Tag: EvaLongoria

The Last Sunrise

Published on by DanielaLeave a comment

Oriah “Ry” Pera (Maia Reficco) was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis as a child. She takes medication to help with the seizures, but has noticed how numb it makes her feel in her day to day life. Now she is traveling alongside her mother Isolde (Eva Longoria) to Mallorca for a business trip and all she wants is some sort of normalcy. Enter Julian Garcia (Fernando Lindez). Julian is a local who works for his family’s fishing company. He’s everything that Ry is not and when sparks fly, the summer will end up changing her life forever.

Based on the novel by Anna Todd, I am actually surprised that I never got around to reading this before it’s release. After all, she was the mastermind behind the After series. Still I wasn’t expecting much going into it because it sounded like everything we’ve seen before with these young adult book to film adaptions. I put it on thinking it would serve as decent background noise while I was dealing with a migraine and cramps, but it ended up making me feel all the feels!

This is a romance and at the centre of the film is the relationship between Ry and Julian. Whilst they initially butt heads, they develop a genuine friendship and that turns into something more. Reficco and Lindez had a fiery chemistry with one another. From the very first moment they met on that nude beach to Ry singing No Scrubs to him at the bar and him showing her what he does at his job, I fell for them more and more. Some of their scenes really gave me butterflies and I hadn’t felt that since Tessa and Hardin.

I do wish there had been more development between Ry and Isolde. For mother and daughter, they seemed very surface level which may have been the point, but I would have still appreciated something more there. They could have decided to show us more of Isolde’s past in Mallorca and what brought her back to the island in a flashback. I did love the friendship between Ry and Amara (Chloe Sweetlove). It may have started off rushed, but it managed to steady and you could tell the two girls really cared for one another.

Another central part of the film focuses on Ry’s health. I’m not too familiar with epilepsy and all that goes along with it, but I do think they depicted the topic well. I read that Todd took experiences from her personal life and put them into the story so I appreciated the delicacy in which it was handled. I want to give Reficco props for her portrayal during those particular scenes. I think she performed them like a champ.

Prime have done it again! They have been on a roll with page to screen adaptions and this one is no exception. The Last Sunrise wasn’t perfect, but it more than set out with it’s intention of making me feel all weepy and quite frankly that is exactly what I was after.

Rating: ♥️♥️♥️.5

Oh. What. Fun.

Published on by DanielaLeave a comment

Every year at Christmas, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) goes out of her way to make it a special time for her family. Her husband Nick (Denis Leary) is clueless and spends most of his time in his garage. Claire’s eldest daughter Channing (Felicity Jones) thinks she’s better than everyone because she’s writing novels now while Channing’s husband Doug (Jason Schwartzman) is never taken seriously. Middle daughter Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) shows up with a new girlfriend each Christmas and youngest son Sammy (Dominic Sessa) has just been dumped. When her family actually forget about her, Claire packs a bag and sets off to find her own happiness.

The cast is absolutely stacked and that is a good enough reason to check this film out. In addition to the names mentioned above, there’s also Eva Longoria who stars as TV host and Claire’s hero Zazzy Tims, Danielle Brooks who portrays Morgan, a delivery driver who Claire meets shortly after she leaves her home and Maude Apatow is Mae-bell, the girl who breaks Sammy’s heart. Unfortunately many of these characters are kind of awful. They are mean, selfish and as a result do not have very many redeemable qualities. That made it hard to root for any of them. At times even I was yelling for Claire to just speak up and give her family a piece of her mind.

While the film was trying to stand out from others in its genre, it became evident that ideas had been borrowed from other, more well known titles. I saw snippets of Home Alone, The Family Stone and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It wasn’t obvious or in your face at least, but it would have been nice for some more originality.

I did appreciate the message they were trying to get across. The fact that mothers (and fathers or really anybody else who finds themselves in a similar situation) give it their all over the holidays can be under appreciated. At the beginning, I really felt for Claire because her family clearly didn’t even seem to really know her. Over time, however, I felt like this stance was being repeated a bit too much and that took away its importance.

Overall, while I did like Oh. What. Fun for the most part, though it didn’t quite hit the mark. Part comedy, part drama, it was as if the film didn’t know what it wanted to be. It could have made more of an impact if it had leaned a bit more into the drama side of it, but the problem was solved rather quickly.

Rating: ♥️♥️♥️