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.7: War Horse

For the first trip to my favourite independent cinema, Light House in Wolverhampton, me and my cinema-going companion decided to see Steven Spielberg's War Horse. The film starts off in the early 20th century when Peter Mullan's stubborn farmer sees something in a splendid horse and spends over the odds on it just to spite his lanlord. His son Albie then becomes attached to the horse he names Joey however due to trouble at the farm his father sells him to the army at the start of World War I and it is only then that the film really gets going. War Horse then becomes a road movie around the battleground of 1914-1918 France as Joey is renamed several times and comes into contact with a lot of different characters including plummy British officers, underage German soldiers, Thomas Buch from The Killing and a scenery-chewing Rutger Hauer. Obviously the film rockets, or perhaps gallops, to an inevitable ending where a now of age Albie goes to war in search of his beloved equine companion.

War Horse is certainly an improvement on Spielberg's last two films, the fourth Indiana Jones disaster and the unintentionally hilarious Tintin, and actually has some spectacular sequences. But for its first fourty minutes it is incredibly slow mainly due to a plethora of expositional dialogue and far too many ploughing montages with the only upside in these early scenes being the pairing of the excellent Emily Watson and Peter Mullan. When war is finally declared we get the better part of the film and the lion's share of the action as Joey's plight briefly brings together soldiers from both parts of the war. It is hard to single out one member of this cast as the stand-out as a lot of the time we have actors appearing for five minutes and leaving again including Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Marsan but for me Hauer does an excellent job and I enjoyed the scenes with him and his granddaughter living in a windmill. But this is definitely the horse's story and the animal actors definitely outshine their human counterparts. I'm definitely glad I saw War Horse as it was well-shot with great scenery and for the most part great acting although Jeremy Irvine as Albie was always a little annoying. A good word to describe War Horse would be long-winded as I felt it took well over two hours to tell a story that could've been condensed to just over 90 minutes.

Verdict: A well made family film with some memorable moments but one that drags far too much so far that reason I will give it 7.5/10