'Beautiful Creatures' movie review

Beautiful Creatures is a teen fantasy romance film about a guy named Ethan, who lives in a small town in South Carolina, where nothing happens and falls in love with a mysterious girl named Lena, who turns out to be a witch (or a caster, depending on how much you want to insult a fictional character). Now I heard a lot about Beautiful Creatures, mostly about it being some kind of a wannabe-Twilight, it heavily relied on its romance story and coming out around Valentine's Day and such, but I had some hope for it. I don't know any of the books that the movie is based on, but I was sure that this would not be some kind of Twilight. But could it be Twilight-esque? I saw the trailer and to be honest, it looked goofy as hell. I mean, there was some cool Florence And The Machine music in it, and it looked cool, but some of the CGI and the special effects looked just stupid, it's basically one of those trailers that make you feel a bit awkward when watching them. And how did the movie turn out?

Well, it actually turned out surprisingly good. There are many elements to it quality, one of its is definitely the acting. The two main actors, whose surnames I cannot pronounce or write correctly have surprisingly good chemistry and really pull off that a bit akward teenage romance. I also like the fact that the main character is a guy, so it doesn't deal too much with the typical teenage girl problems, but the female character is also likeable and important enough, so they're basically a pretty good couple that you feel okay with rooting for. The adult supporting cast is also great, Emma Thompson is a menacing villain, Jeremy Irons and Emmy Rosum are awesomely villain-ish and I also really liked Thomas Mann, the guy who plays Ethan's best friend Link. He isn't in the movie much, and I don't know if it's because of his name or his hat, but he was just my favourite character and a very likeable one. I also really grew to the Southern accent which I used to hate, but halfway through this movie, you can't imagine it being spoken differently. The movie is also a bit more appealling to more mature audiences through a bunch of very smart and witty dialogues.

An element which already attracted me through the posters, like the one above (but was kinda overshadowed by the goofyness in the trailers) is the movie's visual style. I absolutely adored the small, conservative town-setting with a forest nearby, as I'm just kind of a sucker for movies with such a setting. The directing, set design and excellent music by George Harrison's son's band Thenewno2 also help to shape up an interesting and drawing visual image of this film. Sure, the movie has a few cliches and predictable points, but the story and plot is overall interesting. A thing that I didn't like as much were the special effects. Judging from the trailer already, you can see, that the CGI is not in top-form here and a few scenes (the table-spinning) look kinda ridiculous, but there really isn't too much of these scenes and you just get used to them. They actually even look a bit less goofy as in the trailers, but they are still pretty good compared to Twilight for example. There is one more thing that I loved about the movie that I would like to adress, but it's a bit of the major spoiler-ish nature, so don't continue reading, if you haven't seen the movie yet, just skip to the final paragraph. What I would like to discuss is the film's mixed-felt ending. As I understood, the ending is different as in the book and pissed off many fans, but to me it was excellent. I was okay with the fact that Ethan forgot Lena and even tough I really wanted them to be together, but I realised that this would be a great ending, considering a possibility of sequels. The moment when Ethan stept out of the car, I was kinda afraid that they would ruin it with a cliche ending, where he would remember her, but just seeing Lena's glaring dark eyes implying her stepping to the dark side becoming normal for the second she hears Ethan's scream made me realize, it was an absolutely perfect ending. I'm actually really sad, that there probably won't be any sequels due to the movie's bombing at the box office. 

So in conclusion, Beautiful Creatures is much better then what it looks, a sweet, intelligent, entertaining and suprisingly enyoyable teen romance fantasy movie. 

Total rating: 7.5 / 10

So what did you think of Beautiful Creatures? Are you planning to see it? Did you like it, dislike it, why? Comment below, let me know! 

Oscars 2013: Predicting the winners & More

The 2013 awards season is coming to a close, with only the grandest of all the awards, The Oscars, left to be held. With me watching almost all of the nominated films this year and genuinely following the Oscar race from the near beginning, I wil definitely watch the awards show (I live in a country where it's broadcasted at 2am, so I will lock myself from all news and watch it online the next day) and will be able to comment as much as I can on this blog. So this year the race is a bit tighter then last year, when the black-and-white and silent drama The Artist was a sure win. The top Best Picture contender is Argo, winning the highest awards at the Golden Globes, Producers Guild Awards and the BAFTAs, which are all strong precursors in the world of popcorn, glitter and overly-Oscar-obsessed Huffington Post editors. But since Ben Affleck didn't get nominated in the Best Director category, there still is a little hole for a possible grand winner for other contenders, such as Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Les Miserables to fit in.

Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow wasn't nominated for Best Director as well, leaving the latter category's race mostly to Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee and David O. Russel perhaps? My bet is Spielberg, so the Director's prize, Daniel Day-Lewis for-sure Best Actor win with Best Score or something could form a possible consolation prize for Lincoln. Jennifer Lawrence has very big chances of winning Best Actress, and the Best Actor prize is a bit closed as well. But it could go down in a number of scenarios. Even if Argo wins  Best Picture, what else would it win? Editing, Alan Arkin for Best Supporting Actor? It just doesn't seem right, yet I believe it will sadly go down like this. It's not overlong like Lincoln, not controversial like Zero Dark Thirty or not a comedy or a musical like Les Mis and Silver Linings Playbook. Yet, I still hope for one of the latter two to win, since they are my favourite of them all. Yes people, this is the part where my personal opinion jumps in.

And to be honest, my personal opinion caused quite a boiling cauldron of anger inside of me when the nominations were announced, as four of my very dear films of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and Cloud Atlas weren't nominated. Now before you go explaining and complaining that these are not movies that would win Oscars, as they do not reflect the economic crisis or whatever, I tell you, that I understand. But still, some of these movies had chances and would have deserved at least nominations. If I were The Academy, I'd give Best Picture to TDKR, and even tough I know that can't and never will happen, it should have been nominated for anything technical from a completely objective point of view. Perks was a clear contender for Best Adapted Screenplay, and THG's "Safe and Sound" just won a Grammy, but didn't get nominated for Best Original Song. And Cloud Atlas should have won Best Make-Up, everyone who saw the movie would agree. And yet, zero nominations for all of these. At least for TDKR, I bet it was a personal Academy thing. I mean, FUCKING MIRROR MIRROR got nominated for something! And a song from  fucking TED! The movie's hilarious and all, but does anyone remember the original song from TED?!?!?!?

My review of Les Mis.

Putting aside most of my my anger-issues-led personal opinions, I sincerely hope either Silver Linings Playbook or Les Miserables will win. The first one has a definite Best Actress win, and could come out as a big winner with Best Director and Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, if everything would come out perfect. Honestly, what I would like to see the most, is Bradley Cooper getting a gold statue, and even tough that will probably never happen with Day-Lewis in the same category, it's simply a dream I have (not that kind of a dream, you perverts!). Les Mis on the other hand, have Anne Hathaway, who will probably win and all those set design-make-up-hair noms. So I guess it could still come out fine. . Maybe magical Oscar master Harvey Weinstein will bring a bunch of bipolar people to all those parties and a comedy would win after all, like in the 1998's case of Shakespeare in Love. Or maybe The Academy would announce their most heavenly mistakes and decide to give all the awards to Christopher Nolan anyways. We'll see, as this year's awards are, given after a lot of thinking, actually quite open.

There basically isn't a lot of things, that we would be absolutely sure about, except for both of the Actress categories, Adele's Best Original Song win and Life Of Pi being the technical winner. We can't be sure for any of the side-like categories either, like Editing, Original Score and Costume Design, as they could all act as fillers for a potential Best Picture winner or a consolation prize. After all, the Academy awards are never really given out simply by the quality (subjective quality, deemed by 80-yr-old men, I mean), but are usually also equally divided. A most notable example that stuck in my mind (mainly because a lot of my dear movies were participating) comes from 2010, when The King's Speech won Best Picture, Actor, Directing and Screenplay to be the grand winner, Inception was the technical winner with Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing and The Social Network was given a consolation prize in the form of Adapted Screenplay, Score and Editing. But so far we can only wait for the grand awards show, which with the arrival of Seth MacFarlane might actually prove to be an entertaining awards show in the terms of a show, as well.

So what do you think of this year's Oscar race? Which movies do you think will win most Oscars, and which ones? Comment your predictions below, let me know!

