I'm Stephanie and i love films, here i will post spoiler-free reviews!

Thursday 13 June 2013

THE HANGOVER: PART III


Let me get one thing straight, my expectations for this film were rock bottom. I loved the first two (maybe the first one a bit more than the second) but I had heard only bad things about this film so i figured i would go in with low hopes, thinking that i could only be pleasantly surprised... I was wrong. 

Within five minutes of the film starting, a giraffe is decapitated (not a spoiler, this features in the trailer). Although I had seen this happen in the film's trailer and was less than impressed at the time, i gave director Todd Phillips the benefit of the doubt that this happens for a logical reason in terms of the wider narrative...

It turns out that this happens for absolutely no reason in terms of the wider narrative.

Needless animal cruelty
I actually think it would  have worked much better if Alan had bought or stolen a life-size cuddly toy giraffe and the same thing happened. A cuddly toy giraffe would have worked on so many levels; reinforcing Alan's child-like and ridiculously impulsive behaviour as well as the humour of Alan being upset at a toy giraffe's head coming off alongside the pure ridiculousness of a life-sized giraffe in general. There was just no need to include a real giraffe's head being cut off aside from shocking the audience and when a film resorts to shock tactics in order to get a cheap laugh from the audience you can 100% guarantee that this will not be a good film. With this being at the very beginning of the film I was tempted to leave there and then to save sitting through more tacky and desperate attempts of humour but i persevered in vain.

While we are on the subjects of animals, i don't know what species pissed Phillips off but the giraffe is weirdly not the only animal to be killed off for absolutely no reason in this film. In fact there are two other instances where the audience sat in an uncomfortable silence as more animals were murdered in scenes that really did not need to be included in the film and once again served absolutely no function to the wider narrative. I'm not being a PETA, paint-throwing prude here; as much as i love animals, if the murder of one (or in this case some) is justified within a film then i won't bat an eyelid, it's just the gratuitous inclusion of killing animals in order to give the audience a cheap shock that I can't stand - shocking the audience into laughing awkwardly does not a good film make. It is definitely not my inner animal lover that the animal killing offends, it is my inner film lover.

The other thing massively wrong with this film is that it is heavily dependent on Alan to the extent that it completely exhausts his character. We get it, Alan isn't all there - he's, shall we say, 'special' and sometimes says or does silly things that will make both grown ups and children laugh. He provides that blatant, predictable, in-your-face humour of a fat guy being stupid. Call me old fashioned but i am more of a fan of wit. I think the first two films strike a perfect balance between the
Ha-Ha Alan's fat, can we move on now?
'Alan-humour' and the 'witty-humour' and though i never particularly found Alan excessively funny, his occasional quips were a welcome easy-laugh in the midst of everything else that is going on. However, in The Hangover 3 it is much more 'The Alan Show' and near enough every scene is dominated by him in a desperate attempt to make the audience laugh. It's a lazy script and Alan is so overexposed throughout the film that by the end I wanted to pull my hair out. His scenes are long and the attempts at 'humour' are stretched - there are only so many times Phillips can desperately reinforce the fact that Alan is fat and has the mental age of a child and it still be funny.

Phil and Stu are actually the understated saviours of the film and their witty one-liners, though few, got the biggest laughs in the cinema and if it wasn't for them the film would have been a totally lost cause. Stu is still neurotic, Phil is still sarcastic and though the 'Alan/ Phil & Stu' balance was massively skewed against them this time around, they did have just enough presence to at least slightly salvage what remained of the film once you cut out all of the 'Alan-is-stupid' scenes and the animal killings.

The strongest part of the film was definitely the plot. When i heard that for the third film they were changing their tried and tested formula i did have my doubts and though i was slightly disheartened
I missed this scene
when the opening scene wasn't a dishevelled Bradley Cooper desperately phoning Doug's wife i was pleasantly surprised by the strength of the basic story and how well executed the plot was. There were just enough twists and surprises to maintain my interest and as I had already lost faith in the quality of the movie I was waiting for the story to become as obvious and desperate as the attempts at humour were; it doesn't. When you cut out all of the heavily Alan-focused scenes the plot has a real chance to shine and it isn't as predictable or as far-fetched as i initially thought that it would be.

