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The Romance Lover’s Guide to Movie Must-Sees
If you adore Sleepless in Seattle and Pride and Prejudice and The Avengers, then you want a movie guide aimed at women like you. Women who enjoy romances and more! You like both a good kiss and a good knockout and refuse to be categorized—but you wish someone like you would recommend movies.
Which brings Mills & Boon author and professional movie critic Heidi Rice to the rescue. Whether it’s nonstop action with a little heart ’n’ soul, sweetly adorable cartoons, a classic black-and-white screwball comedy or that under-the-radar flick that you never knew you were missing, Heidi Rice will lead you through her must-sees and why you will also enjoy them. From Ryan Gosling’s six-pack to that iconic orgasm sandwich delivered by Meg Ryan, right up to the double whammy of hotties in Prisoners (Gyllenhaal and Jackman)—there’s a little something for everyone.
And a little something for that teenager inside you who’s ready to watch “nekkid” man-candy and spend two hours falling in love all over again….
Dedication
To my Mum and Dad—who love the movies almost as much as me, and loved each other even more. Xx
Movie Bliss: A Hopeless Romantic Seeks Movies to Love
Heidi Rice
Mills & Boon E POP!
Modern Tempted author and film journalist Heidi Rice indulges her inner chick-flick bitch with her take on some of the greatest romantic movies of all time, some movies which boast wonderful touchy-feely moments and a few others that you may never have heard of but will soon wish you had.
Whether you’re looking to have a fabulous Girls’ Night In, planning to drag your other half to a darkened cinema on a secret mission to ogle Ryan Gosling’s nekkid pecs, stuck indoors with bored children on a rainy day, or simply trying to cajole your teenage sons into watching something with a little heart and soul alongside the blood, sweat and firepower… Have no fear; Heidi is here to celebrate what women want in a great movie experience. So if it be Hugh’s sculpted abs gilded by campfire light, Rhett and Scarlett bickering their way through the American Civil War, Meryl cooking boeuf bourguignon (and Alec Baldwin) to within an inch of their lives or Bradley and Jennifer learning to tap-dance, badly, this is so the movie guide for you.
Table of Contents
1) Oldies That Are Awesome
It Happened One Night: A Hitch-hikers Guide to Screwball Romance
The Wizard of Oz: Because of the Wonderful Things It Does
It’s a Wonderful Life: How a Banker Steals My Heart Every Christmas
On the Waterfront: Brando in His Prime Does Bad Boys Proud
The Long, Hot Summer: When Paul Met Joanne…
The Apartment: Mad Men with Laughs
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): How to Beat a Guy at Chess, Every Time
2) Cartoon Capers, but Not Just for Kids
Beauty and the Beast: A Tale That’s Old but Timeless
Pocahontas: Love on the Wild Frontier (and Mel Gibson Sings!)
The Princess and the Frog: It’s Not Easy Being Green on the Bayou
Up: And Away in My Beautiful Balloon House
Tangled: Rapunzel Has a Good Hair Day
Toy Story 3: For When You Wanna See Grown Men Cry
3) Rom-Coms R Us
When Harry Met Sally…: And Meg Ordered an Orgasm Sandwich
Pretty Woman: Confessions of a Streetwalking Shopaholic
Bridget Jones’s Diary: Pride and Prejudice with Really Enormous Knickers
It’s Complicated: Especially After You Sleep with Your Ex, Meryl. Sheesh!
He’s Just Not That Into You: Oh, Yes He Is!
The Proposal: Ryan Reynolds Looks Good Nekkid. It’s Official
Love & Other Drugs: When Love Means Never Having to Fake an Orgasm
Silver Linings Playbook: Nobody Puts Bradley in a Corner
4) Joys for the Boys (and the Girls, Too)
Public Enemies: Johnny Depp as a Bad Man with a Tommygun
Source Code: He Follows the Plot, While You Follow Jake Gyllenhaal
Limitless: Bradley Takes a Drug That Makes His Eyes Even Bluer…Seriously?
