Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast

If you’re not familiar with this story, where have you been? I don’t feel like I should do a synopsis, but just in case you’ve somehow managed to avoid seeing this movie, or the TV show, or the classic cartoon, then I will give you a general idea. Girl lives in small town in France. She likes to read; people think her odd for it. Her father is an inventor and goes off to the market, gets lost, ends up in an enchanted castle. Owner (monster like beast) decides that he’ll imprison the father. Girl finds out, swaps places with the father and slowly discovers the monster isn’t so bad after being imprisoned with him for what seems like days. The two fall in love and it breaks the curse and they live happily ever after. It is better than it sounds, at least the cartoon was. There may be SPOILERS ahead.

Fast forward to 2016. The fact that I’m writing about anything not about the actual movie tells you a lot. For reasons unknown, Disney decided that they should make life-action versions of their animated classics. They started the process with Maleficent. This was a masterpiece. Angelina Jolie was great and it brought something new to the story that had never been seen. In the past two years, Disney has released Jungle Book and Cinderella. This should have been a sign, as neither of those were really anything new, just repaints of the classic. Sadly, this movie falls into the latter, but instead of adding even the tiniest detail that enhances the story, the additions are distractions.

The cast is acceptable. The long-running question I have is, if the movie is set in France, why is Lumiere the only one that speaks with a French accent? Are we implying there are no French actors that could have been in this movie? Also, Ewan McGregor, God love him, his French accent was not great. Him singing with said accent was also not great. Among the assortment of additions, making Gaston less dislikable was, but if he was an honored captain, how could he be so cruel? I mean, his villainy made more sense without the change. The movie decided to give Belle the inventor status and make her father an artist. While it was a slight change, it made Belle seem like a hybrid between the original and Hermione. The death of the mother was explained. I almost prefer not knowing, but that might just be me. Le Fou was made to be openly gay. This was sort of implied in the cartoon. I didn’t find this nearly as distracting as I thought I would, but that might be due to Josh Gad not really being in a ton of the movie.

I want to break the movie up into different pieces, to justify my overall impression. Visually, the movie had a lot to offer. I found the ‘Be Our Guest’ sequence too much. I had no idea what I was looking at. I did like that Emma Watson did a great copy of what Belle had done in the original cartoon, amused and also trying to eat. The CGI was kind of crazy. Everything was CGI except a handful of actors. Nothing ever seemed fake, yet I never felt the same familiarity with it as I did with the cartoon.

The singing was passable. I’m sorry. I know there is going to be a lot of talk about one specific person on the cast (who was incredibly sexy while riding on horseback to save her father, I’m big enough to admit that!), but everyone was mediocre. Maybe Dan Stevens is supposed to be a great singer, but his solo song was just okay. The main Beauty and the Beast songs we all know so well were good, but some were not so great. I was not a fan of Ewan McGregor singing ‘Be Our Guest’ with a French accent. I couldn’t hear some of the lyrics due to the toxic accent. The best singer was the wardrobe, Audra McDonald. The few times we get to really hear her, she knocks the songs out of the park.

That last part leads me to where I’ve been veering. If Disney is hell bent on recreating every one of their animated masterpieces, here’s a thought, look back at Maleficent. Bring something new to the story and you justify recreating it. Why didn’t they do this movie in a different setting? Imagine an all-African American cast? Imagine how well the songs would be sung. This movie gave me nothing new, and that is what I felt so frustrated with. And for the young star, Ms. Watson, to argue that this wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome is really reaching. I’ve loved Belle because she was more like me, but I would hope that I’d realise that neither the Beast nor Gaston were good enough. This movie is a meh, at best.

I forgot to add the overall Hina test score on this when I first posted it. This one gets a fail, I’m afraid. There is a surprising lack of diversity. While there are a few people that are not white in the movie, for the most part, all of the critical roles are played by white actors. Even if the movie centers around a woman, and despite Ms. Watson’s arguing, Belle is suffering from some form of Stockholm Syndrome. The few scenes we see of the eventual couple do not paint a picture of change in Beast, but promote the tired belief that he changed for her or that women can change their man. The showiness of the movie can’t overshadow this glaring issue.

