Les Misérables (2012)

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen

Director: Tom Hooper

Genre: Musical, Drama, Romance

Rating: A-

Les Misérables follows the life of Jean Valjean (Jackman), a French convict who in 1815 has been released from prison on a parole - he has served a nineteen-year sentence for stealing a loaf of bread and is deemed a violent man.  Initially, Valjean does reoffend, but after an encounter with the Bishop of Digne (Colm Wilkinson) he takes it upon himself to start again and, breaking his parole he abandons his identity as Jean Valjean and starts new.  Prison guard, Javert (Crowe) finds out about Valjean's broken parole and vows to hunt the man down.  Eight years later, Valjean is a factory owner and the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer.  Working for him is the lovely Fantine (Hathaway), who is discovered to be sending money to her illegitimate daughter Cosette (initially Isabelle Allen, but later Seyfried), who lives with the Thénardiers (Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter).  Despite being hunted by Javert, Valjean takes it on himself to help Fatine and her daughter.

There are a few problems with Les Mis.  One is that it both moves too quickly and too slowly - it's a long movie and at times feels it, but things still move forward really fast.  There was nothing that I felt could have been taken out, everything had a point, while there were things that I could have seen being added, although still, long movie.  The second problem is that the singing isn't necessarily the best.  The film is essentially sung-through with almost no straight dialogue, but the actors are not exactly known for their singing.  Adding to this is the fact that the singing is done live, instead of in a studio, which leads to mixed results.  In the case of some of the actors - Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc - this has a neutral result, neither adding nor taking away from the actual play.  In the case of Russell Crowe, it kind of takes away from things as his voice isn't really suited for this kind of performance.  I know that Russell Crowe is a singer as well as an actor, but I don't think he's a stage performer and that's what's kind of required in this role.  It's sad because he totally fit the role of Javert, but his voice didn't.  I had similar issue with Hugh Jackman - no problem with his actual singing voice and thought that his physical acting was superb, but I don't think his singing really sold the emotion that he was trying to convey.

This critique, however, is in strong contrast to the absolutely amazing performances of Anne Hathaway and Samantha Barks.  Barks plays Éponine and she just absolutely amazed me in her performance - although she does have an advantage to some of the other actors in that while she is somewhat unknown in film, she's a stage actress and has played Éponine before.  Her performance of "On My Own" absolutely amazed me.  Anne Hathaway doesn't have such a background (although her mother did play the same role in the first U.S. Tour of Les Mis), and yet blew me away with her performance.  I wasn't too sure about it at first, but the more time she spent on screen the more I loved her, and the weakness and raw emotion that she displayed wowed me.  While I loved Barks' "On My Own" Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream" brought tears to my eyes.  It was superb.

The other thing that I really loved about this film was the sheer transformation of some of the actors.  In the opening shot, I didn't recognize Hugh Jackman at all.  While he does clean up, the man that he in those first scenes haunts the man that he is later on.  Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen were constantly changing to adapt to their surroundings, but in a comedic way (that was really needed in this film) that ensured you always knew who they were.  They brought their own personalities to the roles in a way that just perfectly fit.  Once again, however, top props has to go to Anne Hathaway, who just seemed to completely transform here.  She starts the film as this beautiful, rather out-of-place woman, and descends into this mess of a woman with this horrible hair (it looks better on Hathaway in real life, but in the film it's bad), blotchy face, and bloody teeth.  It's probably Hathaway's biggest transformation to date and just.. yeah.  I honestly believe that she deserves to win every award she is nominated for because of this role.

Dark Lover

Author: J.R. Ward

Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Erotic Fiction

Rating: B

 Wrath is the King of the Vampires, known as the Blind King, but hasn't really embraced his title.  Then, one day his long time friend and brother in arms Darius asks Wrath to help his daughter, Beth, through her transition to vampire, shortly before being killed by a lesser - the vampires enemies.  Wrath then takes it upon him to help Beth, before slowly coming to realize that it is not enough to fight the lessers with his brothers, he must also lead his people.

There are a few things that should be noted here.  One is that while Dark Lover is not the best book in J.R. Ward's The Black Dagger Brotherhood series it is the one that opens us up to the world within which the series is set - and what an interesting world that is.  The second is that Ward's vampires here are really very different from other vampires, eliminating a lot of the things that really make them a threat to humans - and really removing them from the world of humans.  The third is that these books are to a degree formulaic and once you figure out the formula the ultimate ending to things becomes clear - not that you're not goign to be apprehensive and crying at some point before hand.

This book is fun.  The vampires are awesome, and really love how Ward goes back and forth between a number of different perspectives - telling the story of both the book's core relationship and things that are going on in the periphery.  I really liked the humans in this book too, although I was a bit disappointed to see that with the exception of Beth and Butch they disappear in the later books.  My favourite part, though, is that the vampires are just so different from any other vampires I've ever seen before. I love when I'm reading a fantasy book that seems to be inspired by other fantasy books but are also different and strike out on their own.  The problem that I have with some books is that their authors so clearly don't enjoy reading the genre in which they write, which is something that I never felt in Dark Lover.  It's a good, engrossing, quick read.  Perhaps a bit smutty or trashy, but still fun.

Love Actually (2003)

Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson, Lúcia Moniz, Thomas Sangster, Gregor Fisher, Andrew Lincoln, Kris Marshall, Heike Makatsch, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page

Director: Richard Curtis

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: A

"Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love"

Love is all around.  That is, very literally, the message of the 2003 film Love Actually.  The thing is, however, that this film isn't just about romantic love, although that does feature rather heavily, as it looks at the love between lovers, friends, and family.  There's even the loss of love and unrequited love and the whole shebang.  Love is all around.

