Tag: Eva Green

The first of the three Disney remakes this year, Dumbo has always felt like an odd choice for several reasons.

First, the original Dumbo doesn’t have a whole lot of plot going on for it. It is a simple story, so they will have to expand a lot of it in order to be worth a revisit.

Second, it was going to be directed by Tim Burton. For the most part, everything he has touched lately has been pretty shit. It has been five years since Big Eyes and 12 years since Sweeney Todd. A lot of forgettable things in between. Could he reimagine it, or will he just make it his basic Burton brand?

And thirdly, like…who the hell cares about Dumbo? Honestly? I can honestly understand most of the remakes, but I can’t imagine Dumbo was high on the list of the average viewer of something they wanted new and updated.

That doesn’t include the people who say no to every remake.

Our main-est adult character is Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), an amputee from World War I (not called that during the movie) has returned home for work, and well, is going to work for the circus. His old boss (Danny DeVito) gives him the job to take care of the pregnant elephant, and Ms. Jumbo gives birth under his watch to a strange, large ear having elephant baby.

What a weirdo! And when they show him off eventually, the crowd makes fun of him, calls him Dumbo, and that makes his mom so mad, she gets angry and causes a ruckus, so they have to get rid of her. Damn.

Well, Holt’s kids are with him, and Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins) take a liking to Dumbo. Shit, they find out he can fly if he has a feather. That sounds fun. That sounds like something that can be exploitable!

And exploit the circus does! More and more stunts, bigger and bigger audiences, more and more money!

Also featuring Michael Keaton, Eva Green, and Alan Arkin.

This frame went on to inspire the film Joker.

The original Dumbo came out in 1941, so that means two things. Honestly, a lot of people have probably never seen it. And sure, 78 years is probably long enough to wait for a remake. Much longer wait for more films. I won’t hurt them for that.

For those that saw the original, there is not a lot of film after Dumbo both learns to fly and learns to do it whenever he feels like it. So a lot of this film takes place after that, which is great. I need expanded stories.

However, they sure picked a dull way to expand his story. Just more exploitation and sadness, and corporations taking over corporations as some weird meta explaining what Disney is doing to everything.

The cast of characters are completely ones that no one will care about. Our lead girl to help inspire the youth of the world has the personality of “liking science” and apparently that is good enough.

And honestly, this whole thing was unappealing to look at. It felt too dark physically at times.The animation never grappled with me, and yes, this film oozes Burton.

I would say this is the biggest live action mistake Disney has done, but I would watch this film a dozen more times before I ever watch either of the Alice films again. Which are directed or produced by Burton too. Ah, now we know where the major problem lies.

If I was a White Bird, I would stay far away from blizzards.

Correction, if I was any color bird, I would stay away from all forms of snow. Fuck that. Birds and snow don’t go together. I am also under the impression that penguins are secretly fish. I don’t think my bird body could deal with snow, let alone lots of it.

So sure, a White Bird In A Blizzard may be impossible to see, but if you are any bird in a blizzard, you are probably fucked regardless, right?

Maybe the moral of this movie, that I haven’t watched yet, is that you are fucked either way, but sometimes you are fucked and invisible.

What? This shit isn’t even a metaphor? She is literally in a blizzard people, wearing white, and being white!

First off, get your time machines ready, this movie takes place in the past. Namely, the late 80’s and very early 90’s. So not too distant, but also before some of you were born.

No cell phones, no GPS, no facebooks, so when Kat’s (Shailene Woodley) mom, Eve (Eva Green), goes missing, there is not a lot they can do to find her. She vanished with no trace and no sign of fowl play. Kat’s dad, Brock (Christopher Meloni), is terribly shook up. Brock is a beta bitch, a pushover, and really doesn’t know how to live comfortably after this news. It seems Eve just grew a bit crazy, being a housewife, not getting to be as wild as she used to be, having to make dinner and stay at home all day. So she just bailed, especially when Brock didn’t really fulfill her sexually.

And who could fulfill her sexually, based on her movie history? And based on his TV history.

Either way, all of this has messed up Kat’s social life a bit. She is blossoming into a flower and doesn’t want to be like her mom, so she has sex when she wants and with who she wants. Usually her neighbor/boyfriend (Shiloh Fernandez). But maybe older men who she shouldn’t be messing with. Maybe.

Oh well. Life sucks. Kat feels lost. And she has to rely on her relationships, her friends (Mark Indelicato, Gabourey Sidibe) and the Detective (Thomas Jane) to help her get by unscathed without being too messed up.

A strong independent black woman and a gay male, the best of best friends represented.

Whoa. This movie dealt with some serious issues. Let’s compare them to Miss Woodley’s other work!

