Jupiter Ascending Short Review

The world building and special effects are gorgeous to look at, but there is really nothing of substance behind the pretty facade. The movie is entertaining for sure, but I felt quite frustrated at all the wasted potential. Instead, this intricately original science fiction universe created by the Wachowski siblings is let down by badly-conceived one-dimensional characters, a terrible script and cliches galore.

2 and a half stars out of 5 stars for me.

The Wedding Ringer Short Review

I knew in my hearts of hearts that Kevin Hart's brand of humor wasn't really my thing, but when I overheard someone saying that it was one of the funniest movie that she had seen in a long time and when I read online that the whole audience was in stitches throughout the entire movie at a screening someone else was in, I thought why not?

And that was a terrible idea because it led me to waste 2 hours of my life watching a terribly unfunny movie. At no point did I feel like walking out of the screening (I was tempted to at the Need For Speed screening that Pamela Moore dragged me into) but I have to say I really regretted going to see it and came out of the movie theater feeling rather angry that I wasted my time on a movie that was not worth any of my time at all.

2 out of 5 stars for me.

Selma Short Review

Deeply moving, Selma director Ava DuVernay manages to avoid the many pitfalls that tend to plague most biographical movies (turning it into a hagiography or trying to cram a person's entire life into a movie's running time and thereby not doing it justice). She manages to achieve this by humanizing and giving us a blood-and-flesh Martin Luther King Jr. and also by choosing to focus on just a short time period in his life.

My only quibbles are that President LBJ's is historically inaccurate portrayal as King's adversary rather than ally, that Tim Roth's portrayal of George Wallace that at times runs into caricature mode, and that Oprah WInfrey is too starry to play Annie Lee Cooper in the film; seeing her in the movie jolts me out of the movie the same way Brad Pitt's role in 12 Years A Slave did.

4 and a half out of 5 stars for me. An uncannily timely must-see film.

Into The Woods Review: A Winsome Cast Makes for a Delightful Musical

I wore this bracelet to the screening. It was custom-made by Jenna of Book Geek Boutique. You can check out her fairy tale themed merchandise on Facebook and on Etsy.



A gift from Jenna, which I wore to the screening since it's the only fairy tale themed necklace I have. You can buy it here.

Let me first say that I am not overly fond of musicals, since being musicals, they tend to have too much singing and dancing for my liking. That being said, I was completely won over by the appealing cast of Into The Woods and had a jolly good time at the screening. Unlike the godawful Les Miserables, which I would have walked out of had I watched it in the movie theater, where the actors seemed to have laboriously delivered a tone-deaf rendition of the songs, in Into The Woods, the singing is all surprisingly very good and seem to have been pulled off almost effortlessly.

Meryl Streep, who plays the witch, is front and center in all of the movie's marketing and she seems to be having great fun playing a wicked character. However, it is actually her The Devil Wears Pradaco-star Emily Blunt's character, the Bakers Wife, who forms the true heart of the story, human fallibility and all.

Her husband is played by a very earnest James Corden, who was last singing in a movie as Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts in One Chance. Anna Kendrick plays Cinderella, and we already knows she is a good singer (see Pitch Perfect). And so, it is her romantic counterpart, Cinderella's Prince, played by Chris Pine, and Blunt who are the true musical surprises. Who knew they could both sing so well?

The rest of the main cast is rounded off by Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood, Johnny Depp as the Wolf, Daniel Huttlestone as Jack (of beanstalk fame), Mackenzie Mauzy as Rapunzel and Billy Magnussen as her Prince. Lilla and Daniel as child actors are pretty good in their roles, while Depp brings his usual unique blend of quirkiness to a quirky role and thankfully doesn't outlive his welcome. Mauzy and Magnussen are decent in their respective roles, even when as their storyline form the most boring thread in this fairytale mashup and their performances are often overshadowed by that of their co-stars.

The first half of the movie plays like a wonderful greatest hits of Grimms' fairy tales, so it is a shame that the movie kind of loses steam on the second act when the characters find out that having their wishes granted don't really bring about the happily ever afters that they were hoping for.

As already mentioned, the entire cast is charming in this winsome musical, although none more so than Pine, who pulls the rug from under his more stellar co-stars and steals every scene he is in. His duet with Mauzy in Agony is the best and most hilarious song in the movie and almost worth the price of admission by itself. I don't think I ever laughed so hard this year, not even when I was watching 22 Jump Street, which as you probably know from Channing Tatum's recent leaked over-enthusiastic e-mail to Sony executives, overtook Ted as the second highest-grossing R-rated comedy (with The Hangover still in 1st place). Someone needs to put Pine in the lead role in a musical comedy quick. Director Rob Marshall of Chicago fame seems to be firmly in his element here after the musical dud that was Nine.

