Date Night #2

It was a toss-up tonight between describing our latest date night and my work this week. I've decided to leave the work post until Friday.

The free movie this evening was called Limitless and starred Bradley Cooper (I think he's quite the heart-throb is some quarters but I'd never seen him before), Abbie Cornish (another new one on me) and Robert DeNiro who is looking more and more like my dad the older they both get. Goodfellas is just about my favourite film of all time so anything that stars Mr D is fine by me.

The film's described as a paranoia-fuelled action thriller. It starts almost in a comical way - the hero (or perhaps anti-hero) is a loser whose girlfriend dumps him and who is unable to start the book that he has been given an advance to write. However it gets darker as it goes on and there is an uneasy ending that you might not really agree with. The idea is an interesting one and you come out of the cinema wondering whether you would want to try the pill Eddie takes, were it available. There was one part in Limitless when I wondered what the point of the particular story-strand was, but mulling it over later I think I see why it was put in. It is the kind of film that you'll think about afterwards. The characters were fairly well-drawn - Eddie is a consistently weak man who gets an enormous stroke of luck and runs with it but doesn't really question the ethics of what he does; Lindy, Eddie's girlfriend, is his conscience but ultimately shows herself to be corruptible (don't think that's too strong a word); but Robert De Niro's captain of industry disappointingly ends up rehashing the retired Jimmy Conway. Still, he tries his best with a limited part and in all honesty it's totally Bradley Cooper's film. 

Having said all that, I did leave the cinema saying 'I loved that film'. It's escapist and it has some holes in it but if you want a good date movie you could do worse than Limitless. BTW, our own Anna Friel is in a small role, almost unrecognisable and with a strange Estuary/NYC hybrid accent.

Strange as it may sound I think Big Man and I enjoyed the movie more because we weren't able to sit together. The showing was in a smaller screen than normal and because we didn't get there 'til 6:15 for the 6:30 start there were no 'two-at-the-end' seats left. Big Man likes to be on the aisle on account of his bad knee - it needs to be stretched out when he's sitting down - so he sat in a single disabled seat (a PREMIERE one, no less!) whilst I sat a few rows further forward in an aisle seat. Win-win situation - Big Man didn't have me commentating on everything (yeah, yeah, I know I'm a pain in the ass patron but don't hate me for it); gasping and hiding my face at scary bits; and I wasn't squished up next to him, feeling constricted and resentful.

There's more than one reason I call him Big Man y'know.......