10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

“People perceive you as somewhat...”

“Tempestuous?”

“‘Heinous bitch’ is the term used most often.”

            When I see a commercial for new teen comedy movies I just shake my head. They are all about drinking and getting laid. I have unfortunately seen some newer ones and I cannot believe how horrible they are. There is nothing funny about them, the acting is terrible and the stories are some of the worst I have ever seen in my life. Remember when teen comedies were actually funny and witty and really smart with characters you could look up to and admire and there was not a lot of cursing and drinking? Remember when they were predominately about girls who could stand on their own? I am talking about teen comedies from the 90s and early 2000s. I am talking about really good ones like Clueless, Down to You, Empire Records, and She’s All That. One of the all time greatest teen comedy movies is 10 Things I Hate About You. It has smart characters you could look up to and also relate to and it is witty and brilliant.

            Bianca Stratford (Larissa Oleynik) is high school royalty. All the boys want to get with her. New kid Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of the boys with Bianca on his radar. He is completely taken with her as soon as he sees her in the hallway. His geek guide Michael (David Krumholtz) tells him that Bianca is off limits and tells Cameron not to even think about her especially because she and her older Kat (Julia Stiles) are not allowed to date. Michael points out Kat to Cameron. Kat is a shrew and a total bitch. Everyone keeps their distance when Kat is around. She is constantly going at it with the popular school hottie Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan). They both despise each other.

            Bianca and Kat are completely opposite from each other. Bianca as mentioned is high school royalty and wants to do what everyone else is doing. Kat on the other hand hates everyone and never wants to be like everyone else and is a feminist. She is definitely not afraid to give people a piece of her mind. She hides behind sarcasm and a hard shell.

            Cameron comes up with the idea to get a date for Kat so Bianca can date. The only problem is none of the boys, even the dorkiest of boys, refuses to date her. In one class Michael and Cameron see the perfect candidate: Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger). Patrick is the school’s resident bad ass with stories flying around that he punched a state trooper and ate things and did things normal people would not even do. Cameron tries to approach Patrick with the idea and Patrick winds up drilling a hole through Cameron’s French book. That is when Cameron comes up with a new plan to have Joey get involved. Michael puts the idea into Joey’s head to pay Patrick to take Kat out so Bianca can go on a date since Joey has been trying to go out with Bianca for a long time.

            Patrick gets Kat to go out with him and the two hit it off. As it usually goes in rom coms and teen movies the two eventually fall in love and of course since Patrick is being paid to take Kat out complications arise. And of course the complications are resolved at the end of the movie. And Cameron gets Bianca because Joey is a total jerk.

            The entire cast is awesome. It was perfect all the way Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger to even the background people. It is really cool to see how far Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have come/gone since this movie. Stiles took some time off for a while to go to school and other things and recently resurfaced in Silver Linings Playbook. She is a good actress I liked her a lot when I was younger. Ledger was fantastic. I love him in this more than any of his other roles I have seen him in. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was adorable here and no he is just hot! He has always been a good actor and you can see that in this movie. David Krumholtz is hilarious. He was the perfect nerd. Andrew Keegan was also very perfect as his asshole character.

            Kat Stratford is a character I grew up idolizing. I was never really into the popular crowd. Sure I wanted to wear the latest and coolest clothes I did not want to look like a total outcast. But other than the clothes I could have cared less about being popular. I hated girls in high school. I was much more into staying home and obsessively watching my favorite shows and obsessively listening to my music. I was eleven when 10 Things I Hate About You came out so I really did not understand the characters or the movie too much. I watched it a few years later and Kat Stratford became a role model and the movie became one of my favorites. I was always shy but yet I had a bit of a tough chick streak in me. I always wished I was Kat who spoke her mind, was tough as balls, and told people off without a care. She was the type of girl I wanted to know and wanted to be. Now at twenty-six I still want to be like Kat Stratford (I have toughened up a lot since first watching the movie though and usually do not hold too much back) and still want to know a girl like her.

            10 Things I Hate About You is one of the penultimate teen comedies. It was made at a time when teen comedies and regular teen movies and rom coms were not so dumbed down and commercialized. I miss the smart characters and the strong female characters that were hard to fall in love with because they were strong. I like that alcohol and drugs were not the whole plot of the movie or much of the movie. Sure there is a scene where Kat gets drunk but it was not all in your face. This was funny and intelligent. I would rather be treated like an intelligent viewer than one who was dumb and is supposed to not think and just laugh. 10 Things I Hate About You is perfect. Anyone from any time can appreciate and relate to the story and all the characters. If you have yet to see 10 Things I Hate About You, you must get on the ball and watch it!! I guarantee there is so much to enjoy. 

Don Jon (2013)

“There's only a few things I really care about in life. My body. My pad. My ride. My family. My church. My boys. My girls. My porn.”

Don Jon reminded me of an article I read online that was about how young people perceive love and sex to be. Unfortunately I cannot remember where the article was from or who wrote it but it was very interesting. It talked about how many young people think sex is like it is in porn videos. They are not seeing sex as something intimate they are not doing sexual acts for sake of doing them (I believe that is pretty much what the article says. I wish I could remember it more). The movie also reminded me of one of the only times I actually turned on the news in the morning and one of the news items was about this show in England I believe that puts people in closed off sound proof room, they have sex which is filmed, and then the couples come out of the room and talk about their sexual experience. Yet again someone commented on how today not too many people talk about sex in a positive way and they just see it as something to do.

