(500) Days of Summer

My friends tease me because although we watch a lot of movies, I rarely find one that I love. I like a lot of movies, but there’s always something which ruins it for me – an unbelievable plot twist, an annoying character, an unnaturally happy ending – it seems I can’t be pleased. Two movies lately though, I have loved. One was Up! Which I got to see in Spain before it’s released here in the UK in October. And one I saw last night, (500) Days of Summer.

Everything about this film was perfect for me. It was quirky and different with its non-chronological storytelling and direction. Zooey Deschanel is appealing, even though she continues to play the same character in every movie she’s been in. What I really loved though, was Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was great to see him in something cute and endearing instead of dark and unravelling. I’ve liked a lot of his work, Brick especially, but in this he was adorable. He can look so in love that it makes your heart flutter, and then when

he’s playing heartbroken, it makes you think of every time you’ve had it happen to you. On a side note, the wardrobe department sure know how to make him look amazing in a handsomely dorky kind of way.

It may not be the intellectual film of the decade, but it’s really enjoyable and I

loved it. See it if you get a chance, it’s real, funny and wonderful.

Posted By: Cat

Step Up 2 The Streets

Step Up 2 The Streets is just recently out on DVD in the UK. I saw this movie twice at the cinema, and I have no good reason for it...apart from the fact that it’s awesome!

For a long time I was telling my friends we were seeing Step Up 2 (colon) The Streets, then one of them pointed out the ridiculously clever point that if you say it all at once, it becomes Step Up to the Streets. My appreciation only grew.

If you’ve seen Step Up, then you’ve seen Step Up 2, just replace Channing Tatum (hotness!) with Briana Evigan. That girl can dance way better than Channing though! Throw in some misfits who just happen to have moves that Justin Timberlake would kill for, and you have the funnest movie of the year.

If nothing else, just rent it for the dance sequence finale. Dancing in the rain may be a cliché, but when you’re doing it to a mash up of hip hops beats with hoodies and sexy heavy breathing then how can you go wrong?

Hotness rating: 3 (out of 5) – Channing shows up for about five minutes to dance to T-Pain in a huge t-shirt, other than that you have to make do with Robert Hoffman. Of course, if that’s making do, I’ll make do any time.

Posted By: Cat

WALL-E

My heart broke about seven times in the first half hour of Wall-E.

Humans have left the Earth in a mess and blasted off into space to let robots clean up their mess. Poor Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-class) is the only one still clocking in daily and is accompanied only by his pet cockroach. He breaks the monotony of compacting rubbish all day by collecting treasures in a lunch box he fixes to a hook on his back each morning and each night, hauls his finds back to his Aladdin’s cave and shelves them by category –but where does the spork go, with the forks or the spoons?

Soon enough, Wall-E’s simple existence is interrupted by EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator).She has been sent by the mother ship to access whether photosynthesis has begun again on Earth, in the hope of answering the fundamental question of ‘can life be sustained on Earth again’. For Wall-E, its love at first blast, when EVE tries to blow him up...three times. Soon, she’s back at Wall-E’s checking out his rubix cube, light bulbs and ipod video playing the old movie Hello, Dolly!. It’s when Wall-E shows her the green shoot he’s placed in a boot for safe keeping that the action starts.

I can’t understand how Wall-E is a kids film. Yes, it has a cute robot in it, but the underlying themes are rather political in nature. We have destroyed Earth because of our need for convenience. In space, humans have become fat lumps with no bone definition and no idea of life outside their hover chair. Their lack of exercise over the years means they can no longer walk as we do, let alone sit up without the help of a robot. They go through life with a computer screen in front of their faces, slurping huge drinks. They talk over IM instead of face to face while on a five year cruise that’s lasted seven hundred years.

Is it hypocritical for Disney to be preaching to us? Probably, but this is about the little robot that could, not globalisation and the death of human interaction!

The real treat of this movie is Wall-E’s courtship with EVE. The little moments they share in the first dialogue-free thirty minutes are heart warming and beautiful. Anyone who has yearned to hold another’s hand will see a little of themselves in Wall-E, who never gives up on EVE. It’s a love story that the kids won’t appreciate, but that I thought was just perfect.

Hotness rating: 0 – he’s a robot.

Posted By: Cat