Cowboys & Aliens: aka Buff & Buffer
Drive: Ryan Gosling Riding on the Edge
John Carter: A Massive Flop but Not So’s You’d Notice
Skyfall: Bond Is Back and Bardem’s Got Him
Prisoners: Two Hotties, Lots of Heartache
Rush: Chris Hemsworth to Drive You Wild? Anyone?
5) Offbeat but Right Up My Street
Dear Frankie: Starring Gerard Butler, When He Still Did Subtle
Julie & Julia: The Great American Cook-Off
The King’s Speech: Or How an Aussie Saved the British Monarchy
Attack the Block: The Kids Are Definitely Not All Right
Young Adult: A Mean Girl Grows Up…Eventually
The Artist: Black, White, Silent, French…et Magnifique!
Cedar Rapids: Insurance Salesmen of the World Unite
Rust and Bone: A Gallic Love Story with Nothing Lost in Translation
6) Big Is Beautiful, Bold Is Even Better
Gone with the Wind: The Civil War Never Had It So Good
The Last of the Mohicans: Featuring the Best Kiss-Off Line in Movie History
Brokeback Mountain: A Fine Bromance
Australia: Nicole Explores the Wonders of Oz (and Hugh Jackman, Nekkid)
Valentine’s Day: Twenty Star-Studded Hallmark Cards Come to Life
Man of Steel: Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, It’s the Hottest Guy on the Planet
Glossary
Buff, Buffer, Buffest: Men who make you drool. Henry Cavill being a case in point.
Chick-Flick: A film where the action is mostly in the snarky, snappy, sexy dialogue—and there are a lot more fluffy-cuddly bits than a dick-flick.
Dick-Flick: A film that overdoses on gun action, or car action, or spy action, or sci-fi action or all of the above. And it tends to stint on the fluffy-cuddly bits. (I.e., the opposite of a chick-flick, really.)
Modern Tempted Hero/Heroine: This Mills & Boon hero is still alpha, but he’s also a whole lot of flirty fun—as are the women who can tame him. He’s gonna be smart, sexy and successful, but she’s going to be able to match him every step of the way. He could be Clark Gable’s hitch-hiking reporter in It Happened One Night, cartoon bad boy Flynn Ryder in Tangled or Jake Gyllenhaal’s flirty, dirty Viagra salesman in Love & Other Drugs, while she could be Meg Ryan’s orgasm-faking Sally in When Harry Met Sally…or Joanne Woodward’s Newman-taming smart cookie in The Long, Hot Summer. She’s gonna have to put her heart on the line with this guy—while making sure he never gets the upper hand!
Modern Romance Hero: This is the ultimate alpha male in the Mills & Boon universe. We’re talking the hot guy who’s at the top of his game. Powerful, protective, overpowering—a guy you don’t want to mess with (but secretly can’t resist). For the purposes of this movie-review book, we’re talking Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind or Daniel Craig in Skyfall—and larger than life in every respect.
Heart-Warming Romance: The home of Mills & Boon American Romance, Cherish Romance and Heartwarming Romance, featuring tough, tender and always relatable heroes and heroines. Look no further than Dear Frankie or It’s a Wonderful Life for a Heart-Warming Romance fix on screen.
Nekkid: That would be Hugh Jackman in Australia and Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal—and several other hunks I haven’t mentioned specifically—so you can be pleasantly surprised when you see the movie.
Romance-arama: A word that I am myself patenting to mean a film with enough different stories to make you dizzy. Coined here to apply to Valentine’s Day and He’s Just Not That Into You, but also applicable to such movies as Love Actually.
Series Romance: This is the stuff Mills & Boon is made of…small books with big themes, hot heroes, heroines just like you and a happy ending. Be warned: not every film in this collection has a happy ending, but they all have a whole lot of heart.
1) Oldies That Are Awesome
Who says you need CGI, SFX, 3D or even colour film to do some amazing storytelling?
