioned here. YOU ARE FAMOUS, JOHN.

Every time I said I hadn’t seen this film all I got was “How is that possible?! It’s Shark Tale!” so I was expecting great things. And let me tell you, I was disappointed. I didn’t find it all that funny and the story itself was kind of boring. The only good bit was when they were in the Godfather shark’s office and there’s the picture that Leo drew of Kate in Titanic. But that’s right at the start of the film, and that’s actually all I liked. Although I suppose I do like when kid’s films try to hammer it home that you should be accepted no matter what you’re like.

5/10

Day 79: To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar

On their way to a beauty pageant in Hollywood, three drag queens end up in a tiny ‘traditional’ town. While there, they bring some life into the town and they remind the women of their strength.

You know when you’re watching a film and you get angry at one of the characters and you end up saying things like “If you so much as touch her I will batter you”? I always get so caught up in fiction and clearly forget that I can’t smack characters. And then when you have two characters that you want to throttle, well, it’s all the more difficult to remember that it is just a film. First up you’ve got the racist cop who then tries to kiss Vida (Patrick Swayze) despite her saying no. He puts his hand up her dress (rage) and finds a penis, and she knocks him to the ground. They should’ve ran him over. Second up, we’ve got the wife beater. How can you hurt someone you’re meant to love? I don’t understand how anyone could do that, it is so terrible. Vida helps Carol Ann (Stockard Channing) find her strength and she stands up to her waste of space husband, driving him out of town.

How exciting must road trips be? You're seeing so many new things and new places, it just seems excellent. If I don't go on a road trip at some point then my life shall have been a waste. Just imagine, you've got your good company, your good music, and you can go anywhere you want. It just sounds like the best time.

Patrick Swayze is such a beautiful woman, I’m always so taken with him every time I watch this film. I wish his character did exist in real life, I’d love to be friends with Miss Vida Boheme. This film is really great. It’s such a wonderful scene when the whole town stick up for Vida, Noxeema (Wesley Snipes) and Chi Chi (John Leguizamo) against the cop. They don’t care that they’re a little outside of what they’re used to because they’ve brought such life to an old town and to their lives.

“When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man’s body and has the little operation, he is a transsexual. When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a drag queen.”

8/10

Day 78: Sixteen Candles

In typical teenage fashion, Sam (Molly Ringwald) fancies one of the most popular guys in school and she thinks he doesn’t know she exists. But Jake (Michael Schoeffling) definitely does know she exists and he spends the whole film trying to talk to her.

During class, Sam is filling in a ‘sex test’ she got from a friend that asks her various questions, one of them being ‘Have you ever done it?’ and she answers with ‘I don’t think so’. Right, what? How can that not be something you are sure of? She probably just didn’t want to put ‘no’ but still, I have heard people say they didn’t know if they’d had sex or not before. I don't mean in a 'I was so drunk, I don't know if we did' way, they were aware of what was happening. Odd. Another question asks who she’d want to have sex with if she could and she puts down Jake’s name, and goes to hand the note over to her friend. But obviously the note ends up with Jake. I immediately thought this was going to result in her being laughed at by all the popular people but it turns out he actually likes her too, so that was completely unexpected. He’s talking to his friend about maybe wanting to be with her and his friend goes “She’s too young to party serious.” Man, I love how people talked in the ‘80s. Think I was born in the wrong time, I can see me talking like that.

Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) originally likes Sam but she keeps knocking him back. She tells him she likes Jake and that she doesn’t know what to do, so Ted tells her to just go for it. Despite him repeatedly being a total creep, I really liked that he did that. He ends up with Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline (Haviland Morris) anyway, in some strange turn of events. Caroline and Jake aren’t getting along at the dance because he can’t stop thinking about Sam so she says to him “Just remember one thing. I can name 20 guys who would kill to love me.” That’s quite impressive. Must be so hectic knowing that all these people like you, how does she get anything done, I don’t know.

I was really expecting to love this film but it was kind of disappointing. Definitely wasn’t as good as some other John Hughes films but it was alright.

6/10

Day 77: Bridge to Terabithia

Don’t decide to pick a children’s film because you think it’ll be short and cute. It will just break your heart. I always make the worst decisions.

Jess (Josh Hutcherson) has no friends and has to do a lot for his family because they have very little money, leaving him little opportunity to just be a kid and enjoy himself. Until Leslie (AnnaSophia Robb) starts at his school and moves in right next door. She opens his imagination up to a world of adventure and they have the best time. For a little while.

