I don’t know anyone personally that doesn’t like the movie, Amelie. Saying so, I know, is a big neon invitation for everyone to chime in and say how much they hate its whimsy and sticky-sweetness, but I’m going to say it anyway. Because I think that liking Amelie says a lot about the person who likes it; that they are romantic and willing to suspend disbelief and cynicism for two hours of richness, love, and exuberance.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are an assh*le if you don’t like Amelie; some people have called it racist for idealizing Paris and leaving out ethnic minorities. Others have just found it too saccharine and boring.

Personally, I think it does a movie a disservice to take it too literally. Almost every film ever made is idealized, and it’s that idealized, dreamlike quality that makes Amelie so beautiful and singular.

If you haven’t seen it, Amelie is a French film that came out in 2001 and was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also did Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement, and City of Lost Children. Amelie (the beautiful Audrey Tautou) is a waitress in Montmartre who does a good deed and feels so good about it that she starts doing good deeds all over Paris. Along the way, she meets a man named Nino and falls in love. Read More »

I can sit down and watch just about any movie and as such, I’ve seen a great many films in my life. More than I could even begin to count. I’ve seen masterpieces and pieces of sh*t, and out of every single movie I’ve ever seen in my life, Before Sunset is my absolute favorite.

It’s not a perfect film; indeed, many people would be bored by what is essentially an hour-and-a-half long conversation. Some would even say that basing a film on just two people talking is pretentious and anti-climactic. I believe, however, that Before Sunset is a deeply moving, real, and thought-provoking film about relationships and connections and even just being human.

It’s the sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise in which the two main characters, Jesse and Celine, meet on a train and then spend one night together in Vienna. Talking. All night. Before Sunrise is a masterpiece in its own right, and, in that both films are directed by indie auteur Richard Linklater, they are both firmly films of and by their generation. Read More »

As an English major, I was always under the impression that literary and popular fiction were genres that were fairly at odds with each other (and, coincidentally, you are supposed to like the former and scoff at the latter. My personal tastes tend to run the opposite way). It’s rare that a book can fit into both categories without the help of Oprah, but oh how I’ve found one.

Audrey Niffeneggar’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife has gained a lot of popularity since it’s 2004 release, making a permanent home in women’s book clubs worldwide because of its earnest and heartbreaking love story. But it’s really so much more than it’s blurb would suggest; it’s also a painstakingly precise, exquisitely written book.

The story is told from the perspectives of Henry and Clare DeTamble, a married couple who have to deal with the complications that have arisen in their lives from Henry’s Chrono-displacement disorder, an ailment that forces Henry to travel through time against his will.

Time travel is usually one of my least favorite genres because it leaves me with too many questions after I’m done watching or reading. Why didn’t the terminator just kill Sarah Conner as a baby? Shouldn’t Marty McFly have known that he was going to succeed at getting his parents back together because if they hadn’t then he wouldn’t be alive to go back to the future in the first place (or even time travel in the first place because Marty essentially tells Doc he would later make the time machine work in Back the Future II?) Stuff like that. I realize that there is a certain amount of suspended belief that one has to assume in entertainment, but it’s still annoying. Read More »