Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters - my thoughts

if I had to describe my reaction to Hansel and Gretel in a few words, I think I'd say 'surprisingly plotty'. By that, I don't mean a great epic with huge twists and turns all the way through, but it certainly, as my sister put it on the way home from the cimema last night, is the equivalent of a good YA novel.


It's not a long movie, only an hour an a half, but it doesn't need to be longer, it's not trying to be complex and long winded, instead, it's punchy, full of enough action for any fan of such things and then has enough plot behind it to hold the whole thing together, unlike some the more disastrous movies we've seen recently where it all seems to be action based on a very small premise.

Basic plot: Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in the woods by their father, just like the fairy tale. They don't know why, they don't talk about it. But they did meet the witch in the gingerbread cottage and she did force feed Hansel candy, to the point that he has 'the sugar disease' - which is like no diabetes I've ever seen unless you expect a diabetic to go into a coma within seconds of not taking an unnamed injection that has no known source. However, practicalities aside, I mean, this is a fantasy movie and there are plenty of weapons around that just wouldn't be there, like a very effective gatling gun, the low-sugar attacks are a cheesy little plot device that comes in useful for the writer at one point, guess what, during a crucial fight.

Anyway, I digress, on with the plot: after escaping from their first witch, Hansel and Gretel become witch hunters, and folks looking for strong women in stories, H&G has it in bucket loads. First, Gretel is the leader of our duo, Hansel pretty much does as she says and she keeps him in line (more about the siblings' characters later). Plus, all our villains, witchy ones, are female, and Famke Janssen does a great job as the ever-nasty Muriel, grand high witch. There are some human villains, just to mix it up a bit and they're all men.

So, that's the premise, what about the main plot? Well, it's pretty straightforward, H&G are hired to find a town's children that have been going missing and the townsfolk suspect witches. H&G go up not only against the witches, but the town Sheriff, who wanted to burn an innocent women, whom he had decided was a witch. needless to say, violence and gore ensue - there's a reason this movie got a 15 rating in the UK, believe me, there is no trying to cover everything up for the sake of a 12A certificate (yay!). And a girlie shows off her assets, above the waist too, so another reason for the certificate. I am soo, sooo, glad that they didn't sacrifice the action for the rating, I've seen far too many movies of late that water down what the camera sees just to get a 12A, and that would be fine if the tone of the movie matched, but in a lot of cases, it didn't.

So, I won't go into details about the rest of the plot, but suffice to say there are revelations, conflict, separation, betrayal and of course, the big fight at the end (remember I mentioned a gatling gun ;P). All in all, a bloody good romp!

However, what I found the most interesting was the relationship between H&G. As I said earlier, she's definitely in charge, she's the sensible one, the negotiator, and that could have easily meant that Hansel could have been the bit of muscle behind her, but that is not how it comes across. Gemma plays Gretel as strong, but tempered and G has a deep, deep love for her brother. She is also not an invulnerable Mary Sue - she can kick arse, but she also gets her arse kicked. I'm not saying the characters in this are overly subtle, but someone though about them beyond their dialogue.

Hansel is a bit more complicated (or maybe I was just watching Jeremy more - I admit it, he is very good looking ;P). He came across as emotionally stunted by his childhood trauma, not very eloquent, unable to handle a woman's advances and he could have looked like a bit of a clown, but the way he was played/directed means his flaws were endearing, rather than clownish. There were also a few subtle things that were not overtly mentioned, just the way scenes were set up: in one bedroom scene, he slept under Gretel's bed when there was a bunk above for him. No explanation, no in yer face, this is a trauma reaction, just him lying on the floor and rolling under the bed to go back to sleep after Gretel wakes him up because she's having a bad dream about their childhood. I thought that was a nice little window onto their lives, not only Hansel, but Gretel's need to talk and Hansel's unwillingness to address the past (which of course is going to come back and bite them in the arse).

Oh yes, and as a side note, there was an interesting scene where H&G have been separated and G literally lands on H - they check each other over and they play it almost like they are lovers, which made me sit up and take notice - very well done, subtle scene in the midst of a whole heap of carnage, which leaves you to make up your own mind as to whether their situation has led to a little too much closeness in their relationship.