Movie Review: Colonia

I don’t normally do reviews for movies I see on Netflix or Amazon Prime. In this case, I was really more intrigued than anything that this movie (helmed by Emma Watson) basically went straight to video/on-demand. This is the second movie of Ms. Watson’s I’ve stumbled onto on-demand, the other being Regression (which had an interesting concept, but that’s pretty much the only interesting thing about it).

The movie is billed as a woman joining a cult for the man she loves. This doesn’t quite explain everything, as I soon found out. Lena (played by Ms. Watson) works for Lufthansa in 1973 and surprises her boyfriend, Daniel (played by Daniel Bruhl) who lives in Chile, during a time of unrest. Daniel is an artist and is part of the revolution. He gets caught up with police rounding people up and ends up getting beaten and taken to a cult/camp. Lena goes to his revolutionary friends, but they’re too scared to help. She decides (for reasons that I’m still not sure about) that she’ll go save him by joining said cult. What transpires over the next hour plus is about what you’d expect in a cult. The leader is a would-be mouthpiece of God and he is helped by those that have been brainwashed by his blather. There is a wonderfully evil matron-type that goes to great lengths to mess with everyone, and I did quite enjoy watching Lena bash her in the face with a 2x4 towards the end of the movie.

While this movie won’t wow you into submission by the acting or the set pieces, considering it is free, and helmed by some weighted stars, I’m still trying to figure out how I never got the chance to see this in the theatre, because I would have. It was nice having it on demand, as I could fast forward over the beatings in the beginning. I was quite surprised by Ms. Watson’s range in this movie. In the recent past, most of the movies she’s been in post-Potter have been supporting roles. In this movie, she is the central character, a strong, determined young woman. It is almost a perfect fit to the message she’s sending through her HeforShe campaign. If you have about two hours to kill, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Movie Review: Noah

When I first heard about this movie, I was not sure what to expect.  I loved The Fountain and The Black Swan was very affecting and memorable.  I try not to bet against directors I like and I like Darren Aronofsky.  The way he interprets things and tells stories has a way of pulling the viewer in and not making it seem like a chore to do so.  There are far too many Academy Award calibre movies that I despise because it feels put on.  It feels like they want us to be as pretentions as the actors, producers and directors are.  It is overbearing and makes me uninterested.

The story of this movie is based on the biblical story of Noah and the Ark.  Aronofsky takes quite a few liberties in an attempt to make the story more relevant, perhaps.  I don’t know my scripture as well as I should, but the basic idea being that Noah has a vision and is told by God to make an Ark and bring two of every animal.  Any other details about the task I don’t know.

If you don’t want to be SPOILED for the movie, you might want to jump to the last paragraph-ish.  Instead of sticking to the original story, Aronofsky makes quite a few changes.  If memory serves, I read that the character Ila, played by Emma Watson, was invented for the movie.  There is also an addition of ‘The Watchers,’ who are fallen angels that have been cursed to live on earth, banished from Heaven.  The representation of this is basically Ents, but made of rock.  Once I made that connexion, I was pretty much no longer in any kind of mind set to believe or even enjoy the movie.

The story continues to take a tight left turn here as the made-up-character is part of the solution for the New World, but for some reason Crowe’s hero is convinced that all humanity must be cleansed from the earth, and thus turns into a bit of a madman, promising to kill everyone on the Ark.  Considering these people are trapped on this vessel for forty days and he tells them this on day one, I thought, come on now, people, you should have had at least three plans of escape.  Once the made-up-character who can’t get prego, gets prego, things get yet more unbelievable. 

Let me be clear, Russell Crowe is as good as actor as you know he is.  He brings every actor around him up several notches.  I don’t know too much about Jennifer Connelly, but the rest of the main cast, Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, them I’ve seen, a lot.  Both of them, when in scenes with Crowe, were amazing, better than I’d ever seen them.  Watson, to her credit, has never, as far as I know, done a role like this and to see that departure was impressive, having said that, without Crowe, the scenes didn’t resonate, but, lucky for her, he was in basically all of her scenes.