Their friendship is quick to start, which are just the best ones, in my opinion. It’s like you can tell there’s something about this other person that just goes with you so well, even if you don’t know them yet. And she helps him to become more of the person he is, which is always great. They discover an area in the woods that nobody else goes to and they make it their own magical kingdom called Terabithia. They use their imaginations to populate it with magical creatures and beautiful scenery. At first he is a bit hesitant to play along but soon enough he can see everything she sees and they get to share in it together. I love how he’s looking at her, obviously I would. It’s like he knows she’s this rare person and is amazed that he gets to be around her. And when he leaves her for the day he is smiling because he’s had such a great time with her. Ugh, I can’t bear it.

The only problem in this wonderful story of love and friendship is, in order to get to their kingdom, they have to cross a creek using an old rope swing. One day she goes across herself and the rope snaps and she hits her head and drowns. Drowns! I knew something was going to happen (the music when they first saw the rope was epic foreshadowing music, if ever I’ve heard it) but I didn’t think they’d make her get knocked unconscious and drown. A wonderful child is dead, her family is devastated, and Jess has lost his best friend.  Why can’t she just be alive and they can be all loved up forever? I don’t want it to mirror real life, I want there to be a happily ever after here.

Also, Zooey Deschanel has become the female Christopher Walken; she just shows up in everything, for no reason. She wasn’t terrible in this though. That’s some high praise coming from me.

7/10

Day 76: Finding Neverland

J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) finds inspiration for ‘Peter Pan’ in a family of four young boys and their wonderful mother.

James helps Peter (Freddie Highmore) to become a child again, to not only think of how sad he is that his father died. But Peter is always expecting the worst and he can only pretend so far before it just becomes another lie for him. He has stories within him and James helps him to see the worth in writing them down and believing in them. The relationship between the two is great, I love James’ patience with him as he helps to rediscover his childhood.

Favourite bit of the film is when Sylvia (Kate Winslet) is too sick to go to the play, so James brings the play to her. It is so wonderful and just so sad. She gets to see the influence her children had on James and she knows their childhoods are forever immortalised within the story. And she gets to see Neverland for herself, as James promised she would.

Completely forgot just how sad this film is, bloody hell.

Peter:   It’s just… I thought she’d always be here.

James:  So did I but in fact, she is because she’s on every page of your imagination. You’ll always have her there. Always.

Peter:   But why did she have to die?

James:  I don’t know, boy. When I think of your mother I’ll always remember how happy she looked sitting in her parlour, watching a play about her family, about her boys that never grew up. She went to Neverland and you can visit her anytime you like, if you just go there yourself.

Peter:   How?

James:  By believing, Peter. Just believe.

8/10

Day 75: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

An inventor who causes chaos in his town pretty much constantly thinks he has stumbled upon the creation that will save the people of his town from a life of only eating sardines; he’s going to turn water into food. And he manages it but the machine goes a bit haywire and ends up in the clouds where it takes in massive amounts of water and therefore produces massive amounts of food. It rains food, basically. That is the gist.

Flint is a great character. I love that he keeps on making new things even if they don’t always turn out how he expected. He’s left alone by the people in the town because they think he’s a nerd (which is apparently a bad thing? I never understood the nerd hate) and because his inventions usually spell trouble. So he’s left pretty much to himself which gives him all the time in the world to be awesome. Then along comes a lady who understands his inventions and is just as excited about them as he is and he’s instantly smitten (you can tell because his eyes go all huge and sparkly, that is the universal sign, I’m sure I don’t need to point that out to you). Her favourite food is Jell-O so he makes her a giant Jell-O mountain and carves out the inside so it’s got a piano and a huge chute and it is just excellent, I’d have proposed immediately if I was her. Is there any way to talk about someone you like without sounding like a teenager? “I ‘like you’ like you”? There is no adult way to say it, is there? I guess you can just say ‘I like you’ but then if you’re friends already, it’s like, of course you like me, we’re chums, no? We need a new way to say it. “I like you as more than a friend” is not a good way to say it, it sounds so weird to me. Suggestions!

The amount of parental love in this film is just great. You hear snippets of conversations between parents and their kids and they’re telling them they love them. And the town cop is always telling his son he loves him, and then he saves him from the foodalanche like a champ. Then there’s obviously the heartfelt moment between the proud father who didn’t always believe in his son and the son who thought his father never supported him. Ugh, it’s so sweet.

