Spoiler Alert Sunday :: my thoughts on The Last Witch Hunter

In the opening sequence of this movie, a group of pseudomedieval knights and their priest, accompanied by vaguely Viking’d Vin Diesel, invade a bug-infested weirwood tree to kill a decomposed witch queen, who then curses Vin Diesel with immortality before he explodes the tree.  All of this is done with the utmost seriousness.

I think I expected this film to be a little more tongue-in-cheek than it ultimately was (a little more Hansel & Gretel) but it was still a goofy fantasy action movie.  The evil witches were as a general rule fairly gross, and the mythology was more backstory and selective explanation than comprehensive history lesson, but it was a movie about Vin Diesel hunting witches.

Elijah Wood was conniving and sly and a total sycophant.

Michael Caine was… there.

Rose Leslie was the reason I saw this movie, 100%, but she was adorable.  She got to keep her accent, she was a precious little hipster-punk witch bar owner with a cool special gift and a cool knife.  Also she passed the Bechdel test and did not kiss Vin Diesel.  So that’s a thing.

Lotte Verbeek was a good memory-wife.  She’s pretty.

Very acceptable trash.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on Now You See Me

I wouldn’t say it was a spectacular gem of a movie.  It wasn’t without its flaws, it wasn’t particularly significant in the grand scheme of life, there’s really only one reason I’d turn it on if it was on television in the future (which is really quite obvious).  But I walked out of it surprisingly content, which is nice.

So.

• Overall, a cast of characters that I didn’t find insufferable.  Which is exciting.  Usually with movies like this, I end up wanting to punch at least one character (usually one of the dudes) in the face, and I… didn’t, really?  Except in those moments where the characters were being intentionally douchey so you were supposed to want to punch them and the narrative seemed aware of that.  Good on you.
• Woody Harrelson was sure sporting a nice collection of douchapeaus.
• Dave Franco is much less hard for me to handle than James Franco.
• Isla Fisher is lovely, and while I (predictably) would have been happy with more exposition on her, there wasn’t a terrible lot of exposition on any of the characters, so I can’t complain too terribly.  I liked that her solo magic act at the beginning could have been taken as somewhat of a criticism/subversion of girl magic if you wanted to.  I liked that with the guys, she wasn’t treated differently particularly (sure, Merritt was making some douchey comments to her, but he was making douchey comments to everyone) and she partook of the magic and the crime pretty equally.  I also like that she kept wearing cute leather gloves with little cutouts.
• Jesse Eisenberg… yeah, I am okay with him, he was a cocky little twit some/most of the time but I could deal with it.  Also, he had elbow patches on his sweater at one point.  This is clearly important.
• Mark Ruffalo is someone who I don’t think I’ve ever taken real issue with.  I haven’t seen his entire catalogue of work by any means, but I haven’t disliked him in any great capacity.  He works as someone to center stories around.
• Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine.  Naturellement.
• Melanie Laurent.  Melanie Laurent.  One of my people thought she was going to be the plot twist, and I admit I would have liked that, but je suis content, because I really do just appreciate everything about her.  I enjoy her character’s enthusiasm for doing her research and I enjoy that she was until recently desk job girl but she could still slam Mark Ruffalo’s head against the bar.  I enjoy that she was caring but also not soft per se.  I also enjoy her accent and her excellent not-quite-smirking eyebrow raising faces.
• This is not my sort of magic, but it was fun.  And okay, Robin Hood stuff, that’s fun too.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on The Dark Knight Rises

This is one of those movies that I actually loathe reviewing.  Occasionally, there are movies I fall in love with, and writing howevermany words on those is easy.  Sometimes movies make me think sarcastic thoughts, and it’s easy to write about that.  Sometimes I flat think a movie is ridiculous, and that’s easy to discuss.  It’s the movies I see that I really do like and appreciate as being a very good film but don’t feel any particular feelings about that I have the hardest time with talking about.

I liked this movie.  The Dark Knight Rises is a very, very good movie.  Technically speaking, it’s well-made, everyone’s performances were very good.  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman did what they had to do, Tom Hardy was all menacing and growly, Christian Bale was solid as usual in the Batman role, I’ll discuss the others in a second.  I mean, I giggle sometimes when he growls, but that’s nothing new.  The growling is always funny.

So I guess I’ll list some idle thoughts, ones that are snarkier than my overall opinion of the film.  A lot of people have written better actual reviews of this movie, making good points.  Some people are crying Oscar; I don’t know if it would win, I rather doubt it, but a nomination wouldn’t surprise me.  It’s got the requisite darkness.

Idle thoughts:

• O-okay, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, buddy.  I’m still cranky with you for the “pretty women aren’t usually funny” comment, which has also been discussed online.  I’d like to imagine you’ve learned from your mistake, though; I know some people say stupid and symptomatic but not dangerous stuff sometimes, cringeworthy stuff, but they learn from it sometimes.  Still, good performance.  Good sweater(vest)s.
• Marion Cotillard.  I like your face, and I admit, that not knowing the comics really at all, I wasn’t entirely seeing that coming?  I’m still making heads or tails of how they actually played it out, but at least it kept me from my worst fear of all, which was the Miranda character being used as the damsel figure.
• There are still… certain strangenesses in overall casting in this franchise, ones that are symptomatic of strangenesses in casting, period, but I can’t blame the actors for that.
• Juno Temple, why were you there?  I mean, I understand that she was Selina Kyle’s… something.  Buddy/accomplice/apprentice/little street sister/what?  Characters like that are written only to serve the purpose of moving something else forward or creating background, which bums me out a little bit because I always get curious about them, but.
• AAAND let’s talk about Anne Hathaway.  Really the only reason I ever broke out grinning during this film.  Who said you couldn’t play Catwoman, darling?  Because they were wrong.  I was also terrified that they were going to modern Irene Adler Selina-who-is-Catwoman.  They could have done it many times.  They didn’t quite, though I could have done without the ending looks of angst and longing and the very last of her, but that’s a plot issue.  I enjoyed the performance a lot, I really did, though now come to think of it, I could have done with a little more exposition sometime, not in the “justifying my actions” way but just in the “additional character depth” way.  But still, very well done.
• Hello, surprise momentary Aidan Gillen.  Hello, surprise momentary Jillian Armenante.
• One of these days, when I’m not avoiding actual spoilers as much out of manners, remind me to write at least a long paragraph entitled “How the same basic plot device can be played two different enough ways to make me feel feelings one of the ways and make me shrug the other way.”

But yes.  I did like it, it was a well-crafted movie.

–your fangirl heroine.