Tag: 2 out of 4

All Is Lost.

I don’t know a lot about this movie, but I am pretty sure it is about feeling hopeless and giving up. This would make it the polar opposite of the film, Never Back Down. I do know it was getting some Oscar hype but only appeared in the indie theaters an hour away, so I never went to see it. I also found out it was directed by J.C. Chandor, who has only ever done one other film, Margin Call, which I loved.

So, I guess that is a positive. Woo!

Shit son, that looks calm as fuck. Why are you so hopeless?

In this survival drama, we have one character, and very very little dialogue. You are going to be mostly left with scenery, special effects, and one man, (Robert Redford). His name isn’t given, so instead of just calling him man, I will just keep calling him Robert Redford.

The dialogue that exists mostly comes from the first scene of the boat, where Robert Redford is writing in a journal and we get some narration. Then we find out why he is drifting hopelessly in sea, by switching to 8 days earlier.

His boat crashes into a shipping container, floating in the ocean. We have a leak! This Robert Redford fellow is like MacGyver, very knowledgeable, and he quickly tries to fix the situation. Unfortunately, a lot of his communication and navigation equipment gets damaged. A boat is nice, but not knowing where you are in the ocean is scary.

What then follows is 90 more minutes of more and more shit progressively hitting the fan, as problem after problem occurs. Storms, capsizing, fires, damaged supplies, all of that.

You will feel hopeless if you pay attention to the movie. How long could you survive if you weren’t as smart as Robert Redford?

This is only like, two layers of shit hitting the fan at that point. I don’t want to spoil too much after all.

If anything All Is Lost is an intense film and certainly not for everyone. If you only have a short attention span, it might not be able to catch your grasp. If you really need dialogue to keep you interested in a movie, it might not be your cup of tea. If you want more than one character, then you are shit out of luck.

All Is Lost is definitely a beautiful film, and a nice film to see Robert Redford too. He has been on an upswing lately, not acting a lot in the first ten years of the 2000s, but in a lot more films recently, and it is good that he is willing to still try different and new things at his age.

I think the film was nicely made and decent, but I also know I never really want to see it again. I do like dialogue and hate it when I get nothing. All Is Lost makes me feel feels, but not feel feels that I will probably be able to recreate. After I know how it ends and learn what happens, I don’t think there is enough to entertain me as much a second time.

Sorry All Is Lost. Good luck on winning uh…Best Sound Editing.

Motherfucking RoboCop.

The Hero of Detroit.

Why he doesn’t have a statue yet, I still do not know. Fucking politicians, corrupt as always.

Anyways, when I heard there was a remake, I was fine with it. When I heard it was PG-13, I was confused. Do they understand the point of that franchise? Besides the satire, of course.

He is black, because black is cool and sexy.

Needless to say, no, RoboCop remake isn’t as bad as everyone said it was before they gave it a chance. I even had a popular tweet a few months back claiming it would suck, and really, it wasn’t super terrible, it just also wasn’t super amazing.

Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is a Detroit detective, and working on uncovering a huge drug and weapons king pin. The detectives meant to monitor him are on his payroll, lots of corruption everywhere. During an encounter, his partner (Michael Kenneth Williams, for authenticity) gets injured.

Murphy really wants to bring him in. So they bomb his car to kill him. Unfortunately they only really leave him super badly disfigured.

At the same time, Omnicorp is making robot police men! But America doesn’t want them to patrol the streets, no trust for whatever reason, so instead they are used to keep peace in the Middle East. Their owner (Michael Keaton) is at war with the government, to overturn their policy making robot guards no longer illegal. Eventually he gets the idea. Why not put a human in a robot, and win the public that way?

Yes…yes…that will allow him to make lots of money. As long as the Robot Human Cop is as good as just a Robot of course. Yet also somehow maintain his human characteristics. Can it be done?

Gary Oldman plays the bio-scientist who has the capabilities of putting a man in a robot body. Jackie Earle Haley is a militaristic trainer. Abbie Cornish is the wife. Jay Baruchel is in here for some reason. And Samuel L. Jackson plays some sort of Bill O’Reilly motherfucker, with a nightly TV show that can warp the American point of view.

He is black because of genetics.

There are at least 3-4 references to the Detroit Red Wings in this movie. This is excellent. In this universe, the Red Wings still exist in all of their glory in like 20 years.

One other amazing thing happened to me in this movie. They played the song Focus by Hocus Pocus. It is a song I have been trying to find the name of for the last 4-5 years, but as it is an instrumental with yodeling and other weird noise, can’t exactly look it up. Thank you for your contributions to my sanity.

Oh you wan’t actual review? Okay.