Right, so, I know it’s a stupid film but I actually loved it. The only cop in town has chest hair that moves when there’s a problem, I mean, come on! There was science, and jokes, and romance, and food, I don’t really know what else you could want, friends.

7/10

Day 74: WALL-E

Earth has to be abandoned because there’s so much rubbish everywhere. Humans are sent off to live on huge spaceships while robots set about cleaning up the world. 700 years later it seems like there’s only one robot left and his name is WALL-E. He still does the job he was built for but he also spends time discovering things that interest him. And when a new robot, EVE, comes to Earth, he falls in love.

So this is one of the cutest films ever and whenever I watch it I can feel my heart swell with how adorable it is. When he’s watching the film and he holds his own hands, I just start crying at how cute it is but at the same time how sad. Another robot lands on Earth and he falls instantly in love with her. He watches as she flies around and enjoys herself and of course he loves her, he hasn’t seen anyone like that before. She says his name and he just loves it, then she giggles when he tries to say hers. He takes her back to his house and shows her things that he’s found but when he gives her the plant she shuts down. He is worried and looks after her the entire time, he even holds an umbrella over her while it’s raining and he gets soaked and hit by lightning. Then he takes her to watch the sunset and tries to hold her hand. I can’t deal with the cuteness, just not at all.

Her ship comes back for her and he won’t leave her alone and tries to make sure she’s alright. When she is powered up again, she tries to hide him because it’s not safe but he is just happy that she’s OK again. She tries to put him in an escape pod so that he’ll be safe but he won’t leave without her. And when he gets zapped into space she takes off after him without even hesitating. The pod explodes and she thinks he’s dead but then is so happy to see him fly past her. They dance amongst the stars, and when their foreheads touch there’s a zap of electricity and he gets all dizzy.

It’s totally alright to be crying because two robots love each other, isn’t it? Absolutely fine, nothing dumb about that at all.

10/10

Day 73: Planet Terror

A bio-weapon is accidentally released in a town in Texas and it infects those who come into contact with it, making them pus covered zombies. I’m not really sure how else to summarise this film? Oh, Quentin Tarantino’s dick sort of… oozes off of him. That’s definitely an important plot point.

The film is meant to resemble the horror films of the ‘70s and it does it well. The dialogue is overly dramatic and cheesy, the plot is mad, and the special effects are terrible. Anything to do with zombies is good in my book, even if I have to suffer Tarantino being his creepy self. Don’t think I have much to say about the film, Rose McGowan’s character summed it up pretty well when she said, “This is fucking ridiculous.”

6/10

Day 72: A Good Year

Following the death of his uncle, Max (Russell Crowe) finds that he has inherited a glorious estate in France. He’s an arrogant, English bond trader (Possibly? I’m going with IMDb’s word on that one, I don’t understand all that stock market malarkey) and he plans to sell the estate for as much money as he can. However, once he goes out there, his memories of the place are awakened and he finds it difficult to let go.

I have to just spend a paragraph gushing about how beautiful it all is, my god. The house is brilliant, it’s a sensational mix of gorgeous and dishevelled, I love it. And all around it just seems ideal for exploring, I was just picturing myself there discovering things. Vineyards always look lovely, such a beautiful thing to have next to your house. How could he even consider selling it? It will definitely be the setting for my happy place from now on. The film itself is beautifully shot, too. Excellent use of light, really made it seem magical.

Is it ever more obvious what’s going to happen than when someone says that a person will never love again? As soon as Francis (Didier Bourdon) told Max that Fanny Chenal (Marion Cotillard) would never again let a man near her heart, I said out loud, ‘She will definitely love him then’. I like when it’s so obvious. And how could Max do anything but love her? She is fantastic, and feisty (nobody uses that word enough) is always a hit. She tells him that she only spent the night with him because she knows they don’t have a future and it seems that may be the way of it, as he is adamant that he is selling the place and going back to England. But after selling he has a change of heart and returns to France, and goes to see her. She asks him if he’s sure he knows what he wants and he says, perhaps the most winning line I’ve heard in a while: “I would like a lifetime spent with an irrational and suspicious goddess. With some short-tempered jealousy on the side. And a bottle of wine that tastes like you, and a glass that’s never empty.”  Excellent!

Is it possible to feel like you’re in love just from watching a film? That’s the only way to describe this feeling that I am experiencing. I’m going to give it the highest marks because I feel all aglow.

10/10

Day 71: La Haine

Riots break out in an estate in France after a local kid, Abdel, is beaten into a coma by the police. For 24 hours the film follows Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) and Hubert (Hubert Koundé) as they go about their day. During the riot an officer lost his gun and somehow Vinz got hold of it and he is threatening to kill “a pig” if Abdel dies.

