Ah, bullet-pointed for convenience, I suppose?
- Yes, all right. I’m good with this film. I have no overarching problems with it that don’t stem from overarching problems with the story of Snow White as a whole or fairy tales as a whole. In fact, I’d say I enjoyed it. It was dark, it was weird, it was fantastical, it did many things I generally approve of.
- Addressing the cast. Kristen Stewart: back when all I’d seen her in was Twilight, I was ugh. Because Twilight isn’t good. Circa Adventureland, I was meh, because I saw it too many times and couldn’t really think any non-meh thoughts about it. Circa The Runaways and now this, I’m coming around to yes, all right, if they give her something to do, she can do it pretty well actually. She seems like a fun enough person in interviews and yes, the way that the media treats her is gǒ se,and I’m sure that if I saw her in something not crummy first, I would not have had to take this time to be able to appreciate her. Which is my longwinded way of saying: good on you, Kristen Stewart. Good job, I very much approve of your performance here.
- Also, I was prepared to judge your British accent, because I judge everyone’s fake British accents. This is not to say I was prepared to hate on it, but I am critical of British accents, and yours gave me nothing to criticize really, so that’s a plus.
- Charlize Theron was doing a really great craycray. I tried to explain to one of my people the other day that, at least in my opinion, “crazy” and “craycray” are not strictly synonymous. That is, all things that are craycray are a little bit crazy, but not all crazy is craycray. Charlize Theron was craycray here, and delightfully so. She really is a beautiful woman, and she was doing evil pretty well.
- Also, I have always sort of approved of the name “Ravenna,” so that was nice.
- Chris Hemsworth, yes all right. I have yet to not approve of him, he does what is given him to do very nicely. And he was given the task of axe-fighting and stuff, which was pretty fierce.
- Also, the filmmakers inadvertently granted me one of my recent wishes in having his voice over the beginning exposition sequence. They gave me the gift of Chris Hemsworth reading bedtime stories. Yes.
- Sam Claflin, yes I suppose you were very all right at being what you were. Which was, y’know, not much. It’s not your fault that I have this inherent bias against the Prince Charming role. But that isn’t your fault.
- Also, you are a very lucky man, getting to work with Ian McShane twice in your young career.
- Ian McShane. Dear sir. I would like to give you a “congratulations on being epic” plaque. Because really, this man is fantastic. My big problem with what he had to do in Pirates was just that they didn’t know what to do with him. They just sort of stuck him in and didn’t give him enough to work with. The role of the presumably head dwarf was smaller and probably less important, but he got a little more dimension in there. Which was fabulous, because I just love it when he gets to do his thing.
- Creepy brother Sam Spruell. You were all creepy.
- I am forced to fully admit that I have a problem when I’m sitting there through this entire thing just drawing Game of Thrones parallels. I have been drawing Game of Thrones parallels with everything lately, yes. But it is a complete issue. Creepy brother walks in and addresses his sister the evil blonde queen and my immediate thought is “well oh dear, is this going there?” It didn’t obviously, but I’m sure the internet has taken it there already. And yeah, when fake-William was walking in the woods with Snow and giving the whole “the throne is rightfully yours, you are your father’s daughter, blah blah blah” speech, I was convulsing a little inside. In a good way.
- Finally, one observation I have about this movie, not necessarily a negative but a definite observation, is that this film definitely has Prisoner of Azkaban disease: particularly at the first howeverlong, it is full of as many gratuitous nature shots as can be.
–your fangirl heroine.
