The Five-Year Engagement

Jason Segel, Emily Blunt

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Rating: B-

Tom (Segel) proposes to his year-long girlfriend Violet (Blunt) but staying engaged is something that becomes too easy for them. Violet gets accepted at Michigan University to be a part of the department of psychology team, something she has been working years at. So she and Tom uproot their San Franciscan lives to move to Michigan, where talented chef Tom can only find work as a sandwich maker at a popular cafe in town. The couple finds various reasons to prolong their wedding, only to come to the important question staring them in the face: what is more important- getting ahead in Violet's career or finally tying the knot?

Just another romantic comedy of the year, "The Five-Year Engagement" is an unexplored story line of a couple who keep putting off their wedding. With some cliches and predictable drama, it's still a film with a promising tagline to reel in the viewers. Judging from the commercial, this movie appears humorous and with actors Segel and Blunt as the leads, it could be potentially worth seeing.

While Tom struggles to accept the path his life is taking, Violet gets drawn deep in her dream as she sets out to what she's been working towards. Though the couple claims to know each other better than anyone else, they have trouble talking about the obvious, Tom's downward spiral of what his life has become and the never-ending engagement. The movie takes on a realism that most romantic comedies don't. It deals with the hardships that would delay a couple getting married, like Tom's resentment of what his career has become over the potential of what it could have been.

"The Five-Year Engagement" actually feels like a five-year engagement when viewing this movie. Only at a running time of two hours, viewers go through the stages of boredom and entertained numerous times. The film opens up and introduces the characters and their excitement of getting engaged. Then as conflict after conflict keep reoccurring, it reaches a slow point. It's hard to predict the outcome when it feels like it should be ending any minute but there's actually thirty minutes left. Then finally the ending arrives, though a bit rushed it comes off as spontaneous and works out.

In the end, I would recommend waiting for "The Five-Year Engagement" to be released on DVD before spending money at the movies to see it. It depends on your movie tastes, because those who are a big fan of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "Bridesmaids" might actually enjoy this a lot then someone who is looking to be entertained but doesn't really care about the premis.

Atonement

James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan
Directed by Joe Wright

Rating: B+

"Come back, come back to me."

13-year-old Briony Tallis (Ronan) is not quite old enough to understand love and the unspoken meaning behind actions. She misinterprets a moment between her older sister Cecilia (Knightley) and a servant's son Robbie (McAvoy) that lead to a downward spiraling of events to take place. Briony is horrified by the scene in which she enters upon, finding Cecilia and Robbie in a compromising position in a study. Her image of Robbie's perfection is shattered and when a turn of events take place after a family dinner, she takes part in condemning Robbie for a crime he did not commit. It's only years later that she realizes the grave mistake she had made and goes about her way trying to make amends.

Based off of Ian McEwan's novel about the loss of love during a war, Atonement captures the harsh realism of war and how not every romance has a happy ending. Robbie chooses to go the military path instead of rotting in a jail cell, and he is taken far away from any chance of happiness. Cecilia alienates herself from her family, disgusted with how easily they could ruin an innocent life over a lie, and works with hospitals, nursing those who return from the bloody fields of war. The film shows glimpses of the rare time Robbie and Cecilia get together before he is deployed back to France. It's a heartbreaking scene when after three years they reunite, changed after all they had been through.

Atonement is a dramatic love story in which the characters all have their own sympathies from Briony's youthful naivety to Robbie's innocent love and to Cecilia's hidden feelings for someone she felt she shouldn't love. It's a movie that brings viewers to tears.