Particle Fever epitomizes the wide-eyed enthusiasm and awe of a “heck yeah, science!” sentiment we can all get behind. The documentary is a breathtaking look at one of the most significant scientific experiments in recent times and one that captured the public’s imagination like few others. It focuses on nothing less than the search for answers about the nature of our universe by looking for the smallest particle in the microverse, the elementary particle called the Higgs boson/a.k.a. “the God particle.”
Directed by Mark Levinson, a physicist, and produced by another physicist involved in the experiment, David Kaplan, Particle Fever makes grasp-defyingly big concepts such as what are the origins of the universe and how is matter created accessible to the viewer. Rather than relying on clever infographics, Particle Fever makes us understand *why* this experiment matters and makes the scientists’ mixed emotions of giddiness and apprehension feel palpable.
The film introduces us to several scientists at the CERN lab in Switzerland, where the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, resides. CERN’s “accelerating science,” motto is quite fitting. As one of the physicists in the film points out, “You know it’s big, but not until you see it do you actually understand how big.” The collider is the world’s largest machine, a 17-mile ring of magnets designed to crash particles into each other at unbelievable speeds. There is a network of 100,000 computers world-wide just to handle the data; 10,000 scientists from more than 100 countries worked on the project, including people from “enemy” countries like Pakistan and India.
The fact that there is a veritable mystery at the core of the film makes the suspense and awe all the more understandable. The search for the presence and size of Higgs boson matters tremendously because it would prove or disprove the so-called Standard Model, a theory about the nature of the universe, that could only, oh, be the end of physics as we know it. No big deal. Whether supersymmetry or multi-verse ends up being the correct model has huge implications, and as one of the scientists puts it, this could mean that he has literally wasted his entire life studying something that may not even be true. Talk about momentous!
Despite its colossal subject matter, Particle Fever remains profoundly human, from the trepidations and child-like excitement of the scientists who have spent decades working on this, to the sight of Peter Higgs crying upon the discovery of something he had only theorized about. In other words, it spans the universe from the smallest to the largest. Higgs boson, the smallest particle known to exist, is also perhaps sort of misguidedly called the “God particle,” because it is the essential building block of the universe. How apropos that to understand the grandest of the grand, one has to find the tiniest of the tiny.
Category Archives: Reviews
Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts 2014
My coverage of the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts 2014
Facing Fear, directed by Jason Cohen
Facing Fear recounts of tale of crossed paths, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance staffer Matthew Boger meets reformed neo-Nazi Tim Zaal to discuss a talk by Zaal. In the process of comparing notes about their days in LA, when Matthew was a homeless street kid, they realize that Zaal was the neo-Nazi who kicked Matthew in the face and left him for dead. The film is not only an examination of forgiveness, but a rare glimpse into the psychology of hate. “Violence made me feel big, elated. It was like a drug, the adrenaline of it.” And like a drug, it stopped working, Zaal explains. In a particularly poignant scene, he recounts how seeing one of his own kids talking like a racist made him feel profoundly ashamed and disgusted. It was the epiphany that turned him away from the movement he lived in for decades. He is humbled by Matthew’s ability to forgive him and recounts the flip-side as well, which is how difficult it was for him to forgive himself.
Cave Digger, directed by Jeffrey Karoff
There is a fine line between madness and genius, the story goes, and Ra Paulette is the epitome of the ardent, borderline maniacal zeal that burns inside many artists. Ra digs cathedral-like art caves into the sandstone cliffs of New Mexico.The labor is grinding and physically arduous beyond measure: he toils for years on each one. The patrons who commission his work do not share in his obsession and there is ensuing friction, a wry commentary on the push-and-pull between art and business. They want to have input; Ra says he is not a “paintbrush.” Valid points on both ends, indeed. Tired of taking commissions, Ra starts a massive self-funded 10-year cave project. Cave Digger could have been the live action version of the Bhagavad Gita, with Ra’s insistence on not being tied to the results but just enjoying the process of creation.
Karama Has No Walls, directed by Sara Ishaq
In a similar vein to The Square, Karama Has No Walls explores a tragedy that left 53 people dead at Change Square in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, during the 2011 Arab Spring. The short shines a light on the often-forgotten cost of the peaceful protests. While the protestors themselves were peaceful, they were subjected to incredible violence by a regime refusing to concede defeat. The image of snipers shooting at a crowd from above is a scathing commentary on political oppression and the high cost of liberty.
