Oh Beautiful

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I cannot help but recall this scene from one of my favorite summer movies today. Heading down to the Pier to watch tonight. There’s just something about a sky, city and water lighting up from these things.

Quickies: Movie Reviews

This past week I went to three movie screenings. All films should be out now, so I’ll offer some thoughts on I Am Love, Knight & Day and Cyrus. I love summer time and the movies.

I Am Love is an Italian sub-titled film following the life of one affluent family. The mother, played by Tilda Swinton, has a deeply hidden past the viewer catches glimpses of during the film. She is fantastic throughout the movie and apparently learned Italian and Russian for the role. The main premise of the film shows Swinton engaging in an affair with one of her son’s friends. Like a true foreign film, there’s a highly uncomfortable sex scene, that lasts 10 minutes too long, on a picturesque background.

I wasn’t too trilled with this film and found myself continually wondering what in the hell just happened. The cinematography and costumes were phenomenal though.

Knight & Day is your typical summer blockbuster film: guns, explosions, cast of two completely polar opposite stars, random other celebs you never saw coming and foreign locales. Needless to say, I didn’t go in with high expectations, although I was excited to see Tom Cruise in a Jerry Maguire-esque role. The whole time I sat there wondering when Free Fallin’ was going to happen; it never did.

Imagine if the Bourne trilogies, Minority Report, Mission Impossible films and The Holiday had a massive, obese baby. This is that film.

The film chronicles Cruise as an AWOL CIA spy and you spend the movie seeing Cruise running away from CIA agents (read: Bourne trilogy). He picks up Cameron Diaz on the way by accident during a plane flight and now they have to spend the rest of the movie together as she is now viewed as an accomplice. The rest of the film shows this fantastically, awkwardly paired duo running around the world trying to track down this battery that never dies.

Note: I wonder if European officials are ever upset at their portrayal in these types of films. They always just get there a little too late, run a little too slow and still haven’t figured out how to maneuver those tiny police cars.

As a highly touted film fest film, I was extremely eager to see this one. I have loved John C. Reilly since his days on the Andrea Gail in Perfect Storm. And lately, I’ve become a huge Catherine Keener fan thanks to her role in .

In Cyrus, we see Molly (Marisa Tomei) as a single mother of Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Molly meets John (Reilly) at a party his ex-wife (Keener) dragged him to. You see him fall for Molly, and her the same (which I find hard to believe since yes, he kind of does look like Shrek). Enter Molly’s son Cyrus. Cyrus is a 21-year-old hardcore Mama’s boy. It’s been just him and mom for over 2 decades, and he’s not ready to give her up.

John fights for Molly and continues to question the motives of Cyrus. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Cyrus plays his “music” for John. The fact these two actors can put you in fits of laughter without saying anything is fantastic and truly a gift.

The film hit a little close to home for myself, being a kid of a single mom who goes out and dates. And this comedy turned into more of a drama when Cyrus shouts to John “She’s all I have!” But upon seeing this I thought maybe I could have been a bit too judgmental with the guys my mom has dated in the past and should probably lighten up. Weird that it took the facial expressions of one Reilly and awkward moments of Hill to make me realize this. At any rate, the film is hilarious and a bit dramatic at times. Either way, you’ll never want to birth a son like Cyrus.