Well, RoboCop wasn’t completely sucky. It wasn’t completely amazing either. They spent a lot lot lot of time before we actually got RoboCop into the streets. We had to watch the set up, the idea, the training, the tests, everything. Once he was about to hit the streets, he had another quick breakdown that they had fix again. Far too much of the movie was given to these factors, probably as they were trying to keep it PG-13 and not have him, you know, being a Cop.

I do think the film did capture the spirit of the original. Corrupt corporations and what not, so that is fine.

It had its entertaining moments and they increased the intensity of the ED-209, those big two legged walker robots.

I also really enjoyed the ending. And by that, I mean that they ended it on a nice note and didn’t automatically set up a sequel. That happens a lot more in movies nowadays. Fuck that.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Are you disappointed I didn’t review Valentine’s Day? Me too, a bit, but I just got My Bloody Valentine on Blu-Ray for a whole dollar, so I really really wanted to review it sometime soon. Before we all forget that this remake was even happening.

One thing I remember from the previews for My Bloody Valentine, way back in 2009, is that it really really wanted to sell the whole 3D idea. This came out about 11 months before Avatar, so at that point, no one cared about 3D movies. It was usually that Blue-Red crap, and the RealD stuff hadn’t really expanded that much (Although that is what this movie used). So yeah, I remember thinking, “3D, ew!” because I assumed it would be shit.

Boy, look how far we have come as a society.

That’s right. Killers in grocery stores. That is about three steps away from Nirvana.

The movie takes place in a shitty small mining community. Back in the day, they had a mining collapse that trapped several people inside. Days later, only one of the miners was found alive, Harry Warden, but he was in a coma. This took place on Valentine’s Day. That might be important. Either way, they find out the other miners were killed by a pickaxe and determined Harry killed them to give himself all the available air. He wakes up from his coma a year later, going on a murderous rampage in the hospital and mine (where a teen party is being held) before he is a shot and killed.

But the majority of the movie takes place ten years later…

Tom (Jensen Ackles) has returned to town. His father was the owner of the mine, and he has just died, so he has come back to sell it. He barely survived the attack from Warden ten years prior, the police killing him right before the blow. A mistake of Tom is also reason for the cave in, so the death of the miners was also on his hands. Either way, he left town, vowing to never return, but now he is back.

And guess what, apparently so is Warden.

Tom’s old girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King) is now married to Axel (Kerr Smith), who is the new town Deputy. Too bad he is cheating on her with Megan (Megan Boone).

Needless to say, someone is starting to kill people again, and most of them are related to the events from ten years ago. Whether it be the local cops now retired (Kevin Tighe, Tom Atkins) or teens that were partying in the mines that night. And who is the killer? Someone involved? Or a random townsfolk who is upset that the mine might be sold, ruining business?

Edi Gathegi is also in this, as a deputy.

The main actress has all the qualifications necessary to star in a horror film.

My Bloody Valentine is actually a remake of a 1981 film with the same name. From what I can tell, they have wildly different plots, except for the killers trademark gear and weapons.

I must say, I was surprised at how many ways he could kill someone with a pickaxe/shovel/mining gear. There were several creative ways, and the dude did a good job sticking to the theme.

And hey, technically, by the end, I was still guessing on who the killer actually could be. I don’t hate the answer, it was nicely done and added a unique angle to it all.

That being said, this is probably a shitty movie and you know it. It goes over the top on purpose, and stays near the top, with ridiculous situation and kills that are at least mildly entertaining. The acting is dull, but that is what it was going for.

Adding it all up, it is probably the best Valentine’s Day themed killer movie there is, but being on top doesn’t mean great quality.

Finally, it is February, which means theaters are allowed to show good new movies again! Both The Monuments Men and The Lego Movie are out the same weekend, which adds some credit to the theory that studios literally wait to release their movies right outside of January, to separate themselves from the junk.

This movie in particular has an all-star cast, directed by George Clooney (his fifth overall), and a World War II story. Yeah, it has a lot going for them.

Typical rag tag group of men to save the day.

The Monuments Men tells the true story of a group of seven men, mostly art historians, curators, and museum directors, who join up with the Allied forces to preserve culture and art that might be destroyed during World War II. Most of these men are old, or out of shape, but they believe in their goal, and convinced the men in charge to let them help.

They were brought together by Frank Stokes (George Clooney), who had the idea after they almost lost The Last Supper when the UK bombed a city. His hand picked team included James Granger (Matt Damon), a painter, Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), an architect, Walter Garfield (John Goodman), a sculptor, Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), a historian. They also have Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville) and Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), a British officer and a French man, for culture purposes. They are later joined by Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), a German translator.

