The Secret (2006) [UR] ***

The Secret is another name for the law of attraction. Simply put, the law of attraction says that we can attract to ourselves resources that exist outside of ourselves, to help fulfill any desire, no matter how impossible it may seem. To invoke the law of attraction, all we need to do is to clearly focus our consciousness - our heart, mind and spirit - on our desire, and we will attract to ourselves the energy and the resources we need to fulfill that desire, regardless of any obstacle that might be in our way.

If we think about it, we've known about the law of attraction all our lives. When we make a wish before blowing out the candles on our birthday cake, when we put a tooth under our pillow in hopes the tooth fairy will visit, when we leave milk and cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, when we say a silent prayer before going to sleep, when we make a wish on the first star we see at night, or on a shooting star that streaks across the heavens, when we try to catch the wedding bouquet the bride tosses over her shoulder – each time we are invoking the law of attraction. Often we don't even recognize the law of attraction working in our lives, and it's only when something unexpected happens to us, something we truly desired but never expected, that we begin to wonder if there might be hidden forces working on our behalf. I can highly recommend The Secret as an excellent introduction to the law of attraction, and as a basis for further study. Some of the many, many books available on this subject include: 

Everyday Miracles by David Spangler

Feel It Real! by Denise Coates

In Tune With The Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine

Jack Canfield's Key to Living the Law of Attraction by Jack Canfield

Law of Attraction by Michael J. Losier

The Law of Attraction by Esther Hicks

The Law of Attraction by Robert Collier

The Law of Attraction in Action by Deanna Davis, Ph.D.

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Labels: documentary, drama 
IMDb 56/100
Amazon

DVD Verdict Review by Michael Stailey

In the Land of Women (2007) [PG-13] ***

Writer/director Jonathan Kasdan's film is a character-driven study of how five women, ages ten to eighty, grow and evolve through their life experiences. The story is told from the viewpoint of Carter Webb (Adam Brody), an introspective twenty-something writer who's recovering from the breakup of his first love affair.

Following his rejection by Sofia (Elena Anaya), Carter moves from L.A. to quiet, suburban Michigan, where he hopes that caring for his aged grandmother Phyllis (Olympia Dukakis) will give his broken heart a chance to heal. Hardly has he unpacked his suitcase than he begins to connect with the three women in the household across the street; wife and mother Sarah (Meg Ryan), teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart) and pre-teen daughter Paige (Makenzie Vega). As caregiver and confidant, Carter offers compassion, friendship and wisdom to these women. And as he begins to heal, he discovers that he has something to say, and he begins to write a children's book.

This isn't a perfect story, and ten years from now Jonathan Kasdan may look back and see how it could have been done differently and better. But it's a good story, and it contains some valuable life lessons. One is that a loving relationship will be more rewarding if we accept the other person as they are, rather than trying to change them into our ideal of what they should be. Another lesson is that sometimes the person we're meant to be with is right there in front of us, and has been there the whole time. 

Labels: comedy, drama, romance 
IMDb 64/100    
MetaScore (critics=47, viewers=55)    
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=54, viewers=64)

James Berardinelli's 3 out of 4 star review

Imagine Me & You (2006) [R] ****

Imagine Me & You is a refreshing, mainstream girl-girl romantic comedy, set in modern-day London. Rachel (Piper Perabo) is walking down the aisle to marry Heck (Matthew Goode) when she has a love-at-first-sight experience with Luce (Lena Headey), her wedding florist.

In the weeks following the wedding, Rachel and Luce grow closer as friends, and as their mutual attraction grows, so does Rachel's uncertainty and ambivalence toward her new husband. Then, when Rachel discovers that Luce is a lesbian, she begins to reevaluate her own sexual orientation.

The film offers excellent screenwriting, and subplots that support the main plot and propel the action forward. There is incredible romantic chemistry between Perabo and Headey, and Rachel's awakening to her true sexuality is similar to that of Heather Graham in Gray Matters. The film's London locations, production values and happy ending are all reminiscent of films written by Richard Curtis, particularly Notting Hill and Love Actually. 

