The Notebook

The notebook story of an elderly lady’s life is being read to her, by her elderly partner in the hope that she will remember  and conquer her dementia.  Dementia is un-reverseable.  The story of the notebook, Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Alley (Rachel Mcadams) fall in love over a summer, however he is a country boy, and she is a very rich city girl.

A sort of cliche inside a cliche story, done moderately well.  I was extremely keen on the inside story (the notebook), rather than the outside wrapper of Noah overcoming Alley’s old age.  This is in no way a spoiler, it is made quite clear in the first 30 minutes the two elderly’s are Noah and Alley, it does not try to patronise you with a surprise gotchya.

Ryan Gosling a country boy, who works on a lumber made you really feel for him; from asking her to a date to all of his downtimes.  His dream is to get the run down house nearby in sea brook, do it up, and then Alley can paint and drink tea on the porch.  Rachel McAdams was brilliant in fighting off her parents and was rather good at kissing….there is a lot of kissing!  I could not imagine Alley and Noah played by anyone else!

I would have probably enjoyed it more, without the wrapper story of Noah and Alley in their age, however there would be no use for a notebook.  It was slightly ambitious having two cliches, upper class loves lower class, and my love life forgetting our story.  I did eventually have feelings for the wrapper story but it was a little too late.  All of the cinematography was quite amazing, flapping birds in slow-motion and moon shining on the water.   Incomparable to the English Patient.
IMDB The Notebook

Rating 6.6/10

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Green Zone

Matt Damon is Chief Roy Miller, an American Army Team Leader in the Iraq war.  His team’s job is to use intelligence sources to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD).   Each site is empty and intelligence deemed false.  Miller is angry at the time and effort wasted.  When Miller finds a note book and a journalist he begins to investigate.  The Green zone is the central area of Bagdad that was the government centre for the Iraq coalition. This area has been taken by Americans as America try to manufacture democracy.

The story takes a few twists and turns and is engaging.  Unfortunately the ending action is bloated and drags on.  Paul Greengrass is using his usual camera techniques that drive me crazy.  We found that the effect of running everywhere with the camera man severely hampered our enjoyment of this film.  Not only could we find ourselves infront of Matt Damon in the corridor and a second later behind him and a couple of seconds later right beside him which was confusing enough, we had to work out through the screaming of frightened Iraqis the machine gun fire and helicopter noise, who was shot and where we are.  Yes ok if you want to experience war like it is first hand but in that case I would play Call of Duty on my Xbox.
IMDB Green Zone

Trailer

Rating: 6.2/10

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