An Education

An Education - of 5

An Education is a look into the life of a sixteen year-old girl coming of age in early-60's London. Based off of Lynn Barber's memoirs, Nick Hornby's Oscar nominated adapted script is witty at times, often emotional, and fully engaging. Lone Scherfig's direction seemed to find the perfect tone for the film, and John de Borman's cinematography was beautifully shot with superb locations in London, Oxford, and Paris. The music is also outstanding and enjoyable blending jazz, rock 'n' roll, and the orchestral score flawlessly.

Carey Mulligan plays Jenny who is finishing her last year of high school and preparing for her Oxford education. But all her studying (much of it from her Father pushing her) has left her bored and wanting more from life. She dreams of exploring Paris, speaking French, going to jazz clubs, etc. Really, she longs for adventure. Mulligan channels Audrey Hepburn's ghost at times in the film, and that's not a slight. She was very deserving of her best actress Oscar nomination. She held together a certain subtlety within all the emotions felt throughout the film until a breaking point. I believe that is very hard to portray and not everyone picks up on it.

Jenny meets a much older businessman in David (a strong performance from Peter Sarsgaard) when he sees her in the rain with her cello. He offers her a ride in the hopes of not ruining the cello. This leads to a few more random meetings, and David brashly asks Jenny to an orchestral concert. David says he'll work it out with her parents. We quickly learn that he has a way with words.

The film really starts to move as you really don't know what to think of David. He seems innocent, but there's also a weird "What's going on here feeling?" as this thirty-something year-old man pursues this young girl. His charm does win you over, and as he helps Jenny to live the adventures she longed for, you begin to root for them even though their romance is unexpected and wrong in most people's eyes (mine included).

I can't go into much more detail as the movie begins to reveal more and more about David as Jenny learns about him, and our emotions are tugged every which way. Let's just say An Education is the perfect title for the film because there is a lot more learned than just in a school/university sense.

An Education deserved it's Best Picture nomination, and I recommend it. Be prepared for some tough scenes, but it is all tastefully done (refreshingly no gratuitous sex scenes or anything exploitative). It won't go on my "to buy" list, but I think I would like to revisit it from time to time. One last thing, keep an eye out for Carey Mulligan. She could really harness her young talent into an entertaining and promising career.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - of 5

Employing the voice talents of Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, and Andy Samberg, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was a fun little movie that could've been great if it wouldn't have gotten kind of weird at the end. The first half of the movie is quite funny at times, but it tends to taper off as the movie delves into more action/adventure territory.

Flint Lockwood (Hader) is an inventor that never seems to get his inventions to work right, and his father (Caan) is wanting him to join the family business bait shop. Flint never gives up on his dreams and accidentally builds a machine that somehow manipulates weather into making food fall from the sky. Incidentally, this saves the town Flint lives in as it's a tourist destination that had been dying in recent years.

This leads to alot of fun scenes with food falling from the sky and how fantastic that could be (when controlled). My favorite scene of the movie is when he builds a jello house to impress Sam (Faris). My girlfriend and I both agreed that we wish we could play in a whimsical jello house like that.

As the movie continues, all of Flint's newfound success leads to his ego beginning to build more and more into dangerous egomaniacal territory. The moral of the story is to not let your ego get so big that you can't control hurting people around you. While I liked the lesson learned, the ending kind of went off the deep end with food fighting Flint and his friends (cooked whole chickens fighting like ninjas, etc.).

If you've read the book, I've heard the movie veers quite far away from the source material so maybe prepare yourself to watch it as a totally different story altogether so you're not too let down. In the end, it's worth a rental but unless your kids love it, I wouldn't put it on the buy list.