Tag: Eddie Redmayne

Sorkin Sorkin Sorkin Sorkin Sorkin!

WE HAVEN’T HAD A NEW SORKIN MOVIE SINCE 2017. And that was Molly’s Game, and was a little weird, because it was also directed by him. BUT THE LAST ONE JUST WRITTEN BY HIM WAS IN 2015. That was Steve Jobs, and if you don’t know about Steve Jobs, well, it was my favorite movie of the last decade, so I kind of love it. Hell, The Social Network, also written by him, also made the top ten list, and was a lot of people’s favorite of the decade.

I am a pretty big fan, I guess you can say.

So I have been waiting patiently for The Trial of Chicago 7. And it took a lot out of me to not rush to go see it in theaters, because honestly, I am not ready for that. Thankfully it was destined for Netflix and I was given the opportunity to check it out along with the rest of the world relatively soon after theaters. This one is his second directorial attempt, and I really hope it it takes the best parts of Molly’s Game and goes a bit further.

I am sure I can remain unbiased in my review.

Alright there are five people here. Are they most of the Chicago 7?

In 1968, there was a presidential election. Lyndon B. Johnson had dropped out, so a new person would sit at the head of our government, and for the Republicans it was looking like Richard Nixon. The democrats were likely to elect Hubert Humphrey, a boring choice really, and one who didn’t push enough values. A lot of people had problems with that, so a lot of people decided to go to Chicago during the Democratic National Convention and protest. A lot of groups, a lot of big ones, and small ones, and some shit went down.

Did the protestors star the riots? Did the police? A lot of evidence one way or another. But after Nixon won, his AG was sent to investigate and was charging several individuals with felonies to invite riots across state laws, and they were all being tried at the same time. So what kind of trial is this? Some sort of political trial? Is the right to protest on trial?

On trial we have Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) were there as part of a national organization they made to help end the war in Vietnam. Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) were leaders from the Yippie organization, a youth group who did not like most of the things the US government stood for. There was David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) was a conscientious objector during World War II and went as a protestor to encourage a lack of riots and peaceful demonstrations. Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) was a Black Panther leader and not from the Chicago area, but went there to make a speech and was there for only a little bit of the time.

And those are most of our key players, outside of judges, lawyers, other people on trial, friends, and etc.

Oh them? Here are the actors involved. Frank Langella, Danny Flaherty, Noah Robbins, Michael Keaton, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Caitlin FitzGerald, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Shenkman, and J.C. MacKenzie.

Here are two more. Let’s assume this is the complete set.

It is important to note I watched this film before writing the review. I mean, that is always true, sorry. I watched this film twice before writing this review. Because I didn’t see it in theaters (as I would have had this review a month ago), I waited until it was on Netflix like the plebian I was. And I will be honest, I liked it the first time, but I never got fully immersed because I kept having to stop it, or go back, due to things going on around me. You know, Netflix problems. So I declared a better time to watch it, so I could watch it again with fewer interruptions, maybe some breaks, but less overall noise around me.

And again, despite liking it the first time, the second time was even better. Normally it’d probably be frowned upon to do a second watch before reviews, because if something is nonsensical on the first watch, I’d want to be able to talk about it. And I will say the choice of a first calm scene in the DA’s office is very odd given the little we know at that point, and it takes maybe too long to pay off, but it still does feel nice by the end.

The film spends a lot of time with exposition of news at the start to get us on the right track, and then does a quick job of introducing the main players, while also taking a real long time to explain the “Chicago 7” vs 8 people on trial part. Which again, when it does in its time, is satisfying and suspenseful.

The acting and writing is clearly the place where this movie would shine the most. I don’t even have to talk about the writing really in a Sorkin movie, but I think he tried to be more subtle in parts when he normally would hammer it along. This is shown a lot in the conversations between Cohen and Redmayne.

Cohen, Abdul-Mateen, and Rylance are the most likely to give oscar nominated performances. Rylance has never been better (on the limited films I have seen). Abdul-Mateen has to give a physical and emotional performance with limited scene time available to him compared to the rest. And Cohen, jeez, it is likely his most normal sounding character role ever and it is just nailed out of the park.

