Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)

Friday, 8 May 2015Friday, 8 May 2015 Starr3 Comments

The first Pitch Perfect movie was a surprising hit, to me. I didn’t think much of it when it was released, but people couldn’t stop raving about how hilarious they thought the movie was. And of course, who could escape Anna Kendrick singing “Cups (When I’m Gone)” on the radio… in the mall… in restaurants… I even did a cover way back when. (Oh to be so fresh out of college that I filmed that in my college apartment.) Anyway, let’s jump right into it, shall we? Our story begins with the Barden Bellas being suspended after Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) accidentally shows her lady bits to President Obama, Michelle Obama, and a large audience at the Kennedy Center. (This scene is in the trailer and is literally the opener, so I’m not spoiling anything for you there.) They lose their champion tour to German group Das Sound Machine (featuring YouTube star Flula!) and have to win “Worlds” in order to be reinstated. (Because every show/movie about show choir/a capella revolves around a big competition that is usually “regionals” but taking it to Copenhagen for that international flair is nice, too.) Also everyone is a senior, so there’s that. If you’re unfamiliar with the humor in Pitch Perfect movies, let me first warn you: The humor is often offensive. But the movies are fully aware of this and basically make fun of how offensive they are. Examples of running gags that are off-color in this movie are:

Flo (Chrissie Fit), the undocumented (???) immigrant from Guatemala, who doesn’t care too much about if the Bellas get reinstated because of the horrors she endured
Announcer John Smith (John Michael Higgins), who frequently makes extremely sexist comments about women, minorities, non-Americans, anyone really

Even though the humor was definitely NOT politically correct, I didn’t find it to be crude, but rather drawing attention to how wrong these jokes are, if that makes sense? I don’t like crude, off-color jokes, but within the script, the sexist joke ITSELF is the joke. It’s a meta-joke, if you will. And I appreciated that level of self-awareness a lot.

“You know you’re setting women back like, 30 years right now, right?”

What was great is that there were so many of these jokes but they never felt too tired. I think the writers did a great job not milking a joke dry. For example, there is a running gag where Becca (Anna Kendrick) says she is intimidated and also sexually confused by Kommissar (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) so our already adorably awkward Becca has some funny interactions with her. But they didn’t overdo it with this one. THEY CAME CLOSE but they didn’t. I was really surprised that Hailee Steinfeld was in this movie? It made sense once the shock wore off that they would introduce a freshman since, as I mentioned, everyone on the Bellas was graduating. She has her own little storyline and she fit in pretty well as far as being a weirdo. I didn’t love her romance subplot, even though it was pretty cute, and I thought that some elements of her character were sloppily done, even though they made sense in the scheme of the whole movie. I just thought that her character could have been written into the story more smoothly. Can I also say that Keegan Michael Key was amazing in this movie? I’m a huge huge fan of his Comedy Central show Key & Peele, so I was really excited that he would be joining the cast. All of his scenes were really funny because he is really great at playing off other people, reacting to them and eliciting certain reactions. I did miss Utkarsh Ambudkar, aka hot Indian guy from Pitch Perfect, because I really liked his character and what he brought to the cast and to the whole movie. There aren’t that may people of color in the Pitch Perfect movies. Some people take issue with the fact that the few that are in the movies are weirdos. Ester Dean — who is a real-life songwriter for artists like Rihanna — is both token black friend and butch lesbian trope, and well, Hana Mae Lee’s character says really unsettling things very quietly. But the nice thing about how Pitch Perfect does this is that EVERY CHARACTER IS TOTALLY WEIRD. Some are weirder than others. (Am I mad that the Asian girl is clearly waaaaaay weirder than everyone else? A little, it’s okay, I’m just salty because it hits too close to home for me.) But the point of the movies is that these kids are all really weird and that’s okay because they have each other. They might even make an occasional joke about how there’s just one black girl on the Bellas. Still, it doesn’t make it okay to drop their one South Asian guy and to replace him with a black beatboxer and a blond Asian who both have no lines at all. While I’m not the biggest fan of Rebel Wilson’s brand of humor, I think fans will really appreciate her own subplot in the movie. She gets a solo and drives a lot of the movie, whereas Anna Kendrick was the very clear star of the first movie. It seemed like the sequel kind of forgot that Anna Kendrick was the star of the first one, or maybe it just didn’t care. Part of Becca’s story is that she begins to detach from the Barden Bellas as she prepares to graduate but the rest of the girls are having a much harder time letting go. (How is Brittany Snow’s character still there if she was supposed to be a senior in the first movie? Because she has been intentionally failing classes for the past 3 years to put off graduation. Yep.) For comedy movies like this, I don’t think spoilers are necessary. Just know that Pitch Perfect 2 delivers all of the insane but hilarious personality that the first one did with its characters. There’s a really great sing-off scene (another classic show choir/a cappella movie/show trope) that features a great guest star. (Those of you who have been following the movie more closely probably know about this.) It was easily one of the highlights of the movie, during which I laughed out loud and frequently. And of course, it’s a movie that features a female ensemble cast that everyone enjoys.