Divergent didn’t really deal with anything serious, as it was clearly just an intense high school film. She didn’t make it into the final cut of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie, so no issues at all. The Fault In Our Stars was about death and life at a young age, so we are getting closer. And The Spectacular Now also had a lot of serious issues.

But the issues in this movie are definitely the most serious. And most shocking, given her status as a younger franchise leading woman now. Because this movie deals with a lot of sex, and because of that, sex happens, and yeah, I can see why maybe the Divergent producers maybe wanted to hide this movie from the general public. They might not want their young star being in movies all naked and having sex with older men. Might ruin imaging.

This might be why White Bird In A Blizzard didn’t get a super wide or public release. It kind of just snuck out of nowhere on my radar. It is based on a book, but who cares.

Or or or or hey. Or maybe. Just maybe. It didn’t get a wide release because it wasn’t the best film?

I mean, it had some nice moments. But it also had a lot of dull ones. I don’t think it fell into too many cliches, it just didn’t really seem like a movie that would never stick with me too long after watching it. I won’t forget about the entire movie in a month, just most of it.

I don’t know how people reviewed the movie Sin City when it came out, I just know that Sin City: A Dame To Kill For will be pretty hard to review.

Sin City itself was pretty polarizing. I think overall it was on the positive side of the spectrum for most people (including me). The art style was something very different and took awhile for some people to get used to. It was also pseudo copied with The Spirit, which a lot of people hated (and those people also suck).

But a sequel has long been in development and long been clamored for, as the original came out in 2005. Almost took 10 years to get another installment. It has to live up to a lot of pressure, so I hope it can deliver.

Now with more nakedness than ever before.

Sin City is a land where dreams come true. Assuming your dreams involve corruption, drugs, sex, betrayal, murder, lawlessness, crime, death, and other synonyms. Shit is weak. Shit is weak everywhere.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) is still running around, being a badass. If you like him, good news, he is basically in every plot line.

Like when Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes to town, looking for secretive revenge and wanting to use his elite poker skills to do it. Or when Nancy the never naked Stripper (Jessica Alba) wants to enact revenge on the death of Hartigan (Bruce Willis) from the first film. Or when Dwight (Josh Brolin) has to go an save Ava (Eva Green) from an abusive relationship, taking out an inhuman body guard Manute (Dennis Haysbert).

So, basically Marv is everywhere. Yay continuity?

Also featuring others, like Rosario Dawson and Powers Boothe bringing back their old characters. Or like Jamie Chung, taking over someone else character. And some people in much smaller roles, like Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven and Christopher Lloyd who is like 150 at this point.

If only there were angels out there for him to help out?

More action! More death! More sex! Is Sin City: A Dame To Kill For a step in the franchise? Or is it just too late?

Hard to say what the reason is, but this movie felt incredibly lack luster for me. Maybe it is because when Sin City first came up, it was before comic book movies really started to amp up their games. Before The Dark Knight before the Marvel films. Because for the most part, this story / set of stories feels very familiar, yet still distant.

Maybe I am annoyed at just how connected they wanted everything to feel? I liked the disjointedness of the first film, just a few short stories and then another.

Maybe it is just the quality of the stories? For what it is worth, there are basically three plot lines. The middle being the longest and most complete, or at least featuring the most characters, but even it dragged by the end. The “first” plot with JG-L didn’t feel interesting, and Alba’s felt not as epic as it was going for.

Maybe it is that the style feels stale after all this time, with the 3D elements never really enhancing it like I had hoped?

Maybe I don’t know. The only thing I know is this movie felt like a great disappointment. But also, maybe I am just getting older.

Let’s talk about History. You know I like history, and studied Ancient History. We’ve been through that many times. I remember seeing the first 300 in theaters and being amazed by what I saw. I was so surprised and excited and at the edge of my seat. Later viewings, the excitement died a bit down, and I didn’t really like the movie as much. That is sad.

So why not a sequel, what, 8 years later? Based on the sequel graphic novel, Xerxes, that isn’t even out yet. 300: Rise of an Empire is also based on history I guess. You see, when the Spartans were forcing Xerxes’ forces to a bottle neck point, the Athenians and other Greece fighters were doing the same sort of strategy but with boats. Overall, both sides stalled enough time to eventually defeat Xerxes’ army!

Spoilers? No, fuck you, that’s history. So let’s get our boat on, and hopefully this movie doesn’t suck. After all, it doesn’t have what I will now call the “Gerard Butler Star Power” aspect that the first one had.

This man is not Gerard Butler.

Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) is a great Athenian, bu he wants to be a great Greek. He wants to unite the country, all of the city states (including Sparta) under one banner. He has wanted this for years, and it doesn’t help (or does it?) that Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is at their doorstep.

But Greece doesn’t want to do it. They have democracy now, so he can’t force them. He instead will go out with the small force and try and stall until a martyr can be formed, hopefully uniting the country and helping them win the war. He also has to deal with Artemisia (Eva Green), a Greek traitor who has risen through the ranks in Persia, leading his entire navy and wanting to see Athens burn.

But this isn’t just any sequel to 300. No, we also get material that happens before the invasion. We get the Battle of Marathon, ten years prior! We get to see how lowly Prince Xerxes became Xerxes the GodKing. And of course, we also get to see that after effects to the 300 getting slaughtered.

Lena Headey reprises her role as Queen Gorgo, and Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey, and Jack O’Connell are the other soldiers who get speaking lines in the Athens boat force.

This shit is real too. A Greek woman commanded the Persian fleet. How progressive!

I am conflicted writing this review, just because I know I initially liked 300, and then started to kind of hate it. So, if I initially like this version too, will I hate it in a year?

I…don’t…think…so…?

I liked this one. Shit, thinking back on how much I liked 300, I think this one is actually a superior film. The problem with 300 really is that it got boring to me in later viewings. The beginning takes forever, and the fights feel repetitive once they start. It didn’t have lasting appeal. This movie balances all of that a lot more. We have a fight to begin, then some back story where cool shit happens. Then we have more fights, and then some fights, then some story, then more and more fights. Hell, we also have probably the most ridiculous sex scene I have ever seen in a film.

But I liked it.

That might have sound creepier than I intended. I liked all of the description above, not just the last sentence of the paragraph.

Mr. Not Gerard Butler? He was pretty charismatic. I really wanted to go up and help him unite Greece and defeat the Persians. Sullivan Stapleton, listen to me right now. Do NOT start starring in RomComs after this movie. None of those roles for Butler are good.

The ending could have ended on a more complete note. I am pretty sure they aren’t setting it up for another eventual film, because the last fight is the Battle Of Salamis, which basically ended the invasion into Greece. So, if they had them posing for victory, or Xerxes running, it would have told the whole ending. This part was left a bit too open ended for my sake.

Did I mention all the cool shit that they did? Man, boat battles sure are fun. No wonder why Rome flooded the Colosseum every once in awhile to hold them for audiences.

Dark Shadows!…Did anyone go see this film in theaters? I mean really? I don’t think I heard a single person thinking “Yes! Time to watch a remake of a 60s Soap Opera!”

Not saying that it was a bad decision to turn Dark Shadows into a movie. First off, I’ve actually seen that show. Like, maybe up to 20 episodes. Who cares if it has over a thousand? Shut up. It was eerie when I was a kid. Secondly, 21 Jump Street just happened. It was a movie version of an older TV show, changed the genre, and was awesome. So why not Dark Shadows?

Oh yeah. Erm.

The Collins family moved to New England from Britain way back in the 1700s, and pretty much founded their own town with their richness, Collinsport. Port, yes, because they do fishing business and continued to grow their fortune. Their son, Barnabus (Johnny Depp) was falling in love with a maid, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), but the parents would not allow it. Then the parents were killed. Whoops. Turns out Angelique is a witch, and got pissed off. Didn’t stop Barnabus from falling in love with another woman, who ended up killing herself under a curse. Barnabus tries to kill himself, but whoops, he’s now a vampire because Angelique is a mean mean person, and then becomes imprisoned for the next 200 years.

Hey look, the 1970s. Collinsport is now barely Collins owned territory. The house in shambles, the fortune all mostly gone and shit. Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) is now the head of the house, and has a 15 year old daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz). Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is an asshole, single father after the wife drowned, with a younger son David (Guilliver McGrath). He is kind of messed up, so they have a psychiatrist there, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helan Bonham Carter). Oh yeah, also a housekeeper Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) who has to work too hard for one guy.

Either way, they need a governess for David, and mysterious Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) answers the call.

BUT WHO CARES, BARNABUS RETURNS. Joins the family, wants to get their business back up, restore the name, and woo Victoria. But witches. And he is a vampire. Oh man, shenanigans.

Dem eyes.

So, from what I can tell, this movie is a lot like the show in many ways. No one really cared about the show too much until Barnabus joined the cast, like 200 episodes in, then it became a huge hit. So much like the show, Victoria was the main character early on, after all the back story, until Barnabus came back, and then she only had a few scenes. With Barnabus, and not too many lines. Bugged me.

