I Watched A Walk To Remember (2002, Dir. by Adam Shankman)

Posted on February 15, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

After popular high school student Landon Carter (Shane West) gets busted for drinking on school property and pulling a prank that nearly killed another student, he’s given a choice. He can either be expelled or he can tutor other students and take part in the school play. At both tutoring and play rehearsals, he gets to know Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), the daughter of the local reverend (Peter Coyote). Even though Jamie doesn’t wear makeup and only owns one sweater, Landon falls in love with her. Too bad she’s dying.

A Walk To Remember is a movie that I can remember walking down to the movie theater to see with my friends. Shane West was so handsome. Mandy Moore was so beautiful, even if she did only own one sweater. The film taught us all that there’s nothing more romantic than falling in love when you only have a year to live. (At least, that’s what it taught us girls. The boys just learned that they could nearly kill someone and their only punishment would be having to appear in a school play.) I loved it when I first saw it and I still enjoyed it when I rewatched it yesterday, even if I now realize that it never made sense that Mandy Moore would only own one sweater. There’s a lot about the movie that doesn’t make any sense but Shane West and Mandy Moore had that irresistible chemistry. Early on, when Jamie warns Landon not to fall in love with her and Landon says it will never happen, that’s when everyone knows that they’re destined to be together.

The movie still made me cry, even though I now know that someone has to die in every Nicholas Sparks story. Getting married right out of high school makes sense when one of you is going to be dead before college reopens for the fall. Did Landon ever remarry? He better not have. I will never forget A Walk To Remember.

So, I Watched The Last Song (2010, Dir. by Julie Anne Robinson)

Posted on February 14, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

Ronnie Miller (Miley Cyrus), who is 17 and way too rebellious to be likable, travels to Georgia to spend the summer with her father, a former concert pianist named Steve (Greg Kinnear). Ronnie is a sarcastic brat up until she discovers that a racoon is trying to eat a nest of turtle eggs. She tries to protect the turtles. The aquarium sends over a volunteer named Will (Liam Hemsworth) to watch over the turtle eggs and he and Ronnie fall in love over the course of several nights on the beach. Ronnie starts to straighten out her life but then she learns that her father has cancer and that the reason he invited her and her brother to Georgia was so he could have one last summer with her.

This is a Nicholas Sparks story so, of course, someone has to die. I always tell myself that I’m not going to cry whenever I watch a Nicholas Sparks movie and then I do. Greg Kinnear was really likable as Steve and Liam Hemsworth was really cute as Will and I know I would have fallen in love with him too if we were protecting turtle eggs together. When the eggs hatched, the baby turtles were adorable.

It’s too bad Miley Cyrus can’t act because her performance was so bad that it ruined the movie. Even the racoon that tried to steal the turtle eggs outacted her. I got tired of Ronnie and her attitude. No matter what happened, Ronnie had to be sarcastic about it. Even when she finally realized that the world didn’t revolve around her, Miley still delivered all of her lines in the same flat, smartass tone of voice so I didn’t buy her change of heart at all.

I’m glad the turtles made it back to the ocean.

Playing Catch-Up: The Accountant, Carnage Park, The Choice, The Legend of Tarzan

Posted on January 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Continuing my look back at the films of 2016, here are four mini-reviews of some films that really didn’t make enough of an impression to demand a full review.

The Accountant (dir by Gavin O’Connor)

2016 was a mixed year for Ben Affleck. Batman v. Superman may have been a box office success but it was also such a critical disaster that it may have done more harm to Affleck’s legacy than good. If nothing else, Affleck will spend the rest of his life being subjected to jokes about Martha. While Ben’s younger brother has become an Oscar front runner as a result of his performance in Manchester By The Sea, Ben’s latest Oscar effort, Live By Night, has been released to critical scorn and audience indifference.

At the same time, Ben Affleck also gave perhaps his best performance ever in The Accountant. Affleck plays an autistic accountant who exclusively works for criminals and who has been raised to be an expert in all forms of self-defense. The film’s plot is overly complicated and director Gavin O’Connor struggles to maintain a consistent tone but Affleck gives a really great performance and Anna Kendrick reminds audiences that she’s capable of more than just starring in the Pitch Perfect franchise.

Carnage Park (dir by Mickey Keating)

I really wanted to like Carnage Park, because it was specifically advertised as being an homage to the grindhouse films of the 1970s and y’all know how much I love those! Ashley Bell plays a woman who gets kidnapped twice, once by two bank robbers and then by a psycho named Wyatt (Pat Healy). Healy chases Bell through the desert, hunting her Most Dangerous Game-style. There are some intense scenes and both Bell and Healy are well-cast but, ultimately, it’s just kind of blah.

The Choice (dir by Ross Katz)

The Choice was last year’s Nicholas Sparks adaptation. It came out, as all Nichols Sparks adaptations do, just in time for Valentine’s Day and it got reviews that were so negative that a lot of people will never admit that they actually saw it. Benjamin Walker and Teresa Palmer play two people who meet, fall in love, and marry in North Carolina. But then Palmer is in a car accident, ends up in a coma, and Walker has to decide whether or not to turn off the life support.

