The Bowdoin Orient

Lobster rolls, lazy afternoons at Popham Beach, free concerts at L.L. Bean, Cote’s ice cream on the green, and multi-day stretches of perfect weather.Summer in Brunswick has gained legendary status at the College. Yet somehow in my four years at Bowdoin I missed the memo that summer is, in fact, the only worthwhile season to exist in Maine.So as my self-imposed deadlines rolled right on by, unfulfilled (by Winter Break I’ll have an awesome job…by Spring Break I’ll have applied to a job…by graduation I’ll have 40 dollars…) and I faced one gigantic post-grad question mark, I decided to throw in the career path towel and eat as much ice cream as possible instead.

One month later, I commenced a summer of scooping Dark Chocolate Noir sorbetto at Gelato Fiasco and nannying part-time.

I wish I could state in writing that my summer was the idyllic mélange of Maine-y goodness that I always imagined it would be. I pictured myself making daily, sundress-clad trips to the farmers’ market, rising at daybreak for long, healthful jogs in the Brunsick Commons, and whipping up craisin-studded, massaged kale salads for dinner.

While my fellow socialites trudged through the snow to the Cold War Party to get out their historico-political ya-ya’s for the year, I decided to top off a Winter Weekend full of sleigh rides and s’mores with a movie about one family’s harrowing saga of near-death trauma and third-world hospital nightmares. Why not?

Just watching the trailer for “The Impossible” gave me a lump in my throat, so I had an inkling that I might be in for an emotional evening. I came prepared with tissues in hand and the proverbial waterproof mascara.

In my case, the waterworks kicked in after the 19-minute mark. And, unlike your average tear-jerker which allows for the occasional break to catch your breath, “The Impossible” was an emotional sprint all the way through.

In the opening scene of “Warm Bodies,” a pale, gangly boy with bloodshot eyes, disheveled hair and what looks like vomit crusted on his sweatshirt shuffles slowly across the screen, asking himself, “What am I doing with my life?” No, this is not an exposé on the lost souls emerging from Baxter basement at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. This boy—the film’s protagonist—is a walking corpse who eats innocent people’s brains for lunch. And I found him to be one of the most endearing protagonists that I’ve encountered in a while. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which our zombie hero “R” (Nicholas Hoult) and his comrades wander aimlessly around an abandoned airport, unable to interact beyond grunts and the occasional outing to snack on some humans.

After watching the barrage of exploding heads, unthinkable tortures and international crises that were “Django Unchained,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “Argo,” it was a relief to walk out of “Silver Linings Playbook” without the urge to look twice over my shoulder. Nonetheless, due to all the media hype surrounding the movie, I was expecting a film that redefined the genre of romantic comedy, and in this I was disappointed. The film begins with the engaging story of Pat (Bradley Cooper), a man with bipolar disorder who returns home from a psychiatric facility to live with his parents, including his OCD father (Robert De Niro), to get his life back on track.

I admit that as the screen faded to black at the end of “Twilight: Breaking Dawn-Part 2,” I felt a wave of relief. The four-film saga, notable for its Mormon undertones and uncomfortably protracted yet passionate teenage romances—better described as “Breaking Bella”—was finally over. Nonetheless, I found myself tearing up at the end of a film with all the elements of a successful Twilight installment: a montage of vampires performing unimaginable feats of strength, a token sex scene which we are to take as evidence of just how much more awesome post-nuptial vampire sex really is, and a solid fifteen minutes of gory decapitations.