So, all in all, good characters, good supporting cast too and a fun, romping plot. It's good to see an ol' fashioned adventure on our screen again, no scrabbling for extra screen time, or younger certificates. There are: some fun comedic moments (chuckle, not belly laugh); a scattering of character subtleties, enough to give the watcher something to hang on to; strong women, both bad and good; strong men too, and finally a pretty engaging plot. I really enjoyed it, in fact I'd go see it again.

Afterword;
The only detractor, we had to see the movie in 3D, since there were no showings in the evening in 2D. The the 3D was crap. Pretty much all of it except the titles and credits was stuff flying out the screen at us, and in some cases, off the bottom of the screen, which threw me out of the 3D. At one point, we were in a forest at night, and I couldn't actually see the trees because the 3D dropped the amount of light. This is my little rant - quit with the 3D, PLEASE, film industry and go back to relying on plot rather than just special effects, this movie did not need 3D!

My Thoughts on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Since I am going to be discussing the movie in detail, consider the following four pictures as spoiler space, some of it quite pretty dwarves :)

Okay, so what did I think of The Hobbit - hmm, well, firstly, I'd like a non-director's cut, please, where they put the story back together in one movie, because, that film was all beginning. It lacked pace, because it was never going to get anywhere. The Hobbit is a short book, it has a beginning, middle and an end, and, even with adding in all the extra info from the appendices, that film did not require that long to get to the point it did.

I thought the beginning before the credits was allowable, although a little indulgent on time, there was a lot that could have been cut out, including all the stuff with Frodo and Bilbo (even though it was fun and what I'd term 'a darling', it was unnecessary). However, the bit with Bilbo and the dwarves in The Shire was excellent, well paced, fun, introducing characters and setting the scene well. Unfortunately, the film, as far as pacing goes, went downhill from there.

After they left The Shire, it became a collection of walk, run, grimace and pace a bit, walk, run, grimace some more. There was very little development of plot, it stayed on one level, the only thing that grew was the realtionship between Thorin and Bilbo and even that was pretty one-dimensional. We seemed to always deal with the dwarves as a group (apart from Thorin and one gem of a moment between Bofur and Bilbo before they get caught by the goblins), which meant that after the intros in The Shire, which was skilfully done, it was all homogeneous fighting for most of the cast and dry watching for the audience.

I did think Martin Freeman was entertaining as Bilbo, he was playing Martin Freeman as he always does, but it worked for the character of Bilbo. I did not however get much growth from him, he doesn't change, even after he'd taken on the Orcs to save Thorin, I didn't feel he'd grown, although attitudes to him do change, and I was wondering if that was deliberate, or not. I'm not sure.

The three dwarves that made an impact on me were Thorin (god can he brood well :P), Kili (nice eye candy, yes, that's shallow, but he is quite pretty), Bofur (he made a mark in every scene he was in, nicely done James Nesbitt, nicely done).

I also enjoyed Sylvester McCoy as Radagast The Brown. He was so sweet and he won my heart when he saved the hedgehog, Sebastian. It was twee and slightly pointless in this movie (did I mention, we didn't really get anywhere as far as plot was concerned), but I'm a sucker for cute animals and that bit made me smile. The whole chase across the moorland with the Orcs was a bit OTT though and what happened to Radagast after that? I might have missed it, I was losing interest in that chase by the time it finished.

The action sequences, like much of the rest of the movie, were slow and repetitive  The worst bit being the whole getting caught in the middle of the rock giants' fight. There was absolutely no point to that section, it does not add to the movie at all, you could have had Bilbo fall off the path in the rain storm and needing to be saved and have achieved exactly the same, not very tense, moment from Thorin that followed. The whole lurching around improbably on moving cliff edges was pointless and, since all the characters ended up exactly the same way they had started, nothing progressed, not even the relationships.

I dread to think what mass of filler will be in the middle movie, or maybe the trilogy will just have a very long ending. Whichever, I don't think I'll be bothering to see them in the cinema. The 3D that we were forced to watch because the cinema didn't have a 2D showing, was pointless, the only scene where it had any effect for me was the last one where the eagles fly round the rock and I really wanted to fast forward through all those damn chases. It wasn't a terrible movie, but it was too long and needed to finish the story.

