Articles Tagged “amy adams”
Julie & Julia
If there’s a secret ingredient, you can bet it’s butter. Butter makes everything better. And there is absolutely no substitute for it in cooking. Using something like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is a joke and an insult to cooks everywhere. So the fact that Nora Ephron’s latest concoction, Julie & Julia, doesn’t come out of the oven just right makes one wonder if the director didn’t somehow substitute oleo for the real deal.
Julie & Julia is based on two true stories, one following Julia Child’s rise to culinary magician and Julie Powell’s magical transformation, via the kitchen, from low-level bureaucrat to published writer. Rather than complement each other like fish and chips, the two stories are like pairing Kobe beef with a side of McDonald’s french fries.
Sunshine Cleaning
Back in 2007, Samuel L. Jackson starred in a movie called Cleaner, where he played the owner of a business that tidied up the biological mess of crime scenes. He was duped into helping cover up a murder, which kicked into gear the active and interesting plot. While Sunshine Cleaning leverages that same odd-but-curious career track, it’s an altogether different film. Not nearly as bright and fresh as the title would leave you to believe, Sunshine Cleaning is an overcast and melancholy film. Despite its grey tones, the film contains a spectrum of color thanks to the performances of Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin.The plot is largely flat and humble, and shows a disjointed family simply trying to get by, together. It’s accessible material, to be sure, and portrayed in the most artful of ways, but some may still find Sunshine Cleaning too overly dramatic and dreary a stroll.
