Flipped

“It’s really dark and brooding.  You’ll love it,” Erik, when suggesting a movie to me.

He was right, I love movies with sad endings and the depressing guy-loses-girl tales.  I’ve always found happy,cheery movies to be naive and unrealistic.  That’s why I want my first review to be about Flipped, it isn't anything like my usual films.

At it’s heart Flipped is a simple love story.  At a very young age Bryce and his family move across the street from Juli.  It’s love at first sight for Juli, but for Bryce, not so much.  He does everything he can to not have to talk to her.

And then in 8th grade that all starts to change.  Feelings begin to, wait for it...flip.  Yeah, that’s right.  Bryce starts to find he has feelings for Juli and Juli begins to think Bryce lacks real character.

That’s what happens, what drives the story, but that’s really just the surface of things.  There’s so much more below that.  The themes and characters in this film are deep.  The most prominent theme in the film is a question, “What makes someone a good person?”  Everyone in this film asks and answers this question.  It’s behind what makes Juli cool toward Bryce and Bryce flip. The film questions how much would some one give up for family, examines the beauty of art and in one scene we see a heartless father question his choice of giving up the music he loved for something he doesn’t really seem to enjoy.

Children actors frighten me.  Macaulay Culkin, Haley Joel Osment, that kid from the Omen - you know the kids I’m talking about.  They’ve all got that plaster look on their faces and feel like little people pretending to be adults, pretending to be kids.  It’s weird.  I was blown away by the kids who have the two leading roles in this film (Not sure if they are they as good as the girl from True Grit, but they didn’t get the opportunity to steal a scene from Jeff Bridges.)  I found myself captivated by the story.  Every step along the way it felt real, because of these two.  Bryce played by Callan McAuliffe sometimes falters but Julie, Madeline Carroll, carries him through each scene.  From what I’ve seen it’s pretty hard to find good child actors and this movie showcases some of the best I’ve seen in a while.

So who’s this for?  I recommend this to everyone.  It’s one of the few PG movies we’ll probably review so there’s very little offensive material here.  It’s the kind of film you could recommend to your parents, or watch with your kids depending on where you’re at in the whole life cycle thing.  It’s a film with humor, serious subject matter, believable characters, a good story and actual heart.  It’s occasionally preachy and sometimes overly sentimental. I didn’t think it detracts from the value of the film as It’s set in a very sentimental and overly optimistic time: the 1950’s . It’s worth checking out, no matter what kind of movies you like.  Sometimes it’s OK to be happy.  Just don’t get carried away.

Enjoy

-Josh

“Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss; but every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and once you do, nothing will ever compare.”  Chet Duncan (John Mahoney), Flipped (2010)

Flipped (2010)
Directed by Rob Reiner
Staring: Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe
Trailer: Flipped

I like the poster for this movie.  It’s one you should look at after the film is done to get how good it is.

Who are the Nuns?

“I’m not sure how I feel about this movie, but I really like the characters and the cinematography. Oh, and the script, the script is really good.” - Suzanne, while watching Brick.

Isn’t that what makes a good movie? Sure there’s more to it than that; good acting, lines we can quote, and maybe a lovable, minority sidekick who says vaguely racist comments, perpetuating the stereotypes we’ve grown to love.

Welcome to Nuns on a Bus. Who are we? What will you find here?

We think that every good endeavor needs a purpose here’s ours: we want to make sure that good movies don’t go unseen. we’ve stumbled across a lot of good movies years after they were released and thought, “How does this happen? How did we miss this movie.”

The answer is simple, no one told us about it. Advertising for a film is one of the most expensive portions of the entire process and as a result it is generally done selectively and briefly. A small film without a huge financial backing requires substantial word of mouth to make an impact. As a result they have a smaller audience. So here we are, the Nuns on a Bus, we will be your word of mouth. We’ll watch every film ever made and review all of them for you. Ok, that might be a bit of stretch, but we’ll watch the ones we can, new and old. We’ll point you to the ones we think you should see and away from the ones that might not be worth your time.

We’re making a lot of promises, so here’s a few more. We promise not to let our personal feelings about actors, directors and producers spoil our reviews. We won’t use phrases like, ‘Worst film, ever’ or ‘Can’t act to save his life.’ or even worse, ‘This is the greatest film of this decade.’ we’ll do our best to be objective when we can and when we can’t, we’ll leave our opinions out of the reviews and put it at the end for film commentary.

So who are we?

We’re film watchers. We want good stories and strong characters delivered by good actors. Everything else is just frosting. We’ve got a broad taste and we’re pretty open-minded. We don’t need happy endings or famous actors. To us films are a lot more about how you feel when you’re done than how much money they rake in.

That’s who we are. The Nuns, Karl and I, will be here, ever week or so letting you know what movies we’ve seen, which ones we loved and which we’ve hated.

I’ll keep my ear to the ground and hope to keep seeing you!

- Josh

“I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.” - Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Brick