The film follows a collection of people, all intricately connected to one another.  David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, and develops an attraction for a new junior member of his staff, Natalie (McCutcheon).  David's sister, Karen (Thompson), is having problems in her marriage - although she's not entirely aware of it yet - as her husband, Harry (Rickman) is enticed by his flirtatious new secretary Mia (Makatsch).  Also working for Harry is Sarah (Linney) and Karl (Rodrigo Santoro).  Sarah is in love with Karl and has been since she started working at the company, although neither she nor Karl have made any moves yet.  Karen's friend Daniel (Neeson) is newly widowed and unsure of how to help his stepson Sam (Sangster), who has fallen in love with classmate Joanna (Olivia Olson).  Sarah's friend Jamie (Firth) has discovered that his girlfriend is sleeping with his brother and in order to deal he retires to his French cottage, where he meets Aurélia (Moniz), who only speaks Portuguese.  Jamie and Sarah both attended the wedding of Juliet (Knightley) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  Juliet has long thought that Peter's best friend Mark (Lincoln) hated her, when in actuality he's been in love with her this whole time.  Also at the wedding is Colin (Marshall), a British man who has decided to go to America where his accent will instantly make him a hit with the ladies.  His friend Tony (Abdul Salis) doesn't believe this is the best idea.  Tony is the production assistant of a film where John (Freeman) and Judy (Page) are body doubles for a sex scene.  Overseeing it all is rock and roll legend Billy Mack (Nighy)'s attempt to have a #1 Christmas hit, a variation of The Troggs' "Love is all Around".  Billy Mack's one friend is his longtime manager Joe (Fisher).  Oh, also, there's minor character Rufus (Atkinson) who provides a couple antics and was initially supposed to be a Christmas angel before being dropped as such - I still like to think of him as one.

This is the kind of film that movies like New Years Eve, Valentine's Day, and What to Expect When You're Expecting all try to be.  Centred around one common theme it tells the story of a bunch of different people who are all connected but at the same time unrelated.  There's the perfect amount of characters here, with the story focusing heavily on some and not so heavily on others.  There are no real twists, you can see the endings that end up happening coming for miles, but it's not really a movie that needs twists.  Each of the storylines is absolutely awesome and each of the characters is great.  Even John and Judy, who get the briefest of scenes, have the feel of being these thoroughly developed characters.  You know that they exist outside of the sex acts that they're miming.

The other thing that I really like about the film is that while you can see the endings coming, some of them aren't necessarily the ones that you want to see happen.  I always feel a but guilty as I watch the Mark/Juliet/Peter triangle, because no matter how much I know Juliet and Peter are in love and even though I think Peter's a great guy, I want Juliet to leave him and hook up with Mark.  At the same time, I want Harry to smarten up and be with his wife.  I don't care so much about some plots - like the Colin one, which I think was just for laughs, or the Sam one, which I think is a bit cliched - but Love Actually is more than just the sum of its parts.  It's just sheer awesomeness.

In addition to being a story about love, this is also a comedy, to which it does so rather nicely.  The amount of comedy is different in each plot, and to an extent so is the style, but somehow it works here.  Even with their differences, they all seem to work well together, they mesh like a really good collage - like a puzzle depicting a picture of Mickey made out of a bunch of smaller images of scenes from Disney movies.  The one-liners keep on coming in this one, as do the little scenes that are just hilarious.  If you haven't seen this movie yet, I recommend you at least look up the image of Hugh Grant dancing to "Jump (For My Love" by The pointer Sisters.

Drums of Autumn

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Genre: Historical, Romance, Sci-Fi

Rating: A-

The fourth instalment in the Outlander series, Drums of Autumn takes our heroes Claire and Jamie Fraser to the American colonies just before the American Revolution.  While Claire knows what is going to happen she's not certain an all the details and knows that she and her family must walk a thin line so as to survive the Revolution with their lives intact.  Newcomers to the land, the Frasers must establish themselves and Jamie dreams of gathering up the men that he was in prison with.  Meanwhile, in the mid-20th century their daughter Brianna is coming to terms with now essentially being an orphan, having lost her mother and the father that she has only just learned of.  In order to come to terms with this, Brianna and the historian Roger Wakefield seek out information about Claire and Jamie, with the hope of discovering what happens to them.

The question that I always have here is just why Claire and Jamie decide to settle in America, at least knowing what they know.  Regardless of their allegiance to the British crown (which does exist for Claire if not her husband), being somewhere largely unaffected by the war just seems kind of safer and in the long run smarter.  Once they commit to making life work in America I get why they chose to stay, but I always wonder why they decided to make that commitment in the first place.  I don't even buy that Jamie wouldn't have had friends or family in Canada to help him establish himself - Jamie seems to have friends or family just about everywhere he goes.

That being said, I did like the general story of Drums.  Things get a lot more complicated in this part of the series than they ever seemed to be in the first two (or three) books, but it's an enjoyable complicated.  I am never too sure about Brianna and Roger as characters, and even less so as time travellers.  Claire seems to have fit in both the 18th and the 20th century, while Brianna and Roger seem to only fit in the 20th, despite their travelling to the 18th (and Jamie, who is stationary in time, doesn't seem as though he would fit in the 20th, although if given the opportunity and need I have no doubt that he would make it work if it meant being with Claire).  I do like the overarching villain of Stephen Bonnett, though, and find the threat that he adds to things to be really interesting.  I grew to kind of hate Geillis in the earlier books, and not in a good way, so I was glad to see that they were really done with her and had moved on to a new threat - or to at least be given that feeling.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Mackenzie Foy, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Billy Burke

Director: Bill Condon

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: C+

I take back my earlier proclamation of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse being my favourite movie in this series.  Having now seen them all, I can say without a doubt that The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is my favourite. It's the most dramatic, the best acted, and really the most solid film in the series.  There's still a lot that's a bit ridiculous, but it's solid.  You can also kind of tell that they've really put a lot of money into this one,  especially in regards to the special effects.  The cast really don't look like they're covered in pancake makeup anymore, the wigs look better, and so on.  I do question some of the outfits - and how turning into a vampire gave Kristen Stewart fake eyelashes - but it's a lot better than the earlier films.

