Tag: Fantasy

I was just as shocked as everybody else that The Book of Life and The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Film. But also, I did give the former a 2 and the latter a 3, only. The two I gave 4’s made it and the other was a 3. So clearly, I was really on my game with the Academy.

But how was I to suspect that some foreign animated films would make it?! Crazy talk!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli movie, which tends to mean quality. I didn’t even know they did movies without Miyazaki, but there ya go!

I would describe this animation style as “moving painting.”

The story begins with an old bamboo cutter (James Caan), being in the forest, cutting bamboo. He sees a glowing plant, and from it drops a tiny little princess girl that can fit in his hands. Shit that’s weird. He obviously brings it back home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen), and bam. That tiny thing turns into a regular sized baby. And hey, his wife suddenly has milk inducing boobies!

That stuff is crazy. The baby grows quickly too, so the local village kids nickname her Little Bamboo. Soon, the princess (Chloe Grace Moretz) is running around with all the kids, singing songs, playing games, going on adventures. Her best friend is Sutemaru (Darren Criss).

But her dad takes her away from the forest to the city. They get a big house with clothes and someone to teach her how to be a real princess (Lucy Liu). That means being a super obedient girl, basically. Seen but not heard. Never showing emotion. Never doing fun things. Terrible.

Kaguya doesn’t want that, no matter how pretty she is. She will avoid suitors at all cost and fight the good fight. You go Glen Kaguya.

Excitingly, the art matches the emotion really fucking well.

The story is actually based on a famous Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Clearly western influence made them focus more on the princess than the boring old wood cutter. It is very close to the main narrative, but in all honesty, this version is probably way better. I see there are tons of movies based on this tale already, mostly live action. But again, this is one is probably way better.

Because this one was fucking awesome!

Like, incredibly. I talked about how crazy The Wind Rises, using “Traditional 2D Animation” but feeling like a 3D CGI wonderland. This one instead felt like a living painting, like I was watching an artist make each individual scene in front of me. Just super quick. I guess actors were hanging around too to talk as the characters. The metaphor isn’t perfect, but the animation is.

Left Behind is a serious of movies books that I remember hearing about when I was a kid. They were about The Rapture from the Christian Bible, where those who were judged holy enough got to go to Heaven, and the rest of the yokels on Earth had 7 years of destruction, sadness, whatever, before…I dunno, the apocalypse or something.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, one would imagine. At that point everyone would realize that Jesus was real, and start being super super religious and good. I couldn’t imagine any amount of chaos after like, a week, because people would generally prefer Heaven to Hell.

But it was a successful franchise, it had at least ten books and a couple movies that people enjoyed enough to enter our American conscious. And this…this is about the same thing? Maybe a reboot of some sort? Maybe a one off? Who knows.

Get on the phone and tell me all the information!

The Steele family is going through hard times. The dad, Rayford (Nick Cage), is a pilot and away from a home a lot because of it. A year ago, his wife found Jesus and got super awkward with the rest of her family. The daughter, Chloe (Nicky Whelan) is away from college and not home much. She is now! But her dad had a last minute flight thing, so she figured she’d see him in the airport before going home.

And look at that. He is fucking a flight attendant (Cassi Thomson). He even lied about the flight being last minute as he got concert tickets weeks ago for a concert in their location! He is avoiding the family. Must be from the weird mom.

Anyways, she also meets Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), a TV correspondent of something. They hit it off too, and he will spy on her dad when she goes home. OMG RAPTURE. Hey, all the kids are missing and super religious people. Stuff starts to crash, people loot, people freak out.

But more importantly, people take a very very long time to figure out what is going on.

Long enough for a quick fly and fuck though.

I didn’t find out til after watching the film, but not only is this is a reboot of the franchise, but it was done by the same people who did the other Left Behind movies. So hey, they are trying. I guess. At least someone is famous in it!

And let’s talk about how annoying this movie was. Very. First of all, it took too long for the characters on the screen to figure out what was happening. Even the strongest of Atheists would figure it out in a couple of minutes. Honestly. If things like that start to happen, things that are magical in nature, the human being will go to the explanation that can cause everything the simplest way. All of your Christian friends and kids missing kind of feels like a dead give away. They turned the movie into a lot of scene changes whenever someone would exclaim they figure it out, just for them to come back and be wrong. It was totally annoying.