The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life, directed by Malcolm Clarke
“Music is a dream. Music is God.” The lady is number 6 is Alice Herz Sommer, a 109 year old pianist and Holocaust survivor. A soul-stirring paean to the transformative power of music, the film documents Alice’s unbridled love for it. Her love is unmarred because music literally saved her life as she was spared from the worst fate in the concentration camps (the Nazis exploited her gift). Alice’s natural ebullience make the film thoroughly engrossing.
AND THE WINNER IS…
Facing Fear is the most compelling because of the sheer scope of emotions and human experience it covers: from Matthew’s own feelings about his sexuality, making peace with a family that put him out on the street at 13, and Tim’s acceptance of a life spent living a way that he now finds abhorrent. Facing Fear is true to its title. Skeletons are big and small, monsters hide in the darkest recesses of our hearts, and the ultimate redemption that also lies there as well, if we know how to look for it.
* We were unable to review Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall.
DC Tattoo Expo 2014
The Square Documentary Review
The Square, a documentary by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) is a heady tour-de-force look at the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Initially covering only Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, Noujaim continued filming throughout the summer and the next tumultuous two years, capturing the the Egyptian Army’s removal of the elected President Mohammad Morsi. The theme of the film is unequivocally revolution, a loaded word that has inched its way towards meaningless and obsolescence, yet here comes roaring into vibrancy. The Square is an engrossing look at the lives of several activists who remain doggedly staunch in their quest for change despite increasingly harrowing circumstances and a constantly changing political landscape. Perhaps surprisingly, the film, while grounded in realism, is unapologetic in its idealism. These activists, although fighting for political change, are actually about as soured on politics and politicians as one can be – the change they seek out and their motivations are universally human and refreshingly not power-centered.
The main character in The Square is “the people,” a word referenced many times and one with an actual significance very unlike the cynical, hollow place it holds in Western parlance. Instead of merely a cheap ploy used by grandiloquent politicians to play upon the emotional heartstrings of a vulnerable public, it is something very much of an undeniable reality. The sight of literally millions of people lining Tahrir Square is moving beyond measure and illustrative of what “we are united,” can precipitate. It’s impossible not to wonder why this has yet to happen in the US and makes palpable to the viewer how a dictator in power for over 30 years can be deposed by a mass protest of such unbridled will.
The “star” of the film, if there is one, is 20-something Ahmed Hassan, an impossibly ebullient working-class youth. Facing increasing disillusionment and personal danger, he remains optimistic even as the regimes change but the circumstances of the people do not. The Square eloquently shows how impossibly fraught and elusive that very concept is and how revolution is hard to come by in a world mired in politics. As he poignantly puts it in regard to the Muslim Brotherhood’s maneuvering into power, “while we were dying in the streets, they were making deals.”
The Square also does an excellent job of demystifying the headlines for a Western audience and untangling a very complex political situation without relying on pundits for commentary. Ultimately, it drives home the point that figure heads nary make a country – all the country’s institutions are the regime. It also portrays the strong role that the military plays in Egypt, especially in their ability to turn a revolution into a war, as Ahmed explains. The fact that the protestors all come from really different backgrounds – for example, actor Khaled Abdalla is foreign-born and of an activist background and Magdy is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood – serves to underline that divisions were not present during the initial protests against Mubarak. “We were united…one hand.”
Despite what seems to be a political quagmire with nothing immediately positive to offer to the people of Egypt, The Square will leave you feeling uplifted by what “the people” can do to effect change. Ahmed explains that they, ”created a conscience, not a political force. We created a culture of protesting and gave the people ownership of their freedom.” The Square is really about something fundamental inside people that moves them to fight injustice. Tahrir Square remains a symbolic peace of land not because of what circumstances it brought about but because it showed what a people united can do. While this may sound incredibly simplistic, The Square proves that it is still something that can take place.
