Review No.105: Snow White and The Huntsman

So now onto the second of the Snow White films and the one that has possibly been a little more anticipated as it stars Twilight's Kristen Stewart as the eponymous heroine in Snow White and The Huntsman. The tone of this one is a lot darker as in the first ten minutes there is a full on battle scene as well as Charlize Theron's Queen Ravena killing off her King on her wedding night, how's that for foreplay. From there it goes a bit more traditional with Snow White being locked in the tower however this time Eric the huntsman is sent by The Queen to return her stepdaughter to her as she needs to rip out her heart in order to live forever. The brutish Eric, played by Thor's Chris Hemsworth complete with odd Celtic accent, agrees to do this in exchange for the return of his wife who has in actuality already been slaughtered by The Queen. When he discovers this he decides to team up with Snow White and together they negotiate the pitfalls of The Dark Forest before being captured by the dwarfs who have a vendetta with Eric. Soon learning Snow White's identity they discover that she is the only one who can lift the curse so banding together with her childhood sweetheart William they decide to battle only for her to fall foul of that old poisoned apple routine and has to be kissed by her true love but it doesn't take an idiot to find out who that is. Snow White then goes all Joan of Arc rallying her troops and her father's former subjects to take down The Queen once and for all in order to release her strangle hold on the people.

For the first half hour or so of Snow White and The Huntsman I found a lot to like mainly because Charlize Theron took the lead as the brilliant immortal Ravena. With all the bloodshed, seduction and magic it did feel like a PG-rated episode of Game of Thrones especially given the closeness in the relationship between The Queen and her brother Finn. Once Snow White escaped however things got a bit dull with both Stewart and Hemsworth not really connecting with me in the way that the two title characters should. Stewart's Snow White was to an extent a strong female character and her battle cries were convincing however she still seemed to quiver  like a schoolgirl whenever the man she loved looked straight in her eyes. Personally though I had no emotional involvement in either Eric or Snow so I was glad when the dwarfs came along to lighten the mood with Nick Frost and Ian McShane in particular impressing in a gang that also included Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone and Eddie Marsan. In fact I felt the dwarfs were used far too sparingly and I could've done with a few more scenes featuring them before the final battle. I did quite enjoy the battles with cinematographer Greig Fraser really focusing in on the action in the final conflict which made me care more than I would normally about a medieval skirmish. The Pembrokeshire scenery added itself well to the bleak story with its old-fashioned landscape lending the right tone to the film. This is Theron's show though and whenever Ravena is onscreen I was completely captivated and when she wasn't I wondered when she would be on next. This then is a bit of a problem when your lead actress doesn't make as much of an impact as your villain but that's what happens when you make you heroine an emotionally-detached Emo Joan of Arc rather than someone who the audience can actually connect with.

In terms of the battle of the Snow White films I feel this wins due to the darker subject matter and the fact that Charlize Theron could kick Julia Roberts' ass. Much has been made of the use of normal-sized actors to play the dwarfs however they added another element to the film that was missing with the diminutive sidekicks in Mirror Mirror. While not a great film more was made to make this a bit different with enough visual flair and great supporting performances to become more of a well-rounded movie.

Verdict: It's a shame this is called Snow White and The Huntsman as The Queen and The Dwarfs are what this film is all about so because of that I'll award this film a 6/10

Review No.78: Avengers Assemble

So it's time to review the film that everybody had seen apart from myself and the friend who accompanied to an early afternoon screening of Avengers Assemble. That's at least what I thought however the screen wasn't as empty as I thought it would be as there was a smattering of patrons already sitting down when we got there though I got the impression that many of them had already seen this at least once. I really don't know how much plot detail I should go into here as I feel the majority of readers will at least have a small knowledge of what the film is about namely the assembly of all the of the Marvel superheroes who have appeared in their own films over the past couple of years. So we have Captain America, Thor and Iron Man combining with The Hulk who is now played by Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson plays Black Widow who she has previously portrayed in the Iron Man franchise and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye who had a brief cameo in the Thor movie. The plot itself revolves around Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury, the link between all of these Marvel movies, who has to gather together these various heroes after Thor's step-brother Loki steals the Tesseract in order to open up some sort of space portal to get an alien race known as the Chitauri to invade. The essential struccture of The Avengers is collecting all the various characters, get them together, getting them to argue, separate them, reunite them and then get them to save New York by vanquishing all the aliens. Along the way everybody gets their time to shine and do their party piece whether it be Thor with his hammer, Captain America with his shield, The Hulk generally destroying things or Iron Man being generally witty they get their five minutes of fame. If you haven't seen it don't read the rest of this paragraph but essentially The Avengers prevent another 9/11 from happening only this time they fend off aliens rather than terrorists afterwards we are given a collection of news footage criticising The Avengers' tactics which I found very reminiscent of Team America. There was also a final scene in which Loki's failed atempts are punished by the head of the Chitauri which essentially set up either a sequel to this film or to Thor or perhaps both.