I don’t think Sorkin has mastered the art of directing just yet. But this is a step up from his directing in Molly’s Game. Still some awkward moments and weird decisions here, especially when near the end some of the characters acted like background noise and cartoons during an impactful moment that took away a bit from that impact. Based on what we learned about the judge, he would have been a lot more furious.

The Trial of Chicago 7 is fucking fantastic.

4 out of 4.

The Aeronauts is a an end of year movie that should have had all of the pomp and circumstance of a summer release and…did not. Because Amazon Studios bought it, I guess they felt it only deserved some amount of release, and one of those online a month or so later.

It was really swell of them to do that for me, as I got to see it before the end of 2019!

Although, I was curious about how the device would affect my enjoyment of the movie. So I split it into thirds by time, not my plot (as I hadn’t seen it yet). I started with my regular desktop computer, then the next third was my phone, and my final third was my living room television.

And the results will not surprise you at all!

The results are as shocking as this balloon ride.The Aeronauts is a fictionalized telling of James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne), famed weather scientist, and him going on a balloon to do some science. His goal was to go super high up, higher than anyone else, with all the science equipment in order to help predict weather patterns and just figure out shit about the atmosphere.

His partner in crime? Fictional, Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones), hot air balloon pilot, loosely based on Sophie Blanchard. She was good a piloting, even though on one of her recent missions, her husband (Vincent Perez) died in the balloon, so that sucks a lot. She is all about the flair and the spectacle in order to get financing behind these trips. Science be damned, she just wants to fly and redeem herself.

And yeah. This is a movie about the hot air balloon trip that almost killed them both, where they went higher than any human before, and science’d a whole lot. Sort of based off of a real trip done, but way less crazy.

Also starring Himesh Patel, Phoebe Fox, Rebecca Front, and Robert Glenister.

She’s as cold as ice, but not willing to sacrifice their love. 

First, the screen results. I was much more excited abotu the movie and interested in its plot the bigger the screen. Shocking ahh! If you got to watch this on IMAX, I am jealous, because it is a beautiful movie with a lot of CGI that works really well together to take us on a trip above the clouds.

The biggest selling point for the film is the visuals.

Redmayne and Jones have really good chemistry together, and despite the story being told in a disjointed order, it doesn’t take away from their short and important flight.

Unfortunately, it is also really hard to get super psyched about this movie, knowing it is far closer to a fake tale than anything else. If it was sold just a fiction story? It’d be a fun adventure. But it is being sold as the sort of true story, and now the whole thing is muddled. This is not something you would get actual useful knowledge out of. It should not be seen as educational.

Unfortunately, the whole film is set up in a way to highlight this one big important moment and flight that really didn’t exist. A cool story, destroyed by its details.

2 out of 4.

By all means, tell me that the movie is done by the people who did Wallace and Gromit. Yes I will watch it every time. I won’t always like it, but I respect it enough to give it the shot it deserves. It’s very weird, very British shot.

So why not Early Man, which is going to combine cave man jokes with very British football jokes. Ones I probably wont even fully understand.

And the best news about it is that the cast only has 3 or 4 recognizable names. They are giving roles to actual voice actors, instead of just laying us down with 40 celebrities, some which probably would have only had five or so lines.

Lava is always a nice bonus, in any movie, regardless of context.

A long time ago, dinosaurs! Also this movie is saying cave people. Let’s let it slide. Meteor wipes them all out, not the people somehow. They find the hot meteor left over that created a giant valley, where it is really hot, so they decide to kick it to each other. They invent the game of football, get really happy, and live their lives in the valley.

Now, some time later, we can meet our new crew of cave people. They don’t know soccer anymore, they are relatively stupid as well. Dug (Eddie Redmayne) is young and a thinker, but the rest of the crew are content. They are content until some mammoths with armor come trampling in, as the rest of the world has decided to stop by and say hello. They are stone age cave people meeting for the first time a bronze age civilization, who is intent on mining out their secret valley for minerals, and letting them die.

Thanks to Dug who infiltrates their society, he learns that they play this game of football on the grand, coliseum like scale. This is their main religion! The only way they can probably get out of their jam and get their home back is by challenging their champions to a game. Dug saw these football paintings on their walls, but they never knew what it meant. But if their ancestors played the game, then they probably can figure it out as well!

Also starring Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, Timothy Spall, Richard Ayoade, Miriam Margolyes, Nick Park, Rob Brydon, Johnny Vegas, Selina Griffiths, Simon Greenall, Gina Yashere, and Kayvan Novak.

