VALENTINE (2001)

From the director of URBAN LEGEND comes the safe story of some young ladies who were mean to a nerd at a middle school Valentine's Day dance and now (thirteen years later) one of the girls is murdered by a nerd in a cherub mask.  After that, all of the remaining girls get Valentine cards and then get picked off one by one in mildly imaginative ways until the big Valentine's Day party at the end.

Light blood, zero gore, zero nudity, very little cussing, zero mystery as to who the killer was, zero scares, unfunny attempts at humor, somebody referring to David Boreanaz as "not an angel".  On paper it sounds bad, but it wasn't actually that horrible.  Just a little bit horrible.  Never once did anything original happen, but at the same time I was mildly entertained.  Worth a watch for very non-demanding and very bored horror fans. 

IMDb says the budget was $29M, but that's gotta be incorrect cause there damn sure ain't $29 million on the screen!  I'd be shocked if the budget was over $10M.

BELOVED (2011)

Told over the course of 30+ years BELOVED starts in 1960's Paris where we met a young woman (the beautiful Ludivine Sagnier) who works at a women's shoe store and makes money on the side by sleeping with guys for cash.  She ends up falling in love with a young doctor and they have a daughter.  Life happens and the two separate, she takes the daughter.  Years later we met the daughter as an adult and she's pretty messed up.  Partying hard and in and out of troubled relationships.  The mother is now played by Catherine Deneuve and the father by Milos Forman, who continue there on-again-off-again sexual relationship despite the fact she's now married to some other dude.

One thing that struck me off guard, but I ended up enjoying, was the characters occasionally start singing.  Not full length musical numbers, but brief musical moments of dialogue or sometimes just, I guess you would call it narration.  The first time it happened, I was like "What the fuck is going on?", but then I came to expect and enjoyed it.  I don't know if the singing was done by the actual actors or not, but it seemed pretty believable to me.  It brought to mind the singing from THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.

I liked BELOVED, but at 139 minutes it overstayed it's welcome by like 20 minutes.  Also I never really cared for any of the characters.  Yeah, they've got problems, but it seemed to me that most of their problems were self-made.  They all had nice clothes and places to live, but yet they filled their time by getting shitfaced and feeling sorry for themselves.  So I guess in that sense it's pretty realistic!

Okay story that's never compelling, interesting little musical moments, Catherine Deneuve looking old but still beautiful, self-pity, good acting by Radivoje Bukvic and Paul Schneider.  Worth a watch, but nothing to go out of your way for.