I thought the movie was a pleasant watch. Not really scary, but with good visuals, acting and a nice atmosphere. I did not mind the plot either. I think it was just not exciting, but I enjoy slow-paced stories when they are well edited, and this one was.
There are many problems with the movie. But for some reason, I was terribly distracted by Taryn's absurd use of boots. Does she sleep with them, or is she very particular about wearing boots right out of bed to walk around the house?
I did not see many reasons to cry watching Wonder, but I definitely smiled many times. It is just adorable. I found it a bit more touching than the book, even. And the Passion Pit song at the end caught me totally off-guard, it was a perfect conclusion.
Interesting footage. I was hoping to see more of the Japanese fleet, but that expectation was frustrated. Still, a great piece for those researching in the topic.
What a lovely idea it is, that there could be a whole flock of blue macaws hidden away in safety in the Amazon jungle. Currently, the rare arara-azul is mostly spotted in Pantanal, and back in the early 2000's, there was major concern they were down to the last specimens! Documentaries were produced to alert adults, books and plays for children were mandatory in schools (some Brazilians may remember fondly of Angelo Machado's book "O Casamento da Ararinha Azul"), and the preservation of this wonderful species moved us in a very special way.
So I think this is a nice addition to this effort, and also a great way to once more bring the topic of preservation and the illegal and dangerous exploration of Amazon to the attention of kids, as the macaw and the jungles of Brazil are far from being safe! Aside from that, the movie is light hearted and fun, and displays several species that are special to Brazil and our culture, and I can definitely appreciate this movie as an educational resource. I am only sorry that I decided to watch it so long after its release. It would have been useful while I was still a teacher :)
Possibly the strangest (perhaps the trippiest) version of Little Red Riding Hood ever told. The first scene already had me confused, why did the cat die? And if the cat died, how could mom go on to send the donuts to grandma? Was she trying to murder grandma and implicate Red? Just so nonsense!
All the praise this movie gets is extremely well deserved. What impressed me most though is how well done the effects were - so well done I had to check if what I had been watching was really the 80's movie and not the remake, because the effects were far more convincing than most of this year's releases! I was sure it could not be from a 30+ year old movie, but yes, it was! What a great production! And the plot, the acting, and the music were all on level with it. A truly superb movie.
I feel like this documentary had all the opportunities to dig deeper into several issues and it never did. It was very nice to hear the stories of these women, and the movie was pretty well made, but it did little beyond illustrating what everyone already expected.
Bruna was a girl who, sometimes because of her personality and temper, sometimes accidentally, took more wrong turns than right ones but still managed to turn out alright. And that, despite the path she set out on, is something admirable - she wanted to have control over her life, and she did it.
The movie was an overall nice one - not a great family option by any means, but I felt it didn't really exploit the character as much as I would have expected. Even the nude and sex scenes were not shocking or even distasteful, even for my rather prudish standards. So this won't cause any awkwardness should you watch it with friends or a date. Deborah Secco is an accomplished actress, and she played Bruna's transition from awkward teenage ugly duckling to a bold sexy woman to depressed addict very well. I think she was a great choice for the role, although her portrayal of Bruna at high school age was a tough buy for age alone (she was over 30 already, hard to play a 16 year old!). A thing to be mentioned is that I didn't think movie glamorized the life of a prostitute the way I would have expected it to either, though they did make it seem way easier than it probably actually was when she was working downtown for cheap before fame. Even if Bruna was cute and good at her trade, even if she liked it, surely there must have been really bad and difficult days that got to her deeper than a petty theft or a diss here and there, or even her adopted brother's scorn. Maybe it was the character's own need to put it aside to stay sane, or something else, but I wish her feelings towards her family at that time had been further explored too, although I liked how they chose to show her worst days at the peek of her popularity.
An interesting point the movie makes is why Bruna gained such popularity at first, and that's something I hadn't see prostitutes portrayed as in movies before - she was, despite all the stereotypes associated with her lifestyle, just an empathetic and genuine person who could connect with and understand people. And even after gaining more respect from men than most women get from their own husbands, she also shows herself as very insightful, saying "I was the perfect woman. I was there to fuck, to listen and to not complain about anything". Ironically, it was by gaining fame and perhaps bottling all those complaints up that she lost that empathy and become arrogant, announcing her doom and the beginning of that much needed dramatic climax that was slow in coming, but worth waiting for.
To conclude, I thought the movie was better than the hype and controversy around the time of its release allowed me to believe, and I wish I had watched it sooner.
I'm not really sure what the appeal of this movie is to gather a cult following. I mean, it isn't horrible, but it isn't super funny either. It's really just alright. Romy and Michele are fun characters, but their ditzy routine gets old fast and the plot is too simple and too straightforward. Janeane Garofalo was about the only thing I actually liked, but even her character is too much of a stereotype.
Considering this came out during the FRIENDS era, I think a lot of the following here comes from the fans of the show who became fans of Kudrow. So basically, unless you're a fan of either Sorvino or Kudrow, give this a pass. There are better flicks out there to waste time on.
Simple plot, shallow characters, the mythology is wrong and the whiteness is just weird. But it is very pretty, visually speaking. Mindless entertainment.
Well, the kids were really good. That's it, though.
It would be hard to judge the movie without comparing it with the old one by the title alone, but with all borrowed scenes and lines, I fear this is impossible - and that's bad, because they're putting themselves against something quite brilliant. What I kept thinking while watching is that this is too "literal", meaning they've set up these scary scenes without setting the proper psychological mood for them, making them less than effective in scarying the audience. I missed that. Some of the scenes were really well done visually, but utterly unemotional and therefore, just not not scary.
