Required Halloween Viewing

Tuesday, 14 October 2014Tuesday, 14 October 2014 Starr2 Comments

We’re almost halfway through October, but Halloween decorations have been in stores since July. Even though I hate (hate hate) being scared, I really like Halloween! It’s my one chance every year to dress up, which I’m recently discovering I love doing. I love getting into a character and being someone else for a day. (I do need to pick characters that are better-suited for chillier weather, though!)
Plus, I used to get the ultimate reward for dressing up: free candy.

First things first, let’s get a couple of short videos up here. These are iconic and classic Halloween staples in my life.

One of Disney’s Silly Symphonies: “The Skeleton Dance”
“Skeleton Frolic”
A classic Mickey Mouse cartoon: “Haunted House”

One of my favorite things about Halloween is the movies that go along with it. Let me remind you that I don’t like scary movies. I’m just kind of a sucker for holiday-themed movies. (Especially Christmas ones, but you all know I’m a super sucker for Christmas anyway.) A few of my favorites are:

Hocus Pocus
Beetlejuice – the only Tim Burton film I like, maybe?
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Casper

Easily the most iconic scene in this movie
More or less any Scooby Doo movie, preferably an older one
Honorable mention: Rocky Horror Picture Show, the strange cult classic that was an extra hit at my summer camp

(Because it was such a big part of my camp experience, I know all the words to this song and more, without having actually seen the entire movie.)
Optional: The Disney Channel originals (DCOMs!): Halloweentown + sequels – cheesy because they’re Disney but they’re a lot of fun

Oh yes, I absolutely cannot stand being scared (and yes, it’s because I scare way easily) but I love Halloween movies that aren’t horror ones.
Basically, I love children’s Halloween movies. SO WHAT they’re great. Halloween is really a holiday for kids now anyway.

I know I’ve left out some other iconic Halloween movies, but I just haven’t seen them before. (I’m too scared to watch a lot of them.)

Have you seen these movies?
Which movies that I left out do you think I definitely need to watch?

Gone Girl (2014)

Tuesday, 7 October 2014Tuesday, 7 October 2014 Starr7 Comments

~~Thanks to Yelp, I was able to see an advanced screening of Gone Girl last night.~~ SO the advanced screening folks issued way too many tickets for the screening and I was turned away despite turning up really early. So mad. A lot of folks were mad. I was one of them. SO MAD. But I got to go to a theater with reclining seats (!!!) to watch with my parents today so it all turned out well in the end!

As per usual, I did not read this book before watching the movie. Long story short, I get to enjoy the movie without knowing how it’ll end or how it deviated from the book.

I like this poster, although it’s not what I expected because it looks almost nothing like the book cover.

I’ll admit, I didn’t understand why people were getting so excited about this movie. Not being part of a book fandom will do that to you, I guess. Reviews started pouring in and everyone was raving about the movie, so I went in with fairly high expectations. I’m also a really big fan of David Fincher, the director, so I was ready for a ride.

And boy did I get it.

What a roller coaster of emotions. With the greys between villain and victim, Gillian Flynn (author of the book and the screenwriter) paints this incredible portrait of how many people doing the wrong thing turns into a sh*tstorm, to say the least. The plot takes you for a ride, with plot twists cropping up every which way. It is really enjoyable if you haven’t read the novel, because then the twists really surprise you. There were several points near the middle/end of the film where I thought it was over but then BOOM MORE STUFF IS GOING ON, IT AIN’T OVER JUST YET.

What kind of man smiles at a press conference announcing that his wife is missing? A sociopath? A bundle of camera-shy nerves? Both? Neither?

Some spoiler-free points:

While I do love Fincher’s work, I would like to see him do more with color. He uses this muted color palette so often in his films (see The Social Network, Fight Club, Se7en, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, etc.) and I want to see him and his cinematographers play with COLOR more. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Zhang Yimou and Brian Fuller, but I think he can do it.
I like Ben Affleck in general as a person and as a director, but I’m really just not hot on him as an actor. I don’t know, he often plays these characters where things happen to him, which doesn’t require too much on his part as an actor, and even then it just falls short. I’m kind of over Ben Affleck as an actor, and I’m really curious about what he’ll bring to the table as Batman because… I don’t know, I always feel underwhelmed.
On the other hand, I really liked the casting of Rosamund Pike. I’ve only seen a few of her movies, and her characters usually don’t have too much depth in those movies. Bond girl. Bennett sister. But here, I got some new things from her, namely:
- An American accent, which is new to me and done well
- More depth and breadth to her character, which she also does well
- She is amazing in Gone Girl. She is about to become HUGE in Hollywood because of this role, and rightfully so.
Neil Patrick Harris does a great job in his role as the maybe stalker ex-boyfriend. He manages to play on the edge of concerned and obsessed so well. You never quite knew which he was, and that was extremely unnerving. Although it gets overlooked often, I think he did the same with Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother: you were never totally sure where he stood morally, and there was something about the way he carried himself where you felt at ease with him most of the time but in the back of your mind you worried about him because you knew deep down you couldn’t 100% predict his next move. So good.
Extra unnerving for me considering I haven’t seen in him a non-comedic role before. Nailed it so hard.