'Les Misérables' movie review

Another big Oscar contender coming to my theatres is Tom Hooper's Les Miserables, adapted from the well-known stage musical of the same name, adapted from Victor Hugo's novel of the same name. The film begins with Inspector Javert (Russel Crowe) freeing prisoner Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman). Valjean re-invents himself as a respectable mayor and decides to help factory worker / prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway) to provide for her daughter Cosette and falls into a stylized and epic story of love and hope. Yes, I just wrote that, because I felt like that. I was looking forward to this movie, especially being the part of my big Oscar preview (I intend to watch the show this year). I am not exactly the biggest fan of musicals, I saw a few, but enyoyed them and I also know nothing about the original Les Miserables stage musical. And its movie adaptation...has its ups and downs.

One of the ups is definitely the acting, which is just confirmed by Hugh Jackman's and Anne Hathaway's Golden Globe win and the latter's for-sure Oscar win. I'm not really sure about the singing, as I am no expert and as mentioned haven't heard anything from the original musical, but I believe they sang amazingly from my amateur point of view. Each of the actors also put a lot from emotion into their performances, which is in Hathaway's case even too much emotion, but I like her, so I think she deserves the Oscar. Pieces of the supporting cast, such as Russel Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen are also good and do not let the Oscar-nominees overshadow them. All of the music and songs are great, but that is basically an 'up' of the original musical. 

Now the film has these two kinds of scenes: some are these emotional, monologuing scenes of characters singing about their feelings, and some are these spectacular, revolutionary scenes, where the actors sing from the bottom of the throats and wawe with French flags and rise for the people and such. Some of the former scenes are very good, like Hathaway's infamous I Dreamed A Dream or the Marius / Cosette / Eponine love triangle scenes, but after 2 hours and a half, which is clearly too much, they get kinda boring. I was just hoping, that this movie would have more of the latter, more of these epic scenes, which overshine with amazing costumography, make-up and set design. I truly loved the Do You Hear The People Sing and One Day More scenes, but I really expected to be more of such. More flag-wawing, more revolution and multi-singing, a battle with singing in between? 

As much as I respect Tom Hooper as a director, I was kinda unhappy with his directing here. I don't know if this is the director's or the director of photography's fault, but in those epic scenes that I loved I simply wished that they would show more of the scenery, more shots from afar and not just the faces, a cliched, but effective 360 spin maybe? Nope, even those epic scenes that I loved the most, just didn't seem fullfilled, as I just wanted to see more, more of that epicness and less of the emotional monologue. The movie could have been around half an hour shorter, as well. But still, I must admit that I really liked this movie. I basically liked it more and more I tought about and while listening to its soundtrack realized, that it deserves a higher rating than what I originally gave it. But that is my subjective view, the movie isn't for everyone - it's long, it's artsy, everything is sung - if you love musicals, you'll love it, if you hate them, you'll hate it, if you just kinda like them (like me), then it depends. In an objective conclusion, Les Miserables is a monumental, wonderfully acted, emotionally powerful and overlong movie musical.

Total rating: 8 / 10 

So what did you think of Les Miserables? Did you like it, dislike it, why? Comment below, let me know!

'Life Of Pi' movie review

Life Of Pi is Ang Lee's family saga of a boy who found himself stranded in the middle of the ocean on a small boat, shared with a tiger. The movie is nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and pretty much every technical category to exist on the face of these marvellous awards. Now I've heard a lot about this movie, from the first trailer I even remember an article in the Huffington Post or The Guardian or some other serious newspaper like that saying this is 'the most controversial movie of the year'. I haven't heard anything similar about this adventurous drama since, and I sincerely hope that was some really weird typo, or the editor might have embarassed himself a bit. What I've heard about from the book that it's based on and after seeing the trailer, the film looked remarkably cheesy and I wasn't even planning to see it. And how is it really?

Well...it's still very fucking cheesy. Honestly, I went seeing this movie with a handful of doubt. The whole story of a boy bonding with a tiger semt really cheesy and stupid, and after the first 30 minutes, I genuinely tought to myself, hmmm, maybe this isn't as bad as I tought it would. Really, the first half an hour is great, there are these amazing underwater shots, the story starts to revolve in an interesting way...and then he gets on the boat. And there is nothing wrong with getting on the boat...besides it being very boring and cheesy. The movie is 2 hours long and I knew the boat part would probably be very long, and it wasn't too long, it was plain boring. And then, well then came something that crushed this movie even more. I must warn you, that these are major spoilers, so if you don't want to get the movie spoiled for you, do not read on. But seriously, I woudn't care if it was spoiled for me. Your call, it's really tough to explain this without spoilers.