Labels: comedy, drama, lesbian, romance, wedding
IMDb 67/100
MetaScore (critics=49, viewers=74)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=50, viewers=78)

Copenhagen (2014) [NR] ****

A film review by Sheila O’Malley for rogerebert.com on Oct. 3, 2014.

A guy and a girl bicycle slowly through the streets of Copenhagen, the colored buildings and wide canals their placid and beautiful backdrop. The sun is setting, the shadows lengthening, making the city seem less like an actual place than a dream space, one where truth can come out, where the regular rules of everyday life no longer apply, where something else is possible. In its best moments, Copenhagen, the debut feature of screenwriter / director Mark Raso takes place in that dream space.

On the surface, the film sounds like Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise or any number of other meet-cute-in-a-foreign-city stories. But very quickly, other things start to come to the surface, things that don't quite fit. The tension between the expectations that arise due to the familiar genre and what is actually happening onscreen makes Copenhagen special, and a bit strange. There's also the undeniable fact that the girl in the film is, in actuality, a girl. She's half the age of William, the lead character. So any possibility of romance is distinctly illegal in nature. Copenhagen doesn't shy away from that, and is unafraid to allow that queasy reality to come to the surface. The film doesn't entirely work, but sometimes things that don't entirely work are interesting, bringing tension and unresolved issues that start to take over the film, almost by stealth. It's nice to watch something that isn't neat, that doesn't play it safe.

William (Gethin Anthony) and his pal Jeremy (Sebastian Armesto) are traveling through Europe, crashing in youth hostels. The whole point of the trip is to end up in Copenhagen, where William can try to track down the grandfather he's never met. William's dad was abandoned by his father. And William's dad was no great shakes in the father department either. William has a lot of free-floating resentment and rage because of that. He found an unsent letter his father wrote to his grandfather. It's in Danish so he has no idea what it says, but he wants to deliver the letter, decades after it was written. You get the sense that William is not looking for a loving reconciliation but confirmation that father figures suck.

The trip immediately goes off the rails because Jeremy has brought along his girlfriend Jennifer (Olivia Grant). William is so hostile and unpleasant from the get-go that it starts to call into question his presence as the lead of the film. He's nasty to Jennifer in a particularly lecherous way; he's vicious to Jeremy when they argue about her; he's a whiny petulant figure. This nastiness is not just an attitude, it's William's default personality. Gethin Anthony is excellent in that he does not soft-pedal these qualities, and does not try to plead his character's case for the audience. He allows William to be as nasty as he is written. It can make Copenhagen a trying experience, but there is interesting stuff on the other side of it.

After William and Jeremy part ways, William is left to his own devices in Copenhagen. He needs to find the address on the envelope because he thinks maybe his grandfather still lives there. His initial queries are unsuccessful. Everything changes when he meets Effy (Frederikke Dahl Hansen), a young student interning as a waitress in the hotel cafe where he is staying. She clumsily spills coffee on his table, and he doesn't seem to realize that it is supposed to be a meet-cute moment because he is rude and ungracious in response. In a later encounter, he tells her about his search for his grandfather and her interest is piqued. To Effy, it's kind of like a detective story, and she takes the lead: she knows that address on the envelope, she wants them to go check it out together.

Effy is intelligent, resourceful, and seems to have an unlimited amount of time to wander around Copenhagen with this rude American, tracking down leads. At first it seems that Effy will be forced to take on the burden of having to be the now-predictable Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the one whose only purpose in life is to lighten up the gloomy male lead. She has a pink plastic camera and is impulsive to the point of recklessness. But Effy, like William, does not quite fit into the genre requirements. She starts to emerge as an individual. Much of this is due to the grounded performance from Hansen. She suggests that Effy is not complete yet. She's still in formation, acting a role a little bit, as young girls sometimes do.

