10 movies that will make you fall in love with chicago

Ah sweet home Chicago!  Although I'm not a native Chicago resident, I call this home and still get those warm fuzzies every time I get a great view of the skyline.  I always try to explain how amazing this city is to friends who have never been, but it's hard to put the entire experience into words.  So instead, I leave it to the movies.  Ironically, a handful of my all time favorite movies are set in this city and I guarantee that watching one (or all) will make you want to plan a trip to this great city stat!

5 things to know before monday ~ 1.19.14

How is it already Sunday?  Seriously.  I barely had time to close my eyes and poof here is the end to the weekend. Well for those of us that don't have the luxury of a 3 day weekend, enjoy the rest of your weekend and check out a few of my discoveries from the week.

via Lo & Sons

mov•ie (moo-vee) | the vow

I'm one of those girls who gets really uncomfortable with the mushy love stuff.  Much like Julia Roberts' character in My Best Friend's Wedding, I am not the girl that is affectionate in public and sometimes the thought of romantic gestures makes me laugh out loud more than it makes me swoon.  I'm not totally heartless though - I do appreciate gestures of love in my own way like the time Matt sent me a Justin Bieber teddy bear for Valentine's Day or the time he sent a singing Austin Powers telegram to my office.  I guess you can say I'm romantic in my own way.  However, I am still female which means that I love romantic chick flicks with un-realistic story lines and over dramatized acting. 

Since I wasn't going to make Matt sit through 90 minutes of me crying through The Vow, my girlfriends and I decided to make a date of it. 

Honestly, I'm not going to share too much about the movie because you can surely predict the plot just by watching the preview, but here are my 5 reasons why you need to watch this movie.  1| It's filmed in Chicago and captures so many great things I love about this city (even though I could tell by some of the street signs that they re-created some parts of Chicago in downtown LA).  2| If you're like me and haven't had a good movie cry since The Notebook, this will help shed some built up tears. 3| It's based on a true events and makes the story that much better. 4| I love Channing Tatum. 5| I love Rachel McAdams...maybe more than Channing Tatum.  Okay, okay maybe an equal amount.  

Needless to say, with this movie you know what you're get into and it delivers everything you want out of it so go see it.

mov•ie (moo-vee) | drive

I've slacked on sharing the great movies we've seen and over the last 4 weeks I've seen A LOT.  In fact there was one week where I was at the movie theaters 4 times in 5 days and 2 of those days I saw Roger Ebert...back to back.  I don't remember the last time I was that starstruck, and I've spotted some great celebs, but he is so legendary. 

This weekend I made sure that we saw Drive.  Aside from already declaring my obsession with Ryan Gosling in this post, we heard great reviews and couldn't end the weekend without seeing it.  

I don't even know where to begin with this movie because words can't even describe what I felt during and after seeing it. In all honesty, I have to say that for me it was like a more modern Scarface.  Not the premise of the movie per se, but more so the music, cinematography and gritty nature of the storyline - artistically the movie embraces a similar look to Scarface. 

There isn't much to the dialogue that would require you to pay close attention and even if no one spoke, each character had so much emotion that paired with the music, that alone could explain the movie perfectly.  In fact, Gosling plays a character that doesn't say much and I think that's what is so intriguing about him.  He has a welcoming smile which makes it so easy for Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) to be friends with him, but because he's not a man of many words - it's hard to see what he's hiding and the types of things he's capable of.