Breaking Dawn opens with Bella (Stewart) having changed into a vampire and going on her first hunt with husband Edward (Pattinson).  Bella must adapt to being a vampire and the pair must adapt to being parents (while also still being newlyweds), to their human-vampire hybrid daughter, Renesmee, nicknamed Nessie (played first by a creepy CGI baby, then by Mackenzie Foy).  Early problems that arise are werewolf Jacob (Lautner) having imprinted on Nessie, Bella's feeding, all the sex that they can now have, Nessie's rapid aging and the potential consequences of it, and what to tell Bella's father, Charlie (Burke).  Then fellow vampire Irina (Maggie Grace) sees Renesmee and, assuming that she is an immortal child, tells the Volturi that the Cullens have broken the vampire law.  Alice (Greene) sees a vision of the Volturi coming to punish the Cullens, setting them on the path to trying to stop them.  The family head travel throughout the world in an attempt to gather up enough witnesses to prevent the Volturi from simply massacring them all.  Then Alice and her lover Jasper (Rathbone) disappear, leading the Cullens to believe that it means that they are doomed to die.  The question is, whether or not they can survive the meeting with the Volturi.

So, yeah.  A lot of the earlier cheese of the films is gone.  The general problems have been resolved, and things that are silly have either been largely dropped or so accepted so as to no longer really be an issue.  One of the things that I liked most about this film was that Edward really chilled out here.  There's no conflict between him and Bella, there's no whining about her being a human (because she isn't), or about him needing to protect her (because he doesn't), or what how.  For the first time the two are treated as equals.  There's also absolutely no conflict between Edward and Jacob; the two are completely on the same side, which is great. It makes the plot so much less annoying.

The cheese that does remain is funny.  Bella as a vampire? Funny.  Bella learning that Jacob imprinted on Renesme and nicknamed her Nessie? Hilarious. There's more to it than just that, and it's all great.  This movie is probably the funniest of the series, and intentionally so.  The many other vampires that they introduce here are far better than the ones that we've gotten used to over the course of the series.  There are so many, it's hard to pick a favourite - I think the Russians, Vladimir (Noel Fisher) and Stefan (Guri Weinberg), although Lee Pace's Garret is also great.

Another thing that I really liked is the opening and closing credits.   I thought the opening credits were really well done in general, and nicely fit the theme for the series.  In particular, I enjoyed how the cast names changed from red - representing the human - to white - representing the vampire.  I thought it was a cool touch.  For the closing credits I actually really enjoyed how they credited people from all five movies - Bella's human family and friends, the Cullens and their vampire friends and family, the Volturi, the Pack and other Quileute people.  I thought it was a nice touch, a "these are the people that helped us get to this point."

The rest of this contains spoilers.  My absolute favourite part of the movie, and my least favourite part, is the actual face off with the Volturi.  Michael Sheen is probably one of the best actors that has appeared in this series, which says a lot because really there are some good actors here.  The ending in the books is kind of lame.  There's a point in the conflict when Alice returns and shows Aro a vision, then Aro and the Volturi back down and the conflict is resolved.  There's no fighting, no deaths, no nothing.  In the movie, however, we see Alice's vision, without realizing that it's a vision.  As a result, there's this epic battle full of great fight sequences and a lot of deaths.  There's a lot more emotion in this one scene than in the rest of the series.  The thing that got me about the Twilight books is that it never made me cry.  There was no sacrifice in the books.  This apparent ending, however, is so drastically different from the books that as people start dying I realized just how emotionally invested I had become and how attached I was to the characters.  There was also a moment when it happened that I couldn't help but think that the ending of the movie was going to be a giant fuck you to author Stephenie Meyer, who has said (about The Host) that she's not sure how she feels about killing off characters.  There's a lot about these movies, especially in the promotions for it, that make it rather apparent that the cast don't really like the books or movies themselves and for a moment I really felt like this was the cast and crew's way of really vocalizing that thought. It ended up not being that, but for a moment as we see Alice's vision and don't realize that's what it is I was thinking that this ending was so much better than the one Stephenie Meyer wrote. It didn't end up being the ending, but it was fun while it lasted.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Billy Burke 

Director: Bill Condon

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: C+

These movies somehow seem to just get more and more ridiculous with each passing film.  The thing that I really like about The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is that it does away with the ridiculous melodrama of the love triangle and introduces new ridiculous melodrama.  The new melodrama is still really rather lame, but it's such a relief to be done with the love triangle bullshit.

Breaking Dawn opens with the prelude to the wedding of the human Bella Swan (Stewart) and her vampire lover Edward Cullen (Pattinson).  Werewolf, best friend, and former would-be-lover Jacob Black (Lautner) is very upset about this and laments the impending loss of Bella's humanity - and is outright pissed off when he realizes that Bella and Edward intend to go on their honeymoon before Bella is turned.  This honeymoon plan turns to be rather screwy for them all, as during it Bella gets pregnant with Edward's baby.  The rest of this movie then deals with the vampires and werewolves each dealing with the consequences of this impending birth.

Soo, yeah.  Ridiculous melodrama.  But somehow it's funny ridiculous melodrama.  Once again, the cast seems to know that the basic concept of this movie is silly and they just go with it.  Once again, I'm going to say that they're all better actors than people give them credit for for not laughing half the time in this movie.  Especially the scene where Bella discovers she's pregnant.  The fact that they were able to play that straight makes them far better actors than we like to give them credit for.

