Sucker Punch!

This movie has me somewhat baffled at it's entirety. Then again, I do tend to take movies too seriously.

This film, while impressively visually stimulating with it's "pin-up girl action," isn't going to get nominated for best story or anything of the sort. An incredibly sexy cast of beautiful women (lead by Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung) outline an adventure carried out in subconscious action scenes to make a daring escape from an insane asylum being run by a psychopathic Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac who is sometimes mistake for David Krumholtz). The plot follows the main character only known as Baby Doll (Emily Browning) whose life is wrecked by the death of her mother, while defending her little sister from an atrociously disgusting and brutal Stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) she accidently kills her sister. Soon after the Stepfather sends her to an insane asylum where we (as movie go'ers) are plunged into her subconscious escape from the reality we see only for a rough 20min of the movie.

The whole film is a Zach Snyder-gasm. Amazing cinematography blended so very well with green screen computer generated backgrounds, enemies, environments and weather. I am a huge fan of samurai demon slaying, as well as gorgeous and enticing pin-up girls, so this movie was a real pleaser for me. However the plot, though basic in many regards and original in others, sufficed for what I feel the movie was trying to say, and in case you don't catch what the message of the movie is, it's laid out for you in the final 5seconds before the credits start rolling. I enjoyed the music to a lesser degree, it's not my taste, but it certainly fit the mood of the movie and that I can appreciate.

I found the movie as a whole to be worth while, as far as a price of a movie ticket is concerned. It's visually stimulating, and has a few redone songs from early generations, but overall this movie's plot was vague at times, tasteless at others, but seemingly original in context. I would give it a higher rating than most movie reviewers, only because I believe I understand that there are more than one standard to hold a movie to. In short, I can really only say that if you got 10$ laying around you should head over to your local theatre with a bucket of popcorn for this action packed CGI fest.

Red Riding Hood

Compare it to the Twilight series and you got a masterpiece of fantasy cinema!


(I've seen ever Twilight movie to date, opening night. Now I know you are about to start bashing on me, maybe even call me a fan of Twilight, but know that my one simple defense is: I have a teenage sister who loves the series.)

Alright back to the topic at hand. This film, both in story and in direction top the Twilight films.

(If you are still wondering why I'm comparing the two, it's because this is directed by Catherine Hardwicke who directed the first Twilight film, and started that movie franchise off on the right foot, however vapid and empty the writing is, Catherine Hardwicke did a great job.)

Sorry, I keep going off topic. Red Riding Hood's plot is very basic in it's retelling format, but has a few nice twists I appreciated. Now don't get me wrong, I made fun of this movie so much before it released, but I was very impressed with the quality of the film when I saw it on the big screen. My soft spot for "dark heroes" got the better of not only my wallet and time, but my judgment as well.

The CGI in this film was great. However I was, and always am, disappointed when werewolves are portrayed as quadrupeds. For as long as I've known werewolf lore they're always depicted as bipeds, man with the features of wolves.

Amanda Seyfried was somewhat less creepy looking than her previous films. This was a major attribute to how much I enjoyed her acting in this movie, though campy and slightly over drawn, was believable. Shiloh Fernandez (if you haven't seen Deadgirl, you're in for a treat) played his talentless and very cliche role well, but then again I am a sucker for dark hero archetypes. This film has a simple, but dramatic competition between Peter (Shiloh) and Henry (Max Irons) for the hand of Valerie (Amanda) that probably wont make you go as far as to make a "Team Peter" or "Team Henry" t-shirt, but was good for the quality of this movie.

Not to give any spoilers, but the ending was an unforeseeable twist, and I enjoyed how they left no evidence for the audience to deduce the ending before they showed you. This to me is what makes movies, the ending. Leaving you baffled, surprised, excited, happy or upset. I've seen far too many movies with "cop out" endings cough Inception cough that are so fantastically disappointing, they leave me with a feeling of "Oh, well that was just a waste of my money."

All in all, was worth the price of a movie ticket, if you are a Twilight fan.

Beastly

Atrocious acting paired with bad writing is a mix for a fantastically laughable film.

The entire time all I could think was "people actually produced this crap?" The awful writing is only -slightly- redeemable by the laughable, but bad acting. Vanessa Hugdens (also in recently release action film, Sucker Punch, but more notable is her roles in the High School Musical trilogy) is so terrible in this movie I almost see her acting career going nowhere. Actually, I take that back. While the acting skills she used in this film were so bad, I am willing to give her the benefit of my doubt and say with her amazing good looks she has potential to be another Jessica Alba, but then again that isn't saying much.

This film also stars a campy, but always enjoyable, Neil Patrick Harris. His role of the blind-wise man is very cliche for any actor, but Neil's performance makes this the only believable character in the entire movie.

So as not to sound completely cut-throat, I decided to go beyond the acting and try to understand this movie from a more forgiving angle. While the acting was awful, the director, Daniel Barnz, has some great shots. So where did this movie go wrong? The writing. Mr Barnz also wrote the screenplay, yet this film was based on a novel (same title as the movie) by author Alex Flinn. I haven't read the novel, but I have read several reviews which casually compair it to Stephanie Meyer's famed vampire series and also speak of the book in a "great for teens, because it focus' on teen issues," way. This I can respect, but however good the book might have been the fault can't entirely land on Ms Flinn, for there seems to have been -plenty- lost in the translation to the big screen.

The substance of this film would appeal only to those with a liking for "high school drama, with mythical and fantasy tie-ins." It is suppose to be a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," and most of the major plot points are there, but I'm not about to say that it's anything short of a b-movie knock off.

In short, if a movie ever has a Olsen twin, don't waste your time. I'd say you're better off waiting for this movie to come out on VHS.

The Adjustment Bureau

A brighter "retelling" of Dark City. Based on a short story by Phillip K. Dick titled, "The Adjustment Team."

This film was one of the best I've seen this year. It's very much along the lines of films like The Matrix and Dark City, where fate is controlled by a group of individuals who hide behind the scenes as mysteries cloaked in enigma. 

Matt Damon's performance as David Norris was great! Maybe it's just my soft spot for Matt Damon as an actor, who won me over after seeing Good Will Hunting, but I really did enjoy this film for more than I believe I should have. The movie centers around a lonely man, Damon, who by chance runs into Emily Blunt's character who through her feminine wiles and gorgeous good looks, indirectly coerces him into relieving the magnitude of complexities and idiosyncrasies that are involved with campaigning for any candidacy instead of giving his closing speech after losing the race. She leaves him feeling a real awakening inside and for years he rides the same bus and follows the same schedule hoping for a chance to run into her again.

The film's science fictional aspect was, although used plenty of times before, quite excellent in this film due to it's uninterrupted flow to the plot of the romance between the two main characters. The action was delightful and, again, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Matt Damon and Emily Blunt falling in and fight for love in the midst of all the chaos of escaping the ever-so controlling Adjustment Bureau.

In short, this was the best sci-fi romance I've seen in a long time, and definitely worth the price of a movie ticket.