The personalities of the three guys were interesting. All of them were angry about what happened to Abdel and the continual police oppression where they live but they deal with it in different ways. Hubert seems the most together of the three, he wants to get out of the estate and get away from the fighting. He continually has to calm Vinz down throughout the film and he tries to keep the peace between people and the police. Saïd can get a bit riled up but he mainly just seems to want to mess around. He’s telling jokes and he just wants to keep away from the fighting and get a girl. Vinz, however, has a quick temper and he wants to be respected and he thinks the way to do this is to shoot a police officer. It seems like the gun reflects how he feels inside: strong, dangerous and not to be messed with. But as the film goes on you can see he is all talk and eventually he gives up the gun, knowing he can’t use it.

Was definitely interesting to see a side to France that I usually don’t see in films. I liked that it was shot in black and white, it worked well for the gritty feel of the film.

“It’s not the fall that matters, it’s the landing.”

8/10

Day 70: The First Wives Club

Three women are reunited after their friend from college commits suicide (Stockard Channing, how much would I have loved for you to be in the rest of the film? Such a loss). All three have been ditched for younger women and they decide that rather than feel bad about themselves, they’ll do good for the women in the community and open a Crisis Centre. Of course, in order to do that they need money. And who better to get money from than their ex husbands?

This film balances the tears and the laughter so well. Every single time I watch them go down the outside of the building in the window washer lift I just crack up laughing. When Bette Midler does her sad eyes I just start blubbing, I can’t stop myself. The three women are excellent together, I love the ending where they dance down the street singing You Don’t Own Me.

Seriously though, is anything better than this film? Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn? Lesbian daughter (“I’m a lesbian. A big one.”)? Women coming together and realising they are strong and can do things for themselves? Ah, I love it so much. I think I’ve watched this film at least twice a year since I saw it as a youngster, I just think it’s great.

“You think just because I’m a movie star I don’t have feelings, well you’re wrong. I do have feelings. I’m an actress, I have all of them!”

10/10

Day 69: Half Nelson

Trying to balance being a teacher and being an addict is proving difficult for Dan (Ryan Gosling). One of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), discovers his habit and the two become friends.

Drey comes across as quite lonely. Her mother is a paramedic who is working all the shifts she can in order to have some money and her brother is in prison, so she’s left pretty much to herself. One night she catches Dan smoking crack in the locker room at school and she stays with him while he goes through the effects. They seem to bond in that moment and from then on the two care about each other. He tries to help her stay away from her drug dealer friend but it’s obviously difficult for him to justify this since he can’t function on a day-to-day basis without drugs in his system. He tries to push her away but when he’s close to hitting bottom, she is there for him. It looks like he’s going to clean up and it seems to be because he has her looking out for him. It just takes one person.

“Change moves in spirals, not circles. For example, the sun goes up and then it comes down but every time that happens, what do you get? You get a new day. You get a new one. When you breathe, you inhale and then you exhale but every single time that you do that, you’re a little bit different than the one before. We’re always changing. And it’s important to know that there are some changes you can’t control but that there are others you can.”

8/10

Day 68: Stranger Than Fiction

Harold (Will Ferrell) is an IRS agent who has gone about his life with painstaking certainty, leaving little room for adventure. That is until his life suddenly becomes narrated by an author who always kills the heroes of her stories, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Or perhaps, more importantly, until he meets a woman who is everything that he is not but is everything he wants and needs in another person.

My favourite thing about this is that when Harold realises his life up until now has been the very epitome of mundane and pointless, he fights back. You know there’s a serious problem when you don’t fight against it. Thankfully he does and is better for it. Professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) tells him that if he is going to die soon and he knows he is going to die soon then he should live the life he has always wanted while he still has time left. So, obviously, because this blog is basically an excuse to talk about mememe, I’ve had a think about what I would do if I was to live the life I always wanted. And I’ll put it here so I can look back at it in a year and think ‘why don’t I just bloody do it?’

Right so I know this is just a massive cliché and I just don’t care, I would quit this life and I would go travelling by myself. But not the travelling that needs lots of money and hotels and insurance. I want to do it with no money so I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. And these strangers might not always be kind but I’m sure they’d always be interesting. I’d listen to the stories of everyone I met and I’d try to help make new stories. I think that’s it, I think all I want is to be able to roam the world and listen to the stories that people have to tell. Apparently I’m a big hippie at heart, who knew?