Follow up, the rapture wouldn’t be that bad. After like, a day or two, people would stop looting and doing terrible shit. You know why? Because then there would be a proven God. At that point they know that if they sin they go to Hell, and they have seven years of pious ness or whatever before the final shit goes down. The bad people would be quickly wiped out and hey, everyone would be too scared to do anything outside of the Bible and it would be peaceful.

That is just general thoughts. The second one not really based on this movie, but maybe based on future ones. Either way. Acting in this one was shit, drama was stupid, and the plot felt like a lot of filler. Pass.

I think we are finally done with them. The ones I talked about a lot earlier in the year. You know, The Jesus Movies.

We had Noah. We had God’s Not Dead. We had Heaven Is For Real. We had the Son Of God. And now we finally have Exodus: Gods And Kings.

Obviously, this one is a story from the earlier part of the bible, not a modern tale or a new testament tale, so it will be closer to Noah in terms of size and scope. Which is good, because Noah is the only one of those I enjoyed!

But also, this movie has controversy. Non religious related controversy. Nope, we got race related controversy. This movie features Hebrews and Egyptians, yet the majority of all the actors involved are white people! White people! How dare you Ridley Scott! As I said before in my The Last Airbender review, I don’t give a damn. I just want someone to act good in the role given to them. I don’t care about the color of their skin. I don’t think being the right ethnicity for a role should be a requirement. What is next? Needing to actually have cerebral palsy? Needing to actually be gay?

It’s called acting. That’s all I’m gonna say.

And you can act anything, even a man with a goatee.

Moses (Christian Bale) is just a dude, living in an Egyptian palace, and good friends with Ramesses II (Joel Edgerton), a prince of similar age who he has grown up with. Seti (John Turturro) was the Pharaoh at the time and getting old, so it is obvious that his son would rule after he was gone. But thanks to some shitty cryptic prophecy, there was some tension between the boys.

That, and the fact that apparently Moses was a Hebrew. Once that secret came out, and Moses saved a slave over punishing them, he was exiled from the Kingdom. Bitch. Ramesses’ mom (Sigourney Weaver) wants him dead, Ramesses is more whatever. Exile should kill him.

Moses eventually makes it to a far away village. He meets Zipporah (Maria Valverde), gets his marriage on and becomes a goat herder. Hell, he also sires a child. Why not? He is fine with his peaceful existence, although still kind of hating on Gods. Until he climbs a sacred mountain of course for the lols and gets fucked over a bit. Like, almost dies. But hey, a kid and a burning bush talk to him about leading his people out of Memphis. So I guess that happens.

Last parts of the movie you probably know all about. Some plagues, some dead people, some running, and a lot of Red Sea crossing.

Also starring Ben Mendelsohn as an Egyptian, and Ben Kingsley and Aaron Paul as Hebrews. Kingsley can do whatever he wants, he is a good mimic. Aaron Paul is super weird in his role. Ridley Scott must have liked Breaking Bad.

The goatee grew a bit bigger. That is a lot of the character development.

Exodus: Gods and Kings is 2.5 hours long. Why? Because Bible, I guess. I can’t tell you how long it takes to read the same story, but I bet I could do it all in less than 2.5 hours. Even with all the ye olde language going on. This is a long movie and it feels even longer. Honestly, I feel like it is over a whole hour of movie before we even get to the burning bush. We get a tiny war, to get some plot. We get some mistreated slaves, we get an awkward attempt to exile Moses, and a long boring time before we get the stuff we care about.

The plagues! Of course that is all we want. The trailers show enough of the Red Sea scenes to make them not not as interesting. The plagues were cool, but they were also rushed. They weren’t fully explained either, they kind of just happened and the story kept going. Too much vagueness, not enough explainin, and a whole lot of downtime.

It was hard to stay awake. The acting from everyone, by the way, was completely fine / good in locations. It is just the story that I had issues with and that is due to its extreme boringness.

Day four of Musical Week also falls on a Thursday. Hmmm. That is my documentary review day. Can I do it? Of course I can do it. When you think “musical” and “docuementary”, the only real cross over would be some sort of concert movie. But! There hasn’t been a sweet teen sensation concert movie for over a year. The last one was the One Direction movie.

So instead I found Metallica Through The Never. You may have guessed it already, but this concert movie/movie has a lot of Metallica music in it. And all of it comes from actual concerts that they filmed the footage at from a few concerts on one of their tours. However there is also a small story in here, clearly fictional with actors, set to Metallica songs, to give us a very strange movie hybrid.