ALSO I got a yellow cup (because CUPS) and a flashlight (there’s an original song in the movie called “Flashlight”), which I thought was some pretty nice and clever branding. (Although I didn’t love the lyrics for the song “Flashlight”. They were kind of dumb.) Are you going to see Pitch Perfect 2? Did you like the first movie? Do you like movies/TV shows about competitive singing? Pitch Perfect 2 is in US theaters May 15.<

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Thursday, 30 April 2015Thursday, 30 April 2015 StarrLeave a comment

Here it is. I’ve been waiting for this movie ever since seeing the first Avengers, and I’ve been hoping for access to an early screening to the sequel ever since, well, I’ve been going to early screenings.

Here it is. I was able to catch Avengers: Age of Ultron in theaters yesterday at an early press screening. (Thank you, YelpDC!) I got there 2 hours early and I was SO excited in my lazy Scarlet Witch-bound.

I am of the firm belief that I photograph so much better when the top of my face is excluded. — I am of the firm belief that I photograph much better when the top of my face is excluded.

MANY spoilers will be following the trailer, so please be aware of this! I’m not sure how much you all know about the movie already (some things have been revealed over the past few months) so I’ll try to keep it as vague as possible with regards to actual plot points.
Note: I wasn’t sure where in the MCU timeline the events of AOU were meant to take place. Right after Winter Soldier? How does Agents of SHIELD factor in, especially since I don’t watch AoS so… I had to do a little bit of research afterwards since AoS does have tie-ins with AOU.

(Abbreviations I will be using in this review: AOU = Age of Ultron, aka this movie; AoS = Agents of SHIELD; MCU = Marvel Cinematic Universe)

You know what, I’m likely going to watch this in theaters again at a later time. The problem with seeing it with zealous fans this early on is… they’re very excited. Someone kept clapping during the screening, a girl fangirl-screamed at one point. Full-on squeal/shriek/scream with delight. (Maybe it was horror, who really knows.) Sometimes you miss dialogue because the audience is laughing too hard at a joke or because there is applause throughout the theater. It makes for a fun experience, but you miss things in the movie as a result.

Of course, the movie was spectacular. It was fun and exciting to watch, and it delivered on many of the things that we have come to expect from Marvel films. This review will sound nitpicky, and that’s likely because I have just been anticipating this for so long and it’s easy to nitpick at a sequel, you know? But I loved this movie, I did. It isn’t perfect and no movie is.

It kept with the tone of the first Avengers film, which was easy since director Joss Whedon returned for this one. However, when the Russo brothers were announced to be coming onboard for the 3rd film, I remember being really confused by the response from some parts of the MCU fandom that went “Good riddance!” Wasn’t everyone so excited that Whedon directed the first one? Wasn’t a really good portion of the MCU fandom also Whedonites? I didn’t really understand when people became so anti-Whedon and/or pro-Russo brothers?

