Movie reviews!

Movie reviews part: whatever I'm up to now!

Beastly:


The modern version of Beauty and the Beast, with the most inspired casting I've seen since I've been here: one of the Olsen Twins (or maybe both, who knows) as "the witch" a role she inhabits in all of it's scary, icy, kooky glory like she was born for it. She manages to take the Southern Cali whisper glam voice and removed rich girl demeanor and make it something dark, genuinely scary, and awesome. And great clothes.

A fluffy, enjoyable starlet vehicle notable for it's good casting (extremely likable Neil Patrick Harris playing a blind version of Barney from How I Met Your Mother), one of the other things that I really liked about this movie was how refreshingly natural Vanessa Hudgingson's (or whatever her name is, sorry honey) body is- she's very small "in the balcony" and it seems like she even has (gasp!) a bit of a tummer in some scenes. For someone with *multiple* sex tape/ nude photo leaks to her "credit" it's a bit of shocker to see that she's so...ordinary.

Anyway, the movie bounces along with various tortured plot points, which as a movie goer who only paid 3$ for the movie I just let go, only marred by one thing: The leading man is lovely, with disheveled blonde locks, a cut glass face, and a cute accent. However, when he undergoes the "curse" and becomes ugly, there's some scenes that show his ungainly mitts- bloated, puffy hands the size and shape of catcher's mitts with painfully short, bitten, blue nails. Wow, I thought, they *really* did their due diligence here. And how awkward it must have been to wear prosthetic hands the whole time! Har.

Imagine my horror when the uggo goes back to being a hottie and puts those huge, square oven mitts on either side of the heroine's face. Oh dear. Now, I have a rather well documented pickiness about men's hands, hands are for sure a make or break issue, but for god's sake, child! I know he can't help it, but hide those things!

Anyhow, rating: 2 stars out of 4. See it at the dollar theatre, or buy one get one. (or as they call it here, very tellingly "take one")

Water for Elephants:



Is it wrong that I sort of felt for August, the villain, of this movie?

EXTREMELY old fashioned (as if the movie makers themselves were adhering to concepts and devices from the era that the film was set in) but entertaining, the movie trills up and down every key in the heart-string piano: parents die in a car crash, dying animal must be put down, jerk teases big lug of a performing animal, young hearthrob loves damsel in distress, dwarf with a cute dog dies (is murdered!), old guy is dying of "jake leg", happy ending where the couple gets everything they want, old man tells his story to "frame" the movie, etc, etc.

The various roles are drawn with crayon on butcher paper but the actors (especially whoever it was that played the ringleader- a man you were drawn to against your will and better instincts, a man with a fire in the belly that Robert ("milquetoast") Pattison can only hope to warm his hands on), but Reese and Co. valiantly struggle to make it work. Some scenes are very lovely in old school way, but the movie is just so predictable (well, there's one scene that did surprise me into a shocked gasp, but I won't give a spoiler), and one thing that made me NUTS was that Robert's character wears a long necklace on a leather cord (or something very like it). That would have NEVER occurred in the 1930s. Okay, I've become my mom. However, it was the kind of thing that really bugged me.

Snarfle! *Push up glasses*/ why am I still single, again?

Rating: 3 out of 4 stars: Watch it when cable is on the fritz.


PIE-RATS!
ON REALLY ODDLY RELIGIOUS TIDES!



Okay, this is a movie I'm still digesting, because I feel like I have a LOT to say about it, but I'm not sure where to start.

Basically, my diagnosis is that the movie has several very inspired "pieces" and is unable to forge them into a whole. The George 3 thing is HILARIOUS and very enjoyable, the "doubles" scene was woefully underused, (even if graceful, gorgeous most beautiful woman in the world Penelope Cruz gives herself away even in silhouette), the Spanish buccaneers on their ship (YUMMERS- call me! ) staring straight ahead, feathers fluttering in the wind, is a hair raising-ly cool moment, but the movie suffers from one thing:

MEL GIBSON-itis.

Dear God: You know I love ya, but please get your harp OUT of Hollywood! And take the burning bush with you, it's staring to smell, and tell Gabriel he owes me 5$. Love, me.

I mean, for REALS! The movie has a REALLY weird "religious" undercurrent that set my teeth on edge. One of the most likeable things about Captain Jack Sparrow was his merry way of amorally walking the earth without a care in the stone tablets. Now he gives one of two possible rats' asses?!!! Uh, excuse ME!

The most badass pirates care about "saving their souls", there's a priest who's not hooted off the ship, the Spanish destroy the fountain of life while melodramatically declaring "The only eternal life is FAITH" or something equally annoying.

Now, on one hand, the tinkle of altar bells is kind of just a plot point, I mean, this IS the era of the Catholic Church as God, but this just didn't sit right with me.

The action scenes were "eh"- actually I've never been a huge fan of the extremely stylized and choreographed nature of these movies' action sequences. Sometimes they really work, but most of the time, they're too much of a set piece to be believable, if that makes any sense at all.

There's something muted about all the performances, too, as if the zany energy and devils (heh) twinkle has left the building. Depp just hasn't had "it" in a while (I kept meaning to write about The Tourist, but I kept forgetting).

Anyways, it was a welcome diversion from the travesty of a "date" that I was on, so:

As an emergency anesthetic: 4 out of 4 stars.

As a movie: 1 star.