Serendipity (2001)

(This is an awful poster but I couldn't find a better one.  I think a poster with the elevator buttons and 23 is lit would have been a better poster)

MIMDB score: 7.1
Current IMDB score: 6.9
Director: Peter Chelsom
Main Actors you care about: John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Piven

Why I liked it: I'm about to head to New York and I was going back through all the New York movies and I when I saw this movie I thought well I surely have reviewed this movie.  I hadn't apparently.  This movie is quite good.  I think it captures a lot of about life and love very well.  When a movie can put into "life" what you are feeling but haven't fully figured out I think it easily makes the movie good.  It kind of questions if fate exists but I guess concludes that it does.

Unfortunately I don't think it's amazing movie which is why I'm only giving it a 7.1.  I just really like it for bias reasons I'm sure.

What stands out: John Cusack might be the best romantic comedy comedian lead in my lifetime.  Sorry if you were born in the 90s and don't understand that.  Between this and like High Fidelity and Say Anything and Sixteen Candles and Better off Dead . . . .

Thing(s) I would change:  I don't know if they really had a strong enough connection to warrant doubting there love for there fiances.  They met once (maybe twice if you count having to go back to the restaurant) and didn't show as having all that much in common.  They didn't really get to know each other and kind of just thought each other were good looking I assume.  I think I might like it better if they spent more time there to establish a better starting connection and not just a one day (and brief) meeting.  Like the movie Before Sunrise spent the whole move on their day they met and wanted to come back to met each other.  It's much more believable in Before Sunset that they think about each other based on that one day meeting.

Favorite Line(s)/Scene:
"Maybe we're lying here because you don't wanna be standing somewhere else."  I love this line.  Hopefully it's self explanatory.

There is a deleted scene on the DVD version in the Serendipity restaurant called "cubing".  She walks John Cusack through a sort of Rorschach thought experiment that is suppose to tell you about the person.  It's rather interesting.  Also in that deleted scene you can see that the devil that later pushes all the elevator buttons is at the restaurant as well.  Makes me wonder if they really needed to take that scene out.

Lars! He's a funny character.  He's like the perfect OK boyfriend.  Girls stereotypically love musicians right.  Oh, he's a flutist though (shehnai to be exact)? His ring doesn't fit. His box proposal.

Similar Movies/TV Shows: A Lot Like Love, When Harry Met Sally, Before Sunrise/Sunset, Forrest Gump but only a little, 500 days of Summer.

"Side" note: "Oh my GAWD this frozen hot chocolate is so good."  Bullcrap!  If you go to Serendipity's in New York DO NOT GET THE HOT CHOCOLATE!  It's rubbish!  The sundae's are where it's at for desserts.  The frozen hot chocolates tastes like a Frosty which you can get from Wendy's at anytime.  The sundae's have a piece of pie stuck in them.  They are amazing compared to the frozen hot chocolate.  Humble pie sundae is my favorite.  Also the High heel pump is my favorite thing to eat there for non-desserts.

Back to the Future 1-3 (1985-1990)

MIMDB score: 8.8, 8.0, 7.1
Current IMDB score: 8.5, 7.8, 7.4
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Main Actors you care about: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

Why I liked it: Maybe one of the most entertaining portrayals of time travel.  I think if backwards time travel existed it wouldn't exactly work like this but I think it's one of if not the most entertaining portrayals of it.  I think all the movies in the "similar" section besides Time Machine needed Back to the Future to exist for people to think of there plot.  A future movie has yet to provide the amount of entertainment for me that these movies gave me.  John Williams's theme is way too good.  On par with the feeling you get from the Star Wars theme.

What stands out: The plot for sure.  The music for sure.  The acting is good enough.  The small jokes like "heavy" are awesome.  The recurrent events like manure on the Biff character is great.  I guess if you didn't like the movies they would seem repetitive but I think it gets at the underlying message about change maybe.  Maybe it's the movie's way of saying you can only change so many things when time traveling.  Maybe it's the movie's way of saying you can only change so many things in your own life and that some things don't change no matter what you do.