Here’s Joss on the set of the first Avengers film. Hey, it’s good that he makes work so fun.

But by the time AOU was over, I kind of understood the decision to go with a different directing style for the next Avengers film. I felt a bit burdened by Whedon’s one-liners and quips by the end of the movie. It felt like when the class clown — who everyone knows is funny — makes just a few too many jokes during a class presentation. It’s not that the jokes don’t land but it feels like he is trying a bit too hard to make you laugh when you’re not there to laugh your butt off. Did I find Whedon’s jokes funny? Sure. But did I want to be laughing at these quips every 5 minutes? Not really. I was pretty tired of them, to be really honest with you all. Still, the quality of Whedon jokes is good; it just felt like the quantity was a bit excessive. And I think it is strange with regards to the tone of the MCU as a whole. Iron Man movies are pretty snarky, because Tony Stark is Tony Snark. Every Avenger movie has its share of jokes and quips. But this one seemed to try much harder than the others, and to me, it seemed to slightly disrupt the overall tone of the MCU. Is that a strange thing to say?

STILL a fan of a Whedon, just to be clear. And I did like the jokes, I did! It was just more than I expected.

AOU starts off in the middle of action, and it was a little disorienting for me for the first 15 minutes or so. I would later find out that watching AoS would probably have helped me out a bit. We begin immediately with the Avengers kicking butt and taking names to find Loki’s staff (yep, the same one from the last Avengers movie). Like I said, I was a bit disoriented about what was going on and who this Strucker fella was since I didn’t remember him from any of the other Marvel movies. We definitely weren’t picking up after Cap 2, and I knew that Agents of SHIELD had handled a lot of the Hydra fall-out, etc.

So for folks who also don’t watch AoS and/or need a refresher on previous events: Baron von Strucker is a doctor who has been experimenting with human enhancement. SO, when we first meet the twins — who moviegoers last saw at the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier, and who are the only surviving subjects — they are referred to as “enhanced”. As in like “there’s an enhanced here”. (This is Marvel Studios’ way of avoiding the word mutants because 20th Century Fox owns the rights to the X-Men and all mention of mutants.) This is how we enter the “Age of Miracles” and step into real superpowers within the MCU, which until now only had Asgardian pseudo-godliness and some superserum-induced abilities in addition to highly trained operatives and whatever you would classify Tony Stark as.

From their post-credits scene in Captain America: Winter Soldier — the twins.

ANYWAY. Thanks to the Scarlet Witch, we are able to explore some of the things that haunt the Avengers. It’s a nice way to see what motivates Tony, Natasha, Steve, Bruce, and Thor a bit. One of my favorite things about the Avengers movies is that you don’t lose sight of each individual character, their individual nuances, their individual motivations. As we move forward in the Marvel timeline, it’s important for us to see the very crucial differences in their worldviews and how those differences affect their actions.

Of course, it isn’t really an Avengers movie until they fight each other a bit. Their harmony as a team is only rivaled by their dissonance in conflict. The dynamics between the Avengers is really nice. Tony and Bruce science-bro-ing it up. (SCIENCE!) Tony and Cap’s ideological differences. Steve and Thor’s excellent chemistry in battle (Chris Squared forever!). (And okay, there’s one dynamic that I really didn’t like how they executed in this movie, I’ll talk about that in my spoilers.)

Clint isn’t in this shot because, well, you’ll see.

Avengers movies excel in bringing together these heroes and showing us how they play off each other. Half of them have their own film franchises now, and each one has their own style and ego. My favorite thing about the Avengers is the relationships between the characters. It’s especially fun because we see characters from individual franchises that get introduced to the mix, like Rhodey (War Machine from the Iron Man franchise) and Sam (Falcon from Captain American: Winter Soldier).