With that much armor, this thing looks a lot more like…football, than football.

Early Man is one of those basic “ragtag team of misfits pull together to do a sport thing better than professionals, due to teamwork, friendship, and shenanigans!” You know the kind. Despite being the type of thing that we have seen before, Early Man still manages to bring something new to the table.

It has a lot of tiny jokes throughout, a lot of puns they worked towards. And yes, there are some modern British football jokes that mostly would have flown over my head. But I got one or two.

The characters are likable. The caveman crew has a lot of complete characters, who have their individual good jokes or moments to shine. I don’t feel like we only have a few supporting people. The whole crew got to feel supporting, always a great thing in a movie like this.

This is not going to be a game changing animated film. But it is still really well done, at points clever, and tells a fun story. Hell, even the final soccer match seems to deviate away from the norm for these sorts of things. Still some surprised out there for everyone.

3 out of 4.

It has been five years since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 hit our theater screens and ended the Snape is great series. Seven books, eight films, and honestly, it ended it a bit lamer thanks to the split in my mind. But I am over there.

But what if there were more books out there to milk the franchise? I remember when I was a kid when the books were only four volumes deep. My parent gave me Christmas presents, and in them included Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and Quidditch Through The Ages. Two strange Harry Potter spin off books, one basically just talking about made up creatures, the other talking about a made up sports history. I read them, forgot about them, and moved on with my life.

And now look. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is now a movie, a movie based on a book of just made up creatures with no plot whatsoever. Not only that, but it will be FIVE films. And I am okay with it. Mostly because it basically can be whatever it wants to be without getting in anyone’s way. People who read the bestiary won’t get angry that it doesn’t match the book, because there is nothing to match. We can get more magic, without going about it in a weird way, and not involving Potter at all. Awesome. Well done.

Ah, there is a beast right there! I found it!

FBaWtFT is set in the mid 1920’s and in America! Yay America! Our hero is Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a slightly weird looking wizard with a weirder suitcase. It keeps coming undone, has a broken lock, and of course it is magical. Inside that briefcase he has a large collections of, well, fantastic beasts. They are creatures he has saved or is studying. He has gotten to America in order to bring one of his biggest specimens to Arizona, for its wide open skies and climate.

But things immediately go wrong when one of his creatures gets out. This leads him to bumping into Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a Non-Maj (non magic user, american wizard term for muggle). A guy who just wants to get a loan to become a baker. Their suitcases get mixed up, and Kowalski unknowingly lets some more beasts into NYC. They are followed by Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson), a government magic employee who wants to bring Scamander in for his suitcase and for being undocumented. Needless to say in the mix up, she ends up helping Scamander and Kowalski get the beasts back, along with her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol).

While all this is happening? There is a bad wizard out there, Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) and causing problems. There is also a magical bad creature wrecking havoc occasionally on NYC, who the magic president (Carmen Ejogo) is going to go and blame on Scamander too.

There is also a relevant plot of a anti-witch woman (Samantha Morton) who is using her orphans or real kids (not sure) to spread witch hysteria. She is also mean to the kids, including the oldest and most emo looking (Ezra Miller). Also there is a littler girl who is important (Faith Wood-Blagrove).

Also featuring Colin Farrell and a heavily CGI’d Ron Perlman!

Heavily CGI’d because Ron Perlman plays that suitcase!

Fantastic Beasts has a lot riding on it. It is the first film of a franchise they want to start, and if it bombs or fails to set up the world they aren’t going to get filthy rich! Also, thankfully, Harry Potter fans eat up anything world related regardless of quality, which is why some shitty book like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child* can somehow win best fantasy book on Goodreads.

With that introduction, Fantastic Beasts wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t amazing either.

The cast was eclectic, but also felt over stuffed. We had four protagonists really, of which Queenie didn’t seem to do a whole lot. Our Non-Maj was funny, but even he didn’t help with the final encounter (despite a conversation with Queenie about how they were all in it together). They didn’t even show him at the same scene, so I am not sure what the point was. Tina was a character that had her backstory eluded to and explained, but she really had the personality of a wet noodle. It isn’t a bunch of exciting leads like it was with Harry Potter.