The cast was well rounded with Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks and Christina Hendricks support Gosling's un-describable performance.  And if you love Breaking Bad, you'll definitely appreciate Cranston's character in this movie.  In my opinion, this movie is so emotionally stimulating and you can't help but feel something - whether it's sadness, anger, empowerment - it'll definitely get you thinking.  Lastly, as if the movie itself wasn't already great, the soundtrack is pretty much the best thing I've downloaded in awhile.  It's a little dark and it's an acquired taste, so if that's how you roll I highly recommend downloading it.

|Did you see Drive this weekend?  What did you think?|

mov•ie (moo-vee) | crazy, stupid, love

I hate that I'm so behind on summer blockbusters.  Crazy, Stupid, Love came out a few weeks ago and I had all intentions of seeing it opening weekend, but alas life happened.  Let me just start off by saying that I will watch ANY movie with Ryan Gosling.  I have been in love with him since I was 8 years old and he was on the Mickey Mouse Club.  When everyone else was swooning over JT, I was gushing of Ryan Gosling.

The movie in itself did have a lot of Ryan Gosling (which I loved), but that isn't the only reason why I loved the movie.  The storyline is so....relate-able.  Maybe not to my life per se, but just with marriage and love in general.  No marriage is perfect.  Love isn't easy....and that's exactly what the movie proves.  You can't just become complacent when you find it.  Why?  Because love is a constant work in progress.  Let's just say that this movie is exactly what you guess it will be about just based on the title, but with a few twists.  

So obviously Ryan Gosling and the storyline made the movie great, but I have to give mad props to the casting director.  It was the perfect combination of actors I love.  Steve Carrell will always make me laugh, but I love it when he's in roles that go against his character.  To this day I still think I'm the only person that loved Dan In Real Life and I think he's character in this movie was very real - which I appreciated.  Then there's Juliann Moore, I mean let's be honest, she's sheer perfection.  I've loved her ever since Boogie Nights and she can do no wrong in my eyes, even though I didn't love The Kids Are All Right.  And lastly, my new girl crush Emma Stone.  She rounded out the entire cast making the movie that much more enjoyable.

The payoff for seeing this movie?  Getting the same warm fuzzies that Love Actually gives me every time I watch it.  If that isn't enough, watch it just to see Ryan Gosling in amazing menswear.  I swear I could do a post highlighting all the things I loved about his character.  Who doesn't love a man that has amazing taste in clothing, drinks Old Fashions and still listens to records.  **Swoon**

|Have you seen this movie yet? Did you like it as much as I did?|

mov•ie (moo-vee) | captain america: the first avenger

As much as I love being social, the anti-social part of me would totally be content if it only consisted of going to the movies.  Going to the movies (not just watching them after they've been released on DVD) is one of the main things Matt and I have in common.  For people who know us as a married couple, they know that we're polar opposites, but I'm glad that enjoying the movie experience is something we both are pretty passionate about.

On Saturday I spent the morning with Rachel of The Style Social / The Style Cooperative (more to come on that) and later that night Matt and I saw Captain America: The First Avenger. Although I was never one that loved reading comics growing up, I have a soft spot for those that have been turned into movies.  Although there are some that I opt to not watch (ie: Green Latern), I will totally geek out to most of them. 

Aside from only knowing of the Captain America character, I was never really familiar with his background.  All I knew was that he didn't have special powers like Superman or Spiderman have. Captain America's (aka: Steve Rogers) story wasn't what I assumed it would be, but it was definitely predictable. The storyline itself was good and definitely delivered a very comic book ending with a few surprises, but part of what made the movie great was the cast...particularly Tommy Lee Jones. Having already played a comic book character once before as Two Face in Batman (pre-Christian Bale), he definitely comes with some experience and his one off lines really made me laugh out loud. Something I wasn't expecting out of the movie.

Overall the movie was entertaining. Was it the best movie I've seen this month? Absolutely not - I would quickly nominate Horrible Bosses for that one, but it was worth seeing in the theater. Honestly, the highlights of the movie were seeing Chris Evans without a shirt on, being introduced to Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones' humor and seeing the Spiderman preview.  If you've exhausted most of the other movie options and are looking for a reason to sit in air condition I think this is a good candidate.  Otherwise, see some of the other summer blockbusters first and table this one for a matinee.

|Are you a movie buff?  If so, any favorite movies you've seen this summer?|