love Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Movie SmackdownÂ®

Source Code (2011) -vs- Deja Vu (2006)

April 10, 2011 The FilmGuru 3

They say love overcomes all obstacles, but time seems to be one of the most difficult. Time and time travel seem made for romance. Maybe that’s because there is a more of a fantasy quality to it than strict science fiction. Finding two lovers who meet across time has been done before, but Hollywood loves to revisit this idea again and again.

This week, our challenger, Source Code, and our champion, Deja Vu, tackle the problem of finding love in the time continuum. In both cases, what starts out as a case of time-travel observation becomes something more of an obsession for the observer. […]

Going the Distance (2010) -vs- Swing Time (1936)

September 4, 2010 Sherry Coben 8

Money’s tight. Jobs are hard to find. Relationships disappoint. Such is the world as we know it. You say recession, I say depression. Let’s call the whole thing off. We go to the movies to forget our troubles, to drown our sorrows, to watch others make sense of this whole sorry mess. Romantic comedy provides a welcome refuge, a few hours in the welcoming darkness where we can rest pretty well assured that no one will die and nothing untoward will befall our hero and heroine, safe in the knowledge that they’ll wind up together at the end no matter how tangled the web of misunderstandings, regardless how high they stack the hurdles. We sit and wait for our happy ending and return again to our little lives at the end, sated and ready for the mundane and the stress life hands us. […]

Remember Me (2010) -vs- Sheâ€™s Out Of My League (2010)

March 15, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

Twilighters aside, there’s precious little to recommend the largely forgettable “Remember Me,” a pretentious romantic exploitation film that uses recent real life history to hype its otherwise tepid dramatic stakes. Director Allen Coulter (of “The Sopranos” renown) knows his New York tough guy patois better than this venture might indicate; poor Pierce Brosnan gets hung out to dry with the least convincing New York accent in movies since the arrival of talkies. Pattinson plays at-sea and moody, indicating the depths of his grief and misery by smoking cigarettes (unconvincingly) and guzzling beer (equally unconvincingly). His roommate is probably the most annoying little shitheel ever to make it to the silver screen, the unnatural spawn of Hal Sparks and Satan.
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Dear John -vs- The Best Years of Our Lives

Dear John (2010) -vs- The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

February 18, 2010 Sherry Coben 11

â€œThe Best Years Of Our Livesâ€ stands tall as the ultimate and still unsurpassed drama about WWIIâ€™s returning soldiers, made in 1946 by William Wyler from a pitch-perfect script by Robert Sherwood. Director Lasse HallstrÃ¶m enters the love-and-war fray with his effort â€œDear Johnâ€ based on a novel by the very popular (if slightly gooey) Nicholas Sparks. The war in question is a lot more confusing than WWII, and the story is a whole lot soapier/dopier, but the eternal questions remain the same. What does war do to soldiers and their families and the women they love?
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Romantic Comedies To Truly Love

February 17, 2010 Sherry Coben 7

Seems I’ve been relentlessly bashing Romantic Comedies since I started writing for Movie Smackdown. I’m only hard on them because I want them to be better, because I know they can be better. Just in case you don’t believe me when I tell you I love the genre, here is a little (partial) list of romantic comedies I will happily defend, presented in reverse chronological order. All of them are worlds better than the execrable holiday-themed callow crass cash cow currently raking in the moolah at the multiplex near you. Trust me, you’re better off renting and watching any one of these in the comfort of home than taking a chance on finding true movie love in “Valentine’s Day.”
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An Education (2009) -vs- Say Anything (1989)

February 16, 2010 Bryce Zabel 3

Listen up, ‘rents. Being a father is never easy, but being the father of a teenage girl, and trying to get that one right is a true challenge. Both of these films — two decades apart in production dates and period settings — show fathers who, with the best of intentions, get it all wrong, but they get it wrong in exactly opposite ways.

You can care too little and you can care too much. When you’re in the middle of things, it’s not always so easy to see which is which. Believe me, as a father of girl who has just left her teenage years behind, these are matters I’ve thought a little bit about. I keep thinking of the famous Kenny Rogers’ song (“The Gambler,” written by Don Schlitz) that you gotta know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Like that’s easy. Still, what we have here to consider are a couple of fathers who don’t know best, not by a long shot… […]

Valentine's Day -vs- Amelie -vs- Love Actually

Valentineâ€™s Day (2010) -vs- Love Actually (2003) -vs- Amelie (2001)

February 16, 2010 Sherry Coben 7

“Valentine’s Day.” From everything I’ve seen and heard, I’m fairly certain that Garry Marshall is a very nice man, and I know he set out with the best of intentions making this film as did all his friends and associates who helped. No one ever intends to make a bad movie, and smacking this film feels a little like hitting a puppy. This movie sits there humping your leg, blissfully unaware and unashamed of the giant stinking turd it’s left on the cineplex screen. To extend the metaphor past all usefulness, this puppy hasn’t yet been spayed. It takes major cojones (or perhaps hubris) to engage such a weak, ungifted and unsuited company of players in hopes of recapturing the success of “Love Actually.” With a few major exceptions, the actors just plain aren’t good enough to rise above the lame material; most are unable to land any of the marginal jokes or even to remind us of any human beings we’ve met.
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Bright Star (2009) -vs- Impromptu (1991)

January 26, 2010 Sherry Coben 4

Ah, consumption. That most romantic and cinematic of slow fades. Think Camille. Two wildly talented love objects with fatally bad lungs compete for this particular smackdown crown. Itâ€™s Frederic Chopin versus Bright Star John Keats in a death-baiting battle of ill-fated geniuses, fighting for every breath, playing fast and loose with history, and winning lovely lady hearts as they struggle for ours. I dare you to find two more gorgeous grandees, two saintlier objects of obsession in all filmdom. Go ahead. Iâ€™ll wait here.
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Up In The Air (2009) -vs- Itâ€™s Complicated (2009)

December 30, 2009 Sherry Coben 7

Finally, itâ€™s awards season again, when the really big guns take aim for our hearts, minds, and pocketbooks. Coming out swinging for the bleachers are two movies made for adults of a certain (middle) age, the demographic that lopes through the rest of the year nearly forgotten, begging for scraps at a table set for callow youth and action figures. George Clooney and Meryl Streep both navigate the rough and increasingly muddied waters of love and commitment, and itâ€™s a thrill to watch them struggle.
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Pirate Radio (2009) -vs- Love Actually (2003)

November 13, 2009 Rodney Twelftree 6

Love, or something like it, is in the air. And British director Richard Curtis seems to want us all to know about it. His penchant for films featuring multiple story-lines and a vast array of characters is well documented, especially with the two films featured today. So with the release this week of “Pirate Radio” across US cinema screens, we thought we’d put Curtis’s latest up against one of his classics.
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