It Happened One Night (1934): A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Screwball Romance
Directed by Frank Capra
Starring:
Clark Gable as Peter Warne
Claudette Colbert as Ellie Andrews
Walter Connelly as Mr Andrews
Jameson Thomas as King Westley
The 1930s in Hollywood were a golden era. There were glittering epics such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, fabulously overblown women’s pictures like Dark Victory and The Women and a raft of acclaimed literary classics such as The Grapes of Wrath and Wuthering Heights…. But by far the most entertaining films of that golden age for me, and the films I return to again and again, are the glorious romantic comedies of Frank Capra. Because Capra’s comedies weren’t just funny and gloriously romantic, they were also heartfelt and genuine, shedding a healing light on the hard times of the Great Depression.
Escapism with an edge, I like to call it.
Now, Capra was a fan of Gary Cooper (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) and later James Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life), but my favourite of his rom-coms (and it’s got a lot of competition) has to be the time he cast Clark Gable as his leading man in It Happened One Night. This was Gable five years before he took on the iconic role of Rhett Butler in GWTW, and while the darkly handsome good looks, alpha tendencies and trademark playboy tache are already in evidence here, this is a younger, more playful and laid-back Gable—he’s supersexy, but his reporter, Peter Warne, is also witty, wonderfully contemporary and gets as good as he gives from his sassy heroine—Claudette Colbert’s runaway heiress, Ellie Andrews. So if we translate that into Harlequin terms, while Rhett is more of a Presents hero, Peter for me is all KISS.
Like most of Capra’s films, the story is simple and remarkably subtle, brilliantly clever and always character led.
Ellie has decided to tie the knot with ‘society aviator’ King Westley against her millionaire father’s wishes. Dad whisks her away to his luxury yacht to make her see sense, but she escapes—determined to make her way back to King, come what may. Enter our smart, jobbing reporter, Peter Warne, who’s on the lookout for a headline-grabbing exclusive. And Ellie’s race across the country to be reunited with her beau is it. At first Ellie’s reluctant, but after a spot of blackmail and the realisation that she needs Peter—because you see she has no money, very few clothes and she is not used to slumming it—they end up hitch-hiking and bickering their way across the country together.
Thus begins an often-hilarious, frequently heart-warming and also exceptionally sexy battle of wits that turns to romance, when Ellie finally figures out that Peter’s more of a match for her than King will ever be, and Peter figures out that his career isn’t as important as finding true love—and a woman who knows ‘the limb is mightier than the thumb’!
But don’t take my word for it. This film won the five big Oscars of 1935—namely Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay—can still charm the pants off you three-quarters of a century after it was made and, most important of all, put an end to men wearing vests (when Gable revealed his bare chest). And let’s face it, ladies, we’ve all got to salute it for that!
There are two key scenes that encapsulate the perfect blend of humour and romance this movie has to offer. First, the now-legendary hitch-hiking scene in which Ellie strings Peter along beautifully while he happily gallops towards his own comeuppance as he instructs her on the proper way to use your thumb. Only, he discovers that, as already stated, Ellie’s long-legged limb is mightier than his thumb, no matter how he chooses to use it!
And then there’s the pièce de résistance—considered super risqué in its day, and still pretty hot now—when the couple has to share a motel room and Peter constructs the Walls of Jericho (i.e., a blanket hung on a washing line) between their two beds. But you’ll have to watch the movie to see the Walls of Jericho come tumbling down!
I give you It Happened One Night—proof that not only does money not buy you love, but slumming it can actually be very romantic…. Especially if you happen to be doing it with Clark Gable.
The Wizard of Oz (1939): Because of the Wonderful Things It Does
Directed by Victor Fleming
Starring:
Judy Garland as Dorothy
Frank Morgan as the Wizard
Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow
Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion
Jack Haley as the Tin Man
Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West
Surely the ultimate fantasy quest movie, the original Judy Garland version of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wizard of Oz does so, so many wonderful things—but here are just a few of them.