The real strong part of this movie is the fact that it moves on from the love triangle while maintaining that continuity.  Jacob is still in love with Bella and he still makes it clear that he loves her and he will always protect her, but he is no longer trying to win her.  He knows he's lost and he's accepting that, or at least trying to.  There's no more Bella being annoyed with him for hitting on her, or struggling to make a decision between him and Edward.  There's also the fact that Edward seems to have truly accepted Jacob as a part of Bella's, and by extension his, life.  I kind of felt like this whole plot lasted at least a movie longer than it needed to, so I was happy to be done with it.

The weak point in this movie is how they tried to draw suspense out of things that I don't think were really all that suspenseful.  There is suspense in this movie - especially pertaining to the likelihood of Bella's survival and what this child is going to be like - but what they try to make suspenseful isn't.  Like whether or not drinking blood is going to be helpful to Bella.  Not suspenseful, don't cue the drawn out sequences and music.  You know what was suspenseful?  The way the movie ends - at least until you see the trailer for the next film.  That kind of killed that.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard, Billy Burke, Dakota Fanning, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene

Director: David Slade

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: C

As weird as it is to say this, I think this is actually my favourite of the Twilight movies.  The plot is still meh, and the acting is still meh, and the special effects and the makeup are still meh,  but the humour has transitioned from being unintentional to... well, I'm not sure how intentional it is and how unintentional it is.  The point is, there is humour in this one.  And action.  And no lame suicide plots.

People are being killed in Seattle, but our friendly neighbourhood vampires are only concerned about how it might affect them.  Likewise with our friendly neighbourhood werewolves.  Alice (Greene) is monitoring the decisions being made by the villainous Victoria (Howard),  as we all know it's only a matter of time before she makes yet another attempt on Bella (Stewart).  Meanwhile, Bella and Edward (Pattinson) are discussing marriage - although both Bella's best friend and would-be-lover Jacob (Lautner) and her father Charlie (Burke) are dead set against the relationship between the two, although for different reasons.  Oh, and once shit does start to go down the friendly neighbourhood vampires and friendly neighbourhood werewolves try to work together.

So, yeah.  The thing that works about this movie is the humour.  My favourite scene in this entire movie - possibly the entire series - is when Bella and Charlie have what is the most awkward sex talk ever.  That alone made this movie worth watching.  There are other moments like this one that really make me think that the actors are far better than we give them credit for just because they're able to keep a straight face throughout it all.  That's not to say that the acting itself is in any way all that good, but that it's not as bad as we claim it is.  I also do like how the plot moves forward here.  The first two movies were really all about setting things up and introducing us to characters and concepts - vampires, werewolves, the Volturi, etc.  This time round things actually go forward and stuff happens.  There's even a whole epic battle!  It's not all bad!

Not all bad, but still not all that good.  The plot still has gigantic holes, ones that I think if I really tried to wrap my head around and explain I would just end up either confused or pissed off - or both.  I still want to spend most of my time yelling at the characters, or at least the main ones.  The thing about Twilight in general is that the more sympathetic and loveable characters are the ones that don't get as much of a focus.  I love Bella's friends from high school, and Charlie, and even the vampires and werewolves who are not Edward or Jacob.  We get to see a bit more of these characters here, although I know it's not a trend that's going to continue.  The triangle is resolved here, and the next two movies are going to be all about the lovefest and its consequences.  Yay?

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, John Ortiz, Anupam Kher, Julia Stiles, Chris Tucker

Director: David O. Russell

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: A

Going into this movie I wasn't too sure about a lot of it.  It looked good, but I tend to be disappointed by Bradley Cooper movies, particularly this year.  I love Jennifer Lawrence, but I was really hesitant about seeing her pair off as a romantic partner for the much older Cooper - Lawrence is 22, Cooper 37.  But, it looked good, I like Lawrence, and I like David O. Russell, so I gave this film a shot.  And, by God, I'm glad I did.

Silver Linings Playbook follows Pat Solitano (Cooper), a man newly released from a mental health facility, into the care of his parents, Pat Sr. (De Niro) and Dolores (Weaver).  Following discovering that his wife Nikki (Brea Bree) was having an affair, Pat had a violent episode, leading to his incarceration and eventual diagnosis with bi-polar disorder. Now released, Pat is determined to prove to Nikki that he has changed and bettered himself, and eventually get back together with her - he's only hindered by the fact that there's a restraining order against him, preventing him from coming into contact with Nikki.  Even Pat's good friend, Ronnie (Oritz) and his wife Veronica (Stiles) refuses to contact Nikki on behalf of Pat, despite maintaining a friendship with her.  Then the recently widowed Tiffany Maxwell (Lawrence), Veronica's younger sister, bonds with Pat over their share neuroses and offers to deliver a letter to Nikki for him - if he participates in a dance competition with her.  Overlaying the whole thing is Pat Sr.'s obsession with football; after losing his job, Pat Sr. became a bookie in order to earn money to open a restaurant.  Pat Sr. is rather compulsive about his game-day superstitions, one of which requires Pat Jr.'s presence during games - something that Pat Jr. is not particularly eager in participating in.

I absolutely loved this story.  It's awkward and uncomfortable at moments, but in a way that completely makes sense in the film.  There are a lot of moments when I wanted to yell at Bradley Cooper's character for his actions - but his actions made sense given the nature of his character.  I felt similarly about Robert De Niro's character.  You spend so much of this movie wanting them to just calm down and be nice to each other, but that wouldn't work.  While Cooper's Pat is diagnosed with bi-polar it isn't hard to see that De Niro's Pat probably has it too.  The one problem that I had here was the fact that I really couldn't follow a lot of the football stuff and it wasn't until the first half of the movie or so was over that it began to make sense and really have a point, at least in my mind.