Fans of Stephen Sondheim's original Broadway musical, on which the movie is based on, will be relieved to know that most of the adult themes have remained intact, although the violence and deaths do tend to occur offscreen and some plot changes seem to have been made with the sole purpose of protecting the perceived purity of the Mouse's other fairy tale princess franchises. Personally I think both long-time fans and newcomers young and old will all find something to love and enjoy. Into The Woods is definitely something you can take your whole family to see come Christmas Day, which is probably what Disney wishes will come true.

4 out of 5 stars for me.

The Imitation Game: A Worthy Addition To The Prestige Pic Genre

The Imitation Game is a great movie that is a worthy addition to the prestige pic genre. You owe it to yourself to go watch this movie so you can learn about a man who not only was the father of the modern computer, but whose work was estimated to have saved 14 millions lives and shortened WWII by 2 years.

How did the British government reward his services to king and country? By forcing him to undergo chemical castration to "cure" him of being a homosexual. Alan Turing committed suicide after a year of enduring this "treatment", and we will never know what other marvels his singularly gifted mind could have created had his life not been so cruelly cut short.

If I have any minor complaints with the movie, it is that at times the movie feels far too neat, too pad, too tidy. War is messy. Real life is messy. The movie should reflect some of these truths instead of being so overly obsessed about hitting all the requisite high notes.

As usual, actor Benedict Cumberbatch turns in another terrific performance as Turing, and he is ably aided by a strong supporting cast that includes Kiera Knightley, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, Mathew Goode, Rory Kinnear and Allan Leech.

4 out of 5 stars for me.

The Hobbit: Battle of The Five Armies Ends The Hobbit Trilogy On A Surprisingly High Note

Wore this necklace to the screening which I got from Jenna's Jewelry Etsy store Book Geek Boutique. Alas Benedict Cumberbatch's dual roles as Smaug and The Necromancer amount to basically a couple of cameos in this movie.

If The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left me bored (I will never forget having to arduously endure 30 minutes in Bilbo's home watching singing dwarves toss dishes around the house), and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug left me desolated (http://shazarose.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-hobbit-desolation-of-smaug-left-me.html), The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies left me as satisfied as a hobbit sitting on his armchair in his cozy home reading a book and smoking his favorite pipe.

The last film of the Hobbit trilogy almost makes the 6 hour-slog of the getting through first two movies to reach the third movie nearly worthwhile, and is the only movie in the trilogy to ever reach some of the heights achieved by the original Lord of The Rings trilogy. 4 out of 5 stars for me.

Big Hero 6 Review: A Mashing of Pixar and Marvel = A Superhero Story With A Big Heart

Big Hero 6 is more than just a North-American Japanese fusion movie set in the streets of San Fransokyo. It also feels like a collusion and collision of sorts between Disney's Pixar and Marvel division.

The movie tells the story of Hiro, a talented teenager who loses his brother Tadashi in a purported accident. Hiro's well of grief threatens to overwhelm him, and it is assuaged, oddly enough by an adorable extremely and huggable balloon-like nurse robot called Baymax, who/which was left behind by Tadashi. Hiro and Baymax's often laugh-out loud funny and at times touching interactions with each other rightfully form the heart and soul of the movie, and while Hiro's sorrow at his undeniably painful loss does occasionally get subsumed by the movie's louder moments, Hiro's loss still informs every emotional arc in the movie's storyline, which is as it should be.

If I have any complaints, it's that I wish that the movie did not abruptly switch gear for the third act and in doing so, quickly goes from heartwarming Pixar-infused story to full-fledged Marvel superhero story, which is something that moviegoers have seen ad nauseum in the last decade or so and is thus quite unnecessary here. This comes as a slight disappointment because the movie already has enough heart to narratively and commercially succeed without the need for big explosives and lots of wham-bam action to help propel it. Plus, it would have been nice if the other characters in the movie had been more well-developed instead of feeling like brief supporting character sketches inserted into the movie just to make up the numbers to fit the title.

I also wished that I wasn't assailed by feelings of deja vu at certain points in the film; the scene of Baymax and Hiro flying over the skyline of San Fransokyo, while undeniably breathtaking, already has its thunder stolen by Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man and even Wall-E's intergalactic dance through space, while another flight scene over debris-filled space recalls a similar scene from last year's Star Trek Into Darkness.