Dirty Wars Film Blurb
Blurb on the film Dirty Wars for BYT’s Top 13 Movie Superlatives of 2013
Jeremy Scahill, a veteran war journalist and the national security correspondent for The Nation, shines a light on the shadowy outfit known as JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, better known as the people who killed Osama bin Laden in this especially timely and weighty documentary, with the recent controversy over the drone program. JSOC, in place for decades, was created to essentially function outside the purview of any legal or military rule, but Dirty Wars makes a strong and shocking case for it reaching the apogee of its power during Obama’s terms, enjoying a level of impunity unheard of before, targeting assumed terrorists, launching drone attacks, and killing innocent civilians in countries with which the US is not even officially militarily engaged. Having chanced upon the very concept of JSOC in 2010, Scahill is stunned to see it come defiantly into the spotlight, taking credit for bin Laden’s capture, and turning its previously-camera-shy commanders into heroes. Ultimately, Dirty Wars, as the title indicates is about global war being waged in the name of national security by an organization with almost no accountability, except to the President, and one prone to night raids and “kill lists” without regard to nationality or legality. This was the case with American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who were both killed by drones. Dirty Wars is the grotesque flipside of Zero Dark Thirty: piles of bodies do nothing to make this kind of warfare seem just and blow the concept of “collateral damage” to smithereens.
Let The Fire Burn Movie Review
My Review Of Let The Fire Burn
Let The Fire Burn is an incendiary documentary on the tragic standoff between MOVE, a “radical” black group and the city of Philadelphia in the early 80s. Director Jason Osder eschews narration in favor of weaving together archival news footage, city hearings footage, and a MOVE film to create a visceral, eloquent, yet even-handed portrayal of events on the day of May 13th, 1985.
The film is a trenchant look at how a series of incredibly bad political decisions resulted in a fiery fiasco that claimed the lives of six adults and five children and led to the destruction of 61 homes in West Philadelphia. Let The Fire Burn is a subtle exploration of race tensions, police action, and terrorist labeling—the audience is left to draw its own conclusions, although answers as to how something so egregiously grievous came to pass are hard to come by.
MOVE’s first incarnation in the mid 70s is as progressive political organization concerned with issues impacting the black community. They do not espouse violence; they are not a religious cult. In fact, they come across as benign as any other hippy-dippy commune with their rhetoric of unity, love, and harmony. Their kids do not wear clothes and only eat raw food and the community does not believe in using modern luxuries, but that might well be the extent of their singularity. The heavily dogmatic component is definitely not present, especially in a religious sense. They all take the last name of their leader, John Africa, and while concerned with “the system” and its corruption, they are a far cry from the militant organization the city seems hell-bent on portraying them as. One cannot help but feel that had conservative Mayor Frank Rizzo not made it his tenure’s goal to dismantle MOVE, this story would have read rather differently.
In a particularly chilling interview, he says “we’re backing off too much,” clearly referencing and the handling of the Black Panther movement, which he derides as not being authentic. He openly mocks its members who upon moving to Africa, Cuba, and China, he claims, were all too quick to want to return back home, where they would still have more freedom than elsewhere. Rizzo’s bellicose stance culminates in a raid on the MOVE compound in 1978 that claims the life of one police officer and as a result nine of MOVE members are convicted for murder. Three police officers go on trial for brutally assaulting one of the MOVE members and are found innocent, despite evidence to the contrary. It is not hard to see that MOVE’s claims of police persecution and brutality are not merely victim-posturing and hold a good deal of truth—in fact, much of the rhetoric employed by city officials in the movie will have you scratching your head, feeling like you have fallen into some sort of an anachronistic time warp back to the 50s.
MOVE soon regroups in a new compound in West Philadelphia and they are radicalized as a result of events in 1978 and the now escalated all-out-war between them and the city. They build a “bunker” on the roof of a house, which the police keep referring to as some sort of a “tactical advantage,” though one would be hard pressed to see that in a structure more akin to a ramshackle wood cabin. They set up speaker systems and harass the neighbors by blaring messages day and night—as one neighbor ruefully points out, “we are pawns, caught in between.” On May 13th, 1985, the police and Philadelphia’s first black mayor, Wilson Goode, move in on the group. What happens next is unfathomable—after dropping explosives on the roof of the house and water-cannoning it for days (a water cannon drops thousands of gallons of water *a minute*) and pumping tear gas, a 10 story high blaze erupts. This is when we get to the most macabre quote of the film: “There was a decision to let the fire burn.”