I was so happy when he decided to live his life. I think perhaps the scene with Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the sweetest thing. She is a baker who he is auditing and they have an awkward relationship where they clearly like each other but his work gets in the way of anything happening. Eventually he packs in all the work barriers and he goes to see her after she’s shutting her bakery for the night. She asks him what he’s carrying and he says “I brought you flours.” and they are actual bags of flour and if you don’t think that’s just the cutest thing then you have a heart of stone, I tell you. She still isn’t too sure about whether to go for it but she invites him back to hers, and she manages to convince him to play the guitar despite him being nervous. She’s watching him playing and singing and you can see in her face that she’s gonna go for it then she kisses him and all is right with the world. I actually cheered. I get kinda caught up in fiction, y’know?

This kind of story is really great. I’ve always wanted to write a book where at least one of the characters is aware of the author but I’m obviously not talented enough to do that, it is so complicated. Emma Thompson is wonderful (as always!) in this film. And Queen Latifah! She can do no wrong. Also, I’m not entirely sure how she did it but somehow Maggie Gyllenhaal managed to make talking about baked goods sound like dirty talk. Anybody else get that? No...?

9/10

Day 67: Womb

Returning 12 years after they first met, Rebecca (Eva Green) and Tommy (Matt Smith), are together for only a short time before he dies in a car accident. Rather than deal with her grief in a healthy way, she has him cloned and she gives birth to him, then raises him as her son.

I went into this film knowing what was going to happen and yet I still felt massively uncomfortable. They didn’t know each other for very long when they were children and she left for 12 years, and when she came back they only knew each other for maybe a week or something. I understand the feelings you have for someone as a child can be overwhelming but you don’t know him now, you’ll both have changed. We’re meant to get that they’re soul mates so fine, you don’t have to have spent that much time with him, ok. I will buy into that idea. But did nobody at this cloning clinic give you a psychological exam? Maybe look into how unhealthy it would be to give birth and then raise the man you were in love with? No? Right.

The whole time she’s raising him you are just waiting for her to be inappropriate. At one point when he’s about 10, he pins her to the ground and says “Now I can do whatever I want with you.” and they look like they’re going to kiss. It’s so uncomfortable. I’m not really sure what she thought was going to happen, she was going to raise him and then when he was an adult they could get together again? I don’t understand. Their whole relationship is strange and awkward. Then she finally shows him who he was and they have sex. Then he leaves. So, she’s lost both of them, and one of them she had to raise for 20-odd years. I’m just not sure what she expected to happen, really.

It is the most excruciatingly slow film. I was bored and uncomfortable for the majority of the film, which is not a good combination. The story is definitely interesting but the film itself is just not done very well.

4/10

Day 66: Hard Candy

Believing him to be a paedophile and a murderer, 14 year old Hayley (Ellen Page) meets with Jeff (Patrick Wilson) and gets him to take her back to his house. The situation goes from light to dark pretty quickly and, thankfully, not in the way that you expect. (This whole blog is going to be spoilertastic. I know all of them are but really, you should watch the film first.)

There is a missing girl and Hayley knows that Jeff is involved. She initiates their meeting and innocently plays along to his ‘flirting’, and then suggests they go back to his house. Once there, the two drink and he shows her around his studio, where he tries to justify taking pictures of underage models. She made the drinks and she slipped him something to knock him out and when he comes to he is tied to a chair. He thinks it’s a sex thing but she quickly helps him realise that it is not it at all. She goes through his entire house to find evidence that he had something to do with the missing girl’s disappearance and she finds his safe and the evidence she was looking for. He panics and tries to get away but she manages to knock him out again.

This time when he comes to he is strapped to a table with ice on his balls. Hayley tells him that first she is going to shave him and then she’s going to castrate him. He freaks out and pleads with her but she is not to be deterred. She even sets up a camera for him so he can watch. He is convinced she has castrated him but in actual fact it was all just set up to look that way. What she’s really after is for him to voluntarily kill himself and she says if he does, she’ll destroy all evidence of his involvement with the missing girl. Jeff says that he didn’t kill her, he just watched as it happened but that he can tell her who it was so she can go torture him. But she already knew who it was and she has already convinced that man to kill himself, so it’s just him left. After some contemplation he decides to go ahead with it and he steps off the roof of his house with a noose around his neck.