So basically the titular character and the tiger bond over the boat or whatever and I didn't really care much about the movie failing to emotionally connect me with the tiger's character, because I rarely emotionally connect with characters, but the moment Pi says "The tiger broke my heart" and "I love you, Mr. Parker", the film lost all credibility to me. Seriously, and then this gets a Best Screenplay nomination?! And then in the end, Pi actually reveals, that he made the whole tiger story up. In the movie, we see the hyena eat the zebra and scare the monkey, and then the tiger scares them both off or something, and basically the hyena was the evil cook, the zebra was the sailor, the monkey was his mom and the tiger was Pi. Okay, that's really great and everything, I really like the twist and all, but if he was the tiger, WHO THE HELL WAS HE?!??! I mean, who was he in the tiger story?! If you don't undestand, read through it all again or try to live through the not-exactly-misery-but-not-exactly-fun-time-either that this movie is.

I mean, honestly, it's not really that bad, as you might have got the impression. But it's far from what I've expected, what it deserves from all those critics and Oscar nominations. I mean, visually it is one of the most stunning films I've ever seen. The way the CGI tiger blends into the screen, the mesmerizing meduses and suricates and whatnot, the film is really a feast for the eyes at its finest. And I would honestly wish it would be weirder, that it would go more into the hallucination territory, with more green whales and other breath-taking visuals. But it didn't. You have a bit of these spectacular scenes, but mostly boring boat scenes. So the result is a heavily overrated, visually groundbreaking, remarkably cheesy, in many ways unlogical, for the first 30 minutes very cool and the middle 45 minutes very boring tale of an Indian named after a number and his weird trippings in the ocean.


Total rating: 6.5  /  10


So what did you think of Life Of Pi? Did you see it, like it, dislike it, why? Do you think it deserves all the praise and awards? Comment below, let me know!

'Silver Linings Playbook' movie review

One of the top Oscar contenders, David O. Russel's dramedy Silver Linings Playbook has finnally arrived to my torrent folder (before you judge me, the movie hasn't been distributed in my country, among many other great ones) and I decided I had to review this one, being one of the main acts of the Oscar season and everything. I was also looking forward to it a lot, as I really like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence (duh) and it really semt like this kind of quirky, comedy-drama, ironic-one-liners kind of movie that I usually enyoy. So the movie focuses on Pat, a bipolar guy with anger issues who returns from a mental institution to finally get back from his life, but with the arrival of other, also not so normal characters, his life gets anything but normal again.

Now the movie is really fucking great. And I mean really great. It would have quite probably made my Top 10 of 2012 list, if I would have seen it in the past year. First of all, something preceeded by all those awards and Oscar nominations is for sure - the acting is beyond amazing. Bradley Cooper gives the performance of his career as the bipolar Pat, and gives us an incredibly realistic depiction of the disease, while also allowing us to relate to his character greatly. The way he rages out, the way he says innapopriate things, he doesn't says them like House or sounds like he's being mean or sarcastic, but he really says them like he can't help myself and like he would be bipolar. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro are in spectacular form as well, making this movie be quite worthy of being the first movie since I-don't-know-when to be nominated in all four acting categories at the Oscars.

But it does deserve awards in other categories, too. This film really is the definition of a dramedy, and should be a role model for all other dramedies. The way it balances the comedy and the drama is unbelieveably perfect, just as much as being balanced in the word "dramedy". It manages to be so funny and positive-spirited at the same time, while also being something, that I can't call exactly dark or sad, but simply life-like. Just like real life is, full of comedy and drama, positive and negative, this movie pulls it off perfectly. The director's visual style, the editing, the music, everything builds up to this poignant, hilarious, amazingly acted, emotionally affecting and realistic dramedy, as what Silver Linings Playbook definitely is.

Total rating: 9 / 10

So what did you think of Silver Linings Playbook? Did you like it, dislike it, why? Do you think it should win any of the Oscars it's nominated for? Comment below, let me know!