I both loved and hated Jennifer Lawrence's casting.  I think Lawrence played her character absolutely perfectly, and there was definite chemistry between her and Cooper, despite the age difference.  I went into this movie hoping that they didn't go the route of making her the love interest and midway through found myself really hoping that she would be the love interest just because of the chemistry between the two of them.  In a lot of ways, I found the character of Tiffany Maxwell to be a lot more intriguing than the one of Pat Solitano.  The one thing that I disliked here was that her age wasn't really established.  From my understanding of the book (which I haven't read), Tiffany is supposed to be older than Lawrence, but because the film doesn't really address this we're left thinking that this 22 year old - who looks younger - is a recovering sex addicted widow who is romantically interested in Bradley Cooper.  Relating to the overall Tiffany problems is the casting of Julia Stiles as her sister.  I like Julia Stiles overall, I just didn't really buy her as Jennifer Lawrence's sister - especially once we saw the actors playing their parents.  Casting is important, and I'm of the opinion that if you're casting two people to be siblings - especially when there's a good age gap - they should probably look a bit alike.

That having been said, though, this was a really good movie.  Really good.  Just to add into the general things that I liked about it, my favourite scene in the entire movie is early on when Pat has just finished reading Hemingway, has a "wait, that was the ending" moment, then throws the book out the window and goes on a rant about it, waking up his parents and flipping out, despite it being four in the morning.  I have wanted to react like this when reading books, and it was just so awesome to see someone actually do so.  The opening of the movie still had me a bit unsure about things, but this scene really cinched it for me.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Rachelle Lefèvre, Billy Burke, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone

Director: Chris Weitz

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: D

Remember how I didn't like Twilight?  Somehow, the followup to it, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (because evidently the viewing public is incapable of determining that something is a sequel to another movie unless there's words that are the same) succeeds in making Twilight look good.

The run down: Edward (Pattinson) and Bella (Stewart) are living happily ever after, minus the whole her whining about being human and him refusing to turn her into a vampire because, really, why would you take the advice of the guy who tried to kill you in the last movie? Bella is particularly whiney about the issue because she's turning eighteen, which is one year older than her eternal lover, except not really.  At a party for her at his family's house, however, her mortality becomes all too aparent when she gets a papercut, causing a blood frenzy, that is only made worse when Edward throws her into a wall.  So Edward decides to break up with her and leave, taking his entire family with him and putting Bella into a depression that lasts forever.  Then she reconnects with Jacob (Lautner) and begins to seek out danger and adventure - all in a way to get glimpses of the Edward inside her head.  Something's wrong with Jacob and his tribe however, and it's only a matter of time before Bella comes out of her depression long enough to figure it out.  Also featured are the Volturi, the rulers of the vampire world, each of whom has great power.  Their leader is Aro (Sheen), and he is joined by Marcus (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Caius (Jamie Campbell Bower).  Their guards include Jane (Fanning) and her brother Alec (Cameron Bright).  Oh, and Victoria (Lefèvre) is back for revenge.

I hate the premise of this movie.  I realize that instantly makes me biased, but I hate it.  I hate that Bella is all whiny about being made into a vampire - honestly, I think I prefer vampire/human romances where the human doesn't want to be a vampire, or at least thinks about the consequences of becoming one a bit more, and isn't just all "I don't want to look older than you".  I hate that no one seems to want to point out the fact that it was James (Cam Gigandet) who gave her this idea in the first place.  Since when is taking advice from the bad guy a good idea?  I actually kind of liked that Jasper (Rathbone) goes into a blood frenzy when Bella gets a papercut as it makes sense in this world - it's kind of lame overall, but I like it - although I do question Edward's protectiveness.  Seriously, throwing her into a bookshelf is not going to help the situation.  Don't want your human girlfriend to be eaten by your vampire family? Don't throw her into a bookshelf.

What I hate most of all, however, is Bella's reaction to the breakup.  She literally goes into a depression for months on end following Edward leaving her.  I get the whole post-relationship depression, but she takes it to an extreme.  Granted, she had already basically given up her life for Edward before hand, so she didn't really have one to cling on to after he was gone... Yeah. Did not like it.  I also don't like Edward's behaviour overall.  First of all, he really seems to encourage her in her complete abandonment of her friends - something that becomes more pronounced as the series continues and the issues with Jacob become more pronounced.   I'm not saying that I disagree with Edward's feelings towards Jacob, I'm saying I don't like Edward's treatment of Bella's other friends, or Bella's treatment of them either.  As for Jacob... fuck, Jacob needs to grow up.  I get that he's a kid, and the youngest of the characters too, but his feelings and what not get annoying really fast.  There is a point when your attempts to hit on your best friend turn from heavy flirting to sexual harassment.  Remember boys, if she says "no" she's not meaning "try harder."

Voyager

Author: Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Historical, Romance, Sci-Fi
Rating: B-

The third novel in Diana Gabaldon's critically acclaimed Outlander series, I have to say that I think that Voyager is probably the weakest, at least in so far as her novels go.  While there is a story here a lot of it seems to be more about a justification of her desire to reunite protagonists Jamie and Claire and move them, once again, towards the action.  While I appreciate the sentiment and I do largely agree with the desire to reunite our time traveller with her soul mate, there is still a big part of me that can't help but feel as though more so than most of Gabaldon's books, Voyager really fails to stand out on its own and really serves instead as a bridge covering the cap between two separate parts of the series.

