Tag: Peter Stormare

One of the advertisements for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters basically said “a classic tale with a darker twist!”.

Fuck that. Hansel & Gretel is one of the darkest fairy tales out there. Parents abandon their kids in the wood because they are too poor to eat. Only have some bread. They go to a house, made of candy. They get all excited. Oh no, locks and chains, girl forced to be a slave, boy force to eat. Witch is going to cook and eat the child, but they fuck up her shit and lock her in the oven in an escape. That is dark. I don’t think you can go too darker than that.

But I will say this tale probably has more foul language, nakedness, and blood.

Not to mention 325% more explosions!

For whatever reason, Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are immune to witch magic. With great immunities come great responsibilities, I think the saying goes. So they were orphaned in by a local town, as they were now heroes, and kind of just started killing all the witches. Unfortunately Hansel also developed super diabetes from all that candy. If he doesn’t get a shot of (somethingvague) every (someamountoftime) he will fall to the ground and die quickly! All that candy, damn.

They get brought into a new town by the mayor, because 11 or so children have been kidnapped recently and they don’t know by who! The Sheriff (Peter Stormare) doesn’t like the idea of other people doing this in his town, but since he was about to kill Mina (Pihla Viitala), wrongfully accusing her of witchcraft, they really really needed to step in. Also, money.

Eventually they find out that a blood moon is happening soon, and a lot of witches are going to convene for some sort of special ceremony, lead by grand witch Muriel (Famke Janssen). Shit. That is a lot of witches. And you know what they say, witches dig ditches. Okay, no one says that.

Also featuring Thomas Mann as their crazy obsessed super fan and Derek Mears as Edward the Troll.

I am not sure if attached to the back is as effective as they would have hoped it to be.

Whoa H&G, where did this come from? Not only are you rated R, it is a hard R. I was joking on the nakedness, but it is there. Fbombs a plenty, and the death scenes are pretty dang gruesome, for witch and human alike. The blood looks fake as crap, but there is a lot of it, and there is a lot of murder. I was a bit surprised.

In case you are curious, I doubt there is any real difference between 3D and 2D, so save the money in difference.

The movie was less than 90 minutes in length, and it did feel pretty rushed to me. I think they could have explained certain things better. Just because something is called a White Witch, doesn’t mean I should have to think of it as a good witch. Specific lineage plot points were also a bit strange to me, but I don’t know a thing about this world’s genetics, since they didn’t tell me.

In terms of entertainment, the fight scenes are pretty good. The acting from secondary people not as much. Also, H&G seem to make pretty crappy witch hunters. You don’t see a single hunt of theirs that actually works as planned or goes well. Yes, they always survive, but come on, prep better. I don’t want my heroes to barely survive every bout, you gotta be able to take these witches down.

I think there is a lot of negative stigma in this country towards prisoners. I mean, if they go to prison, they deserve to be there, is the general rule of thumb. Which is why no one cares about prison rape/violence, and it has become jokes on themselves. But sometimes you get other points of view, like Oz, which dehumanize these practices and make them not a laughing matter.

And it can go completely the other way too. You sometimes get a movie where you are escaping from a future space prison, which has a zero violence record, like Lockout.

Oh shit. That space prisoner has a space gun! Quick, call the space police!

Pretty simple story. This is the FUTURE! CIA Agent Snow (Guy Pearce) has been arrested! He apparently murdered another agent who was undercover, who had evidence of a different agent selling secrets about the space program. Well, that makes it look like Snow is guilty. Snow is threatened to be sent to the space prison by Scott Langral (Peter Stormare) head of the secret service. So that happens, while Snow has one of his agent buddies Harry Shaw (Lennie James) go searching for the dead agent’s briefcase that may show him as innocent.

Speaking of the space prison, you are probably wondering how there is no crime or anything. Well, they kind of put them into sleep up there, and get woken up when they are done with the sentence very nice. But reports are that being in stasis might make them crazy, or get dementia. That sucks. Clearly the president’s daughter, Emilie (Maggie Grace), is the best person to send up there to investigate these claims. She wakes up and interviews a prisoner, Hydell (Joseph Gilgun), who as luck would have it is actually crazy! He escapes and releases all the other prisoners, and they also gain the president’s daughter and security team as hostages.

Hydell’s brother Alex (Vincent Regan) ends up taking charge, because he isn’t completely bat shit insane and realizes killing hostages is stupid.

Either way, rescue attempt, escape attempts, maybe everyone is actually a bad guy on this prison, not just the prisoners. Normal stuff to wonder about in a space action movie.

Always time for a smoke break when you are silencing an entire prison.

It really does take a lot more than just basic action to please me. By now, long time readers would realize that. I like action movies if they also have a nice plot or wonderful acting to it. But that is not how most action movies are made. And thus, they are dreadfully skewed on the scale at gorgonreviews.com. But hey, that is why they are my opinion.

I actually thought Guy Pearce did a nice job as a leading action star dude, but everyone else was a let down. And you know, shitty plot, some bad special effects that they didn’t work too hard on, and a pretty predictable-ish plot.

But fuck it, space prison, amirite?