She has moved into an apartment after living in a house built next to a scenic lake in a secluded countryside area. In the entire script, just about the only element I don't find helplessly implausible is the central concept of a time-traveling mailbox. Well, we’re not 5 dudes in a room talking about our passion for Fight Club and Braveheart. This is a place for people who can't get to the theater until the third week a film is out; a place for people who just want to find something great to stream online after the kids have gone to sleep, a place for people whose favorite pastime is to grab a bunch of classic films on DVD from the library and watch them all weekend. Plot Keywords These cool-cats, sat down at Sundance w/ Grandma & Grandpa Jarosinski to talk about their feature film. They end up falling in love. Kate Forster is moving out from her lake house, built all of it with glass. In 2004, he buys an old glass house in a lake, designed and built by his father, and he finds a message in his mailbox from the former tenant, the also lonely Dr. Kate Forster, asking to deliver her correspondence in an address downtown. I think, actually, that I have the answer to how the same dog could belong to two people separated by two years, but if I told you, I would have to shoot the dog. It's a place that believes that every great movie is a wonderful new treasure, whether you see it the night of its premiere or fifty years later. Alex Wyler is the new owner of the lake house, a young architect who's working in the construction of a new complex of houses at the city skirts. All during the movie, we're trying to do the math: It should be possible, given enough ingenuity, for them to eventually spend 2007 together, especially since he can theoretically keep the letters he received from her in 2004 and ask her out on a date and show them to her, although by then she'd know she wrote them -- or would she? This week you might have been hearing the buzz about the new horror/comedy (hormedy?) It succeeds despite being based on two paradoxes: time travel, and the ability of two people to have conversations that are, under the terms established by the film, impossible. We hear them having voice-over conversations that are ostensibly based on the words in their letters, but unless these letters are one sentence long and are exchanged instantaneously (which would mean crossing time travel crossed with chat rooms), they could not possibly be conversational. Kate has the benefit of being able to tell Alex of what happens in the future. | It is, although it involves many paradoxes, including the one that in 2004 all of this is ahead of both of them, and in 2006 Alex knows everything but Kate either knows nothing, or knows it too late to act on it. To heal these broken hearts, heaven breaks time. That's because Spontaneous is honest. Alex meets his brother Henry in Chicago and when they go to the address with Dr. Forster's correspondence, they find a building of luxury apartments under construction to be delivered eighteen months later. She has had issues with relating to people in a deeply emotional level. Join us for our weekly review of movies worth seeing, worth avoiding and our Top 5 lists – and don’t forget to play along at. He reads the note and sends a strange response to the address she supplies: He thinks she has the wrong house, because "no one has lived in this house for years." Nevertheless, Kate comes up with a memory from 2004, when she forgot a book in a train station, Jane Austen's "Persuasion", and she'll ask Alex to go to that place in that precise moment, when she lost the book. They also have the same dog. Two years earlier in 2004, Alex Wyler (Reeves), an architect, arrives at the lake house and finds Kate's letter in the mailbox. Never Make Rules: Director Rachel Talalay on A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, Netflix's Social Distance Struggles to Sum Up the Ordeal of 2020, A Preview of the 56th Chicago International Film Festival, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time Offers Hours of Deadly Fun. Parents Guide. Sandra Bullock is an enormously likable actor in the right role, and so is Keanu Reeves, although here they're both required to be marginally depressed because of events in their current (but not simultaneous) lives. Funny, sad, everything in between. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late. Who’s going to tell Pence that flies have a bowel movement every 5 seconds? "The Lake House" tells the story of a romance that spans years but involves only a few kisses. It develops that he thinks it is 2004 and she thinks it is 2006, and perhaps she moved in after he left, instead of moving out before he arrived, although that wouldn't fit with -- but never mind. We want to celebrate our different opinions, and celebrate yours as well. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. But maybe they will never meet each other, because of the time distance. Tim Brayton, our seasoned film critic, shares a more critical view of film, an appreciation for vintage cinema and perhaps limited-release movies that we might otherwise miss. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. When they connect in all the right places at all the wrong times, heaven weeps for broken hearts. Neither one of these problems bothered me in the slightest. They both leave their letters in the mailbox beside the sidewalk that leads to the bridge that leads to the glass house. SCARE ME that released October 1st on Shudder! They manage to spend time together through common experiences two years apart. Maybe the future of Kate is about to change, when Alex decides to meet Kate's other self in the past, despite the fact that she has a boyfriend. Enough of the plot and its paradoxes. It succeeds despite being based on two paradoxes: time travel, and the ability of two people to have conversations that are, under the terms established by the film, impossible. He writes to Kate asking more about these incidents and leaves the letter in the mailbox. Kate leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant to forward her mail, adding that the paint-embedded pawprints on the path leading to the house were already there when she arrived. The key element in "The Lake House" that gives it more than a rueful sense of loss is that although Alex's letters originate in 2004 and Kate's in 2006, he is after all still alive in 2006, and what is more, she after all was alive in 2004. Alex and Kate are maintaining a correspondence, talking about the house matters, sending each other letters, which are put in the lake house's letter box. The tenant Alex Wyler reads the letter, but finds no paw prints, no box and no sign of life within the last 5 years, so disregards the letter until a few days later when he is redoing the paint on the handrails and a stray dog, whom Alex takes in and names Jack although the dog is female, trots through the brown paint and leaves its paw prints all the way to the front door. Too many film sites cater to the same kind of audience, with one overwhelming voice in the writing, but what we treasure at Alternate Ending is diversity: diversity of opinion, diversity in belief about what film should do and how it should do it. Many of his problems circle around his father, Louis Wyler (Christopher Plummer), a famous Chicago architect. They will learn that playing with time could be a little bit dangerous for both of them, but Alex will take everything into his hands to finally meet Kate in the future. The two begin a correspondence purely on chance when Kate leaves a note in the mailbox of the lake house asking for the new tenant to forward her mail to her new address in the city. None of this prevents her letter of romantic anguish: That was you that I met! However much can happen to Alex between his present and Kate's present, two years in his future. She is a doctor and has just begin to work in a hospital in Chicago, moving to a new flat in the center of the city. In 2006, a trauma sends Kate back to the lake house, where she finds Alex's response to her letter. Is there a way for them to send letters across the gap that will allow them to meet where she was in 2004, or she where will be in 2006, or vice-versa?