Let The Fire Burn does not offer any explanations for how things went so cataclysmically out of control, but MOVE’s story is as relevant today as it was two decades ago. How a city could wage war against its own citizens and endanger the lives of adults and children with so little consideration is shocking but also not as outlandish of a possibility as one would think, the film shows. The painful public self-appraisal Philadelphia went through in the aftermath of the tragedy was necessary, yet the audience is able to understand how the perfect storm of truculent politics precipitated volatility and ensuing violence of immeasurable magnitude.
God Loves Uganda Film Review
God Loves Uganda, a documentary by Roger Ross Williams, turns its lens onto a new kind of Western exploitation taking place in Africa. Spearheaded by American Evangelicals, the cultural exploitation is no less damaging or disturbing than the plundering of resources and people that has decimated Africa for centuries. The film is about much more than what caused Uganda to be the first country to introduce anti-gay legislation into Parliament that makes homosexuality punishable by death, although it makes the link between America’s hate-filled religious right rhetoric and the spread of homophobia in the country. God Loves Uganda is really about the insidious way in which something as seemingly well-meaning as missionary work has chilling implications for a country still attempting to shake the shackles of Western exploitation. It also is a very probing look into the workings of a mega church.
The film introduces us to International House Of Prayer, a.k.a. IHOP, a religion-in-a-box mega church that would surely match the pancake franchise in its customer outreach. Led by Lou Engle, IHOP is the prototype of the modern-day Christian fundamentalist mega church—in one word, a corporation no different in its methods, resources, and structure than a Fortune 500 company, except in that its media machine would surely be the envy of any corporation. Jono Hall, IHOP’s Media Director, explains he has over 1,000 full-time staff, split into 80 departments; IHOP broadcasts 1 million video hours a month to a 117 nations. No activity goes undocumented on film; millions of dollars go into messaging alone.
What exactly is the message, you might ask? Couched in nebulous and euphemistic terms like “spreading the good news,” or “The Call” campaign (12 hour pray-a-thons to put an end to abortion, for example), the message goes far beyond a merely religious one. This is where the genius of God Loves Uganda really comes through: it reveals the blatantly jingoist language used by the missionaries themselves. The missionaries in Africa keep referring to themselves as an “army” and this kind of rather violence-connoting ethos is scarily illustrated in the scene where firebrand anti-gay preacher Martin Ssempa is literally rolling on the ground, punching the floor, as his disciples all scream, “No to Obama!” for his “pro-gay stance.” A young missionary describes her mission as “imparting a DNA of prayer and worship,” and like DNA, she explains, she wants to “replicate values.” In another equally hair-raising quote, the missionaries explain how the fact that Uganda is nation where 50% of the people are under 15 years old would allow them to “multiply ourselves.” Words like “strategy” and other rather militaristic language only serve to dispel the myth that there is anything particularly spiritual or elevated about IHOP’s goals. At best, this is pure jingoism and all God Loves Uganda does is point a camera at it, without any commentary.
The jingoism also expresses itself in the way the missionaries hone in on specific communities. Engle calls Uganda, “a firepot of spiritual renewal and revival.” Reverend Kapya Kaoma, a priest and former Ugandan now residing in the U.S., who cannot return home because his research into the influence of the religious right there has made it dangerous for him to do so, calls it preying on vulnerable communities and enforcing values on them at the cost of receiving aid. Kaoma explains how the mega churches seek out especially neglected communities, ones unreached by anyone else, and turn them into “dumping places for extreme ideas.” By building schools, orphanages, and hospitals, the American Evangelicals are becoming all-powerful in Uganda and reliance on their help makes any sort of dissent an impossibility. As Kaoma very poignantly states about the young missionaries, “All they know are the Biblical verses they have memorized, but people listen to them because they are white and American.” And even worse, extremist preachers like “the gay agenda is to make your children gay and destroy the world” Scott Lively, who as Kaoma points out, is literally a nobody in the US got an audience in Uganda’s Parliament where he was directly instrumental in urging PM David Bahati to introduce the anti-gay bill. The damage is done in other areas too. During the Clinton administration, HIV reduction was hugely successful; with the advent of Bush’s abstinence-only programs, HIV rates once again began to creep up. Abstinence-only programs were the only ones receiving funding so adhering to the religious right party line was the only choice Uganda had.
God Loves Uganda is a daring film and a look into what happens when religion is used to fan the flames of hatred and violence. There is no “good news” to be found in the message of IHOP and others of its ilk; one either goes along with their message of intolerance or one is heading towards sure damnation. It’s a highly ironic given that the West has plundered Africa to the point of making it hell on Earth.