Move Review: Snow White And The Huntsman

Went to see this movie on Tuesday. First summary thoughts, turn your brain off when you watch it, but if you like high fantasy, you'll probably enjoy it. Now, why do I say that.

Well, this movie is a fun romp through the Snow White fairytale, darker than Disney, with a vicious streak that harks back to the older versions of the stories of The Brother's Grimm. However, not as dark as I think it would have liked to be (but then it was a 12A). Having said it's a fun romp, I mean it, don't try and think too hard, because, hey it is a fairytale, like, the fact that Snow White is locked in 'The North Tower' from about  age 11 until she escapes at approx 17, no company, no teachers, no home comforts and yet, she comes out the other side an eloquent, fairly well-adjusted modern young American - not all due to Kristen Stewart's inability to act her way out a paper bag, either, the script writers really have to answer for that too.

Chris Hemsworth does not really over-exert himself on the acting front either, but, being a girlie, I can appreciate the bod (although I would like to lodge a protest that we didn't get to see enough of it) and so I'll forgive the ever-changing accent, that I think was meant to be Scottish, and the fact that, he was a huntsman, he had an axe, but every time he swung it, I kept expecting lightning to come down from the sky ;P.

Most of the good guys were a little limp actually, even the dwarves, and there was a strong cast there from Nick Frost through to Bob Hoskins. However, I would happily watch this movie again for the bad guys. Ravenna, the evil queen, and her brother, Finn, had the best dynamic in the story. A little suggestion of incest,  complete devotion, a shared anger and the pair of them could act.,Charlize Theron, especially: she walked the tight-rope of batshit insane and reasoning megalomaniac really rather well - she had her reasons for what she was and they more or less made sense. Actually, I'd have liked to have seen more of the siblings' back story.

Talking of back story, that is where the movie suffered - pace. There was far too much navel contemplation in the middle and it took ages to get from the queen's castle to safety with the Duke, and but a flit of an eye to get back...hmmm...There's a whole chunk of time where Snow White and our heroic huntsman stay in a village, that, inevitably, gets burnt to the ground by the bad buys. The only point this whole section makes is that The Huntsman wants to abandon Snow White, which he'd already done once anyway (and come back of course), so why do it all again and spend 20 mins labouring the fact?! If I had been the editor of that story, the 'little darling' would have been ripped straight out, because it killed the pace. There was a whole bit with fairies and The White Hart as well, that, frankly, either they should have got rid of it or tied it in a lot better. I might have suggested replacing both those sections with Evil Queen backstory, of which we only got hints and about 30s of flashback - that would have been far more interesting!

Having slammed the movie a bit, I will admit, I did enjoy it, for all the wooden acting and odd scene choices. It could do with a director's cut to prevent the audience slittings their wrist from boredom in the middle there, but it had something that kept me watching. And, as an aside, they set up quite a nice little love triangle at the end, which is a red rag to a bull for any slash fans :). 

Pre-Avengers Movies - who needs a plot when you have abs! :)

Well, I spent the whole of yesterday being indoctrinated with pre-Avengers' movies. I'd only seen one of them before, because, well, I'm not that much of a superhero gal (except maybe Tobey Maguire as Spider-man) and the only 'comics/graphic novels' I read are Neil Gaiman's Morpheus ones.  Having said all that, though, it wasn't a bad day all in all.

BEWARE - Spoliers follow!

We started with Iron Man, the only movie I had seen before and it's a pre-pre-Avengers' movie and, unlike the others, actually had a rather good plot and some good writing.

Robert Downey Jr has been coming back into his own in recent years, what with Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man and I like this movie, a lot. Tony Stark, play boy, relatively conscienceless weapons trader, gets a boot up the arse when kidnapped by an evil organisation and forced to make his missile for them. Okay, a bit unrealistic, since making a small hamster cage in that cave would have been a challenge, let alone a missile, or an arc reactor, but, hey, it's a superhero movie, if I expected realism, I wouldn't be watching.
Tony's journey is actually the most convincing bit of this movie.He doesn't suddenly change character, he's still a bit of an arse, but he has found a new mission in life.
I also like Obadiah Stane, he's all the way nuts, ruthless and just plain nasty, so of course, when he gets his comeuppance, everyone is cheering! :)

Okay, so I'd see that movie, so no surprises. Then we moved onto The Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton and Liv Tyler).