They must have thought a regular concert documentary was boring and for teeny-boppers. So they wanted something more.

The story itself is just about a boy, Trip (Dane DeHaan), a roadie for Metallica, who kind of just has to run and get stuff. Well, during the concert, he has to go and find a package in truck that ran out of gas. Get the truck gas, so it can deliver the package that is very important, for reasons.

But chaos has broken out in the streets. Death, riots, destruction, and maybe some supernatural things as well! And who is The Rider (Kyle Thompson)? Is he the Sandman?!

I picked a concert photo so you all wouldn’t call me out on shenanigans.

I am not a huge Metallica song by any means. None of their songs are on my iPod, but I recognize the famous ones, and I know to make fun of the driver due to his anti-Napster campaigns.

Despite that, I was surprised at how many of the songs played I honestly recognized. Probably at least half of them. So that was a bonus. The music didn’t sound terrible either and it fit the story they were telling nicely.

The story itself? Well, it felt like an acid trip. No crazy colors, but all the other elements were there. At points it was terrifying, mostly it was weird, but it was definitely entertaining.

In fact, I wanted way more of the story and way less of the concert scenes. That is a terrible complaint, I know, for what amounts to a concert film. But because it is a hybrid, I expected more time focused on the story. I would guesstimate the average movie went 75% concert, 25% story.

It should go without saying that if you hate Metallica music, or the genre of music, you won’t gind any enjoyment in this movie. I thought it was a okay experience, and what I can tell, a good first effort for this fantasy concert genre.

Yay yay musicals! If you are a long time reader, you know I really like musicals. Which is why I am finally having a musical theme week. Yay Musical Week!

Into The Woods decided to be a musical coming out on Christmas Day. The last time that happened was two years prior for Les Miserables which I absolutely loved. It was also my first real attempt at watching it, outside of listening to a few songs ahead of time. I loved the shit out of Les Mis.

But going into Into The Woods, I knew a lot more about it ahead of time. I saw a performance of it from college actors, which I guess is above community theater and high school actors, but still not great professional people. And you know what? I down right hated it. It took a lot of familiar stories, intertwined them, gave us their endings, and that was the halfway point. The second half was all new material, it felt super awkward, it got darker and more metaphysical, and it dragged on an on. So yes, I thought it was too long. I thought there was only four or so unique sounding songs, everything else kind of melded together and by the end, it was as if everyone got a long slow ballad, one right after the other.

I guess you can say I was not at all looking forward to this movie. But hey, the fact that it was only a little bit more than two hours definitely helped ease it in.

One of the biggest changes is that the cow was played by a real cow. Boooo.

Classic fairy tales go into the dark woods, because the woods were the scariest parts of Germany. This was Pre-Nazis, post Lutherans, I think. So it makes sense.

Like who? Well, Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) needs to bring food to her grandmothers house, in the woods. Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) was told by his mom (Tracey Ullman) to sell their milkless cow in a nearby village, on the other side of the woods. Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) wants to go to the three day ball on the other side of the woods, but she has to get past her step family (Lucy Punch, Christine Baranski, some other chick).

And there is also the Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) who cannot bare children. Turns out, a neighboring witch (Meryl Streep) put a curse on them. So now they have to go into the woods to get ingredients over the next few nights to fix that with a potion!

And surprisingly, that is most of the plot you need to know. We’ve got princes (Chris Pine, Billy Magnussen), girls with long hair (Mackenzie Mauzy), and wolves (Johnny Depp)! Shit, I bet the woods even have more secrets than the Library of Alexandria.

The biggest secret is what is real name of the baker’s wife? Can she not have an identity outside of her relationship?

So for those big fans of the musical, there were changes made of course. This is a PG movie because Disney is involved, you aren’t going to see everything you saw in the musical. Like most of Rapunzel’s story line. The second Agony song. No sex is had in this movie. And the sexy times are subdued.

But the only thing I really was sad to see missing was the Agony song reprise, because like the college school production, it was my favorite part. In the movie, it is probably even better as the two princes ham it up and I was laughing hard the entire time.