In fact, I would argue that what is great about Gone Girl, as is usually the case with many David Fincher films, is that it is really difficult to put a character in a box. Their moral character, as is the case with real people, is not clearly defined. These folks live in the greys between right and wrong, and the film was done in a way that, even as I was leaving the theater, I didn’t know who was the “good guy” or the “bad guy”. Add in the great unreliable narration written in by Gillian Flynn, as both the book and film are told from two characters at odds with each other and who are both, as most people are, unreliable… Plus, we have the craziness of the media as a big theme in this story, and I think that comes across so well. Some of the main antagonistic forces in this movie are the sensationalizing media and the mob mentality of the people who consume those media. MMM yes so good.

… I understand why there’s SO much buzz around this movie. It is good. You don’t know what the truth is. You realize that no character knows the truth either. You understand that the truth exists outside of any single person’s story. Messy stories don’t endings tied neatly in a bow. That’s how life is, and it’s unsettling and fantastically done.

Although I wouldn’t call it one of my favorite films, Gone Girl delivers so well on what it promised.
Rating:★★★★★ 5/5
Would I recommend watching it? Yes. (Please note that there is disturbing imagery in this film that is hard to get out of your head afterwards.)

Comments with spoilers below the trailer.

The Maze Runner (2014)

Friday, 19 September 2014Saturday, 20 December 2014 StarrLeave a comment

Thanks to Punch Drunk Critics, I was able to see an advance screening of The Maze Runner on Tuesday. I like Dylan O’Brien, and I know this is a[nother] popular YA dystopian novel trilogy, so I was really looking forward to seeing it and am really really glad I got to see it early.

The Maze Runner really delivers on action and I particularly liked taking a look at how these teenage boys have to figure out a way to coexist and keep each other alive in the society that they’ve been forced to create. It seems relatively utopian in that pre/post-technology way: everyone working together to make sure that the collective group has food, water, shelter, and most importantly, each other. That is, of course, unless you remember that every single boy living on The Glade was put there against their will with no explanation and that they are trapped there. So we have a very interesting dynamic and conflict between newcomer Thomas (Dylan O’Brien), who immediately wants to figure out how to leave and how he got to The Glade on his first day, and Gally (Will Poulter) who dislikes Thomas rocking the boat and works to maintain the status quo that has been keeping them alive.

Spoilers after the jump, but here are a few thoughts I had about the film while watching. (Please bear in mind that I have not read the novel.)

I really like Dylan O’Brien. I’ve liked him since I first (and, really, last) saw him in The Internship. (Which, itself, wasn’t a great movie.) He essentially has to carry the movie with his performance and he does a great job with that. (He also does a great job looking confused. Definite bonus for this role.)
While I’m glad that Ki Hong Lee got to have a prominent role in this film, his character kind of lacks depth in the film. But I like Ki Hong, so I’m glad he got this really huge break. Maybe Minho will get more fleshing out in future films?
You may know him from his work with Wong Fu Productions or The Nine Lives of Chloe King
Also, I’m so glad to see Thomas Brodie-Sangster. I don’t watch him on Game of Thrones, so really the last time I saw him was Love Actually, and he was teeny tiny back then. I like his face, it’s so playful.
Maybe it’s because I just have a lot of anxiety about being chased and having to run away from things, but I thought that they did a really great job building tension with all of the running scenes. (“Maze Runner” = there are a LOT of running scenes)
I usually don’t notice things like this, but I thought the scoring really did a great job elevating anxiety during those tense running scenes. I was VERY STRESSED watching this movie and the music was just adding to that.
Actually, overall, really good use of lighting, camera angles, AND scoring did a great job of building tension.
Did I mention that I do like the cast? Good chemistry with them, although we really didn’t have a lot of time to explore their characters. We did get to hear from more supporting characters than I expected, which is nice.
Also speaking of the cast, good amount of diversity among a group of boys. I liked that. (Not sure if it’s written this way in the book or not.)
I remember flinching when the first girl (played by Kaya Scodelario) because I was really worried about what the introduction of a girl to an all-boys society would do. Luckily, it didn’t do anything other than elicit the comment: “Are all girls like this?!”
Also, I am really glad that Will Poulter got this role and is an actor because a) he clearly worked really hard to bulk up for this film and b) he looks a bit like Sid from Toy Story aka has a “bully face” and I’m just really happy for him because ordinarily that might be annoying to deal with in life but he is literally being paid a lot to make that bully face work.