Overall, I found the entire movie to be too ridiculous, so maybe that is keeping itself true to its soap opera roots? But found it hard to get in to. It really didn’t feel like Dark Shadows, due to its attempt to be a big comedy. I almost think this would have been better received if it tried again to be its own story that had nothing to do with Dark Shadows characters/names/pseudo-plots.

I thought Helena was aweful in the film, and Jonny Lee Miller was pointless as well. My favorite casting choice was probably Haley as the groundskeeper, he did make me laugh.

But overall, this just didn’t feel entertaining to me, and felt like every other recent Burton/Depp movie.

Ohh boy, Perfect Sense? I love movies about sense. I don’t love the notion that they like to assume that there is only five senses still, but I do like talking about them nonetheless.

But add in the possible end of the world? Well then yeah, that sounds like a double winner for me.

Who knows what they are doing underneath those masks!

Ewan McGregor is being all British and living in Glasgow, as a pretty fancy Chef. He meets a girl who is not at all impressed by him at first, Eva Green. But he is consistent, yelling from the alleys and what not. She is an epidemiologist. Someone who studies health events, disease spreads and what not.

Which gives an inside scoop as to what is happening. They randomly have some dude who lost his ability to smell completely. They are keeping him quarentened to determine if it is contagious, and doesn’t appear to be.

Yet it spreads. First people start crying uncontrollably, and once they are done, their smell is completely gone. Soon after that, their taste. Needless to say, once smell and taste are gone, people are less likely to go to a fancy restaurant. Seems pointless. Yet still, people must eat!

These are the minor complications of what is going on. It shows how people react to them throughout the world, but that isn’t the main point of the movie. It is the love between the two characters that develop. Unfortunately, and no one has any idea why, eventually after taste goes, the ability to hear falters too. Well fuck. That makes everything difficult. And even further after that, sight.

Needless to say, something effecting everyone around the world to slowly lose most of their abilities to perceive the world is kind of a bitch. People flip out, looting, and a general fear of leaving the house. What if you leave and become blind and already can’t hear? Fucked then. TV stations seem to be flashing the message of hope, that they are looking for the problem, to stay inside, etc. But does it work.

Further more, once Ewan and Eva have a big fight and leave each others lives, will they be able to find each other again before it all goes black? Or you know, will it all go back to normal?

Also featuring Connie Nielson, as Eva’s sister, and Stephen Dillane, as another cook.

But neither are worthy of a picture, when there could be a picture of Ewan sitting down instead.

Pretty crazy circumstances to build a love story around, I say. And It is AWESOME that they tried it. Well done.

But I think a lot of the delivery I overhyped, and was left wanting a bit more. The final scene? Yeah, it was good and romantic up to the gills. Which is what they really wanted to do. But I still think it was missing something.

The narrator of the movie bugged the crap out of me. She talked a lot, but not about a lot of different things. Just love, true love, etc. I got the point, and wished the movie could have just played out without all the interruptions.

Also took me awhile to figure out that some of the events were shown out of order. No need to play games with me movie. I am already dealing with sensory loss.

Originally I didn’t see Cracks as a movie that was coming out soon, and would have never even noticed it. But because Marry Me turned out to be a fake movie (a lifetime mini-series? fuck that), I had an open spot and stumbled upon this one!

Three fiances, Lucy Liu? I am calling whore on this.

Anyways, this is an independent “foreign” film, British, and based off of a book of the same name. I’d link you to the wiki, wiki has neither the book or author as a page. Hmmm. Seems not too popular.

It tells of an all girls boarding school, presumably high school level. Or I hope at least. I know what you’re thinking: All girl boarding school? Sounds like Lesbian central. Well, yeah. Felt like it to me at least. Even had an awkward (because they are supposed to be high school girls (I think)) scene where the big group went skinny dipping. Not actually, but portrayed as young titties anyone? The group of girls is a HS dive team, taught by the cool younger hip teacher. But a girl from Spain transfers over, far from her family, and is an excellent diver.

Kind of excellent at everything. Makes the other girls hate her. Jealousy! She gets attention! She is better than them! She should be punished!

The bad part of this movie is that the beginning is too slow. Sure, things happen, most of which are important, but they are at a slow more natural pace. Roughly 70 minutes in, out of 100, is where the real crazy shit happens. That last half hour is very much a series of OH SHIT moments, none of which I will tell you about. You might be able to guess everything that happens, from the earlier clues, but man is it intense.

The teacher is played by Eva Green who has done some things. Most recently she is Morgan in the new Camelot series.

So overall, great ending! Beginning far too slow. Good. Interesting. But still kind of slow. The British must think that Lesbian schools take awhile to get used to.

Yep. Lesbians. All of them.