In terms of twists, there are technically two of them. The one more important to the plot I didn’t see coming, but the other one by the end felt extremely obvious from one of the first real scenes. It was an annoying reveal, given the circumstances. The ending had a few deus ex machina moments, and was extremely rushed given the overall pace of the film. Editing was surely an issue, given that it was over two hours but still felt like it didn’t give all the important details.

On all of those notes, I did enjoy Redmayne as the lead. His character felt different but not over the top. The beasts shown were diverse and fantastic looking. But I don’t appreciate that the answer to “where to find them” is apparently in his brief case. There is no hunting of beasts in their natural habitat at all. Well, maybe one. The visuals were fun, the briefcase gag was used well, and there were a few cute moments.

Overall, I have no idea where this franchise is going, but I am certain soon it will eventually give us a young Dumbledore, so that is fun.

2 out of 4.

* – I haven’t read this one yet. I am assuming it is bad though. Judging a book by its cover. I can do that for books, just never movies!

Eddie Redmayne, you son of a bitch. I feel like it was first announced before he even won his award for Best Actor for The Theory of Everything. You know, the news that he would be starring in a film next year called The Danish Girl.

The story for the first male to female transition. The first transgendered person to physically change their sex.

Holy fuck. What are you doing Redmayne? Are you that desperate for two acting awards? Or is this to make amends for Jupiter Ascending.

Either way, you should enjoy this Conan clip from awhile back about Redmayne and his history of playing women.

And this is where it all began.

Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is a young painter living in Copenhagen, Denmark in the 1920s. Life is wonderful. He lives with his wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), who is also a painter, but she mostly deals with portraits. Einar is successful at his landscapes and often has bidders. Gerda cannot get a show, because people don’t care about portraits, no matter how well done they are.

Their best friend is a dancer, Ulla (Amber Heard), who keeps flaking on their appointments, so Gerda uses Einar to finish the portrait. He just has to wear the tights and shoes and keep the same pose, no big deal. Either way, they all find it hysterical and they call this new persona Lili.

But it turns out Lili might not be something new. Maybe it goes way back in Einar’s wife when he was kid playing with one of his friends, Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), a metal name if any. Either way, Einar doesn’t like public shows, but wants his wife to go to a big one to be scene for her art’s sake. And they agree that he should go in disguise, as Lily. It is very deceiving to everyone outside of their BFF. He is so good at being feminine!

Okay, I will stop beating around the bush. This act nor the first act made him realize he was a woman on the inside. But damn it, it certainly gets him on the path. The path that makes doctors think he should be locked up, to try radical treatments, and eventually, the right doctor who is willing to really listen to him and help. Also featuring Ben Whishaw, as a fellow Denmarkian who totally falls for Lili.

Yeah, I’d say he is a little bit convincing.

This rating is the same rating I gave to The Theory of Everything. I recognized how great Redmayne’s acting was, but the story just didn’t live up to his acting.

In this case, the story lived up to the acting, it just wasn’t as amazing as I had hoped.

Let’s be clear. Redmayne was beyond fantastic. At least a block or two past the word. His transition was incredibly believable. His mannerisms, his weight loss, his fucking everything. I can’t imagine a better person to do this role than him. A third of the way into it, I forgot it was Redmayne, and was so engrossed in the character.

I also need to talk about Vikander, who is having a killer year seemingly out of nowhere (See: Ex Machina, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). Her character went through a lot as well, you know, having her husband lose attractiveness to her and come out as a woman. It was hard on her in real life, and you could see the pain in Vikander’s eyes, not sure what she should do or encourage. In fact, this film really should have been called The Danish Girls to a bit more accurate.

Some may say it is too much about the wife though. A lot of scenes from her point of view, keeping Lili a bit more of a mystery. It did a lot for the real Lili Elbe, but man, the filmmakers almost tried to make it about her wife and not her herself. (Is that grammatically correct? Screw it).

Despite the wonderful acting, there were slower moments. Sometimes they took too long to get to the next important scene. Some parts felt repetitive. But if Redmayne wins again (which I am not calling it yet, because there are some still great acting films coming out this year), it probably won’t feel repetitive, just awesome for a young great actor.

3 out of 4.

I don’t think I am ready for this Jelly.

When I first heard about Jupiter Ascending, I was a bit worried. It seemed too far out there, with questionable stars, and a questionable plot. But hey, summer blockbuster, whatever.

