Men in Black 3 (2012)

Stars: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Michael Stuhbarg
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Genre: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Rating: B-

This was another one of those films that surprised me.  I went in with really low expectations – I didn’t even want to see it (I made a hard fight to see Dark Shadows instead, but we ended up arriving at the theatre after it had started).  Yet, despite the fact that I didn’t really want to see it and had very low expectations for it, I was pleasantly surprised by Men in Black 3, although perhaps this was in part the result of my low expectations.

At the start of the film Agents K (Jones) and L (Smith) have been working together for fourteen years (paying no attention to the fact that in the five year gap between MIB and MIB2 K was retired and had no memories of the MIB), although they still have secrets between them.  J continually nags at K to reveal more of his past to him, with K very much ignoring him in a manner that you would very much expect of Tommy Lee Jones.  That all changes when alien Boris the Animal (Clement) travels back in time and kills K on July 16, 1969.  It is up to J to travel back in time and work with a young K (Brolin) and alien Griffin (Stuhbarg), who sees all possible futures, in order to ensure that the future that happens is the one that J knows.

Let’s start with the easy stuff and work our way to the more complicated bits.  The comedy in MIB3 was great.  Jones and Brolin both make a good straight man to Smith’s funny man.  Thompson was hilarious, proving yet again that you cannot go wrong casting her in a movie (seriously, has she been in any bad movies? Any?).  I was a bit disappointed that some of the comic relief aliens from the earlier films played a much smaller role in this one, and that Frank the pug wasn’t shown at all.  The casting in general, though, was great.  As already mentioned, Emma Thompson was amazing.  Brolin really surprised me as well, the way in which he played a younger version of Jones was incredible.  They even sounded alike; at one point I wondered if Jones had done a voice over for Brolin’s part.  The character of Griffin was absolutely adorable and nicely done.

Now, on to the big stuff: The time travel aspect of the film was handled really well, although there were a few plot holes, especially in regards to just how J is recruited in the first place of K died in 1969.  I also really disliked how little reference they made to the fact that Smith is black and travelling to 1969.  There are a couple comments about it, but for the most part the problems that he’d face are ignored.  Likewise, Mike Colter is cast as a colonel working at NASA when there is no way in hell that would have happened in 1969.  It’s almost as if the film wanted to, pardon the expression, white wash American history while pretending to pay lip service to it.  The one really big problem with this film is just how much it ignores story established in MIB2.  While the second film in the series really wasn’t good, it almost seems like the directors and producers decided to ignore its existence (which is a bit ridiculous, given as it’s the same people who did the first two films).  Oh, on a concluding note, as awesome as Thompson was, I did have to question the decision to cast her as a romantic interest of sorts, and long time colleague of Jones.  Not only is there a bit of an age difference between the two (15 years), but he looks a fair bit older than he is and she looks a bit younger than she is, making it a bit weird.  The romantic interest of sorts is one thing, the long term colleague (Thompson's character, Agent O, is portrayed in 1969), another.

Charlie St. Cloud (2010)

Stars: Zac Efron, Charlie Tahan, Amanda Crew, Kim Basinger, Ray Liotta
Director: Burr Steers
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Rating: C

I suspect that I enjoyed Charlie St. Cloud far more than I should have.  Which is a lesson learned; when watching bad movies, it is recommended that one do so in the company of friends who will thoroughly make fun of it with you.

The plot of the movie is very straightforward and rather clichéd; think of it as a more predictable, romantically inclined The Sixth Sense.  Actually, no, to say that is a bit of an insult to The Sixth Sense.  Rather, Charlie St. Cloud is more like The Invisible, but with a happier ending.  If you’ve never seen The Invisible, don’t, it wasn’t good.  But, back to Charlie.  In this film we have the eponymous character, Charlie St. Cloud (Efron), a recent high school graduate and prospective Stanford University student who is an amazing sailor.  One day he and his younger brother Sam (Tahan) are in a car accident; Charlie is revived by a paramedic (Lolita), but Sam dies.  Not all is lost, however, as before his brother’s death Charlie promises to never leave him, and thus after his death Sam is able to appear and the two practice baseball every day at sunset.  Five years later, after Charlie has effectively given up his life in order to stay with his dead brother, Charlie re-meets Tess Carroll (Crew), a girl he went to school with and a fellow sailor.  They bond and slowly fall in love, but it isn’t all what it seems.  Eventually, Charlie must choose between his dead brother and this new love.

There is a bit more to it, but I’m refraining from expanding so as to not spoil.  The plot, however, is ridiculously obvious, with the foreshadowing being dropped as heavily handed as an piano falling from an upper floor of a tall building.  Just where they were planning on going with the plot was rather obvious, so much so that the friends I was watching this film with and I were trying to predict the ending at most half way through it.  We weren’t exactly right, but at the same time we were pretty close.  The ridiculing that we gave the movie was probably the best part of it itself, as was the commentary on the similarities between Charlie St. Cloud and Logan Thibault of The Lucky One.  The one thing that Charlie St. Cloud does have going for it is the beautiful backdrop; but then, as it was filmed in the Vancouver area, I’m somewhat biased.

Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

Stars: Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen
Director: Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Rating: B-

Another Hollywood attempt at a Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears a Who! tells the story of Horton the elephant in his journey to save the Whos.  Horton (Carrey) is, at best, rather eccentric and at worst full out nuts, but he has amazing hearing and never forgets a thing – after all, he is an elephant.  The Whos are nothing at all like the Whos of The Grinch, but rather furry hominoid creatures that kind of resemble monkeys.  Microscopic monkeys, that is, who live on a speck that has landed on a clover.  Horton, being the only creature who is aware of the Whos existence sets out on a trek to find a safe place for the clover, thus preventing the destruction of their planet.  The other animals are predominantly a bit hesitant of Horton and worry about the influence that he has on their children, his only real friend being Morton the Mouse (Rogen), who doesn’t actually believe in the Whos but still supports the elephant.  The most militant of the other animals is the kangaroo, Jane (Burnett), who is aided by the vulture Vlad Vladikoff (Arnett).  Meanwhile, the Whos are preparing for a big celebration and thus do not wish to heed the warnings of Mayor Ned McDodd (Carell) about their possible impending doom.  Thus, it is up to Horton to save the speck and the Mayor to convince the Whos that they are living upon a speck.

I want to say, something about this being complicated, but I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately.  Even though the plot is a bit complicated, it isn’t so overly complicated that it fails to make sense.  In fact, where other made for children movies have failed plot-wise, Horton succeeds.  There is a lot going on but everything makes sense, as does the motivation of the many different characters.  It’s all linked together.  Jane is a total type A, domineering mother, who won’t let her son out of her sight.  She fears the influence of the eccentric Horton, who is making himself look insane by talking to a speck – no one else has ears big enough to hear the Whos.  The Whos, with the exception of the Mayor, do not hear Horton, because they don’t have the technology to receive his words (the two speak through an intricate system of pipes on the top of the Mayor’s house), and thus do not believe the Mayor when he says that their planet is simply a speck on another planet.  To be fair, I doubt I would believe such a thing if I was in the Whos’ position.

The problem with Horton is similar to the problem with The Lorax.  It is more of a product of the 21^st century and the creators of the film than it is a product of Dr. Seuss.  As such, it is rather misleading.  I personally didn’t want to see this film because of the minds of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, and certainly not because of any of the directors or producers (none of which I’ve ever heard of before).  If I want to see a Jim Carrey or a Steve Carell movie, it’s not going to be an animated children’s movie (or even a live action children’s movie).  I want to watch a movie based on a Dr. Seuss story because I like Dr. Seuss stories.  Transporting it from the fictional world of Seuss into a contemporary world  full of pop culture references is just unnecessary.  It takes away from the story and is like making Willie Wonka the son of a domineering dentist who never let his child eat candy.  Oh, wait, I guess Hollywood’s done that already.

Mirror Mirror (2012)

Stars: Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, Jordan Prentice, Mark Povinelli, Joe Gnoffo, Danny Woodburn, Sebastian Saraceno, Martin Klebba, Ronald Lee Clark, Mare Winningham, Sean Bean
Director: Tarsem Singh Dhandwar

Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Rating: B-

The first of the two feature films on the legend of Snow White, Mirror Mirror is an attempt to reimagine the story in a feminine world while remaining child friendly.  This whole idea, or at least the reimaging portion of it, is a common theme in current retellings of Snow White, to the point that it’s pushing becoming a cliché (and will definitely achieve such a status by the end of the year, what with the two Snow White movies coming out and the Snow White television show on ABC).  My problem with Mirror Mirror is that in its reimaging it really loses elements of the original story.  I like the idea of an action girl Snow White, who is as eager to fight the evil queen alongside her prince and the dwarves, but I still want the poison apples and true loves kiss and what not.

The story is such: Once upon a time there was a young girl, Snow White (Collins), who had a wonderful father, the King (Bean), but no mother.  One day her father marries again, so as to give his daughter a mother.  But the new Queen (Roberts) is somewhat of a wicked stepmother; more concerned with maintaining her beauty and power than anything else.  The King eventually goes off to fight a great evil, from which he never returns, leaving the power to rule in the Queen’s hands.  She essentially locks Snow up in the castle, forbidding her to leave, and taxes the country into destitution.  Snow finally comes to her senses and realizes that she should stand up for her people… causing the Queen to get a henchman (Lane) to kill her; he fails to do so, and Snow ends up moving in with seven dwarfs (Prentice, Povinelli, Gnoffo, Woodburn, Saraceno, Klebba, and Clark), who teach her their banditry ways and provide her with room and board, in exchange for her far superior cooking.  Oh, and also, there’s a Prince (Hammer), who is being pursued by the Queen despite his strong attraction to Snow.  Sound familiar?

