Tag Archives: romance

Movies/TV/Theaters

Review on ‘(500) Days of Summer’

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By: Marina Yang

This is my review of the movie ‘(500) Days of Summer’ by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, produced by Mark Waters. The plot of this movie revolves around two co-workers/main characters, Tom (our protagonist) and Summer (the supposedly “antagonist”). Tom is the typical “lover boy”, falling heads over heels for his “soulmate”, believing love to be like a fairy tale. This is compared to Summer (his “soulmate”), who’s more laid back on the topic of love, and isn’t so serious but has her moments.

This movie is very intriguing as we revolve between the two, not truly knowing if either or both are the “antagonist” of this story; truly shaping people’s different perspectives and ideas on it. The two sides of the story are so simple yet complex, it causes the crowd to be in a dilemma between determining who’s truly in the wrong. Leading to no true answer.

But for me, I would say both are in the wrong and right, we are all humans with our own wants and morals. Tom took the friendly gestures to heart, taking them as signals that she “liked” him, and considered him as a “boyfriend”. While Summer used his devotion towards her for her own wants, only using him physically yet still seeing him as a “friend”. Though I can’t truly blame Tom for thinking like this, he really had no right to go berserk on her behalf and grow obsessive, because she never verbally confirmed the status of dating. But that does not make her innocent either. She played with him knowing he was affectionate towards her, easily being able to skim over conflict and start back at square one. I definitely found myself in a conflict at times throughout this movie, because although I resonated more with Tom, I understood Summers’ perspective too.

Despite my opinion, I would recommend this movie, like I said before it’s intriguing and I believe it could be a valuable lesson for some of us. It contains explicit language and behavior, but it lightly goes over it, so it’s not much of an issue.

I would give ‘(500) Days of Summer’ a 4.5/5. If you want to watch this movie, you will have to either buy or rent it as it is not streaming for free anywhere at this time.

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘Bridgerton’ Season 1 review

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By: Sasha Deans

Season 1 of ‘Bridgerton’ is a romantic drama that takes place in London during the Regency era, The story is about rich families who go to parties and dances to find love and good marriages, and everything is super formal and full of rules. The main focus is on the Bridgerton family, especially the oldest daughter, Daphne Bridgerton.

Daphne is just starting her first “season,” which is when high society girls get introduced to people and hopefully find someone to marry. At first, everything seems perfect: she looked super amazing, acts politely, and gets attention. But things start to go wrong, and she realizes that finding true love isn’t as simple as it looks in fairy tales. That’s when she meets Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings. He’s super rich, super charming and but cold, as he doesn’t want to marry anyone. But when he and Daphne come up with a plan to help each other out things start to get really interesting and even sad.

While all this drama is going on, there’s a mysterious gossip writer named “Lady Whistledown”. She sends out letters to everyone in town spilling secrets and talking about people’s personal lives. Nobody knows who she is, but everyone reads her papers. It makes things fun, but also a little dangerous for the characters who are trying to keep their secrets private.

One of the best parts of the show is the music. Even though the characters are wearing ball gowns and dancing in ballrooms, the songs are actually modern ones that we know but they are just played on violins and string instruments so they sound old-fashioned but cool. This makes the show feel unique, like it’s mixing the past with the present.

“Thank U, Next” by Ariana Grande, “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5, “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish, “Wildest Dreams” by Taylor Swift, “In My Blood” by Shawn Mendes are some of the songs heard. Even though the show is about things that happened a long time ago, the modern songs help you connect with the characters and feel the drama in a way that’s more fun and relatable. It also makes scenes more memorable like you’ll hear the violin version of “Thank U, Next” and actually remember the party scene it went with.

I also feel like the diversity in the show definitely helps keep it a up to date show; there’s no timely realistic race structure which is good. There’s many black and just people of color playing so many roles!

Overall, ‘Bridgerton’ Season 1 is about more than just love. It’s about figuring out what you want in life, making your own choices, and dealing with family pressure. It’s also about friendships, gossip, and standing up for yourself. With amazing costumes, fun characters, a little mystery, and awesome music, it’s a really fun and dramatic show to watch. I would definitely give it a 4/5.