JUST KIDDING. It got switched from June to July. But in June, it got pushed back to FEBRURARY 2015. Whoa! That is intense. Blockbusters don’t exist in February. Shitty terrible CGI movies exist in February. This one is going to have a lot of CGI! Ahh!

Apparently it was to finish special effects. They were behind schedule. Right. More likely they moved it back for some terrible reason, like, no faith that it would make money and they just wanted to hide it. Not to mention their awkward Sundance story, they have everything working against them.

The real reason they moved it back was to not ruin Redmayne‘s chance at an acting Oscar.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) always thought she was going to do something with her life. But now she is a grown woman, still living with her mom and extended family in Chicago, technically illegal aliens from Russia. She scrubs toilets and dreams of the big life.

And then, aliens from not Earth are trying to kill her! Oh shit!

Here’s what you need to know. There is some space royalty out there. And the mother, the main ruler just died so her kids have inherited a lot of the universe. The oldest, Balem (Eddie Redmayne), the middle female, Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), and the youngest, Titus (Douglas Booth). They are humans, they have been alive for thousands of years, and they look young as fuck.

But now Balem has “control” over Earth (and Jupiter, I guess). And he wants Jupiter Jones, specifically, dead. And maybe the rest of the earth. Jupiter has no idea what is going on, just that aliens are real, Caine (Channing Tatum) has weird ears and keeps saving her, and shit’s crazy.

Also featuring Sean Bean, lizard men soldiers, crazy visuals, pew pew pews, bees, and more pew pew pews.

And the coolest (technically still slow) form of transportation sense the hover board.

Jupiter Ascending was weird. And I really can’t tell if that is a good weird or a bad weird.

Easy enough of a solution, let’s get my pros and cons on.

Pros: There is a unique story behind everything. Some of the special effects are really polished and amazing. Sean Bean is in it. Channing Tatum isn’t terrible. Mila Kunis isn’t terrible. The lizard dudes out of no where are pretty well made and bamf. Roller skating/gravity boots. Bureaucracy. And it is definitely more polished than a shitty January/February CGI movie release.

Cons: The entire romance plot feels forced. Some of the special effects are piss poor and terrible. The sound quality in some scenes make a few actors hard to understand (Bean, Redmayne, occasional lizardman). Entire movie feels rushed, like it was actually supposed to be thirty minutes longer. Like some executive said “Fuck this rescue scene. We know they will save em. Let’s just get the plot going!”

And then there is Eddie Redmayne. Every time he was on screen, my head was tilted just trying to get it. Everything about him is just so weird. His character has an awkawrd soft/whisper voice for most of the film, outside of the three or four times he yells completely out of nowhere. Also tons of quick cuts.

Ugh. But also the story was interesting and I cared about what happened.

There are a lot of things wrong with Jupiter Ascending. Acting decisions, editing, cuts, kind of lame ending. But also some really great action scenes, cool visuals, and interesting universe.

Fuck.

2 out of 4.

The Theory Of Everything. Quite a bold title for such a short movie. Alright, it is about two hours, but I figured it would take a lot longer than 2 hours to fully discuss and show The Theory Of Everything.

What? What’s that? It isn’t actually going to answer this question? Fuckers. No. The Theory Of Everything is actually a biographical romance film about Stephen Hawking. Yes, the Stephen Hawking. That makes sense that he would have a biographical movie I guess. He is a really smart and well known individual and given his conditions it would allow for some sexy sexy acting to occur. But I always feel weird watching a biographical film when the person in question is still alive. What if he still does something super fucking awesome, like, maybe finding an actual Theory of Everything? This film will feel like such a waste at that point. They’d have to do another one to include that monumental occasion.

What? What’s that? This movie isn’t entirely about Stephen Hawking?

Shit, let’s just get the plot details out then so I can stop making assumptions.

Although, with that grin, I am pretty sure I know who farted.

This film starts us off in the roaring 1960s at Cambridge. That is in the UK, for those non worldly readers out there. Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) is just a physics PhD student who doesn’t know what he wants to study! He is definitely smarter than the rest of his colleagues, everyone knows it. Especially Professor Sciama (David Thewlis), the most important person who needs to know that information, and he encourages Stephen to see a few exciting talks and labs that they have to offer for research projects.

