MONTH OF ROMANTIC FILMS

Now, I am the person least likely to go out of my way to watch a romantic film or what I call a film that appeals mostly to the female audience but because I love all film genres in general, I wanted to dedicate a whole month to catching up with films in the genre.  Unfortunately, I decided that this would be my film watching theme halfway through April, so I decided to extend the theme to May.  So, April and May became my Month of Romantic Films!

I generally love a good film with strong female characters which is where most romantic films fall as they try to balance the story between the two love interests.  This is a very delicate balance when done right.  When done wrong the female or male character comes off as two dimensional and borderline boring or a cliché and that can ruin the effectiveness of the film.  The other bad thing about the genre is that the general hallmarks of the romantic film have now made itself known in pretty much every sub-genre of film.  As modern day film-makers and storytellers try to balance the relationships of the characters and fill out the supporting characters, creating romantic relationships is one of the easiest ways to do this.  Another caveat to this change is the fact that we are getting more films with strong female characters in which the male characters are supporting; this is where the second group of films come in.  These films do not necessarily have or are centered around a romantic storyline, but they present stories that cater to the female journey and/or experience.

These types of films were once labelled “chick flicks” but I’ve never liked that label, so I won’t be using it here.  Needless to say, these are the films that I decided to focus on.

 

TRADITIONAL ROMANTIC FILMS.

Traditional romantic films are what I rarely decide to watch even if they have an actor I like.  Some of the films I finally caught up with were What a Girl Wants (2003), Remember Me (2010), Lovesong (2016), My Week with Marilyn (2011), She’s Gotta Have It (1986), A Ghost Story (2017), The Danish Girl (2015), The Theory of Everything (2014), and The Promise (2016).  A Ghost Story is the closest you are going to get to a horror-romantic film while The Promise is a war-romantic film while The Theory of Everything and The Danish Girl are dramatic-romantic films.  The thing to remember at the center of all these films is a strong romantic relationship between two or more of the characters.

None of the films were bad and they each have their good and bad elements. The films I enjoyed the most were The Theory of Everything, The Promise, A Ghost Story, and Lovesong.  What a Girl Wants was cute but not a film with any new ideas and not one I will ever bother to watch again while Remember Me was decent and had some interesting ideas.  She’s Gotta Have It was more of a “I need to watch” film since it was Spike Lee’s first film.

 

STRONG FEMALE STORIES.

A more interesting list of films that I viewed during these months were those films that fit within this category.  This includes Julie & Julia (2009), Good Hair (2009), Jackie: A Tale of Two Sisters (2017), Betty White: First Lady of Television (2018), What Would Sophia Loren Do? (2021), 20^th Century Women (2016), Suffragette (2015), Radium Girls (2015), Philomena (2013), The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017), Like a Boss (2020), Venus in Fur (2013), and Profile (2018).

Everyone of these films presents some extremely strong women in some great stories about important women’s issues.  Radium Girls, Suffragette, Good Hair, and 20^th Century Women deal with some strong female stories and are headlined by some amazing performances.  Documentaries also featured heavily here especially in regard to presenting some amazing women in Jackie Kennedy, Betty White, and Sophia Loren.

My personal favorites of this group were Philomena, Venus in Fur, and Profile.  Profile was an exceptional film that dealt with a romantic relationship while also dealing with subterfuge and terrorism while being presented through modern day film-making techniques.

 

THE TELEVISION SERIES.

I only watched three series that could be included in this group which were I’m Not Okay with This (Season 1), Mortel (Season 1), and Downton Abbey (Season 1-4).  Mortel was the unusual series that strived to be a coming-of-age show that dealt with two teens given supernatural powers that only work when they are in close contact with one another.  This was a bold escapist show that also had at its core the romantic relationships of the main characters.  I’m Not Okay with This was similar that felt like what if Stephen King’s Carrie was expanded into a series in which you got to hear the thoughts of Carrie all the time.  Downton Abbey is the epidemy of the primetime soap opera with all the characters having some type of romantic relationship.  My wife and I watched four seasons of the show and thus was one of the key things in my romantic viewing for the two months.

 

***

All in all, these two months I managed to catch up with a lot of films that were not originally on my watch list.  In fact, apart from The Danish Girl, She’s Gotta Have It, and The Theory of Everything, the rest of the films were a last minute or blind pick.

Film Review: LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2012)

Actress Yancy Butler returns to battle giant man-eating crocodiles in Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012).  Having survived the ordeal of her previous encounter at the infamous lake, Reba (Butler) is now settled with Sheriff Giove (Elisabeth Rohm) with the protection of her town by barricading the growing population of crocodiles from the rest of the world with an electric fence.  Reba would rather just kill them all but it seems that they are now an endangered species and protected from being hunted.  This does not stop big game hunter Jim Bickerman (Robert England) or his group of men who plan to break into the barricaded area in order to steal the valuable eggs of the crocodiles.  When Bickerman’s men accidentally leave the gate to the quarantined area open an school bus of lost and unsuspecting teenagers find their way to the beach where they are the meal of the day for a swarm of crocodiles starving for food. 

It’s great to see Butler back as Reba as she has grown into the roll with her no nonsense attitude towards her job of both protecting the endangered crocodiles and wanting to kill them all.  She has a lot of fun in the roll and every time she’s on the screen she cracks and sizzles.  Rohm is the more subdued of the two and isn’t given as much room to have any fun but she does play the typical mother whose daughter is one of the bus load of teenagers trapped behind enemy lines.  It is England who truly outshines them all as Bickerman a relative of Betty White’s Delores Bickerman from the original 1999 film (so a nice nod there).  He is given free rein to have as much fun as he can in a film that saddled with mediocre CGI crocodile VFX.

The film is written by David Reed (who also wrote Part 3) and directed by Don Michael Paul.  This is a film that knows it’s the fourth film in an ever going franchise of diminishing results (and for those of you counting there is a Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda film on the horizon for this year).  This is not meant to be a good film but I give it points for bringing in some impressive stars and letting them have fun with the mediocre material because if they’re having fun we’re all having fun (and if you make it into a drinking game it’s even more fun).