The highlight of this film is the dwarfs, which I think is a bit typical of a Snow White film.  They don’t sing and dance, but they do provide a good comic relief for the film.  They are, if not in name than in essence, Teacher, Grumpy, Weird, Gay (or European?), Pervy, Hungry, and Giggles.  Each one is a very unique character and while they don’t really get much individual development in the film they do more than just push the plot forward.  Even during the obligatory montage they interact with Snow in a way that is unique unto them.  It takes awhile for Snow herself to become a strong character, but as she begins to escape from the Queen’s hold she begins to show her independence.  She never descends into the damsel in distress category, even when she is in a distressful position.  The Queen is far less evil than in other depictions, although she is a bit flat.  Her motivation really is the desire to stay beautiful, and the way in which her magic works isn’t really explained.  The world that she travels to in order to get to her magic mirror is cool, as is the being inside of it, but the whole aspect isn’t really developed.  The consequences of her using magic aren’t fully explained either, just ominously threatened.  The idea in itself, however, is rather clichéd, so I guess it doesn’t really need to be further developed.  In some ways, the Prince is more villainous than the Queen.  Like Snow he has to go through some development, but in the beginning of the film he is pretty much everything that you would expect of a fairytale Prince Charming: attractive, daring, charming, conceited, and totally sexist.  He does grow and realize the error of his personality, and it is that development that is one of the few surprising moments of the movie.  That being said, however, while Mirror Mirror is a bit predictable, and doesn’t fully embrace the elements of the classic story, it is still a fun movie and, I suspect probably the best Snow White movie to come out this year.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits / In an Adventure with Scientists (2012)

Stars: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Imelda Staunton
Director: Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt

Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family

Rating: C

I’m not exactly sure where to begin in explaining my disappointment in this film.  Trailers for it made it look like a cute animated film about a band of pirates who aren’t exactly good at being pirates and are entering the Pirate of the Year competition.  Silly, yes, but cute.  And in the post-Pixar world, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve come to expect adult friendly children’s films.  Sadly, this really wasn’t what The Pirates! Band of Misfits (In an Adventure with Scientists outside of North America) was all about.  Yes, there were pirates, yes they were incompetent, yes there was a competition, but the actual plot was a lot more than just that – and it was in that extra development that the film really lost me.

The Pirate Captain (Grant) is the captain of a crew of pirate misfits; there’s the Pirate with a Scarf (Freeman), Peg-Leg Hastings, the Pirate with Gout, the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, the Albino Pirate, and the Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens.  They are, very much rightly, ridiculed by the pirating world, especially by the Pirate Captain’s nemeses, Black Bellamy (Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Hayak), two surprisingly competent pirates who frequently win the Pirate of the Year Award.  Determined to prove himself, the Pirate Captain and his crew set out to prove themselves, and while doing so they board the Beagle and take Charles Darwin (Tennant) captive.  Yes, that Darwin.  It is at this point that the plot of the film becomes somewhat overly complicated; it is revealed that the Pirate Captain’s parrot is in fact the last remaining living dodo.  Darwin is very much your modern day stereotype of a science geek, - complete with an awkwardness around girls and a crush on someone far out of his league, specifically Queen Victoria (Staunton) – wants to take Polly to the Scientist of the Year awards, where he’s sure he will win both the top prize and the love and affection of the Queen.  The Captain, however, sees this as an opportunity for him to gather a huge booty and thus win the Pirate of the Year Award.  Queen Victoria, however, is adamantly against Pirates and also collects very rare and endangered animals, for her own devious means.  It is up to the Pirates and Darwin to save the day.

If that all seems a little ridiculous, it’s because it is.  In fact, it’s completely ridiculous and over the top.  It claims to be smart, but really it’s just over the top.  The humour is, for the most part, rather dull and a bit dimwitted, it’s talking down to its audience.  The premise of the plot is extremely implausible.  I love a good fantasy as much as the next person, but I hate it when something attempts to situate itself in the real world and then makes the plot overly complicated and unrealistic.  If it was just about a band of misfit pirates (as it was promoted) who were trying to win the Pirate of the Year award it would be one thing, or even if it was just about that time that Charles Darwin accidentally found a dodo hidden as a pirate’s parrot.  Combining the two just takes it over the top, as does Queen Victoria as the villain.  The characters are all really just absurd caricatures, presenting stereotypes and over the top ridiculousness.  In the post-Pixar world it is easy to expect more of a children’s movie, but The Pirates fails to deliver.

The Five-Year Engagement (2012)

Stars: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt, Alison Brie
Director: Nicholas Stoller

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Rating: B

The Five-Year Engagement is about a twenty-something couple, Tom (Segel) and Violet (Blunt) who have their lives completely turned upside down after getting engaged; Violet is accepted into post-grad program, causing the couple to move from sunny California to snowy Michigan.  Hilarity and problems ensue as Michigan proves to be the place where relationships go to die.  The wedding is postponed several times, and the couple begin to question their love and commitment to each other.  In short, it is everything that you would expect from a romantic comedy, a movie that girls drag their boyfriends to, and the boyfriends go to in the hopes of being laid.  Except, the difference between The Five-Year Engagement and other rom-coms is that The Five-Year Engagement is actually a funny movie.