This film is excellent. I wish I hadn’t known the plot before I watched it because I would’ve been gripped, believing it was all really happening. Ellen Page has such dangerous eyes, you totally believe she could do this. Definitely her best acting, I think. Really embodied the role of a girl with some serious psychological baggage.

“I am every little girl you watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.”

9/10

Three Books and a Baby*

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

I’m not sure why I didn’t like this one as much as his other books. It must have had something to do with Brett’s character, I just don’t believe all these men would be in love with her. I can’t remember how she was described physically but her personality was just annoying. I’m honestly not sure why any of them even liked her, let alone fought over her. At least she wasn’t a submissive non-thing like the women he usually writes, there is always that.

6/10

~

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

I can’t say enough good things about the Discworld novels, I just enjoy them so much. When I read the earlier ones I thought the wizards were great and obviously The Luggage is still my favourite character and I was worried I wasn’t going to like all the stories about The Watch, but I think they might actually be my favourite ones. You’ve still got your magical characters here too. I do like the storyline about Angua (part-time werewolf) and Carrot (human/dwarf), I hope she realises that she shouldn't just leave him because she thinks he can’t handle her being a werewolf. Hopefully they show up in other ones so I can find out.

8/10

~

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Really enjoyed this book. For some reason when I think about it, I seem to just picture colours. It was beautifully written and at no point felt like too much. I wasn’t a fan of Florentino Ariza, his ridiculous obsession with Fermina Daza that lasted over half a century was annoying and a bit creepy. After she returned from being away for a while and she saw him, what she said to him was so harsh but wonderfully honest. I’m not entirely sure how he could’ve kept pining for her after that, I’d have been heartbroken.

"Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion."

8/10

* Baby not included.

Day 65: Brokeback Mountain

In the Summer of 1963, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) look after sheep on Brokeback Mountain. They both realise they’ve found a rare connection and over the years they live for the time they spend together.

Jack is quite the dreamer. He wants to be with Ennis all the time, not for them to just meet up every so often, so he suggests they get a place together on a ranch. But Ennis is realistic and tells him that they could never do it because they’d be killed if anyone found out and besides, they both have families now. It breaks my heart when Jack looks sad and disappointed. He just wants so badly to be with Ennis but there are so many things in the way. So when he hears that Ennis got a divorce, he drives 14 hours to see him thinking they can now give it a chance, but he’s shot down again. I know Ennis was finding it more difficult to deal with his feelings than Jack but his keeping him close but distant at the same time just wasn’t fair. The last time they see each other they fight and we get the line everybody knows, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” It’s been 20 years and he can’t get past him and he is finding it too much to bear. Jack, my baby.

I don’t think there’s anything sweeter than the moment depicted in the image at the top of the post. They’re together and they’re happy. I’m going to pretend that’s how they always were.

8/10

Day 64: The Fifth Element

Pure evil has come to destroy Earth and Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is tasked with helping to save it. He meets the supreme being, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who is the fifth element and the only creature that can stop evil. Korben helps to recover the four stones that represent the four elements while battling with some very unhappy aliens and a possible psychopath, Zorg (Gary Oldman). Ultimately love saves the day. And a lot of explosions.

We open in a temple in Egypt in 1914, where there’s an Italian man attempting to discover the meaning behind some symbols on a wall. He’s uncovering too much however and must be stopped so the Mondoshawan, aliens that defend against evil, have to come and remove the element stones before they are found. Pretty sure my favourite bit of the whole film is when this great big hulking robot-alien ambles into the room and the Italian man asks, “Are you… German?” I just laughed so much, it was great.

In films, the people in charge always want to shoot first and ask questions later (it’s even said by one of the military guys) and it always drives me mad. I understand you have things to protect but you can’t just go around attacking and killing things when you don’t know what they are. If nothing else it is just rude. That’s probably why if there is other life out there in the universe it hasn’t shown itself around here, they know they’d be killed on sight. Humans are hopeless. When Leeloo learns about war you know right away how it’s going to go, that she’ll not want to help humanity because all we do is kill everything. But then obviously Korben convinces her otherwise, he says that there are some beautiful things worth saving. Love, namely. He tells her he loves her and so she stops the advancing evil. Love to the rescue! How sappy.

I really wish I lived in the time of proper space travel. Living on a ship and exploring space sounds so brilliant.

“Everything you create is used to destroy.”

8/10

Day 63: The Kids Are All Right

A tense family life leads to cheating and heartbreak (for me as much as anyone in the film, I’m sure). Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have been together for over 18 years and the cracks are starting to show. They’ve got two great kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), who decide they want to get in touch with their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). The introduction of this new person into an already shaky family makes tensions reach boiling point and people end up being bastards. Heads up, this whole blog is basically me ranting about cheating. My advice is to skip this one.

