Movie Monday - 7/18/2011

Has it really been two weeks?  Time flies in the summertime...

It's the season of the blockbuster action hits and the fluffy romantic comedies, and the first movie is both:

Knight and Day, starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise, is an action-packed romantic comedy about a guy on the run from government and assorted agencies, who has something that a lot of people are after and a girl who gets sucked into the drama.  We spend most of the movie trying to figure out if the guy (Cruise) is a good guy or a bad guy.  The girl (Diaz) is having trouble figuring it out too.  It’s a little too much action for my tastes, and most of the action is unbelievable, but it was cute.

Letters to Juliet is a cute little romantic comedy set in Verona, Italy where Romeo and Juliet first met.  There’s a wall where people leave notes to Juliet in the hopes that she will help them with their love issues.  Amanda Seyfried plays Sophie, an American girl visiting Verona with her chef/restaurateur boyfriend Victor, played by Gael Garcia Bernal.  He is basically ignoring her off doing his chef things, and she joins up with the volunteers who answer the letters left for Juliet.  She finds one from 1957 and answers it.  The woman who wrote it, played by Vanessa Redgrave, comes to meet Sophie to try to find her love interest that got away – much to her grandson’s (Chris Egan) chagrin.  It was predictable but very cute and entertaining.  I had seen this movie a while back in the theater, but felt like seeing it again.  It made me happy.

Tom Hanks plays Larry Crowne, a man who is let go from his job because he doesn’t have a college education.  He decides to go to college, where he takes a public speaking class taught by Mrs. Tainot (“that’s Tay-no, not Tie-knot) played by Julia Roberts.  She is a nice lady in a bad marriage…you connect the dots.  Taraji P. Henson, Cedric the Entertainer, Pam Grier, George Takei and Rita Wilson (who I think had a fun role, even though we only see her in a couple of scenes) also star in this predictable, romantic comedy.  It was alright, but it was really light fare.  I thought it was a little beneath the capabilities of the actors within.

Stay cool.

MK out.