Thing(s) I would change: I don't get the chicken thing.  It's like Marty gets called a chicken and then all hell breaks loose in his mind and he can't think correctly.  In real life that probably be his down fall.  In the last one the address it and he changes which I guess is his character growth but I think it's lame.  I think there is a better way of showing character growth in Marty.

Favorite Line(s)/Scene:
Younger Dr. Emmett Brown: [running out of the room] 1.21 gigawatts! 1.21 gigawatts. Great Scott!
(Of course)

Marty McFly: Whoa. Wait a minute, Doc. Are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Precisely.
Marty McFly: Whoa. This is heavy.
Dr. Emmett Brown: There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

Marty McFly: [to Uncle Joey as a baby, playing in his playpen] So you're my Uncle Joey. Better get used to these bars, kid.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?

Stella Baines: You know, Marty, you look so familiar to me. Do I know your mother?
Marty McFly: [turning to look at Lorraine, his mother in the future] Yeah, I think maybe you do...

Dr. Emmett Brown: It's gonna be really hard waiting 30 years before I can talk to you about everything that's happened in the past few days. I'm really gonna miss you, Marty.
I didn't notice this but I guess that's hopefully how Doc choice Marty to be the one to go back in time.  It's not like they ever really explain there relationship besides he just kind hangs out with some old science guy.

Doc: The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe: women!
True Dat!

Young Biff: Why don't you make like a tree and get out of here?
Old Biff: It's *leave*, you idiot! "Make like a tree, and leave." You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
I feel like without this joke the Boondock Saints wouldn't have made its joke.

Doc: Marty, you're going to have to do something about those clothes. You walk around town dressed like that, you're liable to get shot.
Marty McFly: [gesturing a rope around his neck, weakly] Or hanged.
Doc: What idiot dressed you in that outfit?
Marty McFly: [smiles weakly] You did.

Marty McFly: Mr. Strickland! Mr. Strickland. It- it- it's me, sir. It's Marty!
S. S. Strickland: Who?
Marty McFly: [terrified] Marty McFly! Marty McFly! Don't you know me, sir? From school, sir!
S. S. Strickland: I've never seen you before in my life, but you look to me like a slacker!
See, these jokes never get old. . . .

Doc: Sometime today, old Biff will show up to give young Biff the Almanac. Above all, you must not interfere with that event. We must let Old Biff believe he succeeded, so that he'll leave 1955 and bring the DeLorean back to the future.
Good time thinking.

Doc: And in the future, we don't need horses. We have motorized carriages called automobiles.
Saloon Old Timer #3: If everybody's got one of these auto-whatsits, does anybody walk or run anymore?
Doc: Of course we run. But for recreation. For fun.
Saloon Old Timer #3: Run for fun? What the hell kind of fun is that?
Amen Saloon Old Timer #3

Man the hover board scene.  I'm not talking about the first one in the future but the second one in the past in the tunnel.  That amazed me when I first watched it.  I feel like this is amazing.  This type of scene where the protagonist needs something in the car happens in a bunch of movies and this one does it near perfectly.

Similar Movies/TV Shows: Donnie Darko, any time traveling movie really, so Time Machine, Looper, Predestination, Terminator 1 and 2, Butterfly Effect, Interstellar, and even Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  There's a bunch more but those were entertaining to me.  I feel like Back to the Future was a time travel genre staple which is why I'm reviewing it.

"Side" note:
Marty McFly: [showing the two boys how to play the shoot 'em up video game] I'll show you, kid. I'm a crack shot at this.
[shoots a perfect score with the electronic gun]
Video Game Boy #1: You mean you have to use your hands?
Video Game Boy #2: That's like a baby's toy!
Video Game Boy #1 is Elijah Wood