BYT Fall Movie Guide
Contribution to the BYT Fall Movie Guide:
Spark: A Burning Man Story (VOD-theatrical release TBD) – This documentary by Steve Brown rekindles the bright-eyed dreamer ethos that we want to believe is what the giant festival in the desert is all about. In recent years, Burning Man has been much maligned for its seeming descent into the dreaded c-word (commercialization) and for no longer being the counter-cultural celebration of a Mad Max-like dystopia it once was. Spark will make a believer out of you; a celebration of the artists who toil assiduously at making the giant sculptures that end up destroyed in a pyre of glory, it is a true roots revival of what Burning Man is still really about.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (November 1) – If you don’t know who Slavoj Zizek is, well, he is probably the coolest academician around at present, even if you won’t find him giving TED Talks. The irreverent and brilliant Czech philosopher/ideology-unraveler follows up The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema with yet another thoroughly engrossing and entertaining film (and don’t call this a documentary…it’s a one-man show). Joining forces with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, it runs like a cultural studies student’s wet dream, a parsing out of ideology in the most gloriously hilarious way.
Film Review: Salinger
Salinger, the ten-years-in-the-making documentary by Shane Salerno, is a surprisingly moving and thorough look at the life of one of American’s most beloved iconic writers. It is a must-see film for anyone who appreciates the child birthing-like nature of writing and its nearly supernatural ability to give voice to our shared humanity. Surprisingly because there was a veneer of sensationalism/celebrity-
Salinger makes a lot of how World War 2 shaped J.D. Salinger, calling it the “ghost in the machine of all his stories” and rightfully so—this is the meat of the film, providing an unparalleled glimpse into something that affected the author’s work profoundly. Salinger was very patriotic and determined to serve in the war and voluntarily enlisted, not even imagining the horrors that lay ahead. Being a part of D Day (while carrying six chapters of Catcher In The Rye in his pocket) and the ensuing 200 days of battle, he fought in the fields of France aptly called “the meat grinder,” where routinely 200 men would die in the span of a couple of hours. Witnessing the sheer desecration of humanity in camps abandoned by the Nazis left lasting scars on Salinger’s mind and he suffered a nervous breakdown in Normandy. His treatment and the themes of “craziness” and damage to innocence would make an indelible mark on his writing, finding its way into almost all of his stories. Salinger’s coverage of the author’s war years also shines a light on his complexity as a character—despite his later reputation as a recluse, he was affable, close to his fellow soldiers, and very in tune with the perspective of both the victims and the perpetrators, especially when he started working as a war investigator in the aftermath. He also met Hemingway there who was very encouraging of the young author.
The only significant way in which Salinger sputters is when the film starts to psychoanalyze Salinger, ascribing motivations without much ground for the conjecturing and the giving of voice to opposing views makes for a rather meandering “was he or was he not” narrative. For example, a lot of time is spent on Salinger being the “Howard Hughes of his day” yet aside from choosing to live in the woods, one would be hard pressed to see what other “idiosyncracies” he displayed. As for the recluse moniker–by all appearances, he was far from it. His retreat to Cornish, New Hampshire was a rather pragmatically-driven quest for find peace and silence to continue to work. He certainly seemed to be social enough in the town itself. He protective of just how much the public extracted from him, granting interviews on his own terms and with the reporters he trusted and staying actively plugged in. Salinger also suggests that Salinger IS Holden Caulfield and that all of his writing is essentially autobiographical, which does not seem to be of tremendous relevance nor anything specifically endemic to Salinger as an author. As Salinger once aptly put it, “I am a fiction writer, not a counselor.”
Salinger also delves rather deeply into Salinger’s relationships with women (specifically younger women). To its credit, the movie does not attempt to sensationalize those relationships under a queasiness-inducing rubric, but it does suggest, perhaps groundlessly, that he was platonically attracted to the innocence he saw in them and once he perceived them as “women,” he grew disinterested. It also uncovers the author’s deep devotion to the Vedanta Hindu religious tradition and his daily meditation. There are some rather ham-handed plot-propelling devices too, like the constant flashing of one and the same picture or of the image of an actor sitting behind a typewriter in a giant movie theatre. The part of the film that delves into all of the killers who claimed that The Catcher In The Rye made them do it (John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman) also seemed entirely out of place with the rest of the narrative and thrown in for pure shock value.