Voyager picks up where its predecessor, Dragonfly in Amber, left off, with Claire facing the revelation that Jamie is not dead, as she had long believed, but rather very much alive - or at least, would be, 200 years in the past.  Time travel inherently makes understanding things like that more complicated.  Claire sets out on a journey to reunited with her man, while the daughter that she is leaving behind, Brianna, comes to terms with the knowledge that the man she thought was her father wasn't, and that she's now about to lose the only parent that she has left.  Meanwhile, Roger Wakefield is faced with the very pressing desire to be a big part of Brianna's life.

I already said this, but I think it bares repeating.  This book is a bridge between two connected but rather separate stories; Outlander and Dragonfly are about Scotland and the Rising, while the later novels are about America and the revolution.  This book serves to connect the two and to establish the younger generation.  While Jamie and Claire continue to play important roles in these books, in a manner of speaking they also become more and more about Brianna, Roger, Young Ian, and other characters more their age.  I understand that, and I really respect that, although I do think that in later books the series becomes a bit bogged down by both the characters and the number of different plots going on.  Gabaldon is a great writer, but sometimes it becomes a bit much and at points it begins to lose the charm of Outlander.

The other problem with Voyager is that in being a bridge book the plot is somewhat lacking.  There's a lot of set up here for a major future plot device, and likewise there's a lot of conclusion here for some of the hanging threads of previous devices.  In as much as the characters might at times bog down later books, one of the things that I love about Gabaldon in general is the plethora of really deep and unique characters.  Voyager doesn't lack in them at all, but for much of the time it almost seems like they're there not so much to introduce or partake in any plot, but to simply exist.  In a way this works, but in a way it doesn't.  The way that it really doesn't work, at least for me, is the fact that there is almost no continuity in these characters - the bulk of them were never introduced before Voyager and do not appear again afterwards.  This is really hugely disappointing, just because I like to see the ways in which these characters appear to have developed off screen.  This idea continues as well; a lot of the characters introduced in Outlander and Dragonfly no longer appear to exist in Voyager.  While it's understandable that Claire has been gone (and presumed dead) for some twenty years, there's still a part of me that wants to see her seek out some of her old companions.  She might not wonder what happened to them, but I do.

Twilight (2008)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Cam Gigandet, Rachelle Lefèvre, Edi Gathegi

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: C-

Where to begin... These are not good movies.  I'm not entirely sure how much of that is the fault of the movies themselves and how much is the fault of the source material upon which they're based, but it's many degrees of not good all around.  I will say this, though; they do kind of get better as the series goes on.  They never achieve a good state, but they get better - or at least, up until The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1.  I can't judge Part 2 as I haven't seen it yet.

For those lucky few who have somehow managed to avoid learning what Twilight is about, here's a quick recap.  Bella Swan (Stewart) moves to Forks, Washington, the wettest place in the continental United States, to live with her dad, Charlie (Burke).  There she meets Edward Cullen (Pattinson), a mind reading vampire who she falls in love with.  Edward and his family (patriarch Carlisle Cullen (Facinelli) and his wife Esme (Reaser), the psychic Alice Cullen (Greene) and her partner Jasper Hale (Rathbone), and Emmett Cullen (Lutz) and his partner Rosalie Hale (Reed)) are all what they call vegetarians, and do not heat human blood.  Most of the movie passes by with this being the only real plot point, but then the Cullens, Hales, and Bella meet nomadic, human blood drinking vampires Laurent (Gathegi), Victoria (Lefèvre), and James (Gigandet).  James is a tracker and after a confrontation with Edward becomes infatuated with the idea of killing Bella.

Once again, what to say... Okay, so there are three major problems with these movies.  One is the general script, the second the general acting and overall casting, and the third the general make-up.  The script... oh, the script.  I'm going to say this in defense of the movie overall; you can only do so much with a movie when the source material isn't that great.  For all of Twilight the movies' flaws, a lot of them are because of the flaws of the book.  This movie did a lot to stay true to the books, for which I respect.  A few things were omitted, and in such a way that while I don't think it really disabled Twilight, it does fail to set things up for The Twilight Saga: New Moon.  You see this a lot in movies and even in TV, and it really annoys me - if you're basing something on a series of books and planning on continuing the series think about how the cuts made affect later movies or seasons.  It's easy to harp on it in Twilight, but they also do it in Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games.

The second big thing here is the cast.  The acting isn't that great, and there are even points when it seems like some of the actors are breaking character, laughing at points that in-character they shouldn't be laughing at.  This isn't really a criticism of the actors themselves, because I don't think it's the flaw of the actors.  I've watched other works of most of the actors and really enjoyed them.  There are some really great actors in this movie, they're just not properly utilized here.  The other problem is the casting in general, which is rather horrible.  It's not enough to hire a good actor, you have to hire an actor that's right for a role.  There are some people who I thought were really perfectly cast - particularly in regards to the humans - but others not so much - particularly in regards to the vampires.  I think one of the biggest problems that Robert Pattinson has in this role is that his American accent definitely isn't a good one (it does get better), making you question why they hired someone to fill in the role of an American when he couldn't do the accent.  Accents are tricky and something that movies in general, not just Twilight, tend to get wrong.  Michael Collins is actually a really good movie, despite the fact that half the cast are Americans doing bad accents, and among the other half is Alan Rickman who doesn't even try to do an Irish accent. Accents are important, people.  The casting problems in Twilight, however, go beyond just accents. There's also the fact that the vampires are all supposed to be these pale creatures (the exception being Laurent, who is black), but for the most part they hired not-exactly pale actors.  The biggest example of this the case of Nikki Reed's Rosalie.  In the books, she's described as this gorgeous woman and Nikki Reed is gorgeous.  The problem is, naturally she's neither pale nor blonde - she's a brunette with a nice tanned complexion that comes from her Jewish, Cherokee, and Italian descent.  So, what do they do?  They slap what looks like pancake makeup and a horrible wig on her.  Nikki Reed isn't the only one that they got wrong here, although I do find it interesting that she's of Cherokee descent, while Taylor Lautner, who plays the Aboriginal Jacob Black, only has "distant" Native American ancestry.  Lautner's role immediately prior to Twilight was as Eugene Levy's son in Cheaper by the Dozen 2.  Don't hire a non-Aboriginal to play an Aboriginal, it's just an insult, especially as there are plenty of Aboriginal actors out there.