These men split up around the war front from 1943-1945 searching for lost and stolen treasures. The Germans hid the art in their country and intended to destroy them should Hitler be killed. They also are racing against the Russians, who have lost so many men in the war that any stolen art they find they will steal right back and keep for themselves as a sort of reparations.

Also starring Cate Blanchett, as a very convincing French art curator, who really enjoys a nice painting. Like. A lot.

Bill Murray looks like a fucking giant in this movie.

Well drat. Turns out, The Monuments Men ended up being the antithesis to That Awkward Moment. If you remember, That Awkward Moment looked bad, but turned out to be decent.

Clooney took an interesting piece of history, put in great actors, and gave us a mediocre movie overall. It is incredibly disappointing that this movie wasn’t amazing, but I have to make sure my review still accurately reflects the overall quality, and not just say it is bad because I am feeling betrayed.

This movie did surprise me in a few ways. One, I saw Murray give a real and convincing cry, which I definitely did not see coming. I don’t think I have ever seen that man cry, it was heartfelt, and I almost teared up as well. Two, I did learn about some famous art pieces in Europe, and it is awesome how close they came to being destroyed/lost forever. Three, there isn’t a number three.

All of the funny moments made it into the trailer, leaving not a lot more for the movie. That is incredibly disappointing, as it was advertised a comedy, with not a lot of laughs. The rest of the movie was slower and more dramatic, but most of the times I didn’t really care enough about the individual characters to care what was happening to them.

The Monuments Men will be forgotten with time. It was a decently acted movie, certainly not bottom of the barrel in terms of quality, it just didn’t have a lot more going on for it.

Yesssss, a Jason Reitman movie!

Who is Jason Reitman? Well, he did Up In The Air, Young Adult, Juno, and Thank You For Smoking.

That should be enough for you. I guess, he also directed Labor Day. He has pretty interesting movies, so I expect good things from this super drama looking movie. Like. Seriously. The trailer shows like no comedy at all.

This is the strangest sex scene I have ever seen, and it involves a minor!

Labor Day takes place in the late 1980s, and you know, was a book and shit. Henry (Gattlin Griffith) is living with his mom, Adele (Kate Winslet), after his dad (Clark Gregg) has left her for his secretary. The dad has a big second family now, but he wants to live with his mom, who never really recovered from the divorce/cheating, as if the entire concept of love had left her.

She doesn’t leave the house much, maybe just once a month to get supplies, but that is all. Well, unfortunately, on her monthly shopping trip, Henry is approached by Frank (Josh Brolin), and he is hurt. He needs a ride, so Henry takes him to ask his mom. Turns out the ride he needs is to their place, and he seems threatening.

Ah, he is an escaped convict, sent to the paddywagon for murder. Pretty extreme. Although he seems “nicer” at the house, he still has to put up appearances of taking them hostage so that they won’t get in trouble if he is found out. Some light bondage, if you will. But while he is there, he fixes things around the house, cooks food, you name it. He wants to hop on a train that goes by their house, but a dang holiday weekend (guess which one!) kind of ruins it all.

But even more remarkable, is that eventually, there is love.

This film also has James Van Der Beek as a random cop (small role), J.K. Simmons as a random neighbor, and it is narrated from the son’s point of view, but also by Tobey Maguire, not Gattlin. Only felt a little weird there.

Apparently, hostage holding has gotten a lot more seductive.

Well, shit. I guess Jason can make a movie I don’t like or higher.

I was kind of disappointed with this movie, like, super disappointed. Like, bored. It was very slow moving, and extremely simple.

What is giving it the higher rating is mostly Kate Winslet. She acted the hell out of that role, really incredibly. She said so much with her eyes and hands. Acting for the win yo. Brolin was good too, and an interesting character.

I just didn’t find any bit of the situation believable. The ride to their home, him staying over, just…it all felt awkward and fake. Having Tobey Maguire narrate it felt weird, because it clearly wasn’t the kids voice. Thankfully he was in the movie at the very end, reflecting on the 4-5 days, but still, it was super dang awkward.

The ending was a bit awkward too in that regard. It did catch me off guard, and you know, suddenly tears, but the story I still kind of hate. Just, Kate Winslet’s acting yo. If you watch it, watch it for her. I don’t know if this movie is a 2013 movie delayed, or an actual 2014 movie. So, who knows about its award potential.

A few months ago, for whatever reason, I decided to watch a shit ton of random dance movies that came out throughout the years, that I of course ignored. These were the non Step-Up movies, basically. I stopped because Battlefield America really messed with my psyche.