One of the things that I loved about the second film was that even though the narrative is so similar to the first, there are brilliant elements of realism that somehow makes these characters and the situation they manage to get themselves into, not once but twice, somehow seem plausible. The second film would not have worked at all for me if it wasn't for the fact that the characters constantly reference the escapades from the first film; the fact that Stu now only drinks bottled beer to avoid being drugged again, the fact that he doesn't ever intend on having the bachelor party that got them into such a mess in the first film, the sheer disbelief that it has happened again - as if they are saying to the audience 'We know it is utterly ridiculous that this has happened again - we know you are thinking how stupid it is that we have basically made the same film twice and we completely agree with you.'

Phil, Stu and Doug all express the appropriate and realistic amount of complete and utter shock at it happening again, along with them openly saying how stupid they are. Doug's wife sums it up the best in the opening scene of The Hangover 2 where a defeated, flabbergasted Phil tells her that it has happened again and she just snaps 'Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you guys?!' She basically asked the question the entire audience was thinking and i remember that being the moment that i relaxed into the film and all scepticism was obliterated.

Therefore, for me, one of The Hangover 3's saving graces was the fact that the attitude from the second film was maintained; these characters are aware of their past more than any other characters from most sequels or trilogies, and that's what makes it borderline relatable. In a lot of film sequels, there isn't much from the original film that is referenced beyond necessity - The Hangover 3 makes references to the first two films, bringing back minor characters in order to help this plot thrive, as well as adding that little hint of nostalgia. There are flashbacks, there are in-jokes and pretty much all the fun of Vegas from the first film is revisited, all of which are very welcome additions to an otherwise faltering film.

It is such a shame that the strong storyline of The Hangover 3 was let down by such a lazy script as i truly feel that if they had maintained the character balance of the first two films they would have been on to a winner. However, Phillips obviously saw Alan as a way to get some easy laughs and didn't seem to consider the fact that he might not be everybody's favourite character, and even if he was he definitely wouldn't be once he has dominated 98% of the film. There is just so much wrong with this film that the few things that were right are completely overshadowed and even though i didn't expect much from the film going in, I still felt pretty disappointed as i left. For me, the fatal flaw of The Hangover 3 wasn't changing the formula narrative-wise but changing the balance character-wise; that alongside the inclusion of shock tactics over wit and real humour is just an unforgivable recipe for disaster.

All in all i award The Hangover 3: ★★ ☆☆ ☆

And I will let the little one from Malcolm In The Middle summarise my feelings towards The Hangover 3 in one short sentence:


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Love,











Tuesday 11 June 2013

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY


On Sunday I had the privilege of attending an advanced screening of the Monsters Inc prequel: Monsters University (Or 'Monsters College' depending on what side of the Atlantic you are reading this from). The fact that I willingly woke up at 7.30am on a Sunday morning in order to make the 10am screening is representative enough of how excited I was to be seeing this film. Despite liking Monsters Inc it isn't one of my favourite films from my childhood - i always watched it when it was on TV and thoroughly enjoyed it but to me it is no Toy Story and it is not even a film that i feel compelled to add to my 300+-strong DVD collection. I do enjoy it, i just don't love it - if you know what i mean?
Director Dan Scanlon introducing the film

The prequel really appealed to me because it is set in a University and i thought that they would be going down the Toy Story 3 route of appealing to the original film's audience at the age that they are now. Monsters Inc came out in 2001, a scary thought but that is now 12 years ago, much of the original audience will be either at University or have already experienced it and i thought that just as we said goodbye to our toys and our childhood when Andy did, we would be going to University with Mike and Sully.

Although i think this was, at least in part, the intention of this particular plot I am a bit saddened to say that it does not succeed on the level that Toy Story did. Sure, as a post-grad i could relate to the look of the campus and the experience of going off to find yourself but i didn't feel the same nostalgic connection that i did when Andy said that last goodbye to his childhood. I promise i will now try to keep the Toy Story comparisons to a minimum, i just wanted to get across what i was expecting from this film in the hope that as you read on you can understand why I was a bit disappointed by it.