But, let's go back to the pancake makeup and bad wigs.  A huge part of what makes fantasy in general so great is the special effects.  The purpose is to take you out of the real world and into this fictional one, no matter how based-in-reality it is you need to have good special effects, especially when you're expecting to be a blockbuster.  The makeup here is horrible, absolutely horrible.  There are a slew of bad wigs, bad dye jobs, and bad attempts to make the not-pale actors look pale.  It's just bad all around.  I commend Twilight for attempting to stick to the source material a lot, but in regards to the makeup this really hinders the movie.  You want to have not-pale actors?  Then give up the pale aspect of the character.  Ditto with the blond.  Don't just give them a really bad dye job.  Yes, vampires are usually pale, but this is the 21st century.  We're allowed to update the myth - Stephenie Meyer does a lot to update this myth in general, and pale skin is not important to the plot.  The worst attempt at this is in the case of Edi Gathegi, who they attempt to make pale despite his being black.  It's just all kinds of bad.  But then, so is this movie.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Starring: Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan

Director: Audrey Wells

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: C+

"I'll hire the muscular descendants of Roman gods to do the heavy lifting." 

Writer Frances Mayes (Lane) has had her seemingly perfect life shattered; following the discovery that her husband is cheating on her she goes through a quick divorce and emerges depressed and unable to write.  Enter her newly pregnant lesbian best friend, Patti (Oh), and Patti's partner, Grace (Kate Walsh), who decide to sent Frances on a gay tour of Tuscany.  There her tour group stops in the small town of Cortona where, after a meeting with eccentric British actress Katherine (Duncan) Frances decides to buy a dilapidated villa.  The film then focuses on the restoration of the villa, with the help of a crew of Polish immigrants, and Frances' attempts to pull her life together and once again find love and happiness.

This is one of those movies that has a lot wrong with it, but is still fun and enjoyable.  I think it's the type of movie that critics like to be hard on because of all the cliches and simplicity behind it.  It is in its very essence a chick flick and thus to a degree that makes it bad.  At the same time, however, it's a well done chick flick and that in my mind makes it good.  There's a lot of comedy to it, and a fair bit of romance.  Lane does a lot of chick flicks and she does them pretty well.  They might not become classics or must-see-films, but they're definitely the ones that you go to when you want a good cry or that uplifting feeling that you can get from a romance.

What I really like about Under the Tuscan Sun, however, isn't the romance in itself.  It's the lack of romance that makes this movie so good.  Frances is not learning to love life again because she falls in love, she's not finding her muse and happiness in another man.  She's finding it in life around her as a whole, and really realizing that there's more to life than just love - there's more to happiness than being with someone.  There's a point early on in the film where Frances makes a wish about the things that she would like to see happen in the house, and the ways in which they come true without being what Frances had thought.  The movie is a bit of a rarity for a chick flick largely in that it isn't about the chick getting the guy.  Maybe not the best film, but I definitely enjoyed it.

A Dragonfly in Amber

Author: Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Historical, Romance, Sci-Fi
Rating: B+

The sequel to Outlander, A Dragonfly in Amber is a bit more jumpy than its predecessor – particularly in the start and finish.  Rather than being a straight continuation of the story where it left off, Dragonfly jumps to the future – thus establishing that Claire both survives the rising and returns to the future, while leaving the how, why, and (most importantly) what happens to Jamie left hanging.  I think a big part of the reason why Dragonfly isn’t as strong as Outlander is because of this immediate jump to the ‘future’; it’s a bit disjaring (which is okay, given the nature of the series), but more significantly it kind of interrupts the story.  Outlander is one concise story, about a woman out of time, with the reader experiencing things as she’s experiencing them (despite the novel being written in the past tense).  By starting Dragonfly twenty (and 203) years after the events of Outlander Gabaldon is establishing Claire as this older, wiser woman now telling a story to her daughter – and, frankly, some of the story that she tells the readers is stuff that I would hope she isn’t also telling Brianna.  The story that Claire tells Brianna and Roger is one that picks up very roughly where Outlander ends and brings our English woman and Scotsman into France on the eve of the 1745 Rising. Knowing what they know about the future, Claire and Jamie are faced with a problem: can they use what they know to change the future and if so, should they be trying to prevent the Rising or work to make it successful?

I really like the way this book ends, even if I wasn’t a big fan of the way in which it was started.  Honestly, I love the idea of a narrator telling us a story from a much older perspective, as they look back on their life.  It’s actually a big part of why I enjoy Bernard Cornwell's The Warlord Chronicles and The Saxon Stories.  As I said, the problem that I had with the way Dragonfly did this was that it interrupted the overall narration of the story.  I think I would have rather seen the jump forward twenty years to a Claire telling the story to Brianna and Roger at the end; have her in the present with her daughter be the big reveal at the end instead of the shock at the start.  But that’s all coulda, woulda, shoulda, and while I’m not a big fan of how Gabaldon did this overall I do have to admit it works.

That being said, what I don’t think worked as well was the period of the novel where our heroes are in France.  While I loved the characters that are introduced here – especially Master Raymond – and would love to see some of them remerge in later books, the overall story here in itself was a bit on the dull side.  The charm of Outlander was its setting, but the bulk of Dragonfly is really removed from this setting.  Claire was a fish out of water to begin with, but while in France it’s more like she’s… I donno… a whale out of water.  She’s able to survive, but not for long – likewise with my attention span.