But before that abomination happened, I watched StreetDance, a British dance flick from a few years ago that for whatever reason took over a year to make it to the US. It was okay, very Step-Up based plot, but had a lot better music than the other dancing movies so I gave it a a pass. I knew at the time that a sequel, StreetDance 2 already existed, but wasn’t making it to America until over 1.5 years after it was released in the U.K.

Those jerks. Well, today is my day! Come on, mediocre dance movie!

Huh. Blindfold dancing. I wonder if this will be important at all.

Ash (Falk Hentschel) wants to be a dancer. Well, he dances. But he wants to be great. He challenges the Invincible crew who always wins (random dance competition), but while spinning his moves, he falls down and everyone laughs at him.

Everyone buy one man, Eddie (George Sampson) who wants to be his manager? What? That was quick. Yeah, his manager, and he wants to put him as the leader of a crew to challenge Invincible and take em down.

And what a crew they find! During the opening intro to the movie, we see them shuttle all around Europe. They all have clever-ish names too, like… Steph (Stephanie Nguyen), Tino (Samuel Revell), Skorpion (Brice Larrieu), Bam-Bam (Elisabetta Di Carlo), Killa (Ndedi Ma-Sellu) and his son? Junior (Akai Osei-Mansfield), Ali (Ali Ramdani), Legend (Niek Traa), Yo-Yo (Delphine Nguyen), and Terabyte (Kaito Masai).

But besides making the rag taggiest rag tag group of dancers “All around the world!” (re: Europe), Eddie still claims they are missing something. That is because he was in the last movie and knows what’s up. Last movie infused ballet with street dancing. This movie, this movie Eddie wants to bring in some Latin dancing element. So he goes to some big club, and there they meet Eva (Sofia Boutella) and boyyyyyyyyyyyyy can she dance. But can the team accept the fusion? Can Eva? Can her overbearing but wise Uncle Manu (Tom Conti)?

Or will everything work out magically at the last moment?

Shit, are they also doing invisible fencing?

Well, I guess all I can do is compare this one to the last one.

It definitely is following the same plot line as the first film, maybe even set in the same world. Dance crew, adding traditional dance element. So that is good. Being similar makes sense in a movie series.

But overall, this one is definitely not as good as the first. The crew is less likable, as there are only 3-4 characters who matter I guess. I only was able to get the whole crew down correctly because I wrote their names during the intro. Most of them didn’t have personalities. Junior? There is a fucking kid on this team? What? Meh.

The music is okay. Still better than a regular dance movie, just not as good as the first. I don’t want to go listen to the soundtrack afterwards.

The ending went as expected. The main chracter is currently most well known as a random bad guy from White House Down. And I guess the dancing was a bit worse than the first film too, with more nonsensical plot moments.

All the words put me towards giving this an overall 1, but it was still okay, and better than a lot more current dance movies. So hey. Take what you will from this.

Isn’t it strange that Tom Clancy died, and within the next two days, they released the first trailer for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit?

Isn’t it strange that this is the first Jack Ryan movie to be made not actually based on any of Tom Clancy’s books, just the character itself, as a sort of reboot?

Skydance Productions certainly has some questions it needs to answer…

You can run Skydance, but you can’t hide. Tell us what you did with Clancy!

In this story, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) was working on his PhD in Economics in London when 9/11 happened. Filled with patriotism, he decided to enlist in the marines, stopping his PhD, to help save freedom. Unfortunately, he faces an injury in Afghanistan and gets booted out early, but not before proving himself to be a hero.

After a long time in rehab, he is asked to join the CIA by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). He doesn’t want to make him an agent. He just wants him to finish his PhD, work on Wall Street, and monitor things in case terrorists plan to hijack Wall Street or use its money for terrorism or…something. Pretty simple. He also starts dating his physical therapist Cathy (Keira Knightley), because that is totally okay.

Turns out, years later, Jack actually finds something and becomes important@ Good old Russia is not only planning a terrorist attack, but an economical attack at the same time to bring us back to the Great Depression era and cause riots throughout the country! Ah, Russia. I missed you as a villain. Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh) is a proud Russian man, and will do anything to help his country through their times of woe. So of course he is willing to carry out this plan for them.

Darn it. Now Jack has to become operational, no longer just sitting as a desk job. He has to fight for his life! All the while his girlfriend is freaking out that he kept the CIA a secret. Clearly she just wasn’t as patriotic as Jack.

You have to be super patriotic to leg kick a black man.

