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Reviews
The Hunger Games (2012)
I couldn't have done any better... 5/10 ?!
This review is from a 26 year old who has read the book.
I don't want to seem to jump on the band waggon of people who say's "its not as good as the book" as this was going to be guaranteed.
Therefore, I will start with the good. Well, one good point really. I think all the readers can agree that Katniss is a very complicated character to play, with multitude of emotions. And I think that Jennifer Lawrence did a good job, considering screenplay she had to work with. This is probably the main positive of the movie.
Now the negatives. For me (personally), the lack of gore and fighting (and hence making it a 12A instead of a 15) wasn't the problem. I didn't like the book because of the gore. I liked the book because it made me feel happy, sad, anger and compassion at different times. It made me care about the characters and what happened to them... how a good book should. This is where the movie failed for me. After asking my friends about the movie (who haven't read the book), they said that they found that they didn't care about the characters during the movie, whether if they died or survived. I think this hits the nail on the head.
A book can achieve a connection between the reader and the characters by creating depth to the characters and more importantly richness of the relationships between characters. By doing this, the reader can relate to the internal feelings of the characters at major situations throughout the book. Hence, the reader will find themselves wanting good things to happen to the main characters such as Katniss and Peeta, and feel emotional pain when bad things happen to them. But this takes pages and pages of emotive descriptions, which is hard to portray on screen. Therefore, the writers had to balance between the depths of characters/relationships with the breadth of storyline within the given time frame, which was probably by far the biggest hurdle. This is where I sympathise with the screen writers. The movie was already 2 hours and 20 minutes long. It would over have to be a lot longer to do achieve this balance. But, obviously that is way too long for a movie. Therefore, as a movie this was destined to fail... maybe as a TV series where there is more time to develop this connection with the characters could have worked better. Who knows?
Wild Target (2010)
Under par...
I went to see this movie last night on a whim, not knowing what to expect. I am only speculating here but I believe the writers of this movie were aiming to make a quirky British comedy. However, the quirkiness seemed a little forced, like they have tried too hard, especially with Emily Blunt's character.
The whole cinema was silent for the entire feature which was unusual for a comedy. When you go and see a comedy, you expect to laugh. Even for short moments of comedic scenes. However, this did not happen at all.
I believe the big faults in this movie should not be blamed on the actors, but the writers. There was little character building, which means believability in the characters and the relationship between them was difficult.
This was not the worse movie I have ever seen (by far) but it is far from being a good movie either. With other modern British comedies such as "The Boat That Rocked", this was just under par.
Dirty Sanchez: The Movie (2006)
The audience has never been so well connected
I have just had the privilege of watching the advanced screening of Dirty Sanchez The Movie. The sustained fear for the Dirty Sanchez boys' safety yet amazement of the pure insanity of these boys on all the peoples faces in the cinema says it all.
I am not a squeamish type. Like most people, I love watching a gruesome scary movie with the comfort of knowing it is not real in the back of my mind. However the stunts on this are not far from the horror in "Hostel", but without that comfort.
What I meant when I said "connected" is that you will find when watching this movie on the silver screen, everyone not only has the same reactions (covering their eyes with their hands), but also the freedom to scream, shout "oh my god" out loud and laugh like a hyena on happy gas without anyone caring. Because they are doing the same thing!
If I was to summarise this movie in one sentence. It would be: It is an amazing experience!
Thank you for reading.
Sin City (2005)
Best movie of the decade
Having following this movie for 1 year, from the time I saw it announced on the internet that they are in the process of making a movie called Sin City and later seeing the trailers, there was a very large chance (more than 99% chance in fact) that I could be disappointed with this movie. The fact that is was not disappointed at all shows how amazing this move was.
It lived not only up to my really high expectations, but so far passed it I was left in aw of how good that movie was.
The camera effects capture the comic book feeling where as other comic based movies fail. I love the way most of the filming is in black and white but only a woman's red dress is in colour. The gore leaves you shocked and your mouth open, probably one of the goriest movie ever. The acting is spectacular showing the highest talent of the all star cast. There are many story lines through out the movie however they are all strong and predominant even with all the gore.
If I could leave you with a few words... See this movie!