            Joseph Gordon- Levitt plays the main character Jon. Jon is obsessed with his porn. His obsession translates into his real life. When he and his two friends are out at a club they see girls and they rate them based on their looks and the way they dress. Jon always rates his girls when he takes them home based on one of the many porn videos he watches. Many of the girls do not live up to his expectations. One night he meets a girl named Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johanson). She is physically perfect and Jon falls for her hard. Barbara is a completely different girl than what he is used to. She makes him wait and wait to have sex with her and also makes him do stupid things that she wants to do. The most important thing to Barbara is that Jon not watch porn.

            Jon is taking classes at college. In his class is an older woman named Ester. She is getting over something tragic in her life and for some reason immediately gravitates towards Jon. She notices him watching porn on his phone since Barbara will not let him watch the stuff on his computer. Ester laughs at him because the porn he is watching is not real.

            One day Jon comes back to his apartment and sees Barbara crying with his laptop open. She looked at his internet history and found that he had been looking at porn. She breaks things off with him. For days Jon is upset and just binges on porn. Ester talks to him about what happened. He confesses that he likes porn better than real sex it offers him a way to escape. Ester helps him see that sex is an emotion and that it is great when there is nothing to judge.

            My favorite scenes were the ones where Jon is going to church. The story is supposed to take place in New Jersey and New Jerseyians are notorious for their bad driving and horrible road rage. I know this from several years of experience being a driver in the Garden State myself. My hand is on the horn a lot, I curse off other drivers for not using their blinkers or driving too slow (I live in an area surrounded by friggin senior citizens!) thinking they can hear me. I was dying when Jon was cursing people off when he was on his way to church and then he and his father would drop more F-bombs at dinner than has ever been dropped before after they have returned from church. Trust me not all people from New Jersey act like Jon and his family they were a little over exaggerated but they were not too far from the true ones.

            My review does not do Don Jon justice but this is as much as I can remember of it even though I saw it yesterday. Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote and directed the movie. Hopefully he will write and direct another movie preferably one that is not entirely about sex. He has potential to become a fantastic writer/director/actor. He did a fantastic job. He kept the movie realistic especially with the relationships. Barbara was just out for herself she wanted to mold Jon into something he was not. Ester meanwhile opened up Jon to his potential and made him feel better and emotional. Don Jon is not one of the best films of the year but it does have a good message. It is not glorifying sex it makes it real. 

Lincoln (2012)

“Shall we stop this bleeding?”

            I knew Lincoln was going to be a good movie even before I saw it. How can anyone ever go wrong with a Steven Spielberg picture? I was not prepared for how impressive and how amazing the movie is. Never for one moment was Lincoln dry and boring as if we were watching a history lesson before our eyes. You are watching a story, an actual nail biting story with touching and thought provoking moments.

            The story is about Abraham Lincoln’s struggle over ending the Civil War and gaining enough votes for the Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery. If he ends the war the south will keep its slaves and never free them if he does not pass the amendment first. On the other hand the war needs to end thousands and thousands of young men have sacrificed their lives and even more have lost homes and land. Congress cannot come to an agreement over the amendment. Arguing goes on and on much like it does today with bills and other items stuck in limbo.

            We get to see Abraham Lincoln not as the myth he has become today. He is a family with two sons and a wife. We see his struggles. Most importantly we see his humanness. We see he was a good man who wanted good for his nation and its people. We see him struggle through every decision and action he or Congress or the army make. The writers made movie Lincoln personable and warm. I can only hope that this movie will bring this brilliant man into a more human light.

            The cast was phenomenal. In all seriousness if Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field are not at least nominated for an Academy Award there is something completely wrong with Hollywood. Day-Lewis’s performance is one of the best I have seen in ages. You were not watching an actor you are watching the character. Field is just so damn good in anything she does. Mary Todd Lincoln was a very complex person full of grief and sadness over the loss of her sons. Field played the rollercoaster emotions of Mary Lincoln to perfection. Joseph Gordon- Levitt was not in the film that much but of course he was great. Tommy Lee Jones was the man. He was the perfect choice for his character. It was interesting to see Lee Pace play an angry Congressman from the late 1800s. He seems so quiet and he was angry and mean here! One of the last scenes of the movie with him was one of the best. There are so many great actors that it would take me forever to review them all. Every one of actors and actresses were stunning no one did a bad job in the slightest.

            Steven Spielberg is just awe inspiring with his direction. The story was personal so his direction was personal. You feel like you are in the room with the characters. Adding to Spielberg’s genius direction is the cinematography by Janusz Kaminski. The movie is dark. The only bright colors are the scenes in Congress and the outside scenes other than those scenes the interiors are dark. I believe Kaminski captured the time period perfectly. It was dark inside compared to outside there were no electric lights. Through the colors and direction you can feel the cold atmosphere and you can feel the history seeping out of every frame.

            Lincoln will most likely go down as one of the great historic movies and one of the greatest movies about the life of Abraham Lincoln of all time. As I said we are not watching a myth on the screen we are watching a man. If you like Steven Spielberg’s movies especially War Horse you will like Lincoln. If you enjoy an excellently written and acted movie you will like Lincoln.