April 19 – Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Remember that feeling when you’re down and you felt you couldn’t rely on anyone. Maybe because you don’t trust people to help or you don’t get along with anyone? So now you’re forced to deal with the problem on your own and eventually every problem like this leads you to shutting people out. Now imagine a family all made up of this person forced to go on a road trip together, does it make a good picture?

Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 adventure comedy-drama film that premiered in the Sundance Film Festival. It received plenty of awards, include Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for and Best Supporting Actor. As I’ve said, the story follows a dysfunctional family on a cross-country road trip to bring 7 year old Olive (Abigail Breslin) to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Along the way, the whole family and each person go through setbacks on the way. There were seven main characters: Edwin the grandfather, Sheryl the mother, Richard the father, Frank the gay uncle, Dwayne the teenage boy, and Olive the young girl, each having their own story. Frank was actually played by Steve Carrell. It was kinda weird seeing him in a drama movie.

April 18 – Winter’s Bone (2010)

How far does one decision go? Can one flap of a butterfly wing cause a hurricane on the other side of the world? There’s a 2004 sci-fi film called Butterfly Effect too that deals with this same question. But the movie for today is far from being sci-fi, but something realistic.

The movie I picked for today is the 2010 drama Winter’s Bone, adapted from the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell. It won Grand Jury Prize in the 2010 Sundance Festival and received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. It stars the lovely Jennifer Lawrence playing the lead character Ree. The film, set in the rural rocky mountains of Missouri, follows the story of Ree as she is left to take care of the family after her ex-drug dealing father went missing. She is trying to find him to avoid the foreclosure of their house. Her search forces her to embark on a journey to deal with the town’s crime lords to find clues of her father’s whereabouts, unsure if she’d ever find him.

April 5 – Blue Valentine (2010)

I first heard of this movie two years ago when I was watching the Academy Awards. I think it was nominated for Best Picture or some acting award. I didn’t really pay attention to it that much. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I started to make a list of what movies to watch for this summer. I was searching every website I knew on what movies were nice to add to the list. Award winners, movies with a huge cult following or generally talked about movies. I also searched for similar movies based on my favorite movies. This movie came up when a site recommended that it was similar to one of my favorite movies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Off to the list it went!

Fast forward to today, the movie I picked to watch was the 2010 drama film Blue Valentine. It follows the story of a young couple, Dean and Cindy, as their marriage was crumbling. They struggle to keep themselves composed and solid for the sake of their very young daughter. This story is intercut with the lovely beginnings of their relationship some time in the past. The film’s leads are pretty much big deals in show business. Cindy was played by Michelle Williams. After my brief research, apparently it was her who was nominated for the Academy Award. Very much deserved! She went all around in this movie: happy girl, naughty girl, sad girl, strong girl. Dean was played by the very handsome hunk Ryan Gosling. Okay that sentence sounded very gay. But who are we kidding? He’s all every girl has been talking about lately. It’s nice not seeing him play the bad boy role. His lover boy role in The Notebook (2004) was, in my opinion, his best performance. I’ll try to talk about the two different timelines in different paragraphs for easier understanding.