But Stephen finds himself interested in something else. Namely, the body, voice, and brain of one Jane (Felicity Jones), a literature student who hopes to one day maybe get a PhD herself. For whatever reason, she sees something in his goofy face and is pretty sure she loves him back.

And then, a motor neuron disease starts to take hold. His legs and hands stop working as well as they used to be. Walking is hard. Writing is hard. Living is hard. He is becoming slowly paralyzed, his entire body, with about 2 years left to live. Jane doesn’t care. She wants to work through it with him. So in his last 2 years, he gets his PhD, gets married, and has a child! But then he is still alive.

And well, obviously, alive to this day.

Also featuring Charlie Cox and Emily Watson as two different caretakers for Mr. Hawking and are in his life way more than you’d might expect, and for different reasons.

Paralyzed yet still made 3 kids? Yeah, not everything turns off down there.

Alright, first thing you may have thought about when hearing this movie was My Left Foot. Or at least that is what I did. Daniel Day-Lewis, the master actor that he is, gave an incredibly performance of a crippled individual and won many praises for it. Eddie Redmayne will win very very similar praises.

Whether it is strong enough on its own to win overall? I doubt it, although it is still incredibly impressive. Also impressive? Felicity Jones. She had a lot to do with this film as well, and nothing felt forced or fake from her. It was also a great performance.

My biggest issue with this story is that it is based on a memoir from Jane Hawking, and thus most of the focus is on them and not Stephen Hawking. That’s right, this is technically more of a Jane Hawking bio movie, not Stephen. Bet you didn’t see that coming. And due to that reason, we have a huge lack of science and talk about his work in this movie. They touch on some light basics, but everything feels like it is super dumbed down and only headline creating topics hit. It felt awkward to rush through all of his academic successes and really made me feel like I was missing something.

Also, the one thing that was definitely missing was some sort of timeline to show us when things occurred. I can’t tell if he was able to finish his PhD and have the baby in the two years he was supposed to live or not. Obviously he lasted longer, but when did the milestones occur? They should have really forced the accomplishments on us and let us know how truly wonderful it was.

3 out of 4.

Audiences rejoice! There is finally a Les Miserables movie! Alright, so personally I haven’t been waiting a long time, just a year max. I mostly was excited about the cast! I like musicals, but never really heard the music in this one. I did give the 25th Anniversary soundtrack a listen a few times, just to be familiar with the songs, but I had no idea what was happening plot wise.

But apparently Hugh Jackman gets to sport a killer beard.

The plot? It is anything but simple. The main plot line is about Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), Prisoner 24601, getting paroled after 19 years in a post revolution France. What did he do? Stole a bit of bread. Sucks. Either way, he breaks the parole after turning his life around for God, hoping to be a better man. But breaking the parole is a another crime, meaning he must be on the run his whole life from Officer Javert (Russell Crowe) who follows the law to the letter, regardless of circumstances.

There are however many more plotlines, including the fall of a factory worker, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), into prostitution, in order to provide money for her daughter Cosette (eventually Amanda Seyfried). Well, Jean Valjean agrees to look after the daughter, but has to remain on the run. Eventually it is the 1832 Paris Uprising, which adds in a love story between Cosette, Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a freedom fighter, and Eponine (Samantha Barks). Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter provide comic relief as innkeepers/beggers, and Aaron Tveit as the leader of the student revolution.

Eddie Redmayne. Turns out he has a decent singing voice, despite not even knowing who the heck he was before this movie.

Alright, so I rushed through the plot to talk about the actual movie. Interestingly enough, the music in the movie was not done off set with the actors miming like most musicals, but sung during the shoots and recorded that way. You know, like an actual theatrical musical! It really gave the film a bit more of a raw emotional feel to it. What was more impressive in that department when they had really really long shots, so you knew that they just sang the entire song in one go. When Hathaway dreamed that dream, I cried due to the shear emotion in that song and scene.

A lot of bad talk has been given to Russell Crowe, who is obviously not a Broadway caliber singer, but I thought his unpolished voice brought a lot of personality into his role, and he felt a bit more real because of it.

But this was Jackman’s movie to win or lose, and he put on quite a performance, that sly dog. From the bearded warrior, to a mayor, to a runaway, to a freedom fighter, he is everywhere, and his performance was phenomenal.

