Film Round Up: Movies I Watched In December. Thoughts + Reviews

Here on the blog we love a good movie. Here is a round up of some of the films that I watched in December so you can maybe find films you'd like. I've shared my thoughts on the films rather than writing a full review in one blog post of a single movie. In keeping the blog short and sweet it means I can provide a load of movie information in one post to be super efficient. So, here we go, here's some information for some films I watched throughout December...

Conception

I watched this quirky rom com all about, you guessed it, conception. The film focuses on several couples and how they handle the topic of conception in a Gary Marshall style narrative (see Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve) with lots of different story arcs in one movie. It features couples struggling to conceive, lesbians attempting to conceive with donor sperm, couples who have a child and are learning to be parents... It's a quirky sex comedy with no real aim rather than showing different stories about how different people get pregnant which shows that it takes a little more than just having sex to make a baby.

Riding In Cars With Boys

This real life inspired film about a young woman who falls pregnant at fifteen after sleeping with a man she only just met was a really nice lazy night flick. Drew Barrymore plays Beverly Donofrio, a depiction of the real life Beverly Donofrio whose life and memoirs serve as inspiration for the movie. Barrymore presents a likeable yet humanly flawed protagonist in an effortlessly charming performance. It's a refreshing film and far from the cookie cutter style films we're so used to seeing nowadays. If anything it captures life. It depicts the hardships teen mothers face, not just as a teen but from that point forward. The film is currently up on Netflix and I enjoyed it. If you like a good drama then this was certainly enjoyable.

The Help

It's a rather air-brushed tale of "beatin' down the man" and some have accused the notion of having a white protagonist gaining credit in mock posters that dubbed the movie "White People Solve Racism" and I didn't particularly enjoy it. I wasn't overwhelmed, I wasn't underwhelmed. I wanted a better exploration of the oppression of African American maids and I would have preferred a tale where the maids themselves had more power rather than it being granted to them by a benevolent, privileged do-gooder whose dreams come true at the end of the film whilst the maids are still living their day to day lives of servitude. It was a bit of a downer. The only highlight was a truly strong performance from Viola Davis in the role of Aibileen.




The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I'm still rather unsettled on how I feel about this movie. I am torn between my faith in Peter Jackson's vision and my appreciation of the source material which framed some particularly fond childhood memories. This film takes more creative liberties than the first of the trilogy and I'm still trying to decide where I stand here. I do know, however, that I appreciated the pugs in Laketown, officially accept Thranduil as my husband wife and that I'm a little bit attracted to a dragon.