The humour in this movie is very much what you would expect from a movie penned by Jason Segel and directed by Judd Apatow.  It isn’t as much of a stoner flick as other Apatow films; there are no drugs nor intoxicated ramblings.  It is a bit sexist, particularly at the beginning, but as everyone except for Katherine Heigl appears to have figured out, Apatow does this intentionally, to allow his characters to grow.  Blunt’s character is very much an intelligent woman on her way to success, and at the start of the film so is Segel’s character.  Then they make the move and Segel becomes very much a man child; unable to find a satisfying job (because there are no restaurants in Michigan) he settles for a job at a sandwich shop and slowly loses his manhood.  Somehow, this is entertaining and the laughs continue as Tom becomes more and more pathetic.  There reaches a point in the film when the viewer is questioning just what Violet still sees in her fiancé; fortunately, she reaches the same conclusion as well.

There are problems with The Five-Year Engagement, particularly with Segel’s mid-movie man child state.  The beginning of the film tries to paint him as this great guy making a huge sacrifice for the woman he loves, while Blunt is cruel for putting him in such a position.  As the movie progresses, however, the two begin to grow as characters and eventually they come to realize that there is more to life than what you gain and give up, it’s about the compromises along the way.  It’s about how you look at life; if you look at it with a negative attitude, then of course it’s all going to be shit and snow.  That’s another trick that the film utilizes; when they’re miserable in Michigan everything is covered in snow, but when they finally start to figure life out the sun comes out again.  It’s a nice little symbolic way to approach the feelings of the characters.  And in the end, it being a romantic comedy, the sun does come out again.

Small Gods

Author: Terry Pratchett

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy

Rating: B

In Omnia it is time for the arrival of the Eighth Prophet to reveal himself and convey to the followers of Om the Great God’s desires.  Except, when the god goes to the disc in order to find his prophet he finds himself in the body of a tortoise, only able to made himself heard to a slow, stupid novice, Brutha.  Brutha is the only person in all of Omnia who truly believes in Om the god and not just the rules and rituals of the church.  In true Pratchett fashion, it is up to Brutha to save the day and restore the god, although he doesn’t exactly realize that he needs to do as much.

Small Gods is not my favourite of the Discworld novels.  It wasn’t as funny as the previous books in the series, although the plot was a bit more intricate than others.  My big problem with the series was that the characters were harder to get into.  All of the characters of the book are new to the series (although the Librarian is briefly alluded to) and very few of them are narrator characters.  It takes a bit for both Om and Brutha to become interesting narrators, and as such it isn’t until about half way through the book that it actually becomes interesting.  Prior to that it more feels like a long, somewhat dry preamble to the actual plot.

Once Small Gods begins to pick up its steam it really takes off and flourishes.  As the meaning of Om’s predicament becomes clear and Brutha begins to flourish under his influence the plot begins to really take shape, things get interesting, and the fact that the novel doesn’t contain the same level of humour as earlier books is forgotten.  At times things are still a bit overly complicated, and there are elements that I thought could have been toned down (particularly in regards to the philosophers), but the book does hold its own.  My one big problem with the second half of the novel is that the consequences of some of Brutha’s actions are never really fully explained.  Not the best in the series, but overall still a good book.

American Reunion (2012)

Stars: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Eugene Levy, Mena Suvari, Jennifer Coolidge
Director: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg
Genre: Comedy
Rating: B-

American Pie was a coming of age film about a group of boys in their senior year of high school who make a pact to lose their virginity, while its first two sequels (American Pie 2 and American Wedding) follow the same group as they discover what happens to you after you finally come of age.  Now, thirteen years after the original film hit screens comes the latest and fourth feature film in the series; American Reunion.  This film provides the story of what happens when you realize that adult life isn’t all it’s cracked out to be.

Since the wedding of Jim (Biggs) and Michelle (Hannigan), each member of the group has apparently gone off into the world, leaving East Great Falls and rarely looking back.  Jim and Michelle have fallen into a rut in their marriage, Kevin (Nicholas) is happily married and a bit of a housewife, Oz (Klein) is a sportscaster living in LA with a supermodel girlfriend, Finch (Thomas), who has lost contact with his friends, is travelling the world, and Stifler (Scott) is becoming aware of the fact that he’s a loser.  Everyone is brought back to their hometown just in time for their 13-year high school reunion, where they’re each confronted with what they’ve given up in life; Jim and Michelle sex, Kevin Vicky (Reid), Oz Heather (Suvari), Finch his chance at one true love, and Stifler… well, actually, Stifler hasn’t given up anything and has insisted on remaining the same person that he was in high school.  Hilarity ensues as each tries to come to terms with their desires and the way life has turned out for them, and figure out how to reconcile what they have with what they once wanted.

