Popping the corn for some Autumn in August fun

While most people are settling in for the summer with the various conventions and Olympic Games, my main event this season is Autumn in August, where I watch and review those films that give off that fall feeling.

Two of my selections this year are well known to me, starting with Kate & Leopold , where Meg Ryan gets a romantic history lesson from Hugh Jackman.

This 2001 romcom has Jackson as the Duke of Albany who accidentally time travels to modern day New York, due to the scientific antics of Stuart(Liev Schieber), who is Kate’s ex-boyfriend and downstairs neighbor.

With Stuart being trapped in a hospital after a fall, Kate winds up dealing with Leopold, who she thinks is a weird yet well meaning man for the most part. Can this relationship last beyond time or will the shifts in reality throw everyone off course?

I know this movie got mixed reviews but Jackman really makes this whole thing work as his character is incredibly believable and charming to boot:

Next up is another New York based film, Serendipity, also from 2001, where John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale agree to let fate decide if their love is meant to be.

After a meet-cute in Bloomingdale’s (how incredibly New York is that?!), Jonathan and Sara spend a magical evening together and despite their instant connection, Sara prefers to have a sign from the universe to determine their path to love.

Ten years later, each of them are in different relationships but somehow start to search for one another before any major commitment is made(with the help of some wacky friends of course!). This movie is such a lighthearted charmer with some nice wintery scenes to cool off to during these treacherous heat waves:

The next pair of autumn vibing movies are new views for me, beginning with Mona Lisa Smile

from 2003, set in 1953 at Wellesley College where art history professor Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) is encouraging her students such as Betty(Kristen Dunst )and Joan(Julia Stiles) to take their studies much more seriously.

As Katherine and her girls attempt to challenge the norms of their day, the pushback is tough yet not totally discouraging either. Can Catherine truly expand these intellectual horizons from them or are the girls completely on their own here?

 

Granted, the reviews were not great for this movie(or the box office) but I’m willing to give this one a chance. The college setting alone has a good seasonal energy, not to mention a story about women trying to make their own choices about the direction of their lives is rather timely indeed:

While I haven’t seen this movie before, I have waited a long while to do so, thanks to a book.

Upon reading an advanced copy of  The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Anne Shaffer, I was delighted with this novel told in letters about what the small island of Guernsey did to survive the occupation by enemy forces during WWII.

I was further thrilled to hear that a movie adaptation had been made but alas, streaming was unavailable to me at the time so I wasn’t able to see it. Well, now I have Netflix and if a British period drama starring Lily James and Penelope Wilton isn’t autumn themed enough, I don’t know what is!:

So, each week in August, I will be watching one of these movies and posting about it(they’re all available on streaming services if you wish to watch along) and hopefully, this quartet of fall fabulous films will keep us comfortably entertained until sweater weather sets in.

Picking something good to watch is always a tricky challenge but especially when the temperature both inside and out is getting too hot to handle there. Fortunately, finding the right mood media can be easier than settling some arguments and just maybe bring about a better understanding of it all by the time the end credits roll: