Day: January 12, 2012

A Shine Of Rainbows

Another Irish movie! But this time I didn’t know it was Irish. I mean. I could have guessed it from the title. A Shine of Rainbows? Rainbows make you two things, gold pots/leprechauns, or gay people. Image association at its finest. But I didn’t even think of the title, just wanted to try something different.

Because I care, damn it.

cHARMS
I mean, those kids brutally beat up and trap poor Lucky and steal his damn cereal. What is that shit? How can he live in a world like that? Hey. Lucky. It might not get better.

The movie is about a poor orphan boy played by John Bell. He is picked on by the other orphans, because he is smaller, even more of a ginger, has a kind of stutter, and you know. Isn’t manly yet. But that doesn’t stop that crazy lady, played by Connie Nielsen. After a lot of research she picks him to adopt, and quickly whisks him on a boat to Ireland. Hooray Ireland. Now he is a small town boy from the big city. Well, a familyless big city.

Things are bound to get better right? Yes.

Because his mom is awesome. She wears pretty clothes, wants to show him the whole world, and help him have the best life he could possibly have. But the dad, played by Aidan Quinn. He is disappointed, thinking she brought home the runt of the litter. He also has a bit of problem connecting with him, since he is just a kid and not his own son.

This is potentially a spoiler? But it also happens like halfway through the story, so I deem it necessary.

The mom ends up dying about halfway through the story, leaving the boy an obvious wreck. What am I talking about. The dad was more of a wreck, he knew her a lot longer, the boy only a few months, if that. But he is in a strange place, with a man who he thinks hates him. The dad is left with a “son” who would never have been his first pick, and seen more as a thing his wife wanted to help out with.

Can they become a family? CAN THEY?

Otter
There is also a few scenes with a sick Otter, which is not pictured, because I suck.

I thought the movie was both pretty sad and pretty wonderful. It has such a good message throughout it, and is very well acted. The kid is going to be in Battleship and that Hobbit thing, so apparently other people like him too. Definitely was a great “Random pick up”.

3 out of 4

Beastly

When I saw the movie Beastly, I figured it was about what everything figured it’d be about. Some retelling of Beauty and the Beast, somehow. Probably modernized. Well. This is true. A modern live action retelling of that movie.

Hmm. I am fine with this as a concept. But depends on whether or not they execute it at all.

mary-kate olsen
Also depends o- OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?

Alex Pettyfer plays pretty bow awesome dude. His dad (Peter Krause) is a wealthy music executive or something who has always taught him that good looking people get farther in life, and he has made that his motto.

But then something crazy happens. He makes fun of Mary-Kate Olsen too many times and she casts a spell on him! (Let that be a lesson for all you Olsen haters). She turns him into a freak, more or less. Tattoos, bald, piercings, and these weird scars that don’t make any sense. All over his body.

In order to save himself, he must find true love in a year (and have someone say they love him) or else he will stay like that forever. It freaks out his dad, who lets him stay in a house outside of the city, telling him he will go there too, but never making that trek. (Ashamed of his ugly).

He has to live alone with his housekeeper, Lisa Gay Hamilton, who hasn’t seen her children in decades, and eventually Neil Patrick Harris, a blind tutor.

Eventually he actively tries to find love, with Vanessa Hudgens who (through a series of moves) has to stay at his seemingly empty mansion. Can he make her love him in time? (Oh yeah, and if he does, NPH gets his sight back and his housekeeper will be able to find her children).

scars
Seriously. Do the scars make any sense? The bloodyness look of them always?

Anyways, I liked the overall plot of the movie, but two certain things bugged me.

One, the love between the two leads. Nothing about it seemed real at all. It all seemed fake and forced. At the end one is left wondering how the hell she came to love him. What, they read some poetry? It was pretty bad acting and distracted me from everything else.

Second, the “lesson”. I am not sure what he learned, after it all. I know this is also a problem with beauty and the beast…but what was it? That ugly people find love? Based off of how the movie was set up, it would make more sense for him to find true love in a less attractive person, the people he made fun of. Yet somehow, he was an asshole all his life (okay raised that way), and he is rewarded with an attractive on the outside woman too?

This is probably just a Hollywood problem, because they love doing “ugly/mediocre guy” with hot woman, and never the other way around. There was no “Gaston” character in the movie either. Aka, someone who was like Beast before transformation, who gets killed, without getting the chance to have his own year to reconsider his lifestyle.

I don’t know, the bad lead acting and the message just bug me a lot in the movie. If they at least made their love seem like it was real, and not this BS love that happened, I would have enjoyed it. But the latter problem would never have been fixable.

1 out of 4