Salinger offers an enthralling look into the creative process of the author. Salinger was really committed to writing a “good book and not just a best seller,” when he set out to write Catcher In The Rye. He was fanatically perfectionistic in his approach and fiercely protective of his work, to the point of being maniacal even about the punctuation. He toiled assiduously, doggedly writing all day, every day, to the detriment of anyone and anything around him. Ultimately, like his fellow creative geniuses, he espoused passion—“there has to be fire between the words.”
Salinger is a paean to lovely mystery that writing really is and a tribute to a man who wanted to be known for his work rather than for himself. The big revelation of Salinger’s end is that a lot of the late author’s works will be released starting 2015, including the completion of the Holden Caulfield and the Glass families stories as well as books on the Vedanta religious tradition.
I Give It A Year–Movie Review
My I Give It A Year film review
Hey, look, a droll and properly cheeky romantic British comedy! Simon Baker, the scion to High Grant’s romantic lead throne—check! I Give It A Year, the new film by Borat writer Dan Mazer attempts to upend traditional rom-com plot structure by literally going about it backwards; instead of the ineluctable march to the altar, we have our characters walk away from it, literally and metaphorically. The question is whether this premise reversal alone helps the film escape well-trodden, trite territory. I gave it an hour and thirty minutes.
Newlyweds Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) appear to be as well matched for each as a Date Lab couple; following a seven month courtship, their marriage appears rather ill-conceived and, well, inevitably doomed. Nat works in brand management (how’s that for a nod to new media?) and Josh is an oafish writer with a Three Stooges-esque sense of humor and white boy dancing moves. Which brings us to the point of the profuse amounts of eye-rolling in this film: Nat is rolling her eyes at her hubby’s antics even at the wedding! This sort of Daria-esque behavior is so pervasive throughout I Give It A Year, with all the couples seemingly hating each other to no end. Mazer hammers the point that being married sucks so resoundingly that the cliché denouement rings hollow even by rom-com standards.
But back to the movie—Mazer has literally jam-packed it with one liners, as in think every line is a one-liner. Zingy indeed. It’s meant to be jaunty and light-hearted, but some it comes off as heavy-handed and contrived. Bawdy humor abounds, too, complete with the requisite, “Oh, look, I am in awkward threesome,” and, “Oh, no, our parents saw the dirty pictures from our honeymoon.” And Minnie Driver’s character has a ridiculous crush on Justin Bieber, so she affectionately calls her husband a bell end. Occasionally, Mazer runs up dangerously close to clumsy Mr. Bean territory, as in the scene where doves are released in a room and the results are less than romantic, shall we say. All the married couples in the film are not exactly a glowing commentary on the institution, either, with the marriage counselor of Nat and Josh’s husband-bashing proving to be one of the comedic highlights.
One surprising place where I Give It A Year is quite trenchantly on the mark is its commentary on the state of modern marriage (yes, seriously). The past several years, a lot of movies have been made with the rather melodramatic trope of, “We are so impossibly in love, but now we hate each other’s guts and we won’t explain to you why. Just watch and share in our joint misery.” Good examples are Blue Valentine and Like Crazy. I Give It A Year presents the more humorous answer to that very same phenomenon: Nat and Josh are at a crossroads because they were so desperate to get married in the first place! All of the characters in the movie keep referring to the dreaded 30s like some death knell, tolling for the immediate donning of a ring and latching on the nearest future wife or hubby. In modern romantic parlance, I think we can all agree that the 30s have been identified as the, “You must settle down age.”
One only needs to take a look at My Friends Are Married to see that the non-married 30-somethings are still somewhat of a minority and rom-coms would have us think that single 30s somethings should make it their life’s goal to reverse their dreadful state of single-dom. As Nat explains to her better-matched romantic interest, “You are a Ferrari and he is a Volvo. I needed a Volvo.” Hardly romantic but definitely something we recognize; without meaning to, perhaps, the film offers some rather astute observations on relationships. The rush to the altar proves rather unwise for our leading couple, but I Give It A Year is still a nod to romance, as one would expect from flicks of its ilk. It offers a good bit of unusual British humor that proves to be amusing… most of the time.