Mike & Sully introducing the film
I've realised I have not sold this film too well in those last couple of paragraphs and that seems pretty harsh, don't get me wrong it is good. There is plenty going right for it - the way the University references (registration, meeting your new roommate, sororities etc.) were worked into the script were very clever and witty and the friendships and basic storyline of how Mike and Sully became the Mike and Sully we know and love was truly heartwarming. We are introduced to some fantastic new characters, my personal favourites being the band of misfits that Mike and Sully eventually join forces with and there are scenes with these characters that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. The personal highlight for me though was the inclusion of other characters from Monsters Inc. The brilliant Steve Buscemi reprises his role as Randall and we actually get an insight into why he is so mean and bitter towards Mike and Sully in the first film and  i thought this was a very welcome nod to the original. Other well-known characters also make cameos and this familiarity gave the film some heart and warmth, even though the children in the audience will not understand the sentiment.

I miss Boo :(
One character who was sorely missed was, of course, little Boo. Obviously as the film is a prequel to Monster's Inc it would be totally implausible to include Boo but as she is mine, and many others, favourite character you really did feel her absence. I feel the inclusion of sweet and innocent Boo in a World where monsters thrive on scaring children is what makes Monsters Inc so great, no children play a central role in Monsters University and although if they did I would probably accuse them of being unoriginal, it did seem like something wasn't quite adding up.

I was also shocked to find out that Monsters University is only 110 minutes as it felt like a lot longer. I think because so many twists and turns are crammed into the basic narrative it makes the film drag - at the end of the day, it is a children's film and it is simply not necessary to include so many sub-plots. There were a lot of instances where i thought the film would be ending yet it somehow managed to carry on and the children in the cinema were becoming restless (which ultimately makes watching the film a much less pleasurable experience for the grown-ups!) As well as the constant changes in the plot being inappropriate for children, there is a sequence towards the end of the film that had near enough every five-and-under child in the audience sobbing and screaming out that 'they don't like it'. With all the wit that the film contains it is sometimes easy to forget that the basic premise of Monsters Inc is pretty much terrifying for children; it's an institution where monsters sneak into children's rooms at night in order to scare them! There was a scene where monsters were scratching along the bedposts and jumping out of shadows to make the children scream as loud as possible as well as other scenes where the monsters are being as creepy as possible because this time they need to scare adults... When you think about it there is no wonder younger children were getting so scared and with the absence of Boo, a child just like the children in the audience who is cared for and safe with Mike and Sully, the monsters lack the compassion seen in the original film.

I was also disappointed that the scene i remembered most vividly from the film's trailer, where Mike is turned into a disco ball, was cut from the final edit. That scene intensified my presumption that the film was going to be about Uni pranks and parties and all the fun and mayhem that comes with it, although there were glimpses of some parties the Uni essence was nowhere near as prominent throughout the film as it's trailer made it out to be.

This band of misfits make the film
All in all, I do think it is worth watching as i did enjoy it there just seemed to be something really off-point for me and I can't exactly figure out what it was. There were definitely some really great, funny moments but i think all of the subplots that are squeezed in means that the great moments get mixed in with the not-so-great moments, eventually making the whole film underwhelming. The script is reasonably strong and the characters are well rounded, i think introducing the misfit monsters a little earlier on would have benefited the film greatly as they carry most of the humour and when they are not onscreen you can feel their absence. Definitely be prepared for some fidgety children towards the end of the film and be wary about taking under five's or sensitive children as the last thing you want is your kids having nightmares about the scary monsters hiding under their bed!

 Monsters University is a watchable film, definitely miles away from the rubbish side of Pixar sequels (Cars 2, i'm looking at you) but not even close to the realm of Toy Story 3. Maybe someplace in the middle alongside Toy Story 2... I wouldn't watch it again but i'm glad i did watch it, and if they make a third Monsters Inc I will give it a go, but only on the condition that they include Boo!!

All in all I award Monsters University: ★★★✯ ☆
                                                                                 (three and a half)

Monsters University is out nationwide from July 12th!

Stay tuned for more reviews and follow me on twitter if you fancy it :)

Love,








Amazing Randall balloon


My name is Stephanie...

