Wreck-It-Ralph Movie Review

Hey everyone! Sorry this was posted so much later than the video, I thought I had submitted this but either I forgot to press the “Publish” button or it didn’t work because I came back to publish a new post and this was saved as a draft. I’ll  get started with the original post now 🙂

So, as you can see I liked this movie quite a bit. The video is fifteen minutes long [I am sorry…I am so sorry. *Bonus points if you correctly guess what/who I’m quoting*] and says it all. For those of you who’d rather read for a couple of minutes than watch a video for fifteen, I’ll briefly go over the video’s content.

The first half of the video I gave the plot summary of the Pixar short “Paper Man” that played before the movie. It’s about love at first sight between a man and woman in a speechless, black and white world where the only color is in the girl’s lipstick. They separate and when the man sees her in a building across the street, he throws paper airplanes at her until he runs out of paper. She leaves her building, he follows, and loses her. The paper airplanes then come alive and lead them to each other. Aww, what a sweetly predictable ending 🙂

The rest of the video is about Wreck-It-Ralph a.k.a “the man who hated his job and decided to change it instead of whining about it forever”. That didn’t exactly go according to plan, but I’ve come to notice that things rarely do in movies. Anyway I just mentioned that I thought it was funny, it was full of puns, I loved Jane Lynch’s character and Fix-It-Felix Jr., found Vannelope’s voice and sense of humor irritating. I’m pretty sure that’s it, unless you count my tangents. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video and this video summary. See you next time 🙂

The Hunger Games Movie Review

Well I decided that since The Hunger Games came out in theaters a couple of weeks ago (thus giving people enough time to see it before giving spoilers) I would write a review on the movie. Let me start by saying that I love the book trilogy; I read the first book around late 2008 or early 2009. It came out in September of 2008 so I guess that makes me a Hunger Games hipster. Lovely, just what I wanted to be. Anyway, enough about my life and let’s get to my opinions.

The story takes place in a futuristic North America which has been turned into the country of Panem. Panem was divided into thirteen districts which were ruled by the Capitol until the districts decided to rebel. The Capitol was able to reclaim control over twelve of the districts while destroying the thirteenth completely. Every year, as a reminder to the twelve districts of what happens when they rebelled, one boy and one girl from each district is selected as tribute to fight in a battle to the death against the other tributes. The protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is from District 12, the poorest of the districts. She lives with her mother and younger sister, Prim, but her father died a year or two earlier. At the reaping [when the tributes are selected] Katniss volunteers as tribute when Prim’s name is called and she, along with the male tribute Peeta and their drunken mentor Haymitch, prepares for the 74th annual Hunger Games. *Note: The rest of the review contains some spoilers for both the book and movie.

If I had to sum up the movie in one word, it would have to be ‘wow’. Now, mind you, I’m a bit of a Hunger Games fangirl; not crazy obsessed but I adored the books, so my impressions of the movie may be different than those who never read the books. Whether or not that’s a good thing, remains to be seen. I was so impressed with how true the movie had stayed to the book. Only a couple of details were changed, which is common for a movie that was adapted from a first-person novel. In the movie you see President Snow talking to the game maker, a riot in District 11 after Rue’s death, and an ominous scene with the game maker and a bowl of berries, which all but literally tells you that the game maker dies. All of these scenes are never given to you in the book because it is written in Katniss’ point of view, and she was never able to know that any of this was happening. One detail that they unnecessarily changed was the way Katniss received her mockingjay pin. In the book she gets it as a gift from her friend, and mayor’s daughter, Madge Undersee. In the movie, however, neither the mayor nor his daughter are mentioned or shown, instead she buys a woman gives it to Katniss for free at a shop in the Hob. I wouldn’t mind this detail too much if it weren’t for the fact that Katniss learns a piece of important information while visiting Madge at her home in the second novel. I’m sure they’ll figure out a new way to lead Katniss to that information, but I still feel that they could have kept Madge in the film. My guess is that introducing Madge as a character would have made the movie longer than they wanted it to be. Either way, I digress.

Another reason I would say ‘wow’ is because if you hadn’t read the book before watching the movie, there might be a few holes in the story for you. For me, the biggest one would have to be when Katniss had been stung by the trackerjackers and has hallucinations. I feel that it might have been hard for people to realize the explosions were the cause of her father’s death. Other than that, I can’t remember specific details but I know that there are scenes where Katniss will do something and, since we can’t hear her thoughts in the movie, her motives behind her actions will become misconstrued. I’ve had friends tell me that they think Katniss is a mean, rude person because she did something [i.e. the way she talked to her mother after the reaping] when really they just didn’t know why she had done it and after I explained, they realized her true intentions. All in all I think that the movie was very well adapted from the book and I hope the second one is just as good. Hopefully, changing directors won’t cause any harm to the way the movie is produced. I’ll be sure to have my fingers crossed!

P.S. am I the only one who loved that Woody Harrelson [Haymitch] and Lenny Kravitz [Cinna] were in this movie? Also, what are your thoughts toward the anger that some fans of the books feel about black actors having been cast for some of the roles? My opinion is that even if you thought of someone as a white person while reading the book, it’s ridiculous to become infuriated when that character isn’t white in the movie. The character’s race shouldn’t matter unless it’s specifically addressed in the novel yet changed for the movie.

