Director:
Josh Boone
Cast:
Shailene Woodley
Ansel Elgort
Nat Wolff
Laura Dern
Willem Dafoe
Rated: PG-13
Shailene Woodley plays a teen named Hazel,suffering from cancer and also a limited social life. This changes, though when she meets another teen named Gus who has to deal with cancer during a support group meeting.
The two start a friendship that eventually leads to a romance which takes both of them on an emotional journey.
Director:
Spike Jonze
Cast:
Joaquin Phoenix
Rooney Mara
Amy Adams
Scarlett Johansson
Rated: R
Good science fiction is all about creating a world that is different or perhaps farther in the future than our own, yet still is able to make strong social statement about our society and keeping it centered around a well structured story. “Her” manages to capture all of this and is the reason it’s one of 2013’s best.
The film follows a the character Theodore (Phoenix), who is in the going through the final stages of a painful divorce and now finds himself all alone. On one of the days that he is on his way home from work, Theodore finds out that a new operating system with fully functioning A.I. has been put out on the market.
Director:
Richard Curtis
Cast:
Domhnall Gleeson
Rachel McAdams
Bill Nighy
Rated: R
For once we have a time travel movie that isn’t all that confusing.
Tim (Gleeson) is the main character of “About Time.” On his 21st birthday, Tim finds out from his father (Nighy) that his family has the ability to travel backwards in time, but only during one persons life, not being able to travel to a time before the person was born.
Tim soon grasps the opportunities he has with the ability, and it helps him through life as he starts working as a lawyer in London. As time goes on, Tim also meets his true love in Mary (McAdams) and helps the relationship along with his power, however, as he does he learns that he can’t make everything perfect.
Director:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Cast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Scarlett Johansson
Julianne Moore
Tony Danza
Rated: R
Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes his directing debut in “Don Jon” and pulls it off just about perfectly.
“Don Jon” is the nickname given to the title character. Jon is a young man living in New Jersey who has developed a routine which he follows every week. Jon goes to the night clubs, sleeps with women, attends church and confessional and more often than not ends up watching porn.
That routine becomes shaken up a bit when he meets and starts a relationship with Barbara (Johansson). Jon starts to believe that Barbara could be the right one for him, yet as time goes on he starts questioning the relationship. When he starts taking a college class at the request of Barbara, he meets a woman named Esther (Moore) who ends up helping him a bit with his relationship situation.
Director:
Jonathan Levine
Cast:
Nicholas Hoult
Teresa Palmer
Analeigh Tipton
Rob Corddry
Rated: PG-13
“Warm Bodies” is your basic modern day re-telling of “Romeo and Juliet,” except in this case, Romeo happens to be a zombie.
The film follows the character “R,” played by Nicholas Hoult who starred in the 2011 film “X-Men First Class.” R is a zombie who knows his name started with the letter “r” but can’t remember anything after that. On the outside, R is just an average zombie slumping around an airport in an post-apocalyptic future. However, on the inside R is able to give a monologue of what’s going on and provides the movie a narration.
Eventually, through a chance encounter, R meets a survivalist named Julie, played by Teresa Palmer. She is with a group looking for supplies. This meeting happens to be love at first sight for R as the encounter restarts his heart. Because of this, R saves Julie and Julie begins to learn that R is slowly coming back to life.
Director:
Gabriele Muccino
Cast:
Gerard Butler
Jessica Biel
Dennis Quaid
Uma Thurman
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Rated: PG-13
Gerard Butler can’t seem to escape the romcom void.
“Playing for Keeps” is the story of a retired soccer player named George (Butler), George has fallen on hard times, struggling financially and is trying to connect with his son even through being divorced from his wife Stacie (Biel). Eventually, George is sucked into becoming the new soccer coach for his son’s soccer team and through doing so he meets a few characters who make his attempts to reconnect with his family more difficult.
One of the problems with “Playing for Keeps” is that they tried to take a bunch of different plots that seemed to come from different movies, and smash them together into a sloppy mess. Not only do they bring in a bunch of different plots, they cut them off after a certain amount of time or make them significantly underdeveloped. They have a romantic comedy subplot; a divorce drama subplot and a father son bonding subplot, and each one of them don’t really go anywhere or mean anything.
Director:
Lone Scherfig
Cast:
Anne Hathaway
Jim Sturgess
Rafe Spall
Rated: PG-13
At one point the film felt like it was going to go on all day.
One Day follows two good friends through 20 years of their lives together. The characters are Dexter (Sturgess) and Emma (Hathaway). Every day in the film comprises of one to four scenes before moving onto the next year.
As the film goes on we see the ups and downs of both their lives and their continuing friendship with each other.
Director:
Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast:
Steve Carell
Ryan Gosling
Julianne Moore
Emma Stone
Analeigh Tipton
Jonah Bobo
Kevin Bacon
Rated: PG-13
Predictable? At times yes, but boy does it work.
Crazy, Stupid, Love follows the character Cal Weaver (Carell), a man who immediately finds out that his wife Emily (Moore) wants a divorce and informs him that she cheated on him with a man named David Lindhagen (Bacon). After finding out, the two split up and Cal lives on his own in an apartment. However, he becomes bored and heads to a local night club and tries to drink his problems away.
While there a young man named Jacob (Gosling), who is a smooth talking ladies man, takes pity on Cal and decides to help him out by getting him into some new clothes and meeting new women. However one woman, Hannah (Stone), a law graduate becomes one girl that Jacob can’t seem to seal the deal on. As the film goes on Cal enjoys his new life of being single a bit, but it eventually leads to things becoming more complicated.
Director:
Will Gluck
Cast:
Justin Timberlake
Mila Kunis
Woody Harrelson
Jenna Elfman
Rated: R
“No Strings Attached” got it wrong, this got it right.
“Friends With Benefits” follows the story of Dylan (Timberlake), an editor who has just been offered a job as editor for a major magazine. Upon arriving in New York, Dylan meets Jamie (Kunis), who is his sort of temporary agent to help get him the job. Before going to work, Dylan and Jamie spend some time together exploring the city and eventually become good friends.
After Dylan gets the job he settles into the city and continues his friendship with Jamie. Eventually the two get really close however do not want to start a relationship, with both of them having bad break ups in the past. The two then decide to just have casual sex instead of a relationship so they won’t have to worry about having the issues of dating, however this raises come complications through out the film.
Matthew Liedke on Film 