Nevertheless, these quibbles are just minor issues which, while making Big Hero 6 less than perfect, doesn't take away the great enjoyment and fun that can be had while watching this latest Disney creation; I was vastly entertained and never once bored throughout the entire 102-minute running time.

My verdict: take yourself and your whole family to go see it, and I can almost guarantee that everyone will be in for a rollicking good time and will be thoroughly enjoying a movie that will have you laughing in utter delight throughout.

4 out of 5 stars for me.

Mockingjay Part 1 Movie Review: Even as Katniss is trapped in the role of the Mockingjay, the movie breaks free of its YA roots to take up the mantle of a mature adult war movie

I wore the bracelet and the necklace to the screening, with the clips adorning my bag. The Christmas ornament was a gift that came with my order. If you like what you see, you can ask Jenna from Etsy's Book Geek Boutique to make you a custom order or check out ready-made ones here or on her Facebook page.

Mockingjay Part 1 is not as good as its predecessor Catching Fire but that is to be expected because not only is it adapted from what many have agreed is the weakest book in the trilogy, it is also adapted from just half of it.

It also has many of the problems that all movies with "Part 1" in their titles have, which is too much simmering and too much buildup and just not enough payoff.

One thing that is going for this movie (or not going for it, depending on what viewers' different expectations are for the movie), is that It doesn't feel like a YA movie, it feels more like an adult war movie. And there are no victors, only survivors like Haymitch said in Catching Fire.

Katniss is a shadow of her former self as fans would well know from the book. Far from being freed as a Mockingjay, now more than ever it feels like her wings have been clipped and she is too often left to wait helplessly in the wings for events to unfold. Jennifer Lawrence is fabulous as always, although she is not given enough to do. The scene from her trying to be convincingly arousing in a Propos is hilarious though, and her haunting rendition of the Hanging Tree song will leave audiences humming its tune days after they have watched the movie. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14H8OzTzne4

However, viewers' sympathy might switch more to her staged-and-now-real romantic interest Peeta. I have always kind of felt that Josh Hutcherson was miscast to play Peeta and I still stand by that assessment. It is nothing against Hutcherson, who is a good actor, although his performance is rather unexceptional here, made worse by the fact that the chemistry shared between Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss and his Peeta throughout the series seem more to be that of a sibling one than that of a romantic couple. Nevertheless, audiences be warned; scenes involving Peeta in this movie would be heartbreaking for fans of The Boy With The Bread.

Handsome Liam Hemsworth as Gale is left to smolder some but he's not really given much to do either. And Katniss is such a strong female character that it feels that she doesn't need a romance to define herself, unlike *cough* Bella *cough* from the terrible Twilight movie series.

Poor Finnick, who is played so winningly by Sam Claflin in Catching Fire, is made a cipher in this movie. The movie focuses on him only when Katniss is in a quandary and need some words of wisdom or advice from him to precipitate a change in her feelings to help prod the movie's progression along. In one of the rare moments when Finnick is finally given more screen time, his powerful speech is criminally ruined by the directorial decision to cross-cut his speech with a rescue attempt. Using a split-screen here would have worked way better and be far more effective.

The role of President Coin, played by Julianne Moore, gets expanded here, and she is made more sympathetic than she is in the book. Julianne Moore is good but not great. And so she continues the trend of casting A-list actresses to play antagonistic roles in YA movies, with Meryl Streep having played the Chief Elder in Lois Lowry's The Giver and Kate Winslet playing Jeanine Matthews in the Divergent trilogy (with the last book Allegiant to be predictably split into 2 parts just like Mockingjay to fatten studios' coffers).

Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as Plutarch Heavensbee as always, but like Lawrence, he is not given enough to do. It is however particularly poignant watching Hoffman embody the role of his character knowing that he just died tragically of heroine overdose not long ago.

Elizabeth Bank's role as Effie Trinket is expanded, although here it's mostly to provide what little comic relief there is in the movie. The other comic relief in the movie comes predictably enough, from Buttercup, Prim's cat.

I did not like Donald Sutherland's portrayal of President Snow this time. To me it felt like he was going overboard and overacting quite a bit. Maybe he was trying to go for unhinged deranged dictator but he never once came across that way to me in the book, especially not in the first half of the book when the Capitol actually has an upper hand over the rebellion.

