February 12th, 2018 | Updated on April 22nd, 2024
1. The Great Gatsby
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It was like a different world, a world of movie stars and big politicians, golden youth, and aristocrats, with fireworks and unthinkable luxury parties. But the main secret of this world was the mysterious Mr. Jay Gatsby. Young, inexperienced and naive Nick Carraway gets into the thick of this life and gets at the invitation of Gatsby himself.
Later he will write an essay, a piercing story about love, thirst for power and crime. This tape can be safely called a modern poem about great love, which is pure, sincere, beautiful and impossible. For the money, you can buy almost everything: respect for others, expensive suits, booze for an unforgettable party, but love is not sold under any circumstances.
Review: ChicagoReader
Robert Redford makes for a much too sane Gatsby and Mia Farrow comes across as even sillier and more insubstantial than she needs to be when measured against the lovely and sexy Lois Chiles; but Bruce Dern is a superb mixture of slovenly charm and thinly concealed menace as Tom, and Sam Waterston a tower of total sanity as Nick.
Director Jack Clayton seems overawed by the opulence of the production as well as by the mythic presence of Fitzgerald—and the result is a film of shimmering surface brilliance and almost complete lack of focus or substance (1974).
2. Dear John
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All the films made based on Sparks’ novels are soaked through his energy and this easy-complex love that he tried to convey to us. “Dear John” is not an exception. They spent the most wonderful two weeks together; sometimes it’s enough to promise eternity to each other.
They were ready for everything for the sake of each other, and even for the most difficult task – to wait! But they are ordinary people, simple, and mortal. She is an ordinary girl, and he is a small change of the American army.
Review: npr
To say that someone dies in a film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel hardly qualifies as a spoiler: Tragic, untimely deaths are the author’s stock in trade, particularly those that lead his characters to re-evaluate the nature of life and how to live it — or love and how to give it.
In fact for a writer known for soulful romance, Sparks displays a prodigious morbid streak throughout his work. So when I confirm that someone does die in Dear John, it should be no more surprising than revealing that not everyone survives a Shakespearean tragedy. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more flatlining in this movie than the cast.
Chief among the lifeless is the performance of Channing Tatum as the titular John. While his abs perform admirably in the many surfboard-toting scenes on the beaches of Charleston, S.C., his line readings are similarly stiff and flat. It’s on those beaches, while on leave from his tour of duty as an Army Special Forces sergeant, that he meets the doe-eyed, golden-hearted Savannah (Amanda Seyfried).
3. The Fault in Our Stars
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It is, at first sight, a typical story of youthful love. Hazel and Augustus are young, pure creatures. The viewer will be able to see the first meeting, the first love, the first experiences, beautiful courtship and wide gestures. But the history of teenage relationships is not quite common.
Hazel has a terminal stage of cancer; the girl is forced to carry an oxygen balloon everywhere. Optimist and wit Augustas put an end to the career of a basketball player, as he also suffered from illness in his time. Therefore, the romantic story turned out with bitter notes. The film’s characters are doomed, but they are full of energy, they soberly look at the world around and on their lives. And they also have a dream that must be fulfilled.
Review: Timeout
Far from the shameless emotional pummeling, it might have been, this adaptation of John Green’s cherished YA cancer drama finds a conduit to earned, understated tears—a tricky accomplishment given the material.
The film’s linchpin is young Shailene Woodley (already the savior of several iffy projects, including Divergent), an actor whose effortless way with real-girlness and soft, exhausted voice turn her oxygen-tank-rolling Hazel into a fully fleshed-out teenage creation.
Even as her character meets and falls for upbeat charmer Gus (Ansel Elgort, Woodley’s Divergent costar) in a support group, there’s believable banter between them that redeems a long-telegraphed outcome known to anyone who’s ever waded into the salty pool of movies like Love Story.
4. Titanic
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This film can be watched forever, experiencing all the new emotions, noticing all the new moments that have hidden from the look in the last time, and, finally, ending the session with the desire to watch it again. This film can be discussed for a long time, listing its boundless merits, forcing us to return to viewing the picture.
But its main advantage is a stunningly beautiful love story and how much you believe in it, thanks to the convincing and undoubtedly excellent play of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The love of Rose and Jack passed through the whole film, caused millions of people to live with the heroes.
Everything is fine in it. He saw her, sitting on his deck for the lower class, and fell in love at first sight, in that scene their love seems so impossible, and their social barrier is so strongly visible. But already in a few seconds, you realize that they are both just people. All these coincidences give a special shade of this story, after that, you start to think about the existence of fate or about a miracle.
Review: Timeout
The love story at the center of James Cameron’s $200-million-plus re-enactment of the sinking of the Titanic is ripe, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, but the ship is spectacle enough, and its sinking is one of the most perversely thrilling adventures ever put on film. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane. 3:07 (intense peril, violence, nudity, sensuality and brief profanity). At area theaters.
The sinking of the Titanic has been explored many times, many ways; in books and film, fiction and nonfiction, with and without the accompaniment of Nearer My God to Thee. ‘ We’ve heard or read scores of survivors ‘ accounts, we’ve toured the great ship through pre-launch photos and newsreel footage, we’ve even been to its grave to roam its carcass in documentaries made for the smallest (TV) and largest (IMAX) screens.
5. P.S. I Love You
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The plot of the film tells the story of a married couple. American girl Holly and Irishman Jerry live happily. This couple is created for each other; these are the two halves of one whole, which live in love and harmony, passing through many trials and events in their lives. They dream of a new big house and children. But fate decreed otherwise, and soon Holly becomes a widow.
Jerry knew that his beloved wife would be in despair. He decided to write letters in advance, which after his death would come to her regularly. In these letters there will always be warm words of a loved one, support, and everything will seem like reality. And in each letter, there will be a postscript “I love you” …
Review: The Star
P.S. I Love You is a load of sentimental humbug that sees Hilary Swank, winner of Academy Awards for Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby, fighting way below her weight in the part of Holly, a young widow whose dead husband has pre-arranged for her life without him.
Gerard Butler hasn’t fared so well either, going from playing Beowulf (in Beowulf & Grendel) to Gerry Kennedy, a 30-something Irishman who falls in love with an American tourist, marries her, moves to New York City to drive limos and then promptly dies of a brain tumour.