There's a beautiful and strange scene where Effy takes William into one of the museums in Copenhagen. She wants to show him something. It's a bust from ancient times, a female, and she moves to stand right next to it, her silhouette and the bust's silhouette highlighted by the thin white stream of light coming in from the window. Mark Raso allows that image of the two heads side by side to just sit there for a long time, still and silent. As the image settles, it becomes clear that Effy and the bust are practically identical twins. Effy whispers, I've never shown this to anyone. William runs his fingers over the bust's face, in wonder at the resemblance. There's an eroticism in the moment, problematic and uncomfortable due to the age discrepancy.

What is so beautiful about that scene, though, is that it is beyond meaning. The image onscreen is what is important, and what it might mean is up for grabs. It makes Effy's inner life a place of mystery and power. She has gone to this museum a lot to visit her doppelgänger. She has wondered about that woman in ancient Greece or Rome, wondered at the connection. She feels in touch with something eternal in herself. None of this is stated explicitly but it pulses off the screen.

What one may expect to happen does not exactly go down as planned. Copenhagen remains true to its own original and somewhat prickly course. There are moments when it is not clear at all why Effy is even choosing to hang out with William, who is rude and combative (in moments big and small). But she wants to know what happened to William's grandfather. Over the course of the film an interesting thing starts happening. William starts to take responsibility for the words he uses. He starts to actually listen to himself and do his best to change course. A lifetime of being a rude rage-boy will not vanish overnight, and a lesser film would have made it Effy's job to show him the better way. But Copenhagen isn't really about that. Nobody can save you. You have to save yourself.

Talented cinematographer Alan Poon gives us dreamy beautiful shots of the city, its buildings, canals, cobblestone alleyways, crowded nightclubs. His work helps ground the film. Copenhagen knows life is complex, and knows that most of us are messes most of the time. Hopefully we all do our best and try not to hurt one another; try to be kind. William doesn't quite get that, not yet, because he's too self-righteous and pissed off. But the film is, in many ways, his lurching journey towards starting to understand that his character is up to him and him alone. [O’Malley’s rating: *** out of 4 stars]

Labels: adventure, drama, romance
IMDb 71/100
MetaScore (critics=71, viewers=84)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=72, viewers=78)
Sheila O’Malley review
Netflix

 

Cars (2006) [G] ****

A visitor from space might be forgiven for thinking that the car is the dominant life form on the Earth. Tended by armies of humans who design, manufacture, sell, lease, fuel, service, insure, wash, repair and drive cars, we staff the entire petroleum industry to provide fuel for them, build the highways, roads and bridges on which they travel, the parking lots and garages where they rest, and the race tracks on which they compete. Roughly one in seven jobs are related to cars, so it's easy to imagine a world in which the car really is the dominant life form, each car taking on a unique human personality, and together filling all the roles that humans normally fill. And so we have this entertaining and thought-provoking family film.

Lightning McQueen is a rookie on the Piston Cup Racing Circuit; he's young, brash and arrogant. After finishing the season in a three-way tie he's on his way to California for a race in which the three finalists will determine this year's winner of the Piston Cup. Through an unusual set of events Lightning finds himself miles off the interstate, on old Route 66, lost in the nearly-abandoned desert town of Radiator Springs. The cars he meets, the friends he makes and the lessons he learns all help Lightning understand that there's more to life than just winning an empty cup; that thinking only about ourselves is guaranteed to drive our friends away; that living life in the fast lane take a lot of energy; and that by slowing down and enjoying our friends and family, as well as the scenery that passes by, our lives will be longer and richer.

With an inventive screenplay, incredible high-resolution computer-generated graphics, and a terrific voice-over cast including Owen Wilson as Lightning, Paul Newman as Piston Cup winner Doc Hudson, and Bonnie Hunt as Sally Carrera, this is a film for the whole family to enjoy more than once. It's also a fitting tribute to Paul Newman; actor, philanthropist and race car driver. 