...And i'm a DVD-holic


#Can'tBeTamed

Saturday 8 June 2013

WORLD WAR Z

 

World War Z is one of those films that i kind of wanted to see but knew i would never actually get around to, so you can imagine my delight yesterday afternoon when i was invited along to a screening of it after work!

The film started with a whole lot of promise; you are introduced to the central family in the midst of their morning routine and the audience is immediately able to get a sense of what a normal, happy and loving family they are. Another pro point was that within fifteen minutes of starting the film, the action and the main storyline (mystery virus is turning civilians into zombies) is well and truly underway.

When the zombies start attacking and the film becomes a fight for Jerry's (played by Brad Pitt) family to survive I really did think that it was a great film - the family dynamics added that extra layer of  emotion to what would have otherwise been just another action sequence and I felt true tension and panic as I helplessly sat and watched, praying they would all get to a safe place unharmed.

Yep, in that first half hour or so I was well and truly invested in the film. Then it all kind of goes wrong...

You see, (and this is by no means a spoiler - it is mentioned within minutes of the film's opening) Jerry happens to be some kind of ex-member of the United Nations. He has contacts and after one night of he and his family running away from zombies he is collected by the UN and his family are dropped off on a safe boat whilst Jerry is faced with no choice but to go back into the scary, zombie-ridden World to try and get to the bottom of this mystery virus and ultimately save the day. This is the true plot of the film and one that I feel was actually a lot weaker  than your basic 'zombie-survival' story... After all, you now know that his family literally face no danger and this seems like a bit of a cop-out. When the terror first began I was convinced that civilians uniting together to survive a zombie attack and a father's struggle to reassure his two young daughters whilst protecting them would have me in tears at some stage (I have this weird thing with unity - a bunch of strangers joining forces for the greater good is always a cue for me to start weeping), I was genuinely preparing to at least shed a tiny tear or get a lump in my throat but the fact is that this film very quickly turns from a drama/ action to a full on action and if you are looking for the level of emotional connection that similar films such as 28 Days Later or Independence Day give you then you will be horribly disappointed.

Now, obviously Brad Pitt is going to be the protagonist. He is. after all, our big bucks Hollywood stud; the guy who the film is about; the reluctant soldier who is convinced to get back out there and fight for the World one last time - of course i expected him to be a huge hero. However, though he might be a hero Jerry is definitely still human (unless the tiny matter of him being invincible was accidentally left out by director Marc Forster) and as time creeps on he survives outrageous, horrific, dangerous event after outrageous, horrific, dangerous event and to be honest, you just start to get a bit tired of it all.

 I know that it is fiction but it still seems a little insulting to the audience when you can pretty much do everything possible to kill a character with him not actually dying and hardly ever losing his momentum. There is also an awful lot of convenience that strikes throughout the film - a complete, unavoidable and unaccounted for disaster can happen and Jerry will conveniently end up being walking distance away from the exact destination that he was planning to go to. Literally, Forster could have dropped Pitt's character from a space shuttle a million miles above Earth and have him land on his own front doorstep completely unscathed and it would not have seemed out of place in this film. The smallest things kill any other character but put Jerry through every trauma possible and he will still come bouncing back, ready to save the day!

As well as that, the zombies were generally quite comical in both appearance and behaviour and there were times the zombies would be shown and the entire cinema just burst out laughing and i don't think this was the intended impact of the film. I also found the 3D to be unnecessary for much of the film - only really serving a purpose when a zombie suddenly appears on the screen, which admittedly did cause me to jump out of my skin, but i actually found for the rest of the time the 3D hindered my experience as the scenes tended to be so fast paced with so much happening onscreen that the gratuitous 3D just made it all seem a bit too over the top and actually made me feel a little nauseous at time.

After a strong start World War Z definitely found itself on a steady decline but the real plummet came with the ending. You have no idea how difficult it is to explain this let down of an ending without spoiling it but it really is just so inconclusive - and inconclusive in a bad and offensive way. I am all for film endings being open to interpretation - a lot of the time i actually prefer it to a concrete ending being forced upon me - but this was beyond a simple case of leaving it to the audience's imagination, this was literally Forster coming up with a vague idea for the ending but being too lazy to iron out all of the new issues that it raises and thus completely failing to execute the idea properly. After investing two hours into this film the ending is less than satisfactory and it genuinely felt as though they ran out of time or money to make the rest of the film so had to end it about fifteen minutes earlier than the script had planned; and this is purely because so much needless time is invested in showing how awesome and great and heroic Brad Pitt is. Which, let's face it, most of us already know.