I do feel like the beginning of the was extremely quick and just kind of threw you into all of the plots far too fast. (Some of these complaints would be complaints with the actual broadway version. I am not reviewing how close they are, just how I feel watching the movie). So that was awkward. I thought I saw some sound editing mistakes, which is one of the hardest parts about a musical to make sure to get right. I also have a problem with the ending, that seems to just whimper and finish instead of an awesome musical bang.

But throughout the film it is definitely entertaining. My favorite would be Blunt (who had an excellent year). I didn’t know she had such singing chops, but she played a great character. I have heard Corden sing before, and it was okay. He was better in this movie than his other recent roles. I was also surprised with the singing voice of Chris Pine, so much that I don’t trust it. And Lilla Crawford, a little girl, had a surprisingly powerful voice as well.

Overall though, Into The Woods is a decently good time. Still has its bleak and sad moments and it may be one of the best musicals of the year, but this year was a bit weaker in that genre. At this point, I would say I enjoyed Muppets Most Wanted more, and probably Begin Again had better music. Despite that, the music has now been stuck in my head for several days, so I will most certainly get a soundtrack as soon as I can and listen to half of it over and over again.

Ding dong the mother fucking witch is dead. That is how I am starting to feel about this franchise. In college, I wanted to do a semester abroad in New Zealand because it is a beautiful country, but now I think I have seen enough of it.

Everyone knows the Lord of the Rings are incredible, so I won’t mention them. I was really excited with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, it was a bit longer, more CGI, but hey, let’s return to Middle Earth.

I completely hated The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug. It was far too long, and it was a completely filler movie. I mean. FUCK. It didn’t end with the Death of Smaug. The obvious end point at least. It was just a long tease that made me bored and tired.

So, here we are, at The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Two things of note come up with the last part. First off, I really hate the title. I booed so hard and long once they announced the title change. It was originally The Hobbit: There and Back Again, a title taken from the book of his journey. Great title. This one is as lame as The Desolation Of Smaug (given that Smaug doesn’t get desolated).

Two, this one is going to be a lot more exciting than the second film. That much is certain. It is pretty easy to do when you leave like one cool aspect into the second film and delay the rest for the ending. The third film gives the end of the dragon and the big battle, so it will be super awesome. But at what cost? A shitty second movie. Given the connectedness of these films, it is important to look at them individually and as parts of a whole. So I don’t know if I can really enjoy this movie as much knowing that it was essentially delayed a year because the movies were broken up from two films into three films.

I think I am allowed to be a little biased and peeved going into this film, as I believe the second movie was 160 minutes of my life wasted.

But this one has tiny men on rams! Yay rams!

Okay so. Battle of Five Armies. Before that, we got a Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) to kill. And then they do that. Moving onnn.

Humans are all pissed off because their water town is destroyed. They have lost everything, their wealth, their homes. They need a place to go. Making Bard (Luke Evans) their de facto leader, they decide that they kind of want to head to the near by Dwarven stronghold for safety. And to get some of that gold that was promised to them.

Speaking of people who want to go to the stronghold, the wood elves are dicking around too. Apparently there is some priceless treasure in there that they want back. And that is all. A bunch of the elves are played by these people (Lee Pace, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom). Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett are elves too, but they are in another part of the story. I don’t really understand what they are doing with Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen, so I won’t talk about it.

Oh yeah. Dwarves. Like Thorin (Richard Armitage). He is now a real King because he has a real Castle, but he is after his special stone and is kind of going mad. Mad enough to go to war with the humans and the wood elves. But also, the orcs that no one know are coming. And Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is kind of just hanging around.

There are also non Dwarven actors, like Ryan Gage and Stephen Fry. But also all those Dwarves? I still don’t feel like tagging most of them. Just Billy Connolly, Aidan Turner, and Dean O’Gorman. I think I am done talking about the plot. And actors.

BUT WHO IS THE FIFTH ARMY?

Orlando – “I heard you got a role in another franchise. Lucky. This one is finally owner.”
Luke – “Dude, no one is going to watch the Monster Avengers movies.”

Yeahhh, dead dragon and big army fights!

And some of that was really cool. Well, the dragon death felt kind of rushed and awkward. Like, somehow, the cartoon version of The Hobbit had a more intense dragon death scene than this movie. It kind of just happened, exactly as one would expect too. So that was actually disappointing. Just that it ended so quick and easy, they could have made the death way more awesome and also, you know…put it in the fucking second movie?