While the movie was visually stunning, and I did see it in IMAX, the story grew heavier and heavier as the story went on.  Much like the trend with superhero movies with too many villains, this too had far more going on than needed and it showed.  I found myself detached and trying to force myself to connect to this amazing cast.

I’m not trying to be negative or tell you not to see the movie.  The trouble for me, as is often the case, is expectations.  When I see an Aronofsky movie, I expect a story that will resonate with me long after I’ve seen it.  Almost as soon as I got out of the theatre, my mind was directed towards lunch.  The movie felt like it was too long and too heavy and while I will always respect someone like Aronofsky, I can’t bring myself to say I enjoyed the movie in the least.  If I want to see a big-budget movie, I know where to go.  There’s a Sly Stallone movie out now.  This movie seemed to be enamoured with itself from beginning to end and it almost seemed like a celebration of excess.

Movie Review: Bling Ring

Celebs living up the high life is nothing new.  In this Sofia Coppala movie, the story of a group of young adults who follow celebrities and break into their homes taking any number of valuables is put to the side by a feeling of staleness and overbearing characters.  I’ve never seen a Sofia Coppala movie and thought this would be an interesting entry into what I expected to be an artsy piece of work.  I’m familiar with off-the-beaten track movies, but this one felt inauthentic from the very beginning.  The cast is made of mostly unknown young actors, save for Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and American Horror Story’s Taissa Farmiga.

The movie is based off of an article published in Vanity Fair, chronicling how a new kid to a school is convinced by one girl, who he isn’t interested in romantically, to break into celebrity houses and take whatever they like.  The concept of stealing from the rich and keeping for the poor seems to be the underlying concept the kids use, but it becomes clear by the placid, shallow performances that the audience is supposed to believe the kids are remorseless, soulless fiends, as I would expect a celebrity like Sofia Coppala to interpret such an event.  It is an inexcusable act, but to believe that the kids committing the crimes were oblivious to right and wrong is a level of humanity that was so played up, it made the entire movie feel fake.  Worse yet, the main character was the untested Israel Broussard who played the doe-eyed, possibly gay, Marc.  Marc is sucked in by the ring leader of the so-called Bling Ring, Rebecca played by Katie Chang.  Neither were all that believable and early on it wasn’t clear why Marc would be so enthralled with Rebecca.  It made sense that the girls wanted nice things and wouldn’t get them through any normal means.  The character of Marc, the central focus of the movie, was directionless and only slightly interesting.

The movie is worth seeing just to see the beautiful bags, clothes and things that get stolen, but the acting is less than sensational and at times seemed forced.  The characters were caricatures from beginning to end, and it was hard to ignore this.  For $7, this is worth seeing, but you aren’t missing much by passing on it.

Movie Review: This is the End

I am not a huge fan of comedies, in general I find them not all that funny or overly funny with very little story.  This one reminded me somewhat of how much celebs think of themselves.  I do understand that the actors claim they were playing caricatures of themselves, but the entire movie just felt like a bunch of actors just having a good time.  There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it just seemed shallow.  I do know that this isn’t the kind of movie you go to for any kind of thought, and it is amusing to think of how celebs would react to being in a situation where the entire world was turning to ash.

The premise is simple enough. Seth Rogen is picking up pal Jay Baruchel.  They spend the day together and then decide to go to James Franco’s house for a party.  Tons of celebs are there and Jay has issues because he isn’t friends with Rogen’s friends.  This minor character discomfort serves as the framework for a thinly veiled story.  The two head out to get cigarettes and while out, everything goes crazy.  People are being sucked into the air, presumably to Heaven, others are fighting for their lives.  When they arrive  back at the party, nothing has happened there, but soon does and tons of celebs get killed in seconds.  What follows is a moderately entertaining and very crude version of six guys being trapped in a house.

The cameos were fun, the movie mildly entertaining.  This is a good movie to see at a matinee price, but more than that and you’re expecting something it won’t deliver, at least it didn’t for me.  I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t love it, not that I expected to.