American Reunion is no American Pie.  Had I not seen the original movie I highly doubt I would have enjoyed this one at all; it really offered nothing new or original as a movie and is incapable of standing on its own.  It does, however, pay a nice tribute to the series, and in many ways restores the dignity lost from the American Pie Presents straight to video films.  It has all of the classic elements of an American Pie film: Jim and his dad (Levy) share awkward conversations, Michelle tells band camp stories, Stifler interacts with bodily fluids and throws a party, and of course there’s Stifler’s mom (Coolidge).  The film may not have been exactly original, borrowing a lot from both the previous films and essentially every other reunion-esque film about 30-somethings, but it was funny.  In all reality, it was just about everything you can expect from an American Pie film.

What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker, Ben Falcone, Anna Kendrick, Matthew Morrison, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock, Rodrigo Santoro
Director: Kirk Jones

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: C

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is another one of those movies very, very loosely based on some already established trademarks.  This time the focus is on the book that tells you all about what you’re going to go through when you’re pregnant.  With that in mind, What to Expect tries to present itself as the love child of Bridesmaids and Love Actually, following the lives of five loosely connected couples, each dealing with the trials and tribulations of impending parenthood.  If that sounds a bit lame, it’s because it kind of is.

The problem with What to Expect is that it doesn’t seem to know what kind of comedy it wants to be, or even if it’s entirely committed to being a comedy.  The genre of movie seems to change with each of the core couples, resulting in a lack of cohesion.  While this would be fine if the movie was a series of shorts connected by a similar theme What to Expect isn’t a film like that.  The Cameron Diaz/Matthew Morrison elements appear to be an attempt a spoof of so-called celebrities who appear in ridiculous reality TV shows, with what seems to be a rather heavy handed jab at Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame.  Elizabeth Banks/Ben Falcone bit is attempting to recreate Bridesmaids with Banks playing the Kristen Wigg role (complete with the actress who played Wigg’s awkward roommate playing Banks’ awkward assistant).  Dennis Quaid is Falcone’s father, with Brooklyn Decker as his much younger trophy wife, thus filling the role of the father who doesn’t get it and the inappropriate stepmother that we’ve seen far too many times at this point.  The story Jennifer Lopez/Rodrigo Santoro pairing is more your traditional romantic comedy; they’re an infertile couple looking to adopt, although Santoro’s character isn’t entirely sure he’s ready to be a father.  Santoro’s part doesn’t end there, however, as he joins a daddy walking club, featuring Chris Rock.  Thus, his part of the story descends into your typical Chris Rock type movie, wherein Chris Rock makes himself look good by surrounding himself with goofs.  The final pairing is Chace Crawford/Anna Kendrick, a pair of twenty-somethings who get pregnant after a one night stand and must deal with the consequences.  Of all the stories, this is the least comedic, more of a dramatic romance than anything else.

The stories themselves are a bit unevenly handled.  Some of them get a lot of screen time and really give you a sense of who the characters are, while others are a bit sidelined.  While some of these stories deserve to be sidelined – particularly the Quaid/Decker one – some of the front runners aren’t really strong enough to carry the film the way that they do – especially the Diaz/Morrison one.  The thing that works with a film like Love Actually is that while it has a large number of stories going on at once each one is well developed, each character unique.  What’s more is that the stories are all interconnected and support and add to each other.  Part of the fun of the movie is figuring out just how they’re all connected (there are even flow charts).  This is lost in What to Expect.  The characters are very, very loosely connected and thus the stories don’t really support each other in the same way.  The film does learn from other American attempts at a loosely connected film with an ensemble cast in that it has fewer characters and thus fewer plots.  The characters do get more attention, for the most part, but would benefit from more cohesion in the film.  In the end, I wanted less of the Banks/Falcone and Diaz/Morrison stories and more of the Lopez/Santoro and Crawford/Kendrick stories.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Author: E.L. James

Genre: Erotic Fiction

Rating: F

I don’t know how Fifty Shades of Grey became a bestseller.  I don’t even know how Fifty Shades of Grey became a published novel.  There is much that can be said about the novel, little of it that is good.  In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I very rarely read full out romance novels, almost never read erotica, and am not into BDSM.  None of that is what made me dislike this novel, however.  The reason why I disliked Fifty Shades of Grey is because it’s a bad novel.

To sum up the plot: Anastasia Steele is an innocent, virginal soon-to-be university graduate who, at the start of the novel, has to interview billionaire, CEO, and late twenty to early thirty-something Christian Grey.  Grey is a domineering, controlling douche who essentially takes to stalking Ana, despite the fact that he repeatedly tells her that he’s bad news and a danger to her.  Despite all the signs that pursuing a relationship with Grey might be a bad thing, Ana lets Mr. Grey sweep her off her feet, all while protesting against his actions.  It turns out that Grey is a dominant looking for a new submissive and despite the fact that Ana resists him on everything, he thinks she’d be the perfect one.  For reasons that I can’t really figure out, Ana decides that, despite the fact that she has no desire to be controlled and is afraid of what Christian might do to her, he is the man for her.  Because, of course, stalker tendencies, anger issues, and an inability to take no for an answer, are no match for beauty.  I kid you not – Christian’s only redeeming quality is his physical attraction (his money is redeeming as well, but as Ana gets upset every time Christian tries to buy her anything, I’m fairly certain that’s not why she’s attracted to him).

