Willow

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Alex, Kyla

Here's my write up from earlier in the year. I do love my 80's fantasy. And I do love Willow. Awesome.

I Don't Know How She Does It

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

A more apt question would be I Don't Know WHY She Does It. Sarah Jessica Parker has a knack for being in extraordinarily mundane middle of the road nothing films lately. This is another. This film is so light it's amazing they managed to catch it to exhibit in cinemas before it floated out of the earths atmosphere. It's really kind of offensive too. Hardly a role model for females in the work place OR mothers. And it makes terrible cases for both.

The film did afford me other opportunities. The sound in my cinema was playing up, the low frequencies were causing cracking from the front speakers. When I informed the staff they were quick to recify this, discovering a faulty cable as the culprit. Unfortunately all the happened only 2 minutes into the film. Then they restarted it with proper sound.

The neat thing about digital projections is that there is no chance if them burning film in from of the projector bulb, so when they stop the film the image remains on screen. It was a rather flattering shot of Christina Hendricks and you could really see the spherical lens distortions in the bokeh.

A surprising amount of the film was shot in very low light. A lot of late night scenes and candle lit restaurant meetings. There was some unusual grain that was particularly noticeable on the darker sides of skin tones. I was thinking that perhaps that could be from some possible digital smoothing of actors skin, but I think it's more than likely just a fast speed film stock. Digital projection of 35mm film elements really allow you to see the grain without wondering if it's just a bad film print.

Stock footage. Sure all these romantic comedy films use stock establishing shots and many don't match up very well in tone. But there were some real travesties here. If you're going to buy some Getty Images for film, please make sure the footage is not interlaced. REALLY! It happened. And that's not even the worst bit. Aspect ratios. How hard is it to see that your footage is squished? I cannot abide this. Sloppy.

That sums up the film. Sloppy. As you can see I did everything to avoid having to actually notice what was going on in the film. Don't bother with this one.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Peter

Well, I've only seen each of these films once each and since the first one, it's become a tradition to plant myself in the enthusiastic crowd at the midnight screening and giggle quietly. If I am going to see it, it's the best way. I love watching the way the sea of teen girls react to everything. That's entertaining enough itself.

But then you have the films. Now, I bare the Twilight series no grudge, if only for the fact that it's made Summit Entertainment enough money to help fund some genuinely cool films over the last 4 years. Pardon the pun, but I find it a very lifeless series of vampire movies. I haven't read the books, don't plan to, I'm just talking about the film series.

I think I will have to reserve judgment on this one until I've seen the concluding part. This is not a whole film, it feels like 2 hours of padding. Especially the first half of the film that just drags on and on. It's "two characters being happy: THE MOVIE." A lot of exposition, set up for what I hope to god is a more interesting finale. My central problem with the films is the writing. Melissa Rosenberg's scripts make me want to pull my hair out. And while the you can make fun of the bad acting all you want, the fact is, I've seen every one of the premiers in this series give much better performances elsewhere, but even a great veteran would find it hard to sell this drivel.

I will acknowledge that it's extremely difficult to make such unashamedly melodramatically romantic material realistic and believable. I just have no connection to the central relationships of the series because it's all so surface. No doubt the books have chapters of internal monologue that flesh out characters and scenarios and you can see director Bill Condon desperately trying to convey some of this in the film but it never gets there.

He heavily uses dreamlike flashback/flashforward montages and dissolves to show connections between characters, visions, dreams, telepathic conversations and such. It works well to get out exposition but never helps add any weight to the drama. Still some of the events in this film are so hilariously bizarre that you kind of forget any of that. They drop stuff in at the end of this film that just seem inane. Perhaps I don't remember the other films enough, so I could be wrong, but there are certain key concepts that really needed to be set up earlier for the non-twilight initiated, the biggest one being werewolf imprinting.

I was even fine with the whole vampire/human birth scene and whilst they don't show anything interested due to the rating, it's implied pretty well and made the young girls squirm in there seats. Unfortunately the rating also kills the sex scenes but since the films haven't given me any reason to invest in these characters and their relationship I didn't really care either way.

I just find this whole series flaccid. There are a few bright spots here and there. Pretty much any time Anna Kendrick and her school pals are on screen it becomes enjoyable. But this film in particular has so many ridiculous situations there is probably nothing that could have been done to keep up any kind of suspension of disbelief. All that leaves you with is the opportunity to laugh at the overt sincerity. I get the feeling most of the cast are in on the joke too, so I feel like it's ok. Thankfully there's only one more.

Real Steel

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Michael

Here's my first review. It's been a while since I've seen anything, I've been extremely busy, so better get right back into it!