Movie Review: Perks of Being a Wallflower

If you’ve been under a rock, or don’t watch MTV at all, then you may be utterly unfamiliar with this movie.  I first heard about it as the ‘next big’ movie of one of the former Harry Potter stars.  After going being sure to catch Dan Rad’s first outing, a mediocre horror film, Lady in Black, and seeing the recent Tom Felton entry, Apparition, I thought, let’s go for the trifecta and see Emma Watson’s latest entry in the post-Potter mania.

Perks of Being a Wallflower follows troubled freshmen Charlie, played occasionally well by Logan Lerman, as he copes with missing a year of school and dealing with general teenage awkwardness.  Charlie writes letters throughout the book this movie is based on, the sole vehicle of communication for Charlie in the movie and the narrator.  The book plays the angle well, but leaves much out, the movie leaves even more out.  Charlie has two siblings, one away at college, the other there at home with him and his two parents.  His first few days of high school are not great, but his English teacher, played wonderfully by Paul Rudd, takes a shine to him and sees him as the intelligent kid he is.  During shop class he meets the perfectly cast Patrick, played by Ezra Miller.  Patrick befriends Charlie and introduces him to a world he never knew, including Patrick’s gorgeous sister, played by Emma Watson.

The three go through the school year together, Charlie being several years younger than them and feeling the burn of the separation as the year continues.  Charlie has a crush on Sam, Patrick’s sister, but ends up dating their friend, Mary Elizabeth.  The relationship doesn’t end well and Charlie begins to backslide into bad habits.  As Sam is about to leave for college, Charlie has a huge revelation and realises that his late Aunt Ellen did things to him that he had repressed.

The story is romantic, in a way, but I didn’t find it terribly original.  Many of my friends revered this book, raving about how it had gotten them through tough times and dealing with growing up.  And while I can certainly appreciate how a novel like this can be so affecting, but both the movie and the book left me uninspired.  I didn’t feel better or worse, it just was and shortly thereafter, I forgot it.  Maybe it’s because my friends weren’t drinkers, didn’t do drugs or any of the things the main characters did in the story, so it made it impossible to relate to for me.

At times, the casting was pitch perfect, at other times, less so.  I expected to come out of the movie in awe of Lerman and Watson, but neither shined all that much.  Lerman seemed tentative at all times, as if he were afraid to grasp the role fully, allow his inhibitions to truly go.  I was never convinced that he was troubled, just socially awkward.  Watson is stunning, but when I read the book, the description of Sam was more towards promiscuity than beauty.  While her looks can’t be argued, I expected to see a huge leap forward with this role and didn’t quite see it.  Maybe my expectations were too high, but even Radcliffe seemed more in tune with his role in Lady in Black, and even Felton was better in Apparition.  I just felt unimpressed by her performance and didn’t see any aspect of Sam, but just a watered down, bad ass version of Hermione.  Also, the eyebrow moniker that she has can’t quite be shirked, but she’s getting closer.  Like Lerman, I felt like Watson shied away from the difficult scenes, which were practically every other scene in the movie.  Of the three, Miller was the show-stopper.  He had a quiet hilariousness to his actions and made the character of Patrick come to life.

One thing that frustrated me greatly was the misuse of the amazing cast. I would have loved to see the scene of Candace having the abortion in the movie, as Nina Dobrev was surprisingly convincing as the older sister of the troubled Charlie.  Her best scenes were towards the end of the movie, but were just wonderful.  The adults were perfect, Paul Rudd as the caring teacher, Dylan McDermott as the concerned father and Joan Cusack as the doctor at the very end, all well cast and well played.

Despite the rave reviews, I can’t honestly recommend this movie to anyone. If you liked the book, and God love you, then go see the movie.  If you didn’t, then this might be a rental or a wait for on TV. The subject content isn’t for kids under 18, if you ask me honestly, given the sex, drugs, drinking and sexual abuse, but the story can be touching for those in the younger age bracket.  I’m just glad not to be a parent to opt to take, or not, my kid to this type of movie.  The movie itself was well-made, but I noticed the author of the book also directed the movie and it made me wonder if someone with more experience could have guided the two young stars better with the challenging source material.