Movie Review: Sucker Punch

The Five Badass Chicks from the Movie Sucker Punch

Sorry it’s been so long but I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. In those weeks, however, I had enough time to take a break and watch a movie I’ve been wanting to see since I saw the first preview. If you don’t know what movie I’m referring to, you might want to reread the post’s title. I guess I’ll start with the positives.

Well I have to say that I absolutely loved the movie [except for the ending, but I’ll get to that later]. It was an interesting sci-fi flick with a group of girls that can seriously kick CGI butt. The storyline is interesting, the outfits are interesting [especially for heterosexual men, if you catch my drift] and the effects are amazing. I guess I could give a basic plot summary as well, so if you haven’t watched it and don’t want it to be ruined, look away.

A young woman [later referred to as Baby Doll] is sent to a mental institution by, what can only be called, her evil stepfather. Once there the movie starts into her dream-like sequences where she is in a brothel and has to dance for men so they can choose her to do the deed with. However, she is being saved for a rich man who will come for her in five days [in the real world her five-day deadline is for her lobotomy]. So she devises a plan to collect five items in order for her and her new friends to escape. Her friends are listed in the picture, names under the corresponding girl. I won’t give up how the movie ends just yet, that’ll come later.

Alright so that’s the basic plot and I have to say that I liked the way it was done, but it was definitely flawed. First of all, while this might not be a bad thing, the movie gave me this sort of anime vibe, especially Baby Doll’s character. Throughout the movie she wears her hair in pigtails, wears short little skirts [yes, even in the snow] and gives off this overall cutesy, anime feel. I really don’t know how to explain it, it’s just one of those things that you have to be familiar with anime clichés and patterns in order to understand what I mean. Also, the movie is quite repetitive after the first 45 minutes or so. Once they create the plan to gather the items you can predict what will happen next. The girls sit with the man who Baby Doll is distracting with her supposedly mind-blowing, amazing, sexy dance moves. I say supposedly because we never see her actually dance. Instead we go into her mind and see that while she’s dancing she’s really thinking of incredibly detailed missions where she and the other four girls must retrieve the item. These moments are a nice release from any suspense the film has created. That may seem like a good thing to those watching the movie [as it first did to me] but after the first two or three missions you find yourself losing interest in the movie and especially those fantasy missions.

Now on to the characters, although I could add more above I’ll spare you the rant. The people in this movie are incredibly one-dimensional. Meaning that they never really develop. You learn a bit of background on Sweet Pea and her younger sister Rocket but even that’s a little vague on the details. You learn nothing about anyone’s personalities, history, thoughts, feelings, desires nothing. The four supporting girls are little more than minions that all share one thought: to leave the ‘brothel’ where they are held prisoner. I like to watch the characters of a movie develop. Sure, maybe not everyone [like the evil stepfather and, obviously, Baby Doll’s little sister] needs to be developed, but the five main protagonists? I think they should be. Also the villain can be summed up in three words: creepy but unthreatening. He’s played by Oscar Isaac which if you’ve ever seen a picture of the man, he’s not that scary of a man. He’s pretty small and the only time I’d ever fear him is when he had a gun in his hand, which happened once so overall, not that bad. Creepy and annoying? Yes. Making me shake in my slippers? No.

Finally I come to the ending. In a nutshell: it made me really, really angry. After I slept on it I realized that while it was still lacking, I understood why everything happened, happened. So again, spoilers so you know, shield your defenseless eyes now. Oscar Isaac [or Blue as he is named in the movie] lives instead of dying when Baby Doll shot him [which I knew would happen because she only shot him once in the shoulder before running away. You think she would have learned after letting her evil stepfather live but I guess not] Although Blue is arrested, it’s only after he lobotomized Baby Doll so it kind of cancels out his arrest. Yeah, you read me: Baby Doll gets lobotomized because she sacrificed herself to let Sweet Pea live. Which also bothers me; why is the only survivor of this entire plan the girl who didn’t even want to go through with it in the first place. Baby Doll mentions how only Sweet Pea would have been able to live normally in the outside world. I must say, that seems like a load of bull honky because everyone else would have done just fine. So the entire mission was in vain because four girls had to die [or in Baby Doll’s case, become brain-dead] for one girl to live.

That is a less angry [although still bitter] version of my initial reaction. After thinking about the ending I’ve come to realize that while I still don’t like the ending, it’s not as terrible as it seems. Baby Doll wanted out of the asylum but realized that only one could successfully escape and that she had nowhere to go, so she decided to let Sweet Pea escape because she still had parents she could go to. So instead of live with the horrors of the asylum she was glad to be lobotomized in order to escape into her own world. So in the end Baby Doll was ‘set free’ and Sweet Pea was able to live her live normally. So although the ending made me both sad and angry, I can at least understand why everything happened, even though I don’t agree with it. Would I watch the movie again? Maybe, depending on what kind of mood I am in and if I’m prepared to feel terrible when it ends. Again. Well anyway that’s my [incredibly long] spiel about the movie Sucker Punch. Now you know how I feel about it and maybe got a new perspective that you didn’t think of before. Speaking of which, feel free to tell me yours in the comments. As always, new opinions are accepted with open, enthusiastic arms. Adios!