As I said, The Choice got terrible reviews and it’s certainly not subtle movie but it’s actually better than a lot of films adapted from the work of Nicholas Sparks. Walker and Palmer are a likable couple and, at the very least, The Choice deserves some credit for having the courage not to embrace the currently trendy cause of euthanasia. That alone makes The Choice better than Me Before You.

The Legend of Tarzan (dir by David Yates)

Alexander Skarsgard looks good without his shirt on and Samuel L. Jackson is always a fun to watch and that’s really all that matters as far as The Legend of Tarzan is concerned. It’s an enjoyable enough adventure film but you won’t remember much about it afterward. Christoph Waltz is a good actor but he’s played so many villains that it’s hard to get excited over it anymore.

Talking About Love: The Best of Me (dir by Michael Hoffman) and The One I Love (dir by Charlie McDowell)

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I wrote my review of The Theory of Everything, I mentioned that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time made a brief, if important, appearance in another film released earlier this year. That film, of course, was the latest Nicholas Sparks adaptation, The Best Of Me.

Now, I have to admit that The Best Of Me was one of those forgettable films that I kind of suspected most of our readers would not mind me never getting around to reviewing. It came out two months ago, it got terrible reviews, and it didn’t do much business at the box office. I didn’t even enjoy it and I’m the girl who always ends up defending the Twilight films whenever the boys here at the Shattered Lens start to make fun of them. You can tell the impression that the Rest Of Me made on me by the fact that I just got the name wrong and I didn’t even bother to correct my mistake.

But here’s the thing. January is rapidly approaching and, with January, comes my annual 16 worst films of the year list. And chances are that The Best Of Me will appear on that list and I’d like to be able to link to a review.

It’s probably not a shock to hear that The Best Of Me is not a good film. With the exception of The Notebook, the novels of Nicholas Sparks are not known for inspiring good films. Instead, they are known for inspiring films about achingly pretty people who meet on the beach, have a melodramatic secret in the past, and ultimately end up falling in love. And dying, of course. Somebody always has to die. The familiar Nicholas Sparks formula actually works pretty well when you’re the one reading his prose and visualizing the story in your head. That’s largely because you can always imagine yourself as the heroine and maybe James Franco, Bradley Cooper, or Ryan Gosling as the hero. But, when it comes to making movies out of his books, the end results are often so predictable and uninspired that the Nicholas Sparks drinking game had to be legally banned after scores of single women fell ill with alcohol poisoning.

(Yes, that actually did happen! Google it! …. or don’t. Actually, don’t.)

The Best Of Me is, without a doubt, the most Nicholas Sparksian Nicholas Sparks adaptation ever made. Seriously, it has everything that you would expect from a Nicholas Sparks film and it presents it all so predictably that watching the movie is a bit like watching a checklist. We’ve got two former high school lovers who are reunited 20 years later. We’ve got melodrama that comes out of nowhere. We’ve got multiple flashbacks. We’ve got soft focus cinematography. And, of course, we’ve got an ending that is meant to be both tragic and inspiring but it’s neither because, since this is a Nicholas Sparks movie, we already knew that the ending was going to try to be both tragic and inspiring.

What we don’t have is much chemistry between the two lead actors. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan are both pretty in the way that people in Nicholas Sparks films often are but you never get the feeling that they have much affection for each other. Even worse, in the flashbacks, their characters are played by two actors (Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato) who look absolutely nothing like James Marsden or Michelle Monaghan. In particular, it’s impossible to believe that Luke Bracey could ever grow up to look like James Marsden. I found myself half-expecting a huge twist where Marsden would reveal that he was an intruder.

And you know what?

That would have been a lot more interesting than what we got! Somebody help me get in touch with Nicholas Sparks! I’ve got some ideas for his next book!

For a far more memorable look at love and relationships, allow me to suggest The One I Love, a film that was obviously made for a lot less money than The Best of Me but which is also a lot more thought-provoking.

In The One I Love, Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss play a couple whose marriage is on the verge of breaking up. At the suggestion of their friendly-yet-creepy marriage counselor (Ted Danson), they agree to spend a weekend at a beautiful but remote house. Danson assures them that they will be the only couple at the house. Duplass and Moss agree and, at first, the weekend seems to be working. However, soon both of them start having conversations and encounters that the other claims to not remember. Duplass and Moss discover that they are not alone at the house…

And to tell you anything else about the plot would be unfair. The One I Love is one of those films that works best when the viewer discovers its mysteries at the same time as the characters. To spoil the film would be a crime. Let’s just say that there is a twist that will leave you reconsidering everything that you’ve previously seen in the movie.

Beyond that twist, however, The One I Love works for the exact reason that The Best of Me does not. Moss and Duplass have the chemistry that the leads in The Best Of Me lack. You believe them both as individuals and as a couple.

So, when it comes time to consider what we talk about when we talk about love, check out The One I Love and leave The Best Of Me behind.