Nic and Jules are constantly sniping and undermining each other all the time. Jules doesn’t feel like she is appreciated anymore and Nic feels under strain because she is financially caring for the whole family. It all gets massively worse when Paul is thrown into the mix. He’s easy going which serves to rile Nic at every point. Not helping matters is that everyone else seems to love him and they are all spending time with him and bonding. She feels like everything is slipping away so she tries really hard to connect with him. Eventually she manages it and it’s a really sweet moment with them singing a Joni Mitchell song at the table but then it’s totally ruined because of her discovery that Jules has been fucking him. My notes are just incoherent ramblings filled with swearing so I can’t remember specifics all too well but I take from that that I was incensed.

Jules bitches about Nic to Paul which pissed me off so much, you can’t be unloading the private problems of your marriage on him after you’ve kissed him. Not allowed. And then she says she loves Nic but then goes right ahead and fucks Paul anyway. There’s not a single part of me that thinks you can love someone and cheat on them. I just do not believe that it’s possible. Her ‘apology speech’ drove me mad as well, when she said “Sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most and I don’t know why.” Because people are selfish, that's why. There is no deeper, existential meaning there; people are selfish bastards and they will fuck you over when they want. I completely understand that Jules felt unappreciated at home, and that is horrible. But fucking some guy isn’t going to fix those problems, yeah you’ll feel appreciated in the moment you’re with him but you still have to go home to your problems, they’ve not gone anywhere because you haven’t dealt with them. You’ve created another problem now on top of all the ones you had before, and this problem is going to devastate the person you’re claiming to love. The way she said the line was as if she had no control over what she was doing, that hurting the people you love is just how it goes. She had a choice, there was a moment (in fact there were several, considering she fucked him a lot) when she could’ve said, ‘No, I’ll not cheat on my wife and ruin my kid’s chance at getting to know their biological father’ and she ignored it and went right on ahead with it. You can apologise all you want but the fact you willingly went ahead with it, knowing that Nic was going to be hurt is inexcusable. For me, anyway. In the film it looks like they’re going to try and work through it. That takes a stronger person than me, I just couldn't do it. Wouldn’t matter how long we’d been together or if we had kids or whatever, cheating is my ultimate dealbreaker. I don’t think I’d even fight about it with my person either, I’d just leave. It just drives me mad, I don’t understand it at all.

Somewhere in the film I couldn’t think about how awful it was that their family was being pulled apart so I went to my happy place. Mark Ruffalo was there, obviously. And it was just calm and there was no cheating or awkward sex (seriously, all of the sex scenes are just the most uncomfortable, man alive). He’s such a babe. You’ll need to go to your happy place when watching the film as well. It is really the only way to get through the sadness and awkward sex. In fact I’m sure that’s how like 90% of marriages work.

7/10

Day 62: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Painfully introverted gentleman, Joel (Jim Carrey), meets loud and exciting lady, Clementine (Kate Winslet), and understandably falls in love. But their relationship inevitably doesn’t work and they both end up getting involved with this company who can erase specific memories, and they decide to erase each other. While Joel is going through the procedure he realises that he doesn’t want to lose his memories of his time with Clementine and he tries to resist it but it’s too late.

To carry out the procedure, the company needs Joel to collect all the items he has that remind him of Clementine. Fair enough I understand there’ll be a lot of tangible things that he can hand over and be rid of but what about other things? You associate certain songs with people, and smells, and places. You can’t erase those, surely you wouldn’t be able to get everything together to make that possible. Of course this kind of procedure isn’t possible currently but maybe it will in future. Until then people will just have to stick with what they usually do when they’re trying to forget someone: get drunk. And that’s never all that successful. 

The film jumps from memory to memory as the technicians are erasing them. The last time he saw Clementine they had a fight, and I’m not surprised they broke up because this was what was said:

Clementine:  You’re freaked out because I was out late without you. And in your little wormy brain you’re trying to figure out, ‘Did she fuck someone tonight?’

Joel:  No see, Clem. I assume you fucked someone tonight. Isn’t that how you get people to like you?