You can watch ‘Bridgerton’ on Netflix.

Books/Art

’Made in Korea’ book review

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By: Maggie Hong

‘Made in Korea’ is a romance novel by Sarah Suk. It follows the stories of Valerie Kwon and Wes Jung, high school seniors who run competing K-beauty brands at their school.

Valerie has been running her business since sophomore year, and it’s the most successful student run business at the school so far. Together with her cousin/business partner Charlie, she carefully stocks face masks, toners, and lip balms to cater to her customers.

When Wes Jung moves to town and begins selling limited edition k-pop merch, Valerie’s business is threatened. Not only that, but she needs the profits to pay for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Paris with her grandmother, whose health is declining by the day. She immediately goes into overdrive, advertising on Instagram and giving special deals to loyal customers.

Wes didn’t intend to start selling k-pop merch, but when his mom, a PR rep for a popular group, has some lip balms left over, he can’t turn down the opportunity to make some money. He needs the money to repair his broken saxophone, and to pay application fees to music schools across the country. So, even as Valerie tries to intimidate him and warn him off her customers, Wes keeps going.

Valerie and Wes are bitter rivals. But as they compete so closely together, they start to realize one another’s situation. This book was both fun and heartwarming to read, and I felt connected to my culture and represented in a genre I don’t usually read. The characters are loveable and nuanced, and the story is engaging and fast paced. This is a great read if you like romance, or if you’re looking for a lighter read and a change of scenery from more serious books.

I would give this book a 9/10.

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘It Ends With Us’

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By: Sophie Elmstrom & Lily Sheldon

‘It Ends with Us’ came out on August 9, 2024. This movie was based on the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, and the film was directed by Justin Baldoni. The film stars Jason Baldoni, Blake Lively, Jenny Slate, and Hasan Minhaj. The movie received mixed reviews, but it was a box office success, grossing 346.4 million worldwide against a production budget of 25 million. We wanted to give our thoughts on this movie, and compare it to the reviews of others.

Here’s a quick rundown of the movie. Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) moves to Boston to pursue her dream of opening her own business after the passing of her father. In Boston, she meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, and they start to fall in love. As their relationship develops, Ryle starts to remind Lily of her parents’ relationship and the abusive tendencies of her father. Lily is at a dinner with Ryle, when she discovers that her high school sweetheart, Atlas, is the owner of the restaurant. Old feelings for Atlas begin to bubble up again, and Lily is stuck with an impossible choice to choose between Atlas and Ryle. Ryle hears about Atlas, and becomes enraged and jealous. He takes out his anger on Lily in forms of domesticated abuse. Lily reveals to Ryle about her father’s abuse to her mother and Lily escapes Ryle, and seeks out Atlas for help. She discovers she is pregnant, and moves out and lives with Atlas for a little. Lily asks for a divorce from Ryle, and he agrees after she asks Ryle how their daughter would react if she was abused by her partner. Lily hopes she has ended the cycle of abuse in her family, telling her daughter “It ends with Us”.

The movie also has a series of flashbacks where we go back in time to when Lily was in high school. One day, Lily is looking out her window and sees a boy her age coming out of the abandoned house next door. As she is walking to her bus she sees him at the stop as well. This sparks Lily to leave supplies at the door of this house in hope of helping this man out. Lily and this boy start talking to each other and Lily finds out his name is Atlas. These two end up falling in love with each other when suddenly Atlas moves away and they don’t continue to talk.

This movie received a 6.5/10 from IMDB and a 57% from Rotten Tomatoes. We believe that this ranking is just a little too low; we think this movie deserves an 8/10. Many reviews agree with the rating of 6.5/10, they believe that the story is very flat and not interesting. Many disagree with what we believed about how it is similar to the book, they said that it missed many book details.

As individuals who have read this book, we believe that movie did a very good job at portraying these characters and the story. Although there are controversies with this movie we believe that the movie was very good and interesting. The way that they portrayed Ryles’ character was very similar and the casting was very good in our opinion.

Overall, we believe that this movie deserves a 7/10 because although it wasn’t a perfect movie it was a very good book adaptation.

You can watch this movie on Prime Video.