Now the army fight was pretty bamf. So that is good. Entertaining fight scenes, although it was hard to follow just how many humans were actually in the war and how the battle grounds were laid out. You just kind of had to go with it and accept it, although I doubt it was planned out. Martin Freeman still made a good Bilbo, so that was good. But of course, the focus wasn’t really on him this whole movie, despite the title. He gets super pushed to the side.

The love story is not as bad as the second one I guess, because of all the fighting going on during it.

And as I said above, I have no idea what the point of the necromancer story line was. Like, they resolved it I guess, but it was totally unexplained and felt incredibly pointless. It was really shitty.

Overall, that makes this movie just okay. Not the weakest of the series, maybe the best. Hard to say. None of these match the LOTR quality and I don’t think that was their goal. But I can’t help but feel the entire franchise was a let down. I haven’t bought any of them, because I know I want to wait for the cool extended package with all of them bundled. But also, will I actually watch any of these again? Probably not. I will probably watch the cartoon Hobbit more.

Daniel Radcliff is one of those actors that you just can’t help but watch what they do. Forever will he be Harry Potter, technically a former child star, but can he be successful as an adult in random movies? We know he was successful in Broadway. He was decently successful in What If.

But what about Satan? It seems like the perfect transition really, given the witchcraft scares of Potter and other wizard folks. First they worship Satan, then they become devils in movies.

Either way, Daniel probably actually did make a deal with Mephistopheles to make all those pounds and pounds of Pounds.

If the United Kingdom adopted the Euro, famous British men wouldn’t have to worry about growing horns.

Everything is shitty for the life of Iggy Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe). He had a long time girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Well, she was killed. And everyone now thinks that Iggy did it! It was tragic too. Merrin went to church every week. She was a good person and no one hated her. But now the only people that believe Iggy are his brother (Joe Anderson) and friend/lawyer (Max Minghella).

I mean, his parents (James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan) believe him, but do they really? And Merrin’s dad (David Morse) is fully convinced of his wrong doing, threatening to kill him himself.

Oh, and he grew horns on his head. That’s interesting. Especially when they seem to change the way people perceive him, just not in the way that you’d think horns would change someone.

This isn’t click baiting to get you to watch the movie, this is just not spoiling what happens. Also with Kelli Garner and Heather Graham.

This is a scene you can find in about a third of every romance based movie.

First of all, let’s give it up for Daniel Radcliff’s American accent. I forgot he was actually a Brit in this movie! If this was his first role, I would have never assumed he was a dirty Queen-lover.

Related. I wish I could fake a British accent.

Anyways, Horns is probably, by far, one of the weirder movies of the year. And coming from me and who I am, that is definitely a compliment. Based on a book I didn’t read, book people didn’t like it as much, which is no surprise. The horns actually happen super early in the movie, but in order to keep the weirdness and uniqueness of the horns, I kept most of it a surprise for the viewers. I don’t know how much the trailer spoiled, but let’s just say it is worth finding out on your own.

It got even weirder by the end, some plot twists I could see coming, and some I could not. Some of the acting from some characters are a bit weak, but I thought Radcliffe and Temple were on point enough to keep the movie interesting. A lot of her plot and acting was of course told through back stories, but still entertaining.

Either way, Horns is at least unique and that is one of the things people seem to clamor for the movies coming out these days. It isn’t a remake or a sequel. Sure its based on a book, but basically every movie ever is based on a book, so get over it.

Rawr Dracula! Vampires! So hot right now, of course we need to revisit the main man behind the bat, the one, the only, Vlad.

Dracula Untold (I promise I won’t get into how much I hate “this is the real story” nonsense for fictional stories that keep happening, I swear) wants to talk about how one man came to be the Dracula that people fear today. A real vampire. Not a sparkly boring person. Not a bunch of kids in private school. Just a guy who has standard vampire powers and standard vampire weaknesses.

But before we get into that, in case you didn’t know, this is becoming a franchise. Not just vampires. But all the classic Universal monsters. It was originally starting with a 2016 remake of The Mummy, then Wolfman, then eventually a Frankenstein thing, but they tacked this one on too. They are going to bring all the monsters into a movie and have them fight other monsters I guess. And it might fail terribly. And yes, it is a lot like Avengers. But I mean, it might be cool, as long as these movies are good, right?

Well, some bad ass armor could help, but why doesn’t it glow and shimmer?