I just kept thinking throughout this movie that Sid looks like he could have been modeled off a today-version of Will Poulter.

Poulter in the film
Not sure if this is because of the book or the film adaptation or what, but I left the theater kind of mad that none of my questions from the moment the movie started were answered. Like NONE OF THEM. If anything, I had more questions, and I kind of hate sequel-baiting. Movies should be able to stand alone.

In general, this was a really well-done movie. Not sure how true it is to the book and whatnot, but it’s definitely a very good action film. As far as comparing it with The Hunger Games and Divergent, which everyone knows is going to happen, I still favor The Hunger Games as a solid story and for the complexity and depth. I was never all that impressed with Divergent to begin with.

The Maze Runner comes out today, Friday, September 19th. Spoilers below this jump. (And by spoilers, I mostly mean my unanswered questions.)

The Trip to Italy (2014)

Friday, 12 September 2014Thursday, 2 October 2014 Starr3 Comments

I recently had the good fortune of attending a CMYE (community manager Yelp event) where I was able to snag a pizza from &pizza while watching a screening of The Trip to Italy, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, at the Landmark E Street Cinema. (One of my favorite spots in all of DC, seriously.)

The Trip to Italy

The Trip to Italy was originally broadcast as a 6-episode television series on BBC Two, as a sequel to The Trip, which took place in England (and is available now on Netflix!). I believe both TV series/films had similar premises: Coogan and Brydon play slightly-fictionalized versions of themselves and play off each other as they take a foodie road trip.

What you need to know about The Trip to Italy is there is no point. Once you have accepted this, the movie is pretty enjoyable. It’s mostly improvised by brilliant comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. I’m personally more familiar with Coogan — who I haven’t seen without his longer hair before!

Steve Coogan, circa 2012 (Photo: The Telegraph)

Here are a few things you can expect when you sit down to watch The Trip to Italy:

PLENTIFUL. IMPRESSIONS. Coogan and Brydon are talented impressionists. Some of the impressions you’ll hear include:
- Michael Caine
- Christian Bale
- Tom Hardy
- Al Pacino
- Robert Deniro
- Marlon Brando
References to The Dark Knight Rises
- References to how impossible it was to understand Bane in The Dark Knight Rises
References to The Godfather and The Godfather II
- References to how The Godfather II is maybe the only time a sequel was as good as/better than the original
  
  (This clip wasn’t shown in its entirety in the edited-down film.)
Alanis Morrisette songs
Following along the poet, Lord Byron, and his time in Italy
Nods to several old Hollywood films that were filmed in Italy
Gorgeous Italian scenery porn
Gorgeous Italian food porn
British humor
Every so subtly, two aging actors acknowledging their changing place in the world and mortality

I really recommend watching this for just a little aimless stroll of a comedy. If it gets released on Netflix, as The Trip has been, I really really encourage checking it out.

Favorite Childhood Movies (part 1)

Wednesday, 3 September 2014Wednesday, 20 April 2016 Starr2 Comments

In honor of the 20th anniversary of The Little Rascals and the cast coming together to recreate the movie poster, I thought I’d reminisce a bit and think about some of my favorite childhood movies. These are the ones that I watched really often, either in school or at home. (Also, I’m not including any Disney animated features here because well, that list would get really long.)

It breaks my heart a little bit when people don’t get that I’m making references to (memorable scenes that I often quote included!):

The Little Rascals

When people don’t understand why I squeak through this song, I am almost as embarrassed for them as for myself.
The Sandlot

A friend once thought I was having a stroke because I was saying “for-ev-er” so weird. I wept for him on the inside.
Annie (1999 version)

Starring a young Lalaine, Sarah Hyland, and Victor Garber, who I would always refer to as “Daddy Warbucks” no matter how many other roles I saw him in.
The Brave Little Toaster (technically distributed by Disney)

This movie was kind of scary, I had a hard time finding non-nightmare-inducing clips!
The Land Before Time + sequels

I think about “Big Water” really often… and tree stars.
Older Scooby Doo films

I had a teacher who loooooved Scooby Doo and rewarded the class if we behaved by showing Scooby Doo movies. Every single one had this old theme song.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The only film to have Disney characters side-by-side with Looney Toons. This was a great one, rest in peace Bob Haskins.
Jumanji

My brother was TERRIFIED of the poacher in this movie but I watched it multiple times at home anyway. Rest in peace Robin Williams.
The Parent Trap

My friend who teaches fencing says that a lot of kids used to cite this movie as the reason they started fencing. Now they’re getting too young for that. Rest in peace Natasha Richardson.
Babe

Baa ram ewe! I didn’t go vegetarian for a long time after watching this, but I definitely thought about Babe when I did.