This novel started out as Twilight fan fiction and really should have stayed there.  I have to give James points for attempting to write in first person, present tense, only because doing so successfully is extremely difficult.  However, she doesn’t successfully do so.  Her attempt at creating a plot is ludicrous.  Ana provides her readers the most mundane details about absolutely everything, even treating the reader to scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  Entire characters are created with no purpose to the story – Ana is given not one, but two secondary love interests, just to establish that she is attractive to the male population.  One of them serves a point in pushing forward the plot, the other just makes you question how our protagonist made it to almost twenty-two without ever having so much as a kiss. 

Sadly, the flaws with the characters do not stop at pointless secondary characters.  James seems to think that by adding melodrama elements to her characters she makes them deeper, but this isn’t true.  There is no real depth to Ana or Christian, and the details that she adds just makes them more and more ridiculous.  Ana is written as if James has no clue what a twenty-something university student is like – which is entirely possible, given as it has been a while since she was a twenty-something anything.

I have a hard time buying that there are attractive twenty-two year old students who have never had sex or gotten drunk (without having some specific reason for having never done either), and don’t own their own computer.  I’m also a bit confused as to just how Ana has never gotten drunk prior to her graduation, given just how often she drinks alcohol and her obvious lightweight status.  I’m also not buying her overall innocence; sure she’s a virgin and never been kissed, but in the age of the internet (which as a twenty-something, she grew up in), the average person is at least aware of many of the sexual practices that come up in the novel.  They’re definitely aware of the concept of blow jobs, although Ana is blown away by the suggestion that Christian might enjoy one.  Every time she is shocked by something that he suggests I can’t help but feel the same way I do whenever Taylor Swift is surprised that she won another award.

Then of course, there’s Christian Grey.  While James has cast Ana in the role of the unbelievable innocent, she’s cast Grey in the role of the horribly damned – he’s the serpent to Ana’s Eve.  In addition to being a billionaire and the C.E.O. of his own company, Grey was adopted at the age of four by a ‘perfect’ family (his words, not mine), to which he never really fit in.  Grey’s birth mother was a crack whore who was unable to support her son and possibly burned him with cigarettes, consequently Grey has issues with people wasting food and doesn’t like to be touched.  As a teenager he entered into a sexual relationship with one of his mother’s friends; she was the dominant, he was the submissive.  Since then he’s become the dominant, having had fifteen significant partners and countless others.  Grey spends much of the book trying to convince Ana to trust him and saying that the submissive has all the power in the relationship because the submissive has the ability to say no – completely disregarding the fact that almost every time Ana says no he either completely disregards her wishes or gets angry with her and threatens physical harm – at one point he even threatens to tie her up in a crate and put her in the cargo hold of a plane.  It’s impossible to tell when Christian’s joking and when he’s serious because both his jokes and his behaviour cross the line.  He outright stalks Ana at points in the novel, having gone so far as to put a tracking device on her phone so that he can always know where she is.  But did I mention that he’s hot?  Because in the world of E.L. James, that’s really all that seems to matter.

When it comes down to it, this book is trash.  To call it “Mommy Porn” is to insult the intelligence of mother’s everywhere.  James should have stuck to writing fan fiction.

The Avengers (2012)

Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Joss Whedon

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comic

Rating: A

The Avengers was awesome.  So far, it’s definitely the best movie that I’ve seen of 2012, and I’ve seen more than a few.  The action was stellar, the special effects great, the comedy subtly genius.  The basic idea of this film was nicely set up in the previous Marvel movies (the Iron Mans, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulks), with the introduction of both many of the characters and the elements that were at play.  My one problem with this movie was that there were still a lot of names that I didn’t really pick up on, because they weren’t really said often enough.  Without doing an internet search I would be unable to tell you the superhero alter ego of Renner’s character.

The premise of the movie is a bit complicated.  Asgardian Loki (Hiddleston) has made a deal with an alien race; in exchange for retrieving the Tesseract he will receive an army that he can use to conquer Earth.  Using his scepter Loki manages to enslave Dr. Erik Slevig (Skarsgård), Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Renner), and several other S.H.E.I.L.D. agents, while also stealing the Tesseract and blowing up S.H.E.I.L.D.’s remote research facility.  S.H.E.I.L.D. director Nick Fury (Jackson) reactivates the “Avengers Initiative” and calls in Tony Stark/Iron Man (Downey), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Evans), Dr. Bruce Banner/Hulk (Ruffalo), and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson).  In the pursuit of Loki they are also joined by Thor (Hemsworth), Loki’s brother and the god of thunder.  The group don’t exactly work well together and are as likely to fight each other as Loki and with the exception of Romanoff none entirely trusts Fury, suspecting him of withholding the entire story.  It is up to the group of them to come together for the greater good, stop Loki, and save the planet.