I have also always felt that Woody Harrelson was miscast as Haymitch but I am finally warming up to his Haymitch. For me, Harrelson turns in a better performance playing a reluctantly sober Haymitch than he was when playing at being a drunkard in the previous two movies.

My favorite new character is the ever luminous Natalie Dormer as Cressida. The rest of her crew, Boggs and the District 8 rebel leader Paylor don't do enough to be really memorable. Jeffrey Wright's Beetee and Willow Shield's Prim are not really memorable in their roles either.

Overall, it feels like a lot of the weaknesses of the book basically just got transposed into the movie. And like the book, the movie is really quite bleak. The movies ends quite close to where I thought it would, but it is a downer of a scene. The ending will probably whet the audience's appetite but most likely will not have them leaving the movie theater on the high that I've experienced after watching Catching Fire on opening weekend a year ago, which is still the best movie in the entire series so far. We'll have to wait a year later until Mockingjay Part 2 to find out if that will remain so.

3 and a half out of 5 stars for me.

A Week of Fairy Tales

This poem is inspired by the poem Monday's Child and the lovely bracelet pictured above, which was made for me by the amazingly talented Jenna from her Etsy store Book Geek Boutique. You can visit her store here.

Monday’s child is fair of face

With hair as black as ebony

An apple causes her agony



Tuesday’s child is full of grace

A maiden at night

At dawn she takes flight



Wednesday’s child is full of woe

For a pair of legs she gives up her voice

Alas sad sorrow is sown from her choice



Thursday’s child has far to go

Measured not in miles but in time

Slumber to a century's chime



Friday’s child is loving and giving

True beauty to love an ugly beast

A prince's true bride at a wedding feast



Saturday’s child works hard for a living

Shod with slippers made of glass

Weds out of the working class



But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay

Bounding through the forest in her red hood

Speaking to wolves outside her neighborhood



Outtakes



(Alternate version)

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Dancing in slippers made of glass

A shoe fit test she does pass



(Alternate version)

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

A dozen so fond of dancing

Daily their shoes do need darning



(Alternate version)

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Gliding through the lake at dawn

Turning to a swan again come morn



(Alternate version)

Thursday's child has far to go

Climbing up a giant beanstalk

Up in the clouds where giants walk



(Alternate version)

Thursday’s child has far to go

East of the sun and west of the moon

To save her bear prince from his doom



(Alternate version)

Thursday’s child has far to go

Past spring, summer and last of all fall

To free her friend from the Snow Queen's thrall



(Alternate version)

Saturday’s child works hard for a living

To save her very own skin

Straw into gold she must spin

Fury Movie Review: About As Solid As A War Movie Can Get

Equal parts thrilling and equal parts harrowing even if it does occasionally take off in baffling tangents that doesn't jive with the rest of the narrative, the movie evokes an old-school look and feel on the horrors of WWII.

The movie is as much about Logan Lerman's Norman Ellison character than it is about Brad Pitt's Staff Sergeant Don Collier character, as the audience perceives the narrative through Lerman's experiences as he tries to survive in a war he is totally untrained to fight in.

Critics who have been incongruously likening Pitt's role in this movie to his previous role as Lieutenant Aldo Raine in 2009's Inglorious Basterds are I dare say going way off track here; sure both characters share superficial similarities in that they are both army soldiers fighting on the side of the Allied Forces in WWII, but the roles and Pitt's portrayal of these two characters could not have been more different from each other.

While never reaching the heights of Saving Private Ryan, and despite the fact that as the narrative unfolds the movie seems to be unloading war movie tropes about as zealously as the characters go about collecting their grisly war trophies, the movie is solidly acted and solidly directed and basically about as solid as a war movie can get, which is about the best you can expect from a movie like Fury.

3 and a half stars out of 5 stars for me.

The Book of Life Short Review

It's great to be watching a big studio release of an Mexican/Spanish culture-centric animation film after decades of watching Anglo-Saxon culture-centric ones (No, Dreamworks' Puss In Boots definitely does not count).

I'd say 20th Century Fox will have a really big moneymaker on their hands seeing as Hispanics are the biggest spenders when it comes to catching movies at the movie theater.

The visuals are trippy, kaleidoscopic and gorgeous to look at, which more than makes up for the rather obvious and slightly bland storyline. The music is decent but hardly memorable. The voice cast as a whole is rather good but I am kind of baffled by the incongruous casting of Channing Tatum as one of the main voice actors in this movie. 4 out of 5 stars for me.