Rating: 
Summary: A HUMAN INTEREST MASTERPIECE!
Review: HOPE FLOATS, starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr., is a wonderful, moving story that strikes at the heart of what all such human interest stories should be.
Birdee Calvert returns home to rural Texas with her daughter after being betrayed by her husband and best friend and tries to pick up the pieces of what she believes is an irreversibly damaged life. Instead she discovers that the best of her and of life was there all along.
Gena Rowlands marvelously portrays Birdee's eccentric mother and the remaining cast is a potpourri of great faces, none showy enough to be out of place and all the likes of those that Norman Rockwell would have been proud to portray in one of his "slice-of-life" masterpieces.
THE HORSEMAN
Rating:
Summary: Basic Values Triumph Over Emotional Betrayal.
Review: "Hope Floats"--to me--is a "cameo" film worth viewing and having. The story-line is about Birdee (Sandra Bullock) being scammed to appear on a TV sleaze show ostensibly to get a free makeover only to hear her best friend (yeah, sure) disclose that she's been having an affair with her husband for the last year!!!...then--rubbing rock salt in the wound--the husband comes on camera and confirms the shocker.
The next we see of Birdee, she's packing the station wagon with the help of her elementary school daughter Bernice and they're off to Grandma's house in the small town where Birdee grew up in Texas--where they're ALL talking about it having seen (and recorded in some instances) the nationwide TV broadcast. Being the main gossip even before Birdee arrives, she 1] gets her nose rudely rubbed in it, 2] her Mother's heartfelt but sometimes unfeeling advice to "get on with your life", 3] Bernice turns on Birdee with insinuations, then screaming "It's all YOUR fault!" adoring her father (for all the wrong reasons she finds out). But WAIT!!!...do I hear a White Knight riding to the rescue?
YES!!!...in the person of Jason Matesse, a highschool friend who's been carrying the torch for Birdee all these years. Portrayed by Harry Connick Jr., he gently helps Birdee confront her self-pity/self-doubt/self-recrimation with smooth straight talk, knowingly (from his own experience?) guiding her back to being the girl he knew and the woman she was prior to the TV fiasco with tender and solicitous attention and the occasional confrontational scene, always being there for her AND letting her know how he feels about her. (Witness the dance hall scene and call me a liar if you can!)
OF COURSE Birdee is distraught, OF COURSE self-deceived Bernice goes bratty in the worst way, OF COURSE some of Birdee's old highschool girl chums can't help but try (jealously) to put "Miss High'n'Mighty" down but that's how things ARE in any social strata when the chips are down--but for the true friends, Birdee's Mother, Jason Matesse, and a few others there for you come thick or thin.
Everything comes clean at the end, with the tenderness, thoughtfulness, understanding, compassion, and basic true values being shown AND recommended to Birdee, almost everyone lives happily ever after. (I'm NOT telling.)
I give Forest Whittaker--the director--Kudos for honing Harry Conniker JR's performance as Jason; the depth, subtlety, and genuiness of his performance comes through LOUD and CLEAR, as do all the supporting roles in this film. It has earned a Place Of Honor in my video collection, and I recommend it to you all: although rated PC13, I'd say General Audience as any intimacy--and there's very little--is all "fade to black" so what's the PC13 all about anyway?
It's well worth your viewing, and/or your purchase!
Rating: 
Summary: The two things that held, and hold this movie down greatness
Review: This is a good movie. As a guy it takes alot to say that about a romance movie, but it could be better. The first thing is to get rid of the bratty kid who doesn't know what she has in a wonderful mom played by Sandara Bullock, but I guess that's because she's a kid who is an exception where most accept divorce as a way of life she's holding the mother accountable for the breakdown of the marriage, but she comes to her senses at the end when she sees the father is apologizing for nothing. It's her crying at the end that is fraying on the nerves though. The other thing is the fact that they omitted Live's "Lightning Crashes" from the movie soundtrack, and the movie itself. It's done in the preview, so why keep it out of the movie? As I said it's a good movie, but it could've been better.
Rating: 
Summary: inbetween
Review: Sandra Bullock turns in a textured, nuanced performance in this bittersweet tale of loss, closure, and new beginnings. After learning in a brutal fashion that her husband and her best friend have become lovers, Bullock returns to her small hometown in Texas, son in tow. She "goes home to Mother", re-instating a relationship that is close but with its share of the usual troubles and flaws. She finds that her high school boyfriend still retains strong feelings for her. Slowly, she learns to trust again, as the two draw close. The movie is saved from mediocrity by the strong performances of the three major characters who are able to convey feelings beyond what is spoken. That said, I have taken from this movie a marvelous set of words in the following quotation:
"Beginnings are scary, and endings are generally sad, but it's what happens in the middle that matters."
|
