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.95: Prometheus

So one of the biggest releases of the year deserves a cinema where I won't be bothered by people munching on nachos or updating Facebook every five seconds luckily the great Lighthouse in Wolverhampton offered that possibility screening Ridley Scott's Prometheus on the week of release. As most people are aware Prometheus was in some ways a prequel to Scott's original Alien film and in particular answer the space jockey question that a lot of people had. The film is mostly set on-board the Prometheus, a scientific vessel which has been funded by the Weyland Corporation in order for two archaeologists to follow a star map they found in a cave ten years previous. As well as archeaologist couple Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway on board Prometheus are among others the android David, gung-ho captain Janek and Meredith Vickers a representative of the Weyland Corporation who seemingly has another agenda in visiting the planet. Once reaching the moon LV-223 the crew hope to find the aliens known as 'engineers' in order to get answers about the map and indeed to find some evidence. Obviously anybody who has seen the trailer knows that things don't really work out for everybody on board Prometheus, this is a Ridley Scott sci-fi film after all, though I do realise that most have yet to see this film so I'm not going to go into any more plot detail than that.

Among those also seeing Prometheus with me were a group of friends that I know from the film quiz that is held at the Light House once a month with one of them having already seen the earlier screening. After the film she asked me for my verdict and I personally was still in a state of shock she told me to give it about fifteen minutes before I made my mind up about it and after a discussion we thought that the first two thirds of the film were sufficiently well-paced however everything went barmy in Prometheus' final section. My feeling was what made the first Alien film work so well was that feeling of despair and isolation which was coupled with the paranoia that built up as the crew-members started to die off. This is certainly present when we first see Prometheus as David wanders around the ship on his own waiting to release the crew members from their state of statis as he watches their dreams and learns to speak different languages in order to converse with the engineers. Scott does build up the intensity when the crew first make it onto LV-223 and as the origins of the species become better known there are some interesting questions to be asked as well as fantastically jumpy scene involving an autopsy. My feeling is though that people expect more from their sci-fi films now than they did in 1979 so there has to be some shoot-outs and some space ship crashing to satisfy action fans and indeed the trailer that debuted a while back is full of footage from the final stages of Prometheus. I think I would've been happier to see a film that relied more on horror built on paranoia than loud gun battles later on. Another problem I had was that sometimes I felt the film was fairly clinical and scientific while I'm aware that this is sometimes necessary in a film about scientists this meant from time I felt removed from some of the conversations that the characters were having.

There are also far too many characters to get to know that well however there's no faulting the performances from the main players each of whom has something to offer. Among those who discussed the film afterwards we all agreed that Michael Fassbender is excellent in everything and as David here you really believe that he isn't of this world. He is able to make David seem both pleasant and later creepy he claims to be there to help the crew but we never know the mission he has been programmed for so that makes him certainly the most interesting character. Noomi Rapace is also predictably excellent her Dr Shaw does really look like a scientist and with her tomboy like looks combined with her scruffy hair she does at times conjour up memories of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. Rapace's stature also counter-acts that of Charlize Theron who as Vickers is practically Amazonian when compared to her she here gives off her best Ice Maiden impression as the character motivated by money at times being so cold that Janek questions if she is also a robot. As Janek, Idris Elba is responsible for the humour of the film more of an army than everything else he keeps his crew going with quips but also makes sure that he is responsible for all on board his ship. Guy Pearce also impresses as Weyland although the prosthetics given to him to make him look like a very old man seemed to be to be not that impressive especially given that this is a big budget movie.

Unlike a lot of other science fiction films Scott is keen to explore various themes most notably being that of faith represented mostly by Shaw, the most religious character in the film, who carries a crucifix pendant around her neck her constant belief questioned by her partner Holloway especially seeing as she can't have children. Her pendant is a symbol of her belief so the moment it is taken away from her she experiences some of the most traumatic events of the film as a whole. The other theme which is most prominent is that of big business and the fact that money can buy you anything you want even if you have to manipulate other people to get that. This is seen in the character of Vickers who believes her money sees her as superior than everyone else on Prometheus while Weyland's motives also demonstrate the power that money can buy you. Scott's film isn't perfect by any means, especially when he decides to crank everything up to eleven, however there are underlying themes behind the action which is something that I rarely see in science fiction films these days. While not a great film Prometheus is certainly one of the better big budget films of recent years and I would recommend everybody go to see it at the cinema so they can make their own minds up about it.

Verdict: Two thirds of a brilliant film are spoilt by a completely bonkers final chapter but despite this Prometheus boasts great performances from its ensemble cast and underlying themes to the action so overall I will give it a very deserving 7.5/10

Review No.38: Young Adult

A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to go to a free preview screening of Young Adult however due to complications involving times, dates and life in general this had to be cancelled. Thankfully today the internet fairies have blessed me with a copy and I can finally see the new film from Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody who directed and wrote Juno respectively. One of the criticisms of Cody's Oscar winning screenplay for Juno was that her writing for the teenage characters felt like somebody of her age imaging how teens would speak. In response to that the lead in this film, Charlize Theron's Mavis Gary, is a grown-up who writes as a teenage girl as she produces a set of novels that are classed in the young adult range. When we first meet Mavis she is struggling to complete the last in the popular Waverly Prep series for which she writes when she suddenly receives an e-mail from an old flame about his wife having a baby. From this she decides to return to her old hometown of Mercury a backwater suburb where the majority of her old schoolmates still live and in which she hopes to rekindle her old boyfriend Buddy's feelings for her despite him being a new dad. She also strikes up an unlikely friendship with another former schoolmate Matt who, by his own admission, is a fat nerd and who suffered a traumatic experience during high school.

I think for the most part Cody gets everything about Young Adult right with Mavis being a character who is stuck in a state of arrested development and despite being successful and once married to a charming man she still hankers for her old school life where she was the Prom Queen. Charlize Theron gives what is, for me personally, her best performance playing a character who is essentially a bitch but giving her some sort of heart and reason for behaving the way she is. Theron also bounces well off Patton Oswalt who gives a good accounting of himself as Matt the only person privy to Mavis' plan to win back her former love. Patrick Wilson is also fairly solid in his role as Buddy you can believe that he once was a popular high school jock but has decided to settle down with his wife Beth. The whole smalltown of Mercury is very well drawn and I felt a sense of an old town that had tried to be modernised and was still inhabited by the same people that were there twenty years ago only now they all have kids. As you can imagine this being a film from the creators of Juno there is also a lot of emphasis on the soundtrack and how music can evoke certain emotions. As Mavis is obssessed with her high school years there is a lot of 1990s music from the likes of Dinosaur Jr. and 4 Non Blondes however it is Teenage Fanclub's The Concept that is the song that you will be humming after the film has finished. The main problem is I feel that Cody and Reitman didn't know how particularly to finish the film so after the 'big incident' things go off a bit with Mavis' ultimate decision being left in the hands of someone that I feel she would've paid little attention to. Apart from the ending though I really enjoyed this film with two strong central performances, a great setting and an awesome soundtrack.

Overall: A well-written and well-acted comedy which dips a bit at the end yet features Charlize Theron's best performance very gets  8.5/10