One of the things that I do love, however, is the introduction of Roger as a narrator, even if it is in the third person. I really like the way Roger sees things. Like myself he’s a historian who’s intrigued by a good tale, and it’s made very clear very quickly that the only way Claire is able to move forward and Brianna is able to accept the truth is through Roger. The part of me that enjoys a good mind fuck in literature almost thinks that it’d be fun if Claire was revealed to have been a complete nutjob who dreamed her time in the eighteenth century, but I realize that’s not going to happen – there’s too much pseudo-science to these books to make them just a mind fuck.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller

Director: Stephen Chbosky

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Rating: A

"And in this moment I swear, we are infinite."

Charlie (Lerman) is a wallflower.  About to start his first day of high school he begins writing letters to an unknown "friend," unleashing his fears and worries, most of which can be summed up with the revelation that the only people he's spoken to all summer are his family. In addition to being a wallflower, Charlie is also a person with no friends.  That all changes when Charlie meets two seniors, Patrick (Miller) and Sam (Watson), who invite him into their group of friends.  Each member, like Charlie, is eccentric and has their own slew of issues, with The Perks of Being a Wallflower detailing the way in which they come to deal with at least some of them.

Perks is so much more than your typical coming of age drama or teen romance.   It's a dark film, based on a dark book, and nicely handles the many themes present within it. I don't really want to go into the details too much, because I think if I did I would risk spoiling the movie, but I will say that while Perks deals with typical high school issues - school, fitting in, first love, etc - it also deals with much more adult issues - death and abuse being the big ones.  Each of the younger characters is struggling to figure themselves out, be they a major character or a more minor one.  At first it's a bit hard to realize this, that even the "popular" kids - portrayed primarily through Charlie's elder sister, Candace (Nina Dobrev), and football player Brad (Johnny Simmons) - are struggling to figure themselves out, but by the end of the movie it's clear that they're all in the same position, even if they haven't all been through the same things.

The thing that really makes this movie great, however, is the acting in itself.  There's kind of two divisions in this movie; the group that gets more focus and the group that is more sidelined - this can also be seen as Charlie's friends versus Charlie's family.  Lerman portrays his role absolutely perfectly.  I read an interview of Chbosky's where he said "It’s such a tricky part [Charlie], because if you go just two degrees to the left, let’s say, he’s a depressing character. You go two degrees to the right, then there are no stakes. And he [Lerman] so understood that."  I have to agree completely; Charlie could have been a complete disaster and there were points when the character really does make you cringe with the social awkwardness, but all in all he's just absolutely perfect.  I've seen Lerman in other roles before, but none that captivated me so perfectly as Charlie did.

Miller and Watson were also perfect.  Miller's performance was on the surface really far from being subtle, but at the same time really nicely conveys the many more subtle issues that surround Patrick.  He is this flamboyant and outgoing character who appears to reek of self confidence, and yet on a deeper level he's just as insecure and afraid as Lerman, or any of the other characters in Perks.  Much like Lerman, Miller's performance could have easily gone a degree or two in any direction and completely ruined the film, but it didn't.  Watson's role was, I think, in many ways a lot less tricky.  The character of Sam is a lot more how it appears; she's not all that confident and while she tries to pretend otherwise it's not hard to see that.  I loved her reactions to things throughout the movie, especially to Charlie.  One of my favourite moments in the entire movie is when Charlie gets stoned and Sam takes care of him.  It was a bit that had me both laughing and crying and was just perfectly handled.  It's an awkward moment and I thought Watson's very subtle reaction to what Charlie was saying was absolutely perfect.  Kind of rounding out this group is Mae Whitman's character, Mary Elizabeth.  Where Patrick and Sam are subtle, Mary Elizabeth is in your face and angry and I thought Mae Whitman did a superb job at this.  The pairing of her and Charlie is kind of a stroke of genius, just because they're such great opposites.

However subtle those performances are, or are not, they're a lot more in your face and predominant.  The other thing that got me about this movie was the sheer superbness of the roles that were a lot more minor, namely Charlie's family.  I think I could count on one hand just how many scenes Charlie's parents, played by Kate Walsh and Dylan McDermott, have, and yet I was as wowed by them as I was any other character in the film.  Walsh doesn't say much in this movie but her reactions to the things that are being said are absolutely perfect.  There's one moment near the end where she's being told something and you don't need to actually hear what's being said, her reaction says it all.  I can't go into saying all that I want to about Walsh and McDermott's performances, or Dobrev's for that matter, without really spoiling some of the movie so I'll leave that there.

There were two things that I didn't particularly like about this movie.  One was the dating.  I spent about half the movie trying to figure out just when Perks is set, which was in itself rather annoying.  The issues that Perks encompasses could have easily been dealt with in a modern setting, with the possibly exception of the subplot of the tunnel song, so it didn't really need to be set during the early nineties.  That being said, however, setting a film at that time isn't a big issue - so long as your viewer realizes that it's set then.  Until I figured out that it wasn't set in the modern day I spent too much time questioning the costume choices, and once I did figure it out I spent a lot of time trying to figure out just when the movie was supposed to be set - time that could have been better used simply enjoying the film.  This could have easily been handled, even without having it scroll across the bottom at some point.  Charlie starts the movie by writing a letter to his "friend", it could have been dated.  Likewise, early on he has a class that could have easily had a date written on the board - we discovered that Paul Rudd's character was named Mr. Anderson through such a tactic, so I don't see why we couldn't have figured out the date as well.  The other criticism is the use of Paul Rudd and Joan Cusack.  While I think both are stellar actors and enjoyed what they did I didn't think either role was properly utilized.