Also thank goodness there are some PoCs in this one. Don Cheadle and Anthony Mackie and Claudia Kim (I’ll talk about her character in the spoilers section) added some much-needed diversity to the cast.
Even though they’re barely hardly in the movie at all. It’s a start, Marvel. It’s a start. But you can do better and you know that.

With regards to our new characters, the twins, I liked their dynamic a lot. They don’t really look anything alike, but it was a pretty convincing sibling relationship. I am always very wary when brother-sister duos get announced, because sometimes the actors play off each other with far too much sexual tension for sibling relations. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen did nicely in this regard.
HOWEVER (no one is safe), their accents were a bit wonky. Elizabeth’s sounded decent, but she wouldn’t consistently speak with it. You could hear a very distinct American accent slip out pretty often. Aaron’s seemed like a bit much; I got a bit of a Borat vibe from his accent. Luckily for us, the two of them didn’t have that many lines, but I do wish they worked with their dialect coaches a little bit more.

Not sure how much I liked Ultron as a villain. He seemed a bit shallow for a Marvel villain, so it was disappointing. It just seemed like we don’t really delve very deep into his motivations and his thought process as a villain. He jumps so suddenly to villainous intent, and we don’t really explore how he got there or get a glimpse of how he’s doing the right thing from his perspective. It’s hard to sympathize with him as a villain, which makes him a weak villain. Marvel is better than this, so it was disappointing. I guess the true villain(s) of the movie are their inner demons blah blah whatever. Andy Serkis has just the tiniest presence in the movie and that was disappointing, too, although I am guessing we’ll see more of him in the future?

I can’t really complain too much about the action sequences. Marvel delivers wonderfully on action movies, but with Avengers movies, you often have so many important characters on screen and there were so many cuts within any given fight scene that it was easy to just get lost. I kind of tuned out a lot of the action sequences because it was easier than trying to watch a flurry of arms and legs and guns and robots in IMAX 3D.

I was confused about Natasha’s TRON-esque catsuit. Why were there lights running through it? It was pretty cool but I didn’t understand the tactical reason for this. And she didn’t seem to have a set weapon or anything. I mean, her skillset is her weapon, I suppose, but she had guns, she had cool electric… dagger… things? No signature weapon and, seemingly, no assigned weapon? I loved that Clint (Hawkeye) got a lot more screentime compared to his brainwashed self in the first movie, although his personality is still not really fleshed out at this point. He was on screen and even got lines, but he was still not really an active character in the movie. (Do you see how small he is on the poster?)

It’s getting a bit dicey for me to talk about this movie without any spoilers, so let’s just jump into the spoiler section below the trailer!
Warning: It’s a lot of critiquing in this section. My big issue was that a lot of things happened in this movie that I thought there wasn’t enough of a build-up for: new characters, new situations, new relationships, etc.

Are you planning on watching Avengers: Age of Ultron?
Do you like watching MCU films? What did you think of the last Avengers movie?

LOTS OF SPOILERS COMING UP. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU! I MEAN IT.

Here’s the latest trailer, and spoilers below the jump.

Cinderella (2015)

Friday, 27 February 2015 Starr5 Comments

My first early screening of the year was for Disney’s latest live-action adaptation, Cinderella.

I’ll be honest with you: I was not that excited for this movie. We’ve seen a few live-action Disney fairy tales and they haven’t done very well. And while Maleficent was a villain backstory, I couldn’t discern any actual new twists, and well, I own the original 1950 animated movie so I know the story? What is this new movie bringing to the table besides Cate Blanchett and a bunch of other actors that I don’t actually know very well.

ALSO, I’m not going to lie, I was a little salty about how bright blue the new dress is. Cindy’s dress was this silvery white that looked just barely blue in the light. It’s a beautiful dress, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt miffed by the color.

That is not a silvery blue. That’s an in your face, blue-as-blue-can-be kind of blue. Still pretty.