Labels: animation, auto-racing, comedy, family, sport   
Internet Movie Database 72/100   
MetaScore (critics=73, viewers=75)  
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=69, viewers=80)    
Blu-ray1   
Blu-ray2

Priceless (Hors de Prix) (2006) [PG-13] ****

There's an old saying that some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Well, Irène (Audrey Tautou) is one of those people. Young, beautiful and talentless, Irène prowls the hotels, casinos and parties of Monte Carlo, Monaco, hoping to snag an ultra-rich older man who would marry her and set her up for life. Of course, the ultra-rich older men know what the beautiful young girls want; they keep the girls interested by giving them clothes, accessories, jewelry, and sumptuous meals, and by renting beautiful hotel suites for them to live in. But they don't give the girls anything really expensive or lasting.

And so late one evening, Irène mistakes Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a shy hotel bartender, for a wealthy hotel guest. And while Jean knows that Irène is with Jacques (Vernon Dobtcheff) and why, he falls for her anyway. Even after Jacques dumps Irène, and she picks up Gilles (Jacques Spiesser), and even while Jean is being kept by the rich, older Madelaine (Marie-Christine Adam), he is still in love with Irène.

There's really no great mystery in this light, frothy, adorable, romantic comedy. We know that eventually Irène will wake up and realize that she loves Jean and that he's priceless. But it is the process of getting there that is so enjoyable, especially the inventive party scene in which Irène convinces Agnes (Annelise Hesme) that Jean is a very rich Dutch prince, and a much bigger catch than Jacques. The costumes, sets and cinematography are gorgeous, and there's great romantic chemistry between Tautou and Elmaleh. If you imagine Only You meets French Kiss, set on the French Riviera, you'll have a feeling of the flavor of Priceless. 

Labels: comedy, romance     
Internet Movie Database     
Metacritic 72/100     
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=69, viewers=74)     
Blu-ray

Failure to Launch (2006) [PG-13] ***

After having fallen for someone who later dumped her rather than launch his own life, Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) embarks on a career as a professional relationship interventionist. The process goes like this: first Paula is hired by parents who are trying to move their son out of the family home. Then, she flirts with the son, and bonds with him by going on dates, by sharing an emotional trauma like saying goodbye to a dying pet, by meeting his friends at an amusement like a co-ed team sport, and by letting him teach her a new skill or sport. And, finally, after he falls for her, proposes to her, moves out and gets his own place, she ends the relationship.

Recommended by a neighbor couple, Paula is hired by Al (Terry Bradshaw) and Sue (Kathy Bates) to intervene with their son Tripp (Matthew McConaughey), a 35-year-old boat broker (boat, launch... get it?). However, something unexpected happens: Paula falls for Tripp. Failure to Launch is a film about relationships that asks us to consider several questions: (1) Can a relationship begun under false pretenses ever be reinvented as a completely honest and open one, in which both partners trust each other? (2) Will Paula's roommate, Kit (Zooey Deschanel), always initiate mad, passionate sex with Tripp's buddy Ace (Justin Bartha) by slapping him? (3) Will the handsome but self-absorbed Matthew McConaughey finally star in a movie in which he's more interested in his female lead than in himself? (4) Does Terry Bradshaw ever regret doing the scene in which he's feeding his aquarium fish while standing bare-bottomed in his naked room?

There are several cute scenes in this romantic comedy, and the final reality TV scene in which Tripp and Paula restart their relationship is unique and well written. This romantic comedy will be most thoroughly appreciated by fans of McConaughey, Parker and Deschanel. The DVD contains several extras and my favorite was the unscripted segment featuring Matthew McConaughey and Terry Bradshaw interviewing each other. I especially enjoyed the moment when Matthew quoted Terry's remark after they had wrapped the film: Let me tell you something. I've got four Super Bowl rings, you know. And there's awards, and there's Oscars and things out there. But fifty years from now, who remembers any of those things? The thing that you'll be remembered for, the thing in life people will remember you for, is how you treat other people. 

Labels: comedy, rom-com-faves, romance     
Internet Movie Database 5.6/10    
Metacritic 47/100    
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=46, viewers=62)     
Blu-ray