In the immortal words of Cher in ‘Clueless’, that’s way harsh. Of course the thought of her off fucking someone was clearly what kept him up until 3am when she eventually got home, so it was obviously a problem for him but he definitely could've voiced his insecurities and concerns in a better way. You can’t just throw it out there in an argument, once you say something like that there is no going back. And obviously that’s what happened; they split up and she had him erased, prompting him to do the same. That’s not the only time he was so completely rude to her in their relationship though. At one point he tells her she’d be a bad mother. I mean, you can’t just say these things and expect her to be alright with it. She wakes him up saying that he never tells her things and that she tells him everything. He says that constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating, and she is hurt by it. No wonder she felt bad being with him if he kept saying things like that. Although, of course, it wasn’t always like that. They are lying out on the frozen lake together under the stars and he tells her that he is the happiest he’s ever been, being right there with her. Which is sweet but then the memory is gone and he’ll never have it back.

I’m not sure about this memory erasing business. On one hand I can totally understand why you would have it done. If you’re having a difficult time moving on from someone, it makes sense you would want to do anything you could that might help. But then, you’re not just erasing the bad things that eventually spoiled the relationship, you are also erasing the good things that made you happy. Like with Joel, he’ll never have that memory back of being the happiest he’s ever been, and that’s just awful. Your relationships with other people (not just talking romantic ones) can give you insight into different aspects of yourself. With Joel and Clementine, he never did anything and always shied away from socialising with people, but then Clementine came along and just constantly pulled him out of his comfort zone, pushing the boundaries of who he thought he was. To erase that time together is to erase the knowledge that you can do so much more than you think you are capable of, that you don’t have to be who you’ve always thought you were. My thoughts on this always change from viewing to viewing of this film but today I’ve decided memory erasing is a bad idea. But I’m never consistent on that.

They both end up finding out what happened and they listen to the tapes of them talking about each other. I say talking but it’s really just a complete tearing down of the other person. He talks about how she’s insecure so will fuck anybody and she talks about how totally boring and pathetic he is. It must be so difficult to listen to all the bad points of your relationship before you even get a chance to have the relationship, and to have perhaps negative things about you pointed out so mercilessly. She tries to leave but he catches up to her and they both know it will probably not work but they decide to go for it anyway.

Joel:  I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.

Clementine:  But you will. But you will, y’know, you will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.

Joel:  OK.

Clementine:  OK.

9/10

Day 61: When Harry Met Sally

Two strangers have to spend 18 hours together on the drive to New York and in the process they end up becoming important in each other's lives. After the drive, Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan), both go off and we see them meeting again at various points in their lives. It’s your basic 'they dislike each other, then they’re friends, and somewhere in there they fall in love' film and it is one of my favourites.

The car journey is great, I love that they bicker pretty much the whole time. He is obnoxious, telling her she’s wrong to think certain ways, but it makes her think and so isn’t the worst thing. The main thing is obviously when he tells her men and women can never be friends because the sex aspect always gets in the way. She says she has male friends that she doesn’t want to have sex with but he counters with, ‘they want to have sex with you’. I’ve never believed in this, surely people can just be friends. And is it the same with lesbians? Can they be friends with women and not want to sleep with them? From my experience, yes. What about gay men? It is definitely possible to just be friends with someone of the gender you are usually attracted to without sex getting in the way. But then obviously that’s not what happens in the film and I am glad of it, so who knows.

10 years later they are both going through break-ups and they help each other through them. Meaning that they eventually manage to be friends, and they both seem to get a lot from the relationship. She appears to enjoy his cynicism a lot more now, and he feels comfortable talking to her about what’s going on with him. Their night time phone calls might be just my favourite since it’s so clear they must do it all the time. But there is obviously more to it than just friendship because when she says she is going on a date and he says that it’s great, she is clearly disappointed. He isn’t over his ex-wife though and that’s obviously a barrier to anything happening. Later when they’re both seeing other people, they are clearly jealous of the other. The whole time I’m just shouting at the screen for them to be together because they both like each other, god damn.

When her ex calls her to let her know that he is getting married she is really hurt because the reason they broke up is that he didn’t want to get married. So she takes from it that he wanted to get married, he just didn’t want to marry her. And so she’s upset and she calls Harry, and he comes ‘round to comfort her. But they end up having sex, which they both enjoy but it makes things massively awkward the next morning. He just leaves and she is mortified, and their friendship is almost ruined. The perils of having sex with friends, kids. She eventually tells him that she isn’t going to wait around and be his ‘consolation prize’ and that seems to be the end of it all. He’s an idiot and takes far too long to realise that he loves her but when he does he goes running to the party she is at to tell her. Then we get the speech that everybody knows, and I love it:

“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

10/10