The best part of a movie like this is the action, and The Avengers doesn’t fail to meet expectations.  It’s an action packed movie, and despite the league of some of the characters none of the fights are one sided.  There’s no moment when the bad guys line up and wait to be slaughtered one-by-one by the good guys, nor does the fact that Thor and Loki are gods make the outcome of a fight rather obvious.  Even the very human Phil Coulson (Gregg) gets a few good shots in.  The space bits were a bit over the top and I have to admit that the alien invasion kind of reminded me of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. 

The second best part of this movie was the cast.  Downey, as always, is stellar as Tony Stark.  I don’t think he was as funny as he was in the Iron Man films, and I would have enjoyed a little more between him and Pepper Potts, although his interactions with Jarvis did make up for it a bit.  Seeing him squaring off with Captain America, Loki, and Thor really gave us an idea of just how powerful Iron Man is, and for the first time he seemed to really be up against an opponent who is his match.  I liked Captain America more in this film than I did in Captain America, although I do hope that by the next movie he’s gotten an upgrade on his uniform.  I think I liked Thor more in Thor, although part of that is because he’s quieter and more stoic than the other Avengers and thus fades a bit when in a larger group.  Hiddleston makes an amazing villain; I spent part of the movie hoping for his sake that he doesn’t look as creepy in real life as he does when he’s playing Loki.  His timing was amazing, I just wish that he hadn’t been wearing that horrible horned helmet for so much of the film.  I enjoyed both Johansson and Renner’s characters, and I liked that the Black Widow was utilized more – I’d like to see standalone films for them in the future.  I’d also love to see a standalone film for Nick Fury.  Smulders character left me wanting more – it was nicely acted, I just found myself questioning who she was every time she appeared on screen (did they even mention her by name?).  I didn’t really care for Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, although he’s not my least favourite Bruce Banner.  When Stark asks Banner if he smokes pot I was waiting for him to say yes.  Ruffalo, however, had the distinction of playing two very different characters, and while his Banner was lacking his Hulk was amazing – easily the best part of this movie.  It says a lot about an actor when he manages to make the Hulk funny.

The Lucky One (2012)

Stars: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner
Director: Scott Hicks

Genre: Drama, Romance

Rating: C+

There once was a time when hearing Nicholas Sparks’ name attached to a movie meant that you were going to fall in love with the characters and end up bawling your eyes when the ending failed to be happy.  It’s all a part of the formula of a Nicholas Sparks movie; two messed up people meet and fall in love, overcome the obstacles to their relationship, and just as you think they might get a happy ever after one of them dies. And as depressing as that sounds, it’s what I’ve always liked about his movies, the cry at the end.  Sadly, The Lucky One, while being a Nicholas Sparks movie, falls short of this goal.

Logan Thibault (Efron) is a U.S. Marine who, after surviving a somewhat disastrous night raid, finds a picture of a beautiful young woman (Schilling) in the sand. This photo becomes a talisman that Logan believes has kept him safe so when he returns to the US and is unable to adjust to life outside of the armed forces he decides to walk to Louisiana, across the continental US, to find the girl in the photo.  The girl, Beth Clayton, is in many ways as damaged as he is, although in a very different way.  She is struggling with her brother’s unexplained death in Iraq while raising her son and dealing with her rather abrasive and potentially abusive ex-husband.  Beth is initially suspicious of Logan, who cannot bring himself to tell her just why he’s sought her out, and is rather annoyed when her grandmother (Danner) gives him a job.  Despite her initial hostility, the two grow close and begin to form a relationship, although the secret of why Logan came to Louisiana hangs over them, as does the imposition of Beth’s ex.

I actually enjoyed the acting in this film, despite its rather hokey premise.  The problem with The Lucky One is that it’s really rather melodramatic, with too many different elements to the plot going on.  Efron is a war veteran whose survivor’s guilt appears to disappear quicker than it appears.  That in itself is believable; what is harder to contend with is the many layers of drama that is Beth Clayton.  She’s a struggling single mother, trying to raise her somewhat awkward son in the way that she sees fit, with the threat of losing him to her powerful ex, the cop and the son of town judge and mayor hopeful.  She lives with her sick grandmother, was orphaned at a young age, and is struggling with the loss of her brother, who she was very close with.  Also, she can be a bit of a bitch.  It’s all just a bit too much to deal with, and could use a bit of simplification.  Or, perhaps, a lot of simplification.  I can deal with the idea of a guy finding a picture in Iraq and feeling that it keeps him alive so he goes in search for her.  I’m fine with her being a bit of a wreck because she’s still not come to terms with the loss of her loved one.  The rest was just a bit unnecessary, and the more it piled on the more I started to question the plausibility of it.  I enjoy the two messed up people meet and, defying the odds, fall in love formula that is Nicholas Sparks.  But in The Lucky One it just falls short of achieving the greatness that some of his earlier films had.

Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012)

Stars: Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White, Rob Riggle

Director: Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family

Rating: C+

I was a bit disappointed by The Lorax.  The trailer for it made it appear to be a fun movie, a bit of comedy, a bit of romance, a bit of suspense, and the occasional musical number.  While technically it did follow through with this, it did so in a manner that left me wanting.  The story overall was good in theory, but somewhat poorly executed.  In many ways the walled city of Thneed-Ville appears to be a utopian society; everyone’s pretty happy and gainfully employed, and everything is very, very clean – largely due to the complete removal of nature.  Rather than have real trees, dirt, and everything that comes with that the world is covered in cement, Astroturf, and blow up trees, and oxygen comes in bottles.  Everyone is completely satisfied with this state of affairs – everyone, that is except Audrey (Swift), who dreams to see a real tree.  Enter protagonist and love interest Ted Wiggins (Efron), who sets out to find a tree for her, taking him beyond the walls of Thneed-Ville to the home of the Once-ler, who tells him the tale of the Lorax and the trees.  This brings him attention to corporate giant Aloysius O’Hare (Riggle), who has made his fortune from selling air and consequently does not want anyone to bring back the trees.

If you think that this sounds like an environmentalist, anti-corporation film you’d be right, and in that manner it does justice to the book that it’s based on.  I have no problem with the message in general, and in general it’s handled well although a bit heavy handed at times.  Some of it made me roll my eyes, particularly in regards to the use of bottled air, especially as there’s a lack of continuity there – the Thneed-Villians have to buy air for their home, but have no problem breathing outside, it’s just when they leave the city that this becomes an issue.  There is a difference between the ending of the book and the film; in the book, it’s rather ominous and fore boarding.  There is a sense of hope, but just a sense.  In the film, however, things are a lot happier in the end and there is a resolution.  Given the nature of the issue, however, I was a bit disappointed that there was a resolution; it’s an ongoing issue, and I disliked the way that it was resolved with a nice little song and dance.  The point of the book is that there is more to the issue of saving the environment than just the trees, but the trees provide a start.  The film implies more that if you save the trees then you save the world, and everything is hunky dory afterwards.

Other problems… I wasn’t amazed by the voice acting.  It really seemed a bit half assed, which was disappointing given some of the actors.  I don’t really expect much from Taylor Swift or Zac Efron when it comes to acting, but I do have expectations with other cast members, especially Betty White.  Danny DeVito was great, but I think his role was somewhat sidelined, which is odd given as he played the title character.  I was especially disappointed by the Once-ler.  In the book he’s a rather foreboding character, hidden except for his green arms.  It’s easy to believe that he’s this formerly malevolent character, who has seen the err of his ways and holds the last hope for humanity.  In the film, he’s really just a pathetic character who failed to listen to the Lorax, who didn’t have any real power to begin with, then faded into legend as the world was left to deal with the consequences of his actions.  It was a disappointment, as was the film overall.

21 Jump Street (2012)

Stars: Jonah Hill, ChanningTatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Rob Riggle

Director: Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Genre: Action, Comedy

Rating: B

21 Jump Street is an action comedy about two cops, Morton Schmidt (Hill) and Greg Jenko (Tatum), who are assigned to specialty division, 21 Jump Street, after blundering their first arrest, because the only thing they know about policing is based on what they’ve seen in the movies.  On the surface, it appears to be little more than yet another 21^st century movie remake of an 80s TV show.

Except it isn’t just another remake – it isn’t a remake at all.  Instead it’s a sequel of sorts, more a continuation of the story set out in the TV show than an attempt to recreate it. It pokes fun of the fact that it is a remake, with Ice Cube’s character even saying “The people behind this lack creativity and they've run out of ideas, so what they do now is just recycle shit from the past and hope that nobody will notice.”  One of my favourite elements of this movie is the references that it makes to the TV show, from having some of the original cast appear in cameos to making Tatum’s character the son of Captain Richard Jenko, from the first season of the show.  A lot of it is done very subtly, but it gives the viewer a sense that the film is not trying to replace the original series.

There is more to the movie than just the fact that it doesn’t attempt to usurp the series.  The acting is good – which is a bit of a surprise given as Tatum isn’t exactly known for his acting skills.  I enjoyed watching Tatum play the somewhat dimwitted cop who spends much of the movie in over his head as he tries to negotiate his way through high school among the nerds.  Watching him in an AP Chemistry class was, in my opinion, comic gold.  Normally I’m not a big fan of Hill, bit in this his painful awkwardness seemed to work, at least for the most part.  There were moments when the jokes appeared to go on a bit too long, especially when it came to Schmidt being socially awkward.  I also liked how it is an action movie, but it makes fun of action movies.  In many ways it’s an action movie equivalent of Scream.  Both the movie itself and the characters specifically acknowledge the things that you expect from an action movie.  Overall, this was a pretty good movie, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.