Also why does the shoe look so weird and polygonal? It just didn’t bode well for the movie, for me.

Sigh… Not sure what to expect from Disney live action adaptations anymore, but I tried to go into it with an open mind… and a themed DisneyBound of course!

Now, on to the actual review.

You know what’s kind of awkward… is when the movie ends and people want to know how it is. But they phrase it like this:

“Did you like the movie?”
“Well-”
“I loved it, it was amazing right??”

No. I did not think it was amazing, I’m sorry. I found it, basically, exactly as underwhelming as I thought it would be. That being said, I think I went into it with the expectations that this was a movie for adults. It’s not that it’s a movie for children, per se, but it’s also not quite a movie for adult Disney fans either…

Let me back it up and talk some of the things I liked about this new adaptation:

Costuming was exquisite. Seriously, it was pretty glorious. My cavorite costume of the film is Lady Tremaine’s first that we see in the film, with a spectacular black and gold color scheme. Most of her later costumes have green, and I don’t like green, especially wearing it, but I loved this first costume.
PLUS THAT HAT. Oh man, dream outfit. I would wear this. Complete with a grumpy cat.
Set design was beautiful. Oh man, it was really gorgeous. When Anastasia and Drizella are making fun of Cinderella’s house, it totally baffles me because uh, the house is beautiful. The Prince’s castle? Wow.
Action scenes are best in live-action. The scene where Cinderella is fleeing the castle as the clock strikes twelve is well-done in live-action. That kind of tension-building doesn’t come across as well in most animations, so this was done pretty well.
Scoring was also done really nicely. Although I will talk through some of my issues with it in a bit.

Essentially, my takeaway from this movie was that it took the fairy tale feeling that was conveyed by the animated 1950 films and translated that fairy tale magic through the aesthetics. Gilded everything, soft sunlit scenes. The movie was so nice to look at. But beyond that, I really found it lacking a lot.

Let me talk about the music really quickly. I was pretty dismayed that the songs from the 1950 movie weren’t used in this film, even in the scoring. The only song I recognized from the original soundtrack was when Lily James briefly sang “Sing Sweet Nightingale”. By briefly, I literally mean she sang the line “Sing sweet, nightingale” once while doing her chores. I didn’t hear the motif throughout the rest of that scene. I did not hear “So This is Love” as a motif in scenes with Richard Madden. I did not hear “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” at any point. And no “Bippidi Boppidi Boo” for our fairy godmother scene.

I didn’t love the casting of Helena Bonham Carter for the fairy godmother. It added to the confusion of what this movie was trying to be. After all, it wasn’t trying to be a super faithful live-action recreation because Helena’s fairy godmother is nothing like the matronly wise old woman archetype that we had in 1950. She is also not likely popular among children. So she’s cast in this film for adults and yet her role was so campy that I don’t understand what the larger goal was for this casting choice. And when you have so little screentime but are so heavily advertised (kind of like Johnny Depp in Into the Woods) you have to make THE MOST out of it and I just felt that her performance, much like many of the non-Blanchett performances, fell flat.

In fact, that was my major problem with the entire film. Overall, it seemed like it was aiming to just be a highly romanticized period film with some magic. But I felt so overwhelmingly uncharmed by it. What was it trying to be? It was not a faithful adaptation of the original animated movie, as it needed to do something original. (Didn’t love those twists, but I’ll talk about those in my spoilers.) It wasn’t innocent and light enough to be a children’s movie, but it was too campy to be an adult movie.

I definitely had an issue with the dialogue. Most of it was cringe-worthy. It was not natural, maybe because of this lofty romantic fuzzy daydream vision they were going for? BUT THEN explain Helena Bonham Carter’s character? The goofy fairy godmother? Goofier than Whitney Houston’s. I mean, she’s HBC. We know what to expect from her, and she deliver that, but it seemed so out of place in this film.