Refreshing is definitely the word for this flick. The influence of internet and social media has been all around recent movies, but the desktop/Skype cam was new (at least for me), and the execution was great. There was tension and suspense and I was hooked. Not at all a masterpiece, but excellent entertainment!
It's unfair to compare it to Antichrist. There are similarities, yes - a psychiatrist and his girlfriend go to a cabin in the woods - but the development couldn't be more different.
Personally, I did enjoy the movie. I liked the twist at the end and I hadn't seen it coming at all. The acting is really good and feels incredibly natural, like they are not acting at all. In fact, combined with the directing and peculiar camera work, it felt strangely immersing - like a reality show that is actually showing the truth. Since it's so strangely natural, someone who isn't sucked in might think the movie goes a bit slow. Personally though, I thought it was brilliant. I was very pleased and very impressed with Brazil's ability to produce good thrillers!
Visually striking as always, but lacking in many ways. While the pacing was actually good and you never feel bored, there was essentially no story to follow at all. The armies meet and fight - that's all there is to it.
There's no build up to the fight, no preparation, and the main characters have power beyond reason - see Legolas jumping the falling rocks when he was fighting the orc that had Tauriel. He's an elf, but he's not gravity proof as far as I remember.
Thorin was a such a powerful character and he went underdeveloped, as honestly did Bilbo and Galadriel at least. I like the attention Thranduil, Kili, Legolas and Tauriel got, but Thorin's epiphany was an important moment and it was actually kinda hurried.
It was a fun watch for sure, but I have a hard time accepting this as a stand-alone film. It was more like a very long battle shot that could have been put as an extra in a deluxe edition of the DVD.
I must definitely say I enjoyed The Hobbit as a trilogy, but I wish they had edited it somewhat differently. I think it still has a lot of potential if someone decided to make a different cut out of it.
Pretty cute movie! Definetely entering my rom-com faovorites list.
A really, really pretty adaptation of the original story.
I'm surprised at how enjoyable this was. A very decent rom-com indeed.
The plot is driven by sheer dumbness. Nothing that happens is initially out of the dumb people's control, they are just initially dumb. It's annoying,
Fine, the story is not as good as the first, but it has great music that will have you singing along and it's just awesome fun! I absolutely loved it!
The movie did a great job in portraying Alice as a normal teen girl, with the normal feelings and perceptions of a teen girl. She is a lovely character and carries the movie well.
The part with the adults was a bit awkward though. Alice's dad is a fantastic parent, no discussion, he defends his daughter in ways that I have seen few parents do, but I saw no point in his romance plot. It was just there, it felt too casual to be important enough to be shown like that. Maybe adding more meaningful dialogue would have helped, or it should not have been done at all.
I mean, think about this: he is going through something - he is watching his daughter suffer a hard process of adaptation, and no matter how great his relationship with his daughter, families are never so simple. There was supposed to be something going on in his mind, and he never approaches it, despite finding someone he could confide in. I think it would have enriched the movie to acknowledge that talking about your true feelings is necessary for bonding.
That dancing scene is so embarrassing! But it was fun to watch for nostalgia's sake.
The movie was light-hearted, funny, and crazy, and I loved every minute of it. I got into the main characters as I had not in a while. It also made very humorous use of the rising ultra-right conservative movements, which is particularly relatable to Brazilians (just put Neymar in place of Diamantino!).
The premisse is very interesting and the spaceship setting is just beautiful. Jim turns into a dislikeable character pretty fast though, and it is hard to like Aurora when we feel sorry for her all the time. The dramatic climax feels like a mixture of Armaggedon and Titanic, as weird as it may sound, but it is rather exciting. The ending is of the feel-good variety, and I have no complaints.
Overall, a solid 6, which is only disappointing because the rather common story feels like a great injustice to the lavish visuals.
It's a very cute movie featuring a great main character who is a horrible person, a secondary character who was supposed to be a horrible person but goes through a believable positive development, and their lovely friendship. The soundtrack is great too, as expected from a piece with such a John Hughes influence.
I knew Shannon Purser from Stranger Things, and I was kind of expecting Sierra and Barb to be similar, since they are from the same outcast mold, but they could not be more different. I am impressed with Purser for being able to play such different personalities into the same stereotype. Also, Froseth is so pretty I do not think she is human... maybe she is from an advanced alien race, taking a vacation on Earth?
But going back to "Sierra is a bad person but a great character", oh, wow. I do not think I have ever disliked a rom-com heroine this much, EVER. Specially in a teen movie! Still, it was cute and entertaining, and Noah deserves a main role, soon. Here, it felt like he was there for decoration, which is sad, because he has a lot of charisma on-screen.
I love the book. The movie basically misses on everything that was important. I cannot believe the author actually helped adapting this.
The dialogues were so unoriginal! It was like a generic-version of a fantasy tale, they got the bones for it, but could not really flesh it.
Light and fun entertainment. Also, a very nice cast!
I do not think I will ever find tentacle monsters cute (thanks, Japan!), but this movie almost made me change my mind. Almost. The being enslaved by a human part did not help, it was so mean.
It was otherwise goofy, but enternaining. It had an interesting 80's feel to it, without pushing it too hard, like recent works have been doing. It just was not actually good.
I was glad to see Jane Levy though. I wish she had more job offers, she is way better than Nickelodeon movies.
