67 - The Big Wedding

Connection To ANYWHERE BUT HERE - Susan Sarandon

Now this is a film that's opening scene that has the opening scene of Robert De Niro about to do cunnilingus on Susan Sarandon before Diane Keaton disrupts it, picture this scene mentally how you will and you're welcome.

Honestly it was weigh up watching this film... on one hand I absolutely love Amanda Seyfried to bits, but on the other hand something about Katherine Heigl just drives me the wrong way (I honestly think it's some of the things she said), in the end despite the negative reviews I decided to risk it.

The Big Wedding as a sit-com plot where a now divorced couple have to pretend to still be married for the Colombian mother of there adopted son, so honestly the film could have been over within 20 minutes just by telling his mother the truth.

The truth is with The Big Wedding is that it keeps verging on being funny, there are genuinely fleeting funny moments but honestly the rest of the movie just falls short, I predictably wrongly that the father (Robert De Niro) would be caught "cheating" with his current girlfriend (Susan Sarandon) by the son's real mother, his divorced wife his played by Diane Keaton, who as you remember co-starred with De Niro in The Godfather Part II - how things change.

The rest of the cast - the kids including Topher Grace, a 29 year old virgin doctor who falls for his adopted brother's real sister, Katherine Heigl as the sister who is Heigl like and I don't know if it was a plot twist that she was pregnant all along and didn't know it because I could see it coming a mile off, Ben Barnes is the adopted son who's going to be marrying Amanda Seyfried - who is underused as far as I'm concerned - and we also get Robin Williams along for the ride as an ex-AA buddy of De Niro and now a priest who probably is in the best scenes of the film.

Overall is a film that is seriously lacking something, the cast aren't bad when it comes down to it but the material is trying but none of it fits together, you can live your life without seeing this movie.

66 - Anywhere But Here

Connection To THE JOYRIDERS - the three young "joyriders" of that movie all actually appear in this and it's from the same year (1999), so it's a connection between Shawn Hatosy, Elisabeth Moss or Heather McComb... you know what I'll go with McComb, you never know the two might come in handy at a later date.

Natalie Portman came onto the scene in astonishing style with Léon (as I knew it here in the UK or you might know it as The Professional) with a great performance as Matildha, she followed it up soon with roles in Heat (small but memorable), Mars Attacks and Everyone Says I Love - which I know you could argue on the quality of them last two movies but the them three films all had astonishing cast lists, during this time she also stole the show in the lesser-scene Beautiful Girls, by 1999 she would turn 18 so she would be categorized not a child actress anymore and the most famous for her that year was Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace, not a bad career choice from a certain point of view, but if this was some people's first experience of her they would genuinely think what a wooden actress she is, the same year she would make Anywhere But Here and if I was writing this in 1999 you could start to think maybe a question in a few years to come will be - whatever happened to Natalie Portman?

I need to start this next paragraph by saying I'm roughly the same age as Natalie Portman, well she is a year-ish older then me, the reason I had to start with that is that I have had a crush on Natalie Portman for so long now, spanning 3 decades (I always like saying stuff like that), probably since 1997/98 so she really is an age appropriate crush for me, I had cut out pictures of her on my bedroom wall, and as the years have gone the crush as never really gone away, even if other actresses have been let in and being allowed to share that affection - I didn't want people thinking I was a dirty old man well I write because I imagine some of how the movie is viewed is seen from how I was in my teenage years.

Anywhere But Here, along with Where The Heart Is, the following year is what I have always considered the period where she was in danger of falling into "safe" pictures, where the films are not necessarily bad but are just not the most challenging pictures - perhaps what you see is what you get.

ABH (what I'll call it from now on) as teenage daughter (Portman) and flighty mother (Susan Sarandon) upping sticks from a small town to California, hence the title of the film because it's not exactly where Portman wants to be, so most of the film is Portman moping (of missing home) or challenging her mother while she in return does stuff on the spare of the moment or insist they go for ice cream

Among the events in the movie has her cousin Shawn Hatosy SPOILER die during the movie, which seems like death by plot convenience to me to get a sad reaction from you as the audience member END OF SPOILER.

Perhaps the most effective scene for me is because I am child of divorce and my dad didn't want me is the scene where Portman is on the phone to her father who really wants nothing to do with her, I'm not sure how this scene would play to other people but me for I really identified with her.

Sadly a more interesting movie is presented when we saw Thora Birch in her underwear in her photo and then we learn Natalie Portman was the one who took it, am I alone in thinking that would be a better movie??? (get out of her you pervert)

Overall I can see why somebody with a different taste in movies would really like it but despite the lovely Portman it's just not the movie for me at the end of the day, and it's not that I disliked it I found it mainly okay despite decent performances from Portman and Sarandon.