This movie summarised the preceding movie 'Hulk' in about two minutes under the titles, which, IMO, was best. However, then we get to the main movie and well, I think the first two minutes were more interesting. This movie was search, chase, search chase, chase, basically. Not much more plot than that and only a dorky Edward Norton to keep us going.
Okay, to be fair, the fight scenes were rather spectacular, but most of the cast were so internal, it was more fun to watch paint dry.  Okay, Bruce, so you're a tortured scientist, I get that, and you have to stay calm, I get that too, but I'd like to have seen a little more!
Even General Ross, our bad guy for most of the movie had about as much emotion as a hunk of wood. And Tim Roth, well, I prefer him in lie to me, he just did not make it for me as the hard-arse Russian/Brit marine. He was too pointless for me to care about his descent into the monster soldier.

I think I've trashed that movie enough :). Next, we threw on Iron Man 2. This should just have been called Tony's Meltdown.  There is no other plot really. There are some good one-liners, Tony has his usual snark on, and some of the action sequences are brilliant - the suit in a briefcase is priceless. However, compared to Iron Man, it is a pale also-ran. And having given Tony the benefit of the doubt about the whole cave thing in number 1, him developing a whole new power source for his suit in a week stretched my disbelief to whole new proportions. Still, the movie was worth the watch, once.

Next came Thor. Note, my picture is not of Thor himself, it's of Loki because, frankly, he's the best thing about this movie. :) He's a villain with depth, broken, with big daddy issues who does what the God of Mischief is supposed to do, he stirs it up. (Disclaimer here, my sis had been bending my ear about Tom Hiddleston and how great Loki is for months, and I resisted, I really did, but I have to admit, she's right.) Be warned, though, this is no masterpiece of a movie. The events on Asgard, well, they're relatively interesting (and Shakespearian), with Loki's machinations and Thor being a complete lunk-head, but when Thor gets dumped on Earth, hmm, we're back to the ol' paint drying thing. There should have been more of a subplot on Earth, just trying to get Mjolnir (his hammer) back from SHIELD is just, well, tedious.
I am rather enamoured with the relationship between Loki and Thor, it has possibilities, but, please, no more running around deserts!

And finally, we got to Captain America (we were following the timeline, apparently). Well, this had a bit more plot. I liked the start where Steve is trying to enlist and Bucky is just adorable.
However, I thought there was about as much chemistry between The Red Skull and Cap as there is in a vacuum. Individually, they were great: naiive, but heroic Cap, wanting to do his best for the best; Red Skull, Hug Weaving, dark, mad and ruthless. But put them together and the ending was a bit of a damp squib. It didn't feel like the writers had invested in their bad guy, he was just a precursor for The Avengers movie.
Still, Chris Evans did a good job as Cap and the CGI of him as a 9-stone weakling is very effective.


So, what is my assessment all in all: would I go out of my way to watch these movies again, well, no, but if someone put them on, I wouldn't walk out of the room in disgust. :)

Hammer's The Woman In Black - wow, just wow!

The Woman In Black - don't look behind you Arthur!

Just to set the scene: I've been waiting with bated breath for this movie to come out since I first heard Hammer were making their own adaptation of The Woman In Black. I have read the book, seen the stage play and I own the TV adaptation on DVD - this is one of my favourite all time ghost stories, so the film did not have much to live up to! I say now, I was NOT disappointed.

This is a creepy, suspenseful, truly scary film. The cinematography captures the atmosphere of the book perfectly, but the adaptations made for the big screen make the film much, much more immediate than the book. I was hiding behind my hands, peaking at the screen for a good 50% of the time and that was down to the fabulous pacing and brilliant effects. They weren't overdone, no massive, obvious CGI, instead horror artistry at its best. I usually find myself in movies catching any computer graphics, noticing the tricks, but not in this movie. I actually have no idea how much was computer enhanced and how much was just camera angle, but whatever it was, those angles and blended tricks were brilliant (just look closely at the picture at the top of this blog entry and you'll see what I mean).

The director has to be praised for the way this film is put together. From the very first moment that Arthur steps in Eel March House, this film had me looking over Arthur's shoulder in every shot. Each time there was a gloomy corner, I was looking into it, wondering, is she there? And sometimes, eek, she was! I am sure when I watch the movie again, I will see more ghosts.