If I had one major complaint, it would be that the ending felt a little bit hokey to me. Just a bit, still made me cry though.

4 out of 4.

Everyone loves Marilyn Monroe. This is what people are saying. Apparently she is big right now, according to Smash. I don’t know why, I haven’t noticed any people talking about her more than she has been talked about the last 10 years. But since people are saying it, it must be true!

And that is why we get My Week With Marilyn. Based off of Marilyn Monroe coming to London to do a movie, and having a very brief relationship with some guy.

There she is. What a camera whore.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is just a guy. He wants to be in film and also likes Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) but who doesn’t? He tries to work under the great Laurence Oliver (Kenneth Branagh), because Marilyn Monroe is coming to shoot The Prince and The Showgirl. Through persistence, he becomes the assistant director.

Hey, Marilyn Monroe is weird. She has her own acting coach, and keeps trying to do things weirdly, even refusing to get lines right because she says it doesn’t make sense for her character. Turns out Oliver doesn’t think highly of her, or her constant delays of the production, and claims he got her for her looks, not her talent. She hates that shit. Know who else hates it all? Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), her husband at the time. He was making a play also kind of making fun of her. So they fight about it all and he goes back to America.

TIME FOR COLIN CLARK TO MAKE HIS MOVE. Even though he is also kind of dating the costume design girl, Lucy (Emma Watson). Despite her reputation as a heart breaker, Clark hangs out with her a lot more. And then they do some things (Each other), and then eventually she leaves to go back to America when the movie is done, leaving Clark all sad and heartbroken.

But you don’t care about Clark do you? You care about Hermione.

So how was it? Well first, my fault clearly, I didn’t think it would only be a week of her life. But then again, that was the title. I actually thought it would be a full Monroe movie. I’m sure there is already 30 of those, though. Also, this isn’t going for an accurate portrayal of Marilyn. It is going through Clark’s eyes, how she was and felt to him, and it shows. She seems otherworldly in this movie, and also crazy. But definitely on a pedestal the whole time, and almost like she is better than the rest.

But I found the entire thing uninteresting. It could have been about any actress I felt, and made them weird, not just Marilyn. The movie they are filming doesn’t seem to be that popular/important of a film either, so it doesn’t hold much cultural significance. Just the premise in general makes Marilyn seem like a person with bad morals, which I am sure she wasn’t.

Right? Right?

But yeah. Probably only interesting to someone who already likes Marilyn Monroe. Everyone else won’t care, and will find it kind of boring.

1 out of 4.

One of the central plots in The Invention of Lying was that the main guy was a writer/actor whatever, and in their world, all they did was read about the past for their movie. He got assigned the shitty years apparently, and the only event he had to work with really was the Black Plague. As they constantly joked in that movie, you can’t make a good movie about the Black Death!

When I heard that I called BS. Who wouldn’t want a nice movie about the Black Death? Shit was crazy! Disease, dead people, more diseases, populations wiped out. No real war I guess…probably some accusations of black magic. Maybe that is it. But you know?

Looks like SOMETHING is about to happen.

So obviously this movie is about disease. And one village that is getting destroyed by it hears rumors of another village that has not been plagued. Sean Bean, all knightly, wants to go investigate. He gets a group of people, including the priest monk dude Eddie Redmayne.

The journey takes awhile and then eventually they find the village! Lead by a woman, Carice van Houten, who might be a necromancer? What? She has apparently brought someone back to life. Oh shit, they aren’t Christians!

And yeah. The plot is basically that. They try to figure out if the woman really has powers, are trying to find out why the village has had no plague, and you know, not get killed in the process. But that plan also goes poorly. People get locked up, and maybe sacrificed.

The movie had a lot more pretty brutal violence than I was expecting, almost reminded me of Saw levels, just in action movie form not horror. So that torture porn stuff might be relevant.

She’s a witch! Burn her!

And yeah. I think I know what the movie was overall going for. Closer to the end the themes were a bit better to pick up on, and what might have been occurring with the main characters. BUT. It just took way too long to get to that point. By then I could barely find myself interested in the movie. I was actually turned off by the amount of violence in this movie, if you can believe that. So it wasn’t really the type of experience I was hoping for a Black Plague movie. But then again, not sure what kind of experience I’d expect.

1 out of 4.