You know, let’s go back to talking about the actors for a minute. Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but they gave her such odd lines to work with. Lady Tremaine as a character is just kind of cruel because she can be. They weakened that in this film, and I don’t understand why they did this. She did what she could, but even she couldn’t salvage the awkward dialogue. There’s nothing WRONG with the actors in this film, but the performances were just all so flat and lacked depth. Richard Madden? Lily James? YAWN. I do find casting Richard Madden as Prince Charming odd. He’s not handsome in the conventional Disney way of casting men who look young and dashing and charming? He’s more handsome in that John Stamos way, if that makes sense? It seemed odd. He was also one of the more expressive actors in the movie, and that’s saying something. The stepsisters were comical, as they’re supposed to be, but were they actually much more animated than everyone else or did they just seem so much more lively relative to their costars? True, their funny moments were pretty funny. The comic nature of how ridiculous the sisters are was maintained in this movie, thank goodness. Those two made the most of their time on screen.

Oh, but Cate Blanchett really was brilliant. Truly an amazing actress, and the little things sh did really reminded me of some of the great actresses that have graced the silver screen. She already is in their company. Amazing.

I’m going to cut to a trailer before I rip into this some more, but I’m going to rip into this some more after the trailer:

Cinderella is out in theaters March 13. Spoilers to follow:Read More »

Frozen Fever (2015)

Thursday, 26 February 2015Thursday, 26 February 2015 StarrLeave a comment

I was able to see an early screening of Disney’s newest live-action adaption, Cinderella, last night, my first screening of 2015!

But I’ll level with you: I think a lot of Disney fans were more excited for Disney’s newest animated short than for their newest live-action adaptation. From what I’d seen in my travels through the Disney fandom, Frozen fans were barely hibernating when they were able to spring back up in excitement!

Can I be a bit more honest with you? I was not excited. I was WAY over the hype for Frozen before the movie was even released. The soundtrack was fantastic, yes. Was it a good movie? Sure. But was it hyped beyond belief to the point where most Disnerds are a bit sick of it? YUP.

That being said, “Frozen Fever” was really cute!

Yes, there were some echoes of the original movie that were eye-roll-worthy. (“After all, a cold never bothered me anyway.” UGH, Elsa, no.) And some of the animation seemed recycled:

Pretty sure they just inserted Elsa into the scene of Anna waking up on coronation day? The lighting on Elsa seemed a bit off.

But it all worked to remind you that FROZEN HAPPENED, in case you forgot. They rode bicycles in the hall…

Notice that Anna is holding her favorite food: a SANDWICH!

and even Oaken and a portable sauna make an appearance, among other nods to the movie:

The premise is that it’s Anna’s first birthday post-events of Frozen and Elsa wants to make everything PERFECT to make up for being a cold ice queen for all of Anna’s life.

Of course, hijnks ensue because, well… think about the title. Also, it’s a Disney short; when AREN’T there hijinks?

It was definitely cute and fun and REALLY, I mean really, reinforced the idea of sisterly love. Elsa makes a lot of very grand gestures for her sister in this movie for Anna’s birthday, so if you’re not used to seeing grand gestures of platonic love, you’re going to be a bit confused. It’s okay, it’s super sweet and thoughtful. I mean, it includes this adorable/awkward family portrait:

I’m going to cut to the trailer now before I spoil too much. Even though I’m really sick of Frozen (and the folks in the theater were REAL sick of it), this was still a fun short to watch. Short and sweet. Definitely good for fans of Frozen and still a treat for Disney fans otherwise.

“Frozen Fever” and Cinderella will be out in theaters March 13th.

Seventh Son (2015)

Friday, 6 February 2015 Starr2 Comments

This was not a good movie. It pains me to say this because I have a friend who worked on it (the visual effects were great, B!) but oh boy.

Okay, now that I’ve blurted out my thesis, it’s time to back it up.

