Blue Valentine was one of those films that seemed to be outside the box in terms of 2010 films. I had read a lot of great reviews about it despite the trailer looking rather boring. The descriptions and reviews won me over for the most part, but after seeing the film. I’m not sure what they really saw in it. I will put the best foot forward and say the characters were amazing. The growth and decline of their relationship had a raw sense of real-lifeness that a lot of films don’t come close to treading on (thus the acting was pretty great). I did often times despise Dean just because I did not like his character (but he was well developed). The film had sort of a R-Rated Notebook feel to it, but when the Notebook has a no-so-happy ending. Relationships dissolve and BV shows how true love can fade even under the most severe of emotional connections. I felt the pacing of the film was very slow, and the cinematographic decision to cut between past and present was a neat idea (once you realized that is what it was doing), but mid-way through the film, it becomes annoying, the contrast felt thrown together. I do feel with just a few tweaks of storyline and character development, the film could have been a brazen telling of how, as people, we change over time, but think it fell a bit short. The film wasn’t bad, and I can see what others found interesting in the film, but between the pacing and the muddy waters that characters sometimes dipped their entire heads under (meaning, I lose where they were coming from — mostly Dean), I have to say that BV didn’t live up to the hype.

Trailer

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• Drama

80%

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

75%

Friends with Kids (2011)

75%

Drive (2011)

60%

Melancholia (2011)

65%

Red State (2011)