People who know me will know that I'm not a big fan of Hollywood action films however I did enjoy both Thor and Captain America for different reasons while I also thought the first Iron Man film was fantastic. As I previously mentioned all of the superhero get to do the thing they're best known for and I would best surmise Avengers Assemble as sort of being a Greatest Hits Mixtape which should've had the tagline - you liked what they did before, then see them all do it at the same time. This is a benefit in some cases as I don't think there was much more that could be done with the character of Captain America given Chris Evans' limited range while Thor made me giggle more than anything else as did Hemsworth's lines here though saying that Hiddleston's egocentric Loki provided a good villain who, like any good baddie, was set on world domination. I am looking forward to the third Iron Man film if only to see more of the bickering between Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. which again was a highlight of this film however the latter's quick-talking was a bonus in this film and did provide some of the stand-out moments of the script. I would've liked to have seen more of Mark Ruffalo's Hulk as most of the plot surrounding him seemed to be waiting until he turned green and started smashing everything around him. I am aware that there have been two previous Hulk films but I would've like to have seen another one with the excellent Ruffalo in the lead role as his brief appearances as Bruce Banner were very well done. Renner and Johansson were also ill-served by their screen time which hinted at a past relationship between the two and I do hope that he at least does get his own prequel film to flesh out the character before a second Avengers film. There is a lot of wit in the script and when I have heard friends discuss the film it is the one-liners that they best remember which again I quite enjoyed and found myself laughing several times throughout. There was though a fair bit of exposition throughout with most of it being delivered by Jackson as he walked and talked with Robin from How I Met your Mother explaining various plot points to her. The final battle scene is about 45 minutes long but is extremely well-produced and visually stunning allowing each Avenger to demonstrate why they've been recruited in the first place however towards the end I did feel this battle had become slightly repetitive. It did take me a while to decide what I actually thought of Avengers Assemble however it was at the end of the day a Greatest Hits, or Greatest Smashes in the case of The Hulk, highlight reel where everybody got to do what they're known for which was both the best and worst thing about the film as it was entertaining but left little room for character development.

Verdict: A Greatest Hits Mixtape where everybody gets their chance to shine but characters don't really develop though overall it was fairly entertaining and kept my interest throughout so therefore I will award it a 7.5/10

Review No.59: The Cabin in the Woods

 Sometimes it's very hard to write a review about a film without spoiling any aspect of it so apologies in advance if I give away anything too much but I've had a glance at some other write-ups of the film so know what and what not to include. The film itself, co-written and produced by Joss Whedon, has been in developmental hell for years finally being released ahead of its producer's helming of The Avengers Movie. While Whedon is busy with his superheroes it is left up to the other co-writer Ben Goddard to direct a story about five college students who are all going off to the titular cabin to drink, get stoned and have sex with one another. We think we've see this all before with the stereotypes all covered from the slutty one to the jock via the intelligent one and the drug addict however Goddard and Whedon play with our perceptions almost instantly after the youngsters get to the cabin. Obviously as you can ascertain from the trailer not all is as it should be and there is another plot away from the woods which involves two middle-management types played by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins. It is the scenes featuring Jenkins and Whitford in their office that were the most entertaining as at times their snappy delivery of the one-liners made me think I was watching a horror as if scripted by Aaron Sorkin.

The Cabin In The Woods - Trailer #1 [VO|HD] by addictomovie
My main problem with Cabin in the Woods is that we were given little reason to care about the group of five going to the cabin and we knew only very little about them. I know to an extent that that's the point as often in the young teen slasher movie genre the characters are flimsy and the acting is atrocious so maybe this is Whedon and Goddard's way of mocking those genre conventions. At the end of the day though shoddy acting is shoddy acting and I particularly thought Jesse Williams as the bookish yet handsome Holden was so wooden that he blended it with the walls of the cabin from time to time. What Whedon and Goddard do right is in asking the question what if there was something more behind those crappy horror films that we often watch and why do the teens always split up when terror strikes? The last twenty minutes or so is when the film reaches its most entertaining however those are the moments that I can't talk about. It's clear that the writers know their horror as they spoof the Japanese shock horror genre as well as the main mockery of the teens alone in the wood together. I can't say that I was ever scared but I was never bored either laughing at the witty interplay between Whitford and Jenkins or intrigued by what direction the plot would take. True if you think about anything too much you can unravel parts of the plot but overall a clever plot coupled with some decent performances from its veteran cast members means that this is a step above your normal mainstream horror film.

Verdict: While it may favour concept over quality in periods ultimately The Cabin in the Woods is an entertaining ride to which I will give 8/10