This movie isn’t set in the modern day. I already told you it is about Vlad The Impaler (Luke Evans), the real inspiration for Dracula. Not that Vlad in real life was a vampire, it looks like Bram just took his name and hierarchy and ran with it.

Either way, Mr. The Impaler got his name for being a bad ass. He was recruited at a young age in the army and killed killed killed. Now he is a Prince of his own area, Transylvania, and wants to live life in peace. There is also a local vampire in a cave nearby, but ignore him. Either way, some Turks come knocking on his door, asking for the normal payment. But because some of their scouts were found dead, they assumed the Transylvanians came out and killed them. Now they payment is some cash and 1,000 boys to fill their armies. What! No!

So he goes to Mehmed the Conqueror (Dominic Cooper), the Turk leader to appeal to his better nature. Well, he ain’t having it, even when he offers up himself instead of the boys. Now they want 1001 boys, with the additional one being his son, Ingeras the Young (Art Parkinson).

Well, shit. What’s an Impaler going to do. Sell his soul to the devil for temporary vampire powers to defeat an entire army? Yeah. Thank goodness he knows where Master Vampire the Vampire (Charles Dance) is to get his powers on. As long as he doesn’t drink blood in 3 days, they will be temporary. If not, well, full on vampire.

He also should keep it secret. Very Catholic lands here. They don’t like Vampires. Maybe his lady, Mirena the Woman (Sarah Gadon) will find some parts of it interesting though.

Also featuring Diarmaid Murtagh as Dumitru the Untitled.

Shit, they also got Patsey from Holy Grail in here?

This might be one of those movies that would be better not seeing the trailer? That is my guess. If I didn’t see literally every cool thing a dozen times from trailers, I would have enjoyed the movie more. But Dracula didn’t do anything cooler than those few scenes. Namely the bat attack related scenes.

Other than that, it is mostly a poorly acted period movie. We got accents, we got swords, horses, chivalry and more. And just a lot of bad overly dramatic acting.

And if that is what you want in your “NO THIS IS THE TRUE STORY” films, then you might actually love it.

Unfortunately, no matter what happened with this movie, we were getting the next two anyways. Universal is going to make this Monster Avengers thing happen, damn it. Maybe the final outcome will be cool. Maybe the next movies will be good. But this is not the Iron Man of the Monsters universe, unfortunately.

When I first saw a trailer for The Book Of Life, I was taken aback with the animation styling. And the story line. And everything about it. Well, everything but one thing.

Guillermo del Toro‘s name was attached to the picture. Really? I like del Toro, so I found that surprising because it didn’t seem like something that he heavily influenced. Outside of the Mexican influence, it just didn’t seem like his work. But I decided to give it a benefit of the doubt. There is reasoning behind the animation style, there is some cultural significance to the whole picture, and damn it. It might be excellent.

If you didn’t know, this movie has something to do with the Day of the Dead, which takes place from Halloween to Nov 2. In particular, they call Nov 2 the Day of the Dead, as that is the day that they celebrate the gravestones of their family members and party in their remembrance, the central theme to the story.

The non central theme hopefully is searching for this mythical Book of Life that gives everyone super powers. I hope.

Oh shit, those kids found it! Run! Chaos everywhere! Ahh!

Mexico in this case is the center of the universe, not only that, but the center of Mexico is a place that looks like a guitar surrounded by water, in San Angel. That is where a lot of shenanigans take place, given its central location. I guess I should explain the afterlife. Get ready for some facts. Everyone knows that once people die, their spirits go to a really sexy place where they party all day and all night and live with their families and friends! La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) rules the Land of the Remembered and it is totally fetch. But there is another afterlife place. The Land of the Forgotten, ruled by Xibalba (Ron Perlman). That is not a fun place. You see, if people in the Land of the Forgotten ever forget about someone that has died, the spirit gets moved to the Land of the Forgotten for the rest of eternity. Not a fun time at all. 🙁 🙁 🙁

Xibalba of course doesn’t like his job and wants to rule the cool place, so they make bets and wages all the time over the lives of humans to determine who rules what.

So they see these three kids running around. Manolo (Diego Luga) with his guitar and sensitivity, Joaquin (Channing Tatum) who likes to sword fight and wants to be a soldier, and of course, sweet sweet Maria (Zoe Saldana) the object of their affection and daughter of the general.