Dan Radcliffe does a magnificent job as Arthur Kipps. He is a broken man when we meet him and his eyes tell all. Considering that much of this film is just Dan, the camera and the ghosts in the background, Daniel had a lot to carry on his shoulders and he does it very, very well. You see his grief, you feel his fear, you stand with him when he resolves to beat that terror and yet, none of it was overdone. His is a subtle performance, believable and sits perfectly in the atmosphere of the whole film.

Hammer have made some significant changes to the plot, but then every adaptation I have seen has as well. The changes in this case were, I think, the best changes to I have seen to this story, As I mentioned above, the book is not as immediate as the film, it can afford more introspection, as writing often can. The changes to Arthur's circumstances, to the location, Crythin Gifford and to the story of Jennet, the woman in black, are understandable and work within the film, providing atmosphere and background that allow the watcher to sink very quickly into the plot and also add to the scares.

I would heartily recommend this film to anyone who is either a ghost story lover, or a Daniel Radcliffe fan, because you get plenty of both. But a word of warning, the creepiness lingers :). It was midnight when I got home from the cinema, a dark and windy night. Let's just say I didn't stay outside in the dark for long and I may have ducked under the covers when I turned off the bedside light!

Green Lantern, Rather a Good Movie in My Opinion

I'll preface this review by saying that I have never seen any Green Lantern media before, I did not know the story and am coming at this from merely having seen the movie.


Oh, and, there are spoilers in this review, so don't read past the pretty piccie if you don't wanna know.

It started fairly predictably with the slightly broken male lead and oo, he's a pilot, a maverick pilot, so no surprises there then. The beginning was average for a superhero movie, or really any action movie where our all-American hero is going to be expected to save the day. However, after all the initial, this guy's a loser, he runs away from responsibility, but he's got an edge no-one else can match stuff, what made me sit up and start watching properly was when he was faced with Abin Sur. There was a second after he had been dumped on the shore by this green glow when he stared at this alien spacecraft like he was about to leg it in the other direction and then, in another heartbeat, he was scrambling into the water to help. The timing on that moment was perfect and I was a fan of our hero from that second on, even when he did the whole, I'm going it alone to save my planet speech just before the climax, which, like all such speeches in all other superhero movies, just made me cringe.

Hal Jordan: I think Ryan Reynolds did a good job on this superhero. He wasn't goofy, or sickenly all-American, or hard-edged, he was an ordinary guy who had dealt with the loss of his hero-dad by trying to emulate him and then running away when the going got tough, and I liked that about him: an understated lead. There was the odd moment of comedy, the bit where Carol recognises him behind the mask just had me giggling and I loved the line (forgive me if I'm paraphrasing), 'I've seen you naked, you didn't think I'd recognise you just because I can't see your cheekbones?'

I thought poor old Hector had a rough ride, called in by the government, infected with Fear by accident, however, he played the hand he was dealt and with relish. This is where this movie revealed it's hard edge, there was no saving Hector, no redemption and I found that refreshing, even though I still felt sorry for the retiring nerd we had first met.

Talking about this movie's hard edge, Hal did not get to save everyone. Unlike Superman, or Spider-man, Green Lantern saved the day, but not all the innocent victims survived, and I'm not talking unnamed planet-fulls of folks, we saw innocent human beings destroyed by Paralax before Hal could stop him. This surprised me, although, I should have remembered that DC does tend to be darker than Marvel. I think this was the tricky line that the movie tried to walk, because Green Lantern is not as dark as Batman, he flies, he uses the power of Will to fight his battles, he's a much cleaner-cut character, and maybe this is why people didn't like it, because Hal was so understated, not the man with the dark alter-ego, nor an out and out Superman-type, but I liked that about the whole movie.

Okay, so the movie did have some timing problems, lines could have been cut better, the music could have been more dramatic, but I said it was a good movie, not a magnificent one. This movie didn't take me to the skies, but it did surprise me, and it left me winded at times, the confrontation between Hector and Hal in the secret lab is exquisitely done, if you ask me. Not your average fight scene at all. It was bits like that which made me like this movie: I was never bored.