In all honesty, the 'twist' ending creates more problems than it solves and Forster just could not be bothered to address these problems or come up with a new idea, so just kind of stuck it out hoping the audience will be too blown away by the rest of the film to notice... And judging by the bewildered silence that encased the cinema when the credits came up and everybody realised that we weren't going to be getting any more of a solution than that, i don't think that i was the only one to notice!

All negatives aside, the acting was great, the opening half an hour was incredibly strong and if you are willing to leave all logic and disbelief at home for the night then who knows - i am sure you could enjoy it! I just know that I definitely would have enjoyed it more if there was more focus on family and unity and less focus on how fantastic, resourceful and invincible regular human Jerry is.

All in all I award World War Z: ★★✯☆ ☆
                                                                                 (two and a half)

World War Z is out nationwide from June 21st!

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Love,









Saturday 1 June 2013

THE GREAT GATSBY



I am going to start this review of by saying something controversial: I read the book The Great Gatsby and if i am being totally honest... I didn't love it.

No, wait, come back! I promise I have stuff to say that you might agree with and won't strike your literary soul with horror the way my opening statement did. I just didn't realise when i first picked up the book that ultimately, The Great Gatsby is a love story. The tale of unrequited love and, well, a pretty great man who throws some pretty great parties whilst being in love. Other than love and parties not a lot really happens and even though it is a pretty short book, it dragged.

Now, onto the film. Despite not loving the book i was super excited to see the film... The excitement came around the time the words Baz Luhrmann were uttered in the same sentence as it and was even more intensified when Leonardo Dicaprio and Carey Mulligan were announced to play Gatsby and Daisy. An element of doubt set in when Tobey Maguire (seriously, what?) was cast as Nick but all in all, despite the bad reviews i was hearing, i was excited. 

To start with, as i expected, the film is visually stunning. The luxury, picturesque buildings, the extravagant parties and the beautiful 1920s fashion... Aesthetically i was in love. The beauty of the scenes combined with Luhrmann's trademark directing technique made it a joy to look at and i think even if i hated everything else about it, the pure beauty of the film would have been enough to make me enjoy it at least a little bit. Luhrmann is one of my favourite directors and this is because i love the fast-paced, carnivalesque nature of his films. I think any other director even thinking about making Gatsby into a film is, quite frankly, unacceptable. If anybody was going to bring those fantastical parties to life it was Baz and he delivered 110%.

Carey Mulligan is beautiful as Daisy
Onto the casting. Carey Mulligan has been a firm favourite of mine since i saw her in An Education four years ago. She is simply beautiful and such an elegant, graceful woman in every role i have seen her in and she floated into Daisy's shoes in a similarly elegant manner and with such amazing beauty that shone through the screen. However, in the book i found Daisy to be quite a one-dimensional character. I had absolutely no feeling or emotion towards her and i am sad to say that this translates into the film as well. I don't think it is by any means a reflection of Mulligan or Luhrmann; they did everything right but, for me, Daisy just isn't a character i can bring myself to care about. There just isn't enough there for me to relate to as she doesn't really have a lot of dialogue and we are told very little about her life, aside from her relationship with Gatsby. I think Daisy's transparant character is more a reflection of the expecations of women at the time of Fitzgerald's writing above anything else. Saying this, the scene where Daisy is preparing to marry and the string of pearls breaks as she is screaming did bring a lump to my throat when watching. Carey Mulligan might not have been able to breathe life into a lifeless character but everything that she did do was beautifully acted and for that, i can not fault her.