For starters, there are the catchy hum-along songs. Tunes so memorable that as soon as you say the titles, you’ll be humming them in your head—like ‘We’re Off to See the Wizard’ or ‘If I Only Had a Brain’ or ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’. See what I mean? Works every time…
But let’s not forget the best song of all: Judy Garland’s sends-shivers-down-your-spine version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ which, amazingly, nearly got cut from the finished film because Louis B. Mayer thought it slowed the pace. (Louis, you philistine!) Tons of people have covered this song since (just try sticking it into YouTube and you’ll get the picture), but no one sings it with more heart and soul than Judy, her full, rich, heartbreaking voice all the more poignant when you consider this was her finest hour, when she was a beautiful, doe-eyed teenager full of promise, and all her troubled times were mostly still ahead of her.
Then there’s the superb casting: not just Judy at the peak of her powers, but also all those character actors—from Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West to Bert Lahr’s hilarious Cowardly Lion—who each took their one big chance to shine and turned in career-defining performances.
And don’t forget the glorious Technicolor photography coupled with some eye-popping set design—they make the Yellow Brick Road gleam like a golden halo, the field of deadly poppies glow a vibrant red and the Emerald City sparkle in an array of rich verdant greens. Plus there’s the gorgeous process art, which is so lush and lovely it’s still a feast for the eye—and makes today’s CGI-enabled movie magic look decidedly ordinary by comparison.
And let’s not forget the dreamily good script, which took L. Frank Baum’s original story about a young girl’s quest to get home and moulded it into something that will make you laugh, cry, sing, dance and gasp with amazement. And it boasts a slew of quotable lines that have become an essential part of pop culture: ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’ ‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’ or ‘I’m melting, I’m melting’, to name but a few.
And last, but by no means least, there’s the fact that this movie can still make you feel like a kid on Christmas morning—no matter how old or jaded you are, or even if it’s the middle of July. It can mesmerise and excite, and fill you with the complete conviction that magical things really do happen and there actually is ‘no place like home’.
The Wizard of Oz is Hollywood’s golden era at its most golden, guaranteed to make your troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops…. Oh, darn it, I’m singing again!
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946): How a Banker Steals My Heart Every Christmas
Directed by Frank Capra
Starring:
James Stewart as George Bailey
Donna Reed as Mary Hatch
Lionel Barrymore as Henry F. Potter
Henry Travers as Clarence
Ward Bond as Bert
Whenever ’tis the season to be jolly, I can never resist the opportunity to pull one of my all-time festive favourites out of the Santa sack and spread some good cheer into the winter chill.
I’ll grant you, though, It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t exactly a chick-flick in the conventional sense—and James Stewart’s suicidal savings and loan man is hardly anyone’s idea of an alpha male. Consequently, Frank Capra’s Yuletide classic may not be everyone’s idea of a film to make you drool over the festive season. But luckily, us romance junkies are about so much more than hunky guys and romantic fantasies, right? We’re so not that shallow. And anyway, I’d argue that this festive favourite does have a hunky guy in it—maybe not hunky in the Hugh Jackman–nekkid sense, but certainly hunky in the huggable sense. James Stewart, after all, is so the template for the grounded and gorgeous heroes of Harlequin’s heart-warming romance lines. And with those stories in mind, I’d also say that It’s a Wonderful Life may be a romantic fantasy but with a it-could-happen-to-you integrity, because this film is about the making and maintaining of a strong, resilient, wonderful marriage. It’s about family and friends. It’s about all those mundane everyday things that you take for granted but which give your life meaning. And it’s about what happens after the Happy Ever After…and how you make it last forever.
So, in other words, if this film doesn’t leave you with a warm glow and a great big ahh wrapped around your heart, then you’d have to be a close personal friend of Ebenezer Scrooge.
All right, already, now I’m going to give you a quick rundown of the plot—for anyone who has somehow managed to miss it on TV every Christmas for the past fifty-something years!
James Stewart is George Bailey, the owner and manager of a small-town savings and loan that is about to go tits up. He wanted to see the world as a kid, had big plans to get out of Bedford Falls and make a name for himself. But George is a guy who’s always done the right thing for his friends and family. So when he fell in love with the girl next door, he married her and had four kids. When his father died, he took over the family business even though he didn’t really want to…. And when his uncle Billy mislaid thousands of dollars of the bank’s money, it’s George who’s set to take the fall.
