Posts Tagged ‘Emma Stone’

Short Take: Though it bares no relation, it has a chance to be as memorable and cherished as "Fried Green Tomatoes"

Director: Tate Taylor

Screenwriter: Tate Taylor, Kathryn Stockett (novel)

Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek

Length: 2h 17m

Synopsis: Rural Mississippi in the 1960s, before the civil rights movement gained much momentum, was a cesspool of racism and bigotry. In the town of Jackson, where every upper-middle class housewife hires the services of a negro maid to cook, clean, and raise her children, recent college grad Skeeter (Stone) decides to collect testimonies from the maids of her friends and neighbors. Looking to reveal the level of hardship these women go through on a daily basis, Skeeter’s project commences with the testament of a maid named Aibileen (Davis) who works for her friend Hilly (Howard). As the stories get darker Skeeter can’t help but become more involved, and before she knows it her sympathies for negroes ostracizes her. She and the women she interviews, with tensions growing throughout the town, grow increasingly disconcerted, but despite the dangerous risks they take they must believe that their collaboration is for a higher purpose. When fortune smiles and Skeeter’s work is published as a compilation of anonymous depositions a palpable sense of relief can be felt, as though the gravity of what they accomplished had drastically changed their world in an instant. However, the reality is that what they had done had not yet changed their world as they had hoped, but it did begin to change. And in a town where progress hadn’t been seen in ages, to see it again at all is enough to provide hope that they might get to see even more of it.

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Short Take: Self-aware without bragging about it. A genuinely romantic comedy.

Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

Screenwriter: Dan Fogelman

Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Jonah Bobo, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Analeigh Tipton, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon

Length: 1 hour, 58 minutes

Synopsis: Cal Weaver (Carell) is overcome with depression when his wife Emily (Moore) demands a divorce and reveals she slept with a coworker. After listening to Cal drunkenly profess his woes, fast-talking lothario Jacob (Gosling) decides to teach him how to get more women. As Cal regains his self-confidence, Jacob falls in love with Hannah (Stone), a determined young woman who has a specific vision for her future. Meanwhile, Cal’s son Robbie (Bobo) nurses a crush for his babysitter, Jessica (Tipton).

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Short Take: It's exactly what you'd want it to be.

Director: Robert Fleischer

Screenwriters: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland), Emma Stone (The Rocker, Superbad), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)

Length: 1h 20m

Synopsis: The world as we once knew it is over. The vast majority of people on earth have become zombies, leaving a remaining select few to wander about trying to survive. A teenage boy – referred to by his home town, Columbus, Ohio (Eisenberg) – gets picked up by a zombie-killing professional (Tallahassee) and the two destine to travel west across the U.S. in search of a zombie-free locale. On their way they encounter two girl con artists named Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin), and the two pairs henceforth oscillate between being trusting and distrusting of each other as they travel together. Zombies, as the common enemy, might prove to be the only thing the four have in common. Read the rest of this entry »