Insomnia

Insomnia, my nemesis

My nocturnal menace

You're no nightly rendezvous

No lovely illicit paramour



I stare wide-eyed

Helpless and hapless

Into your endless

Gaping black maw



Tossing and turning

We wrestle mightily

As I strive to reject

Your leeching embrace



Akin to a vampire

You suck all vitality

Until I am no more

Than a withered husk



Bedraggled in defeat

Glassy-eyed with fatigue

Bleakly I blearily greet

The painful dawn

Minions Review

Just last week, Minions overtook Toy Story 3 to become the 2nd highest grossing animated movie ever, behind Frozen.

There can then be no doubt that the movie is a huge commercial success. But how does the movie stack up critically?

While it is true that in the 1st Despicable Me movie the Minions stole the movie from its human characters, and Despicable Me 2 suffered from featuring too little of the Minions as their usual yellow silly selves, Minions shows that there can be too much of a good thing.

Centering an entire movie on characters that sprout mostly gibberish that are occasionally punctuated with the word "Banana" is no mean feat and alas, unlike the superior Shaun the Sheep movie which also featured no real dialogue, Minions doesn't manage to successfully pull it off. Instead we get a mostly mediocre movie where the really funny moments are very few and very far between.

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

Jurassic World review

After hearing friends say that they enjoyed Jurassic World, I decided to give the movie a try even though I wasn't really crazy about dinosaurs.

The movie stars Chris Pratt as Owen, a dinosaur trainer, a dinosaur whisperer of sorts, and Dallas Bryce Howard as Claire, Jurassic World's operations manager. All chaos breaks loose when the park's latest genetically modified dinosaur escape its enclosure and it is up to Owen and Claire to join forces to save the day. To complicate matters, Claire's two nephews Zach and Gray are visiting the park when this happens.

While the movie is enjoyable enough, serving a nice blend of action and comedy, what I found hard to get out of my head throughout the movie was: "How on Earth did Claire spend several hours running around the park in her high heels without ever falling once?" I felt this detracted from the rest of the movie and might have marred my enjoyment of the movie quite a bit.

Also, all the characters are rather two-dimensional, with Owen and Claire playing polar opposites, Owen as an easygoing guy and Claire as an uptight corporate type. Claire’s eventual character growth and development is too predictable and makes her character rather boring.

Unfortunately for me, I found the plot rather sexist at times. Claire's female assistant is attacked by a dinosaur in an extended scream-fest scene more suitable in a horror than a PG-13 movie like this. Also, oddly enough, after seeing their aunt Claire be all bad-ass and save Owen from becoming dino-chow by shooting a dinosaur with a gun (minor spoilers), her nephews adamantly want to stick with Owen instead of her, just because she lacks a Y-chromosome. I also found it rather unrealistic that one of Claire's nephews was easily able to fix up an old vehicle and have it running and fully operational in no time flat without any outside help.

Right from the get-go, you’ll know who is going to make it and who doesn’t, which takes some of the suspense out of the movie. The army subplot provided by the character of Vic Hoskins, who wants to use the raptors as military weapons, is rather over-the-top and silly.

Despite the rather predictable and at times really asinine plot, the movie is entertaining enough and enjoyable at times, mostly from its nicely orchestrated action sequences.

3 and a half out of 5 stars for me.

Inside Out Short Movie Review

Inside Out is an excellent movie. Funny, whimsical. innovative and touching at times, a movie that can make you cry over a part elephant, part cat and part dolphin imaginary animated character is no mean feat.

Hope Jurassic World doesn't divert too many people from checking it out.

A must-see for both adults and children!

5 out of 5 stars for me.

Insurgent Short Movie Review

Draggy and overlong, devoid of much of a pulse in what is supposed to be a high-octave dystopian action movie, Insurgent disappoints when it should thrill.

2 out of 5 stars for me.

Cinderella Short Movie Review: Visually Gorgeous and Sumptuous but Emotionally Inert

The Cinderella bracelet I wore to the screening. My friend Jenna sells a variation of it in her Etsy store.



The Frozen necklace I wore to the screening. The Frozen Fever short before the movie wasn't at all narratively satisfying, seeming to exist more to give everyone a glimpse of all the characters from Frozen than anything else. Jenna also has it in her store.



And to complete the ensemble, a Game of Thrones t-shirt, which seems apt since Prince Charming (Richard Madden) and his Captain of the Guard (Nonso Anozie) were both Game of Thrones alums. You can get the shirt from Amazon.com.



"Have courage and be kind." And so, with her parting words to Cinderella, which gets repeated ad nauseum in the movie, Cinderella's mother, played by Hayley Atwell, condemns our titular heroine to a life of drudgery under her stepmother and stepsisters after her parents pass away. (Centuries old spoiler alert here)

Cinderella, or Ella, as is her real name, is played winsomely by Lily James (Downton Abbey), as is her Prince Charming, played by Richard Madden (Game of Thrones), he of the toothsome grin and oh-so-blue eyes. Their onscreen chemistry is palpable and strikes a magical spark for the film. Indeed, it is one of the few things, besides the gorgeous visuals and a crackling campy performance by Cate Blanchett as the Wicked Stepmother, that makes it a decent movie, but alas not a great one.

Great as the casting is, and wonderful as the visuals and costumes are, the movie is let down with a merely serviceable script by Chris Weitz and a very by-the-numbers directorial effort by Kenneth Branagh. Which is crying shame really, because the movie could have and should have been so much more.

Both director and scribe should have heeded the movie's message to "have courage" and instead crafted a more bold and daring rendition than this very safe and rather bland adaption of Disney's classic 1950 animated feature.

3 out of 5 stars for me.

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.