Bets! They place them. Xibalba picks Joaquin to eventually marry Maria, and La Muerte picks Manolo. If Xibalba wins, he gets to rule the Land of the Remembered, but if La Muete wins, Xibalba has to stop interfering with the lives of humans. Oh golly.

The fate of so much on such a little arrangement. And who is to say the girl will marry either boy? Pfft. Gods.

Also featuring the voice acting talent of Christina Applegate, Ice Cube, Carlos Alazraqui, Danny Trejo, and Hector Elizondo.

Not to be weird, but that is the sexiest hair I have seen on a CGI wooden puppet ever.

Turns out, del Toro didn’t have a lot to do with this movie. Sure, he was involved on some level as a producer, but he wasn’t even the executive producer. He probably provided some nice funding and helped design the Land of the Remembered, because it was vibrant and unique, but not sure what else he might have done.

A lot of music in this movie, and about half of it (or more) were actual songs but with a lot more mariachi feel to them. We got Creep and I Will Wait and much more. I think there is also unique music, but I just might not be hip enough on the music scene to get the references.

I think this is a hard movies for kids to follow. A lot is going on, a lot of characters are good and just misunderstood. After all, Xibalba isn’t a bad guy, just looks bad. Joaquin isn’t a bad guy either. The only bad guy is a bandito who doesn’t show up til the end, and I will say, he had very entertaining fight scenes.

The movie has a lot of spirit and energy, but I just found it hard to really relate to anyone. Or the story itself. It just ended up on the “okay” spectrum, which was disappointing, as I figured this one would be one of the best films of the year. Maybe I made a mistake in picking The Book Of Life over The Boxtrolls. I hope not!

Vampire movies.

A pretty popular subject subgenre of film, most of them all showing vampires in a different light than the accepted myths. Yes. Twilight is basically to blame for these last 8 or so years. I mean, shit, we even have a Dracula movie coming out later this year, about the “True legend” of Dracula. A misunderstood villain movie! How original. How different.

Then we had Byzantium, a very serious different vampire movie that was praised and I just kind of…could never get in to it. This is all important lead up to say that for Only Lovers Left Alive, I know it is another serious vampire movie. One about love. And I am just afraid I won’t be able to get into this one either.

Which is why it took me about or month or more to watch it!

Maybe I am just afraid I can’t experience true pain, like this clearly emotional vampire here is feeling.

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) has been around for a long time. He is so bored with it all, with humanity (Which he refers to as Zombies), that he has turned into a stay at home recluse. In order to not be bothered, he moved to the most decrepit and abandoned by society place he could find, Detroit, Michigan, to live out his lonely existence. And make music.

His only contact with others is a young rocker lackie, Ian (Anton Yelchin), who gets him things during the day for fat cash and has a clause to not tell people of his whereabouts, and a doctor (Jeffrey Wright), who he visits at night to buy blood from, no questions asked.

And just when he is thinking about ending it all, his wife calls him. Eve (Tilda Swinton) has been living in Tangier. They are still in love, just spending hundreds of years with a person can be a lot. So they do their own travels and discovery a lot. Either way, he convinces her to travel to him, so they can be in love and reminisce and relive the glory days.

But with Eve, her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) eventually shows up. She is immature and bad news and what leads to just the beginning of Adam and Eve’s problems.

Also, John Hurt is in here as another, much older vampire, that is a spiritual adviser to Eve.

Ever wonder why one of the blood types is O? Stands for Orgasmic.

My biggest fear was…essentially reached.

Only Lovers Left Alive is not really a bad movie, it is just another movie that I had to struggle to really get in to. It is definitely a slow feeling movie, probably because for people with eternal lifespans, time tends to not be super important.

Only Lovers Left Alive is also a really well acted movie. Both Swinton and Hiddleston are fantastic. They had to convey a lot of their emotions through their actions and it showed. But time and time again has shown me that a well acted movie does not necessarily make a great film. Also, shout out to Yelchin, who I had no idea was playing the rock groupie.

The movie tells a decent story, that is for sure. The pacing just kills me at times, which of course also factors into the entire length of the story. Based on the actual plot points of the film, I wouldn’t expect it to be two hours long. But it lingers.

Does it have to? Does it have to let it linger? Not in my mind, but then I think I am a minority here.

Not a completely unique take on Vampires, as a lot of the traits are still there, but a decent adaptation of them in a modern shitty world society.