And in amongst all the good things he did, in amongst the happy times and the tough ones, George lost sight of his dreams. And so, when everything starts to collapse around him one Christmas Eve, George decides to take his own life. So far, so not so warm and fuzzy, I’m sure you’re thinking…but bear with me here. For as George is about to take a header into the town’s ice-filled river, up pops Clarence, a trainee angel to jump in first (yes, George is a bit miffed that he only warranted a trainee one, too). George, being George, saves Clarence before thinking about himself—giving Clarence the chance to get to work.
So what does Clarence do? He comes up with the cunning idea of giving George a glimpse of what good ole Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never lived. Yup, you’ve guessed it, Clarence has basically ripped off his cunning plan from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and given it a clever twentieth-century twist.
So George discovers that the brother he saved from drowning as a kid then died and never got the chance to grow up and become a war hero—and all the men he, in turn, saved also died. George finds his beloved wife, Mary, is a lonely spinster and doesn’t even recognise him. He runs home to find the derelict house they bought and rehabbed together is still a broken ruin. His kids don’t exist, and miserable old man Potter—the big, greedy, unethical banker who has always hated George and his savings and loan—has taken over the quaint, sweet little town and turned it into a garish, soulless, neon-lit strip mall. Yes, times are terrible in Bedford Falls without George. Everything he knows and loves is gone….
So then all Clarence has to do is ask George if he really wishes he’d never lived. And the answer is a great big resounding no! Not just from George, but from everyone in the audience. And as George runs down the snowy Main Street and shouts merry Christmas to all those people and places he knows and loves (and who now know him, too), he’s got his mojo back (so to speak) and he, at last, realises that small dreams can actually be better than big dreams, especially if you know how to appreciate them.
So what’s the moral of the story?
Maybe it’s that we should all learn to cherish the little things? Maybe it’s that every life has value (even nasty old Mr Potter’s, who hasn’t got a single redeeming feature)? Maybe it’s simply that when the chips are down, you should look at what you’ve got, not what you haven’t? All good advice and all very heart-warming (especially if you’ve just been down a heaving Oxford Street in London’s West End trying to do all that last-minute Christmas shopping you should have done months ago).
But what I love about this film, what never fails to send that delicious quiver of emotion down my spine, is the way it portrays George and Mary’s marriage, because at the end of the day, that relationship is the bedrock of George’s life. Mary’s a sweet, pretty, no-nonsense, and utterly competent and patient wife and mother. She adores George, but she also knows him, inside and out—his weaknesses as well as his strengths.
And that makes theirs the perfect partnership.
That doesn’t mean the kids don’t get on their nerves, or that they don’t get on each other’s nerves, but it does mean that they love each other, and that they’re willing to go that extra mile to make things work. George isn’t the only one who’s made sacrifices, he’s not the only one who’s had to work and struggle and keep things together when it would have been easier to let them slide. Of course, this being George’s story, we don’t see a lot of Mary’s struggles, but they’re there, especially when George loses it with her and the kids and then slams out of the family home—on his way to a date with the icy river and Clarence.
And Mary’s the one who gets them their Happy Ever After in the end, because she tells all their friends and family of the trouble George is in. George being a bloke, of course, doesn’t think of that one (must be something to do with that old Y chromosome ‘asking for directions’ thingy). And so the whole town chips in to help with a few dollars here, a couple more dollars there—and in the end it really isn’t about the money, it’s about the love behind it. Cue another great big ahh.
So, is George and Mary’s marriage a romantic fantasy?
You betcha, but isn’t it one we can all aspire to? And isn’t that the same quality you love to unwrap in your favourite series romance? For me, the fast cars, the luxury homes, the designer wardrobe, even the glistening pecs, the awesome six-pack and the sex-god abilities between the sheets are just the sparkly tissue paper. It’s what’s underneath that counts—the good, strong, steady, dependable heart that’s beating just for you. That’s the real present, the gift you want that will keep on giving….
All right, I’m getting a little carried away now, but you get my drift. Especially if you watch this film on Christmas Eve in front of your bauble-laden tree and a roaring fire with either friends, family or the love of your life—or even just your favourite series romance—snuggled by your side.
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