Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) is an 8-year-old girl living in Australia with her drunken mother and taxidermy obsessed father.  One day she decides by random selection to mail Max Jerry Horovitz (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), an obese man living in Ney York that suffers from an inability to discern subtlety (i.e. Asperger’a Syndrome), and they become pen pals.  The film follows their 20-year relationship through postage and their lives over that time.

This is a stop-motion film from Australia about these two individuals who randomly become their own best friends and the ups and downs that come with a relationship like this.  I find it interesting that somehow people are able to be so frank about themselves and their feelings in such a distant scenario.  It’s easy to assume that people would be less personal and more superficial with their conversations.  However, over this medium where it took a week (sometimes more) for everyone to get a reply I find that people are willing to delve into their personal experiences so fluently.  I guess the truth of the matter is that in order for relationships, like this one, to flourish one must be open from the get go about yourself and that’s what made this story so special for me.

While I was watching this movie I found myself wondering what if this film were set in 2010?  In a world where twitter, facebook and myspace available to Mary as well as Max I wonder how different their lives would have been.  Would they still suffer from a deep dark depression based on their lack of friends?  Would they have have even met and interacted at all?  It’s an interesting thought.

The truth of the matter is that no matter how you look at it this is a fantastic movie.  It begins with a simple premise of a young girl in Australia reaching out for some form of friendly interaction with this forty-four year old man in New York.  Eventually they become the best of friends and along with a narrator (Barry Humphries) that made me feel like he was reading me a bedtime story that I was never able to shut my eyes to due to how interesting it was.  It’s thanks to the narrator that I began to realise exactly why the filmmakers decided to make this story into a stop-motion film.  The claymation made the movie feel more like we were shown some illustrations of these characters, like in a story book, and were imagining the inbetween actions that were being animated for us on screen.  It fit the story perfectly.

If you’re into stories that are centred around how people interact then this is definitely for you.  Even though it’s an animated film I can suggest not having the children around since the movie contains a small amount of graphic language and a few odd depictions of things like prostitutes laying eggs and babies coming out of glasses of beer.

VERDICT? RENT IT AT LEAST.

IMDB says 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 91%

I say 8.5/10

George Simmons [Adam Sandler] is a popular comedian and actor who just found out that he has a rare type of cancer and will probably die.  This forces him to look back on his life and realise that he has become lonely and unable to connect with another human being.  He decides to employ Ira Wright [Seth Rogen] to help write him jokes for his stand-up and be his personal assistant as he tries to go back on stage.

This is Judd Apatow’s third film that he has written and directed himself – the first two being The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up.  I love this movie.  It features such honesty about the idea of celebrity and dealing with death and loneliness.  We are treated to so many moments that you can’t help but shed a tear and then laugh hysterically.  Since we’re dealing with a film about a batch of comedians there is no lack of joking in the film, and it kind of shows you how much you love seeing friends just sit around throwing ideas around and bullshitting around trying to be funny.  There is absolutely no topic that is off-bounds with these people which allows them to be really funny and even when they end up not being funny you laugh anyways.

The film tackles so many characters and their personal and professional development.  Adam Sandler’s character has to deal with attempting to create this personal connection with Ira.  Ira is trying to break into the business.  Laura [Leslie Mann], who is the love of George’s life and his ex-girlfriend, tries to figure out her feelings towards him which are resurfacing as she finds out about George’s illness.  We also have Leo [Jonah Hill], Daisy [Aubrey Plaza] and Mark [Jason Schwartzman] all playing characters who are all at different stages in their professional comedic careers helping ground the leads in the film by giving us these intermediate positions that we can only imagine George was once and Ira will become after the credits start rolling.