Tobey Maguire's comical facial expressions introduced us all to a new Nick Carraway
Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway... Where to start? I can't even begin to tell you how shocked i was when Maguire was announced to play the character who ultimately carries the novel. The story may be about Gatsby but in every sense of the word it is Nick who is the protagonist so casting somebody who had pretty much disappeared since his last big film almost a decade ago did not seem a wise choice for me. Tobey Maguire is Spiderman. To me and to many other people this is all he is known as... Could he really carry the film adaptation of one of the biggest literary classics to exist? As soon as the film started, i was wary. He was definitely not how i imagined Nick to be when reading the book, he was just too awkward - too much of a wallflower, i know Nick is the one who observes the whole story but he doesn't just blend into the background the way that Maguire did. As well as this new awkward personality that Maguire introduced to Nick, it was distracting that he seems to only be able to do facial expressions that border on comical, it is difficult to take him seriously. His facial reactions and the way he responds to other characters almost seemed like a caricature but i have to say, after about half an hour this grew on me. The small essence of slapstick comedy that Tobey Maguire embossed into every facial expression eventually worked for me and i will be completely honest and say that they only worked because of Baz Luhrmann's directing technique. The whole film was very bizarre, very carnivalesque, very caricature and once the parties and the fast-paced nature of these scenes got into the swing of it Maguire's silly face blended in naturally with the rest of the carry-on around him after initally sticking out like a sore thumb. Similarly to Luhrmann's other great films like Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, a lot of the shots were sudden close-ups of the character's faces and although Maguire definitely does not portray the Nick Carraway in the book, which i can see would annoy fans, he does portray an acceptable and watchable Nick Carraway. I did need time to get used to him but in hindsight i think he was a good, not great, choice.

Leonardo Dicaprio: A truly great Gatsby
Oh Gatsby... As with most people my age i have been a huge fan of Leonardo Dicaprio for as long as i can remember, he was one of my first 'favourite actors' having watched The Basketball Diaries at a young age and even then i remember thinking how astounding he was at acting - my love of him is not just down to his sexy good looks. Therefore i could not have chosen anybody else to play the iconic literary character of Jay Gatsby. He did say 'Old Sport' a hell of a lot but all in all he made a pretty great Gatsby (i didn't even mean to make that lame little pun there but i am leaving it in because it's true) He has the charisma, the depth, the look of Gatsby. He was so close to how i pictured him to be when reading the book and i actually connected with film Gatsby a LOT more than i did with book Gatsby. Something about the sad, painful look in his eyes and the hidden anguish he portrayed so well. In the book i was somewhat unaffected by the ending but in the film i was edging towards tears. It just broke my heart to see Gatsby fall apart the way that he does and personally i truly believe that Dicaprio brought Gatsby to life in ways that the book could not. My ultimate favourite scene in the film is when Gatsby is throwing all of his shirts over the stairs; he just looks so happy, so carefree - Dicaprio's entire face transforms, he had the youthful, fresh, innocent look that he did in his early days. It looked like a genuine transition of emotion, not just your bog-standard actor putting across that emotion, you can see that Dicaprio really did feel it and it is little things like that that make the film and fully engross you into the storyline and lives of the characters.

On top of this, there are many other pro-points to the film: The on-screen chemistry between Leonardo Dicaprio and Carey Mulligan was out of this world. They really looked like they were in love with eachother and the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby was enchanting, even if Daisy as a character was not. The supporting cast was amazing and i couldn't fault anything about any of them and very little of the main narrative was changed in the transition from book to film, which is a rare feat nowadays and must have made fans of the book pretty happy. There genuinely were a whole lot of plus points to this movie but the biggest negative was that i found it around about half an hour too long. There was a section in the middle where it all just seemed to drag and the audience had already understood the pain and anguish at unrequited love but Luhrmann seemed keen to reinforce that as much as possible... And this was too many times for my liking. As i said, the book is pretty short and i had already wondered how they would make it into a feature length film at all, let alone a two and a half hour one. However, similarly to Les Miserables, the prolonged middle section of the film was more than made up for by the incredible ending. The last fifteen minutes had me hooked and the very, very last scene - though really predictable - sent shivers down my spine.

As i wasn't a huge fan of the book i will actually congratulate The Great Gatsby for, in my opinion, being a film that is actually slightly better than the book. Other than cutting down some of that middle section i couldn't think of anything more they could have done in order to improve it. And my love for Baz Luhrmann may be slightly responsible for this but i like to think it is a film that will be enjoyed by most!

All in all i award The Great Gatsby with

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Love,