First of all, is anyone surprised? When my friend Annie told me she had early screening tickets on Wednesday, I had no clue what she was going on about and very vaguely knew that it was a movie at all. Something something… fantasy or sci-fi genre? Am I out of the loop or did it seem like there was very minimal promotion going on for this? (Not a rhetorical question, it is entirely likely that I just was never targeted for advertising for this movie.)

I am assuming that all the actors in this film were really well-paid because ugh, it was just awful. I really take issue with the writing. The dialogue made me roll my eyes into the back of my head and the plot points were so loosely tied together. The movie itself was pretty short, which was great for me because that meant I didn’t have to endure it for more than 2 hours. But maybe they could have used some extra time to build the world here? World building is crucial and I will never excuse any book, movie, TV show, etc. that doesn’t take care to do it. I mean, there’s a scene where we are looking at a tombstone. It says “REBEKKA” backwards. Is this the script of this grand world? Mirrored English? That was one of the worst offenses, that they made such a laughably barely-half-arsed attempt at the world-building. This is a movie based on a book series, the world-building is done! You just have to put it in the movie!

You know what’s worse than a movie with an all-white cast?
A movie where the only people of color are the secondary villains who have zero character development and are killed off.
Djimon Honsou is in this and it’s such a shame that his talent is wasted here. There was an Asian secondary villain who doesn’t have any freaking lines before he is killed. Do not even get me started on the black female secondary villain who takes the form of a leopard. She is reduced to an animal much more than the other villains, and the Asian one was a bear chained in a cage for most of his scene, so that’s telling. And of course, she has no lines. At least Djimon Honsou had lines.

I cringed during most of Jeff Bridges’ and Julianne Moore’s scenes. I think I cringed most watching Julianne Moore play this poorly developed villain. I couldn’t help think of her standing in front of a green screen pretending to wield magic while she has been nominated for an Oscar for the fifth time. I’ll go more into how I think her character fell completely flat later, but just… know there was a lot of putting my head in my hands in the middle of the theater. I don’t blame her at all. She did the best she could with what she was given… but she was given baloney.

Jeff Bridges, the Oscar-winning actor, may have known this was all ridiculous. He uses this strange affect when he speaks in this movie, like if Sean Connery was trying to play Gandalf. Maybe his character is supposed to be a kind of washed up old fool, but it was still very sad to see him like this. I’d like to think that he knew this whole movie was ludicrous and was just having fun while getting paid.

Ben Barnes actually did a pretty good job. I’m not familiar with his work (sorry Prince Caspian fans) but you know what, he looked good in this role and I think he delivered. Not sure why his character was the only one with any real depth but okay then. I’d watch more movies with him after seeing Seventh Son.

If you’re familiar with my reviews, you might know that I care deeply about world-building and relationship-building. The relationships between characters bond us to them more than their actions independent of other people. The relationships in this movie were almost all BS. There’s, obviously, a love story and it’s completely limp. It drives much of the plot ending forward and I was so detached from it that I was really disgusted. Two attractive actors with some on-screen chemistry does not a love story make! The only maybe compelling relationship, to me, was of Tom Ward (our protagonist) and his mother. His mother was a pretty cool character, played by Olivia Williams, and I maybe felt most attached to her. But maybe that’s just because it’s easy to write maternal traits without having to do much else.

I mean… I have so many negative things to say here. A waste of Kit Harington, who is only in the movie for the first 10 minutes, sorry to all his fans. A waste of admittedly, as I said early, really nice visual effects to create magic and mythical beasts. A waste of what seems like it was a really cool world. This story is just empty and flat and I had no reason to care about it. I was so uninvested in the characters, in the story, about 5 minutes into the movie. Spoiler alert: Gregory locks away Mother Malkin and she escapes because “time made her stronger” and that is the impetus for our conflict? That after enough time passed, she could just leave her prison? As soon as this happened, and Julianne Moore was introduced in just an utterly tragic costume, I knew this movie was worse than I thought it would be going into this screening.