I found that looking around the internet most people were either okay or loving this movie, but most had the same grievance – which is that the end was drawn out.  However, what I think is that the last twenty minutes was really the serious piece of the movie with the least amount of the comedians ‘shooting-the-shit’ mainly because it was a really serious moment for our main characters where George and Laura try to fix things up and Laura and Clarke [Eric Bana] start to deal with their marital problems and George and Ira’s relationship finally has a truly tense moment and all of these three things are resolved almost immediately.  Therefore forcing the film to slow down and take it one at a time and at times even deal with it in a really immature way since we’re watching comedians.

I am hoping with all honesty that Judd Apatow gets some real credit for this movie.  This is leaps and bounds better than The 40 Year Old Virgin and definitely a big step up from Knocked Up.  This is already in my mind as a must-buy for my personal DVD collection and I want at least an award for writing for this movie – at the very least a nomination.  Judd Apatow has always been the funny man that’s entertained us but he’s never really dealt with a real issue in his movies and this is the perfect example of how you can get the audience in with an entertaining movie and at the same time deal with a character study of the status and life of a celebrity.  The cancer factor takes a back seat in this movie.  Please don’t go into this movie thinking you’re going to need a tissue to deal with the cancer pieces of the movie, if you take tissue you’ll need it to deal with the fact that you’ll be laughing yourself into a hospital bed.

Overall this is a must watch for fans of stand-up comedy and fans of any of the actors in the movie.  If you think you like to laugh watch this movie.  I’m nominating it as my favourite comedy of 2009 so far, and I don’t think there is much left to compete with it.

IMDB says 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 68%

I say 9.0/10

Henry [Eric Bana] is a time traveller who can’t control when or where he travels. At the age of six he finds out that he can time travel and has done it ever since. One day he travels back in time to see his future wife, Clare [Rachel McAdams], when she is six and the film follows this magical love story between Henry and Clare.

This movie doesn’t hide anything from you when you read the premise. It’s a genuine romance story with a science fiction element which is dealt with seriously and therefore brings up a lot of interesting special dynamics in the relationship between Henry and Clare. For example one of the biggest questions you ask yourself is would they get together if he hadn’t travelled back in time to meet her as a six year old? Or one that is constantly addressed throughout the movie; how do you think Clare feels having to live with this constant inconsistency? When you think about it while we’re following Henry around on his shifting in and out of time periods Clare is left sitting at home waiting for the next time she gets to see him.

To be honest I think a lot of men will take their significant others to see this film, for obvious reasons, and while the women will love the movie men will have one of two responses. Men will either: (a) decide to try and pick apart the story due its use of time travel; or (b) realise that it’s a sappy romance film and actually pay attention to the characters and fall in love with Mr. Bana just like how Ms. McAdams did. I personally fall into the (b) category but I must warn all the (a) men out there and ask you to point that logic meter to any film you like about time travel. Time travel can make or break a film depending on how you decide to look at it. The manipulation of time makes you constantly have to think about who knows what when and which preceded what; it makes the story very convoluted and therefore makes it hard to believe things. Personally it’s a plot device that I like in a lot of films but is best used in moderation to help keep us all in tune with the movie. Therefore this is why this movie fails just a little bit because Henry is jumping in and out of time nearly every second. I love the effects whenever we see him disappear but at the same time I could almost predict that anytime he goes just a little bit out of frame he was going to leave us right then and there.

One thing that will take you for a loop in the movie is that not only does Clare love Henry, even with his condition, but she also tolerates it. However, eventually Henry decides that he needs it to stop due to its inconvenience, as you would imagine, and he seeks out Dr. David Kendrick [Stephen Tobolowsky] to help him. Now I think the world of Mr. Tobolowsky and love most of his work that I’ve seen and when he appeared in the film I couldn’t help but throw my fists in the air with an awesome sound effect going off in my head. Even though he had little to do in the movie I definitely loved every moment he was on the screen.

Other than the expected tear jerker the film is genuinely a good film and definitely the perfect film to take the misses out to this week when she starts nagging you about all the action movies she’s had to endure in the last few months.

IMDB says 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 36%

I say 7.5/10