On an unrelated note, I realize that Jack Ryan is an established and long running character, but I am tired of Jack being used as the main character name in movies. Last year we got Jack The Giant Slayer, Jack Reacher, and Oblivion, which said Jack about thirty times in the trailer alone. I am all Jack-ed out. I am pretty sure no one is named Jack anymore.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit ended up being better than I thought. Honestly, the trailers made it look a bit ridiculous, and almost implied that they were trying to play him off as some sort of super human with a huge brain and brawn. I guess I didn’t give enough credit to Branagh, who directed Thor, and also starred as the main villain in his own movie. That has got to be a cool feeling.

The thriller aspects for the movie are what really did it for me. They really wanted this to be a smart, intellectual thriller, kind of spy versus spy kind of deal. So they made the main character and villain smart. They had great chemistry together, a sort of battle of wits.

But I also left feeling that it all wrapped up too easily and too nicely. There was only one real “spy like” point in the movie, everything else was basically your standard mindless action. The villain lost far too easily.

If this turns into an official rebooted franchise, I do hope they replace Pine. I didn’t actually hat him in the role, but he was the fourth person to play the role in five movies, so I’d rather keep the actor carousel going.

Let’s all take a moment to cry about the fact that we lost James Gandolfini this year.

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.

.

Are you feeling better? No, me neither.

It does suck. He played a similar character in most movies, but there was some talent there too. Even if he didn’t do anything else, he at least gave us The Sopranos, and that is all we can ask for.

So that is why I went to see Enough Said, his last major role/film release, before, you know. Let’s just get into it.

We will always remember him as a man who loved to eat.

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a massage therapist, and living a lonely life. She has a daughter, but that daughter is about to graduate high school and move off somewhere to college, and she her ex husband is now newly married while she hasn’t found anyone.

So Eva goes to a party, that her friends invite her to, where hey she can hopefully meet some new clients or a guy, even if none of them look attractive to her. At the party she meets two unique people. Marianne (Catherine Keener), a real life poet for money, who might need a masseuse. And Albert (James Gandolfini), a single man, works at a TV history museum, and live a quiet and simple life.

He asks her out on a date. Aww.

Eventually Eva realizes that her two new friends/lovers aren’t strangers, but ex husband and wife as well. All she can hear from Marianne is negative thoughts and attributes of Albert, which seem to be affecting her own relationship with him! Of course she also keeps this knowledge a secret, as she feels bad for Marianne not having any friends. Coupled that with her daughter leaving, she reaches out to the younger friend of her daughter to really bond with, quite awkwardly.

Also featuring Ben Falcone and Toni Collette as her friends.

What? He also loved movies I guess. That’s good. He used to be in them.

Damn it. His final starring role, and it is not the best movie of the year.

It is awkward sure, awkward enough to make a decent movie. But it follows a pretty obvious path, and there aren’t many surprises in store. The plot line with her daughter never really felt finished, but once it got to the weirdest point, it just stopped mattering I guess?

The acting was good from the three main leads, everyone was a basically normal human being, so it wasn’t too difficult. I guess it is worth noting that Gandolfini wasn’t a gangster, so he must have been acting here too right?

The story is a decent one, but it basically just stays there. Just a decent, okay movie, nothing special. I guess, I have said enough about this movie now. Har har har.

Oh Paranormal Activity series, how you disappoint me.

Originally, Paranormal Activity 5 was supposed to come out in October, as the other films had all done the four years previously. The only news about it was that it would star Demi Lovato. But something changed. They weren’t going to continue to give us another film with no more answers and a lot more bullshit. No. We were getting a spinoff.

We were getting Paranormal Activities: The Marked Ones in January, and it has a Hispanic theme to it. Yay spin-offs. Hopefully this one doesn’t have too many scenes where if you blink you will miss the scares, which I found annoying from the first one.

Oh huh, apparently if you blink you might get more than you bargained in your eyes.

This part of the franchise also takes place in the majestic California, in the summer of 2012. Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) just graduated high school and he has his whole life ahead of him. So, perfect time to just continue to live with his grandmother (Renee Victor) in her small apartment complex and not worry about things like jobs. Fuck jobs. Especially when a relative gave him a handheld camera to use, and a gopro, so he can just dick around with his good friend Hector (Jorge Diaz).

Well, beneath their apartment also lies a weird old lady, Anna (Gloria Sandoval), who some claim is a witch. They do end up noticing some strange stuff coming out of her apartment, noises and people, including Oscar (Carlos Pratts), the valedictorian of his high school class. But when she mysteriously dies, from Oscar, that is when stuff gets weird.

First, Jesse wakes up with a weird bite mark on his arm. Next thing he knows, after getting mugged, he is able to throw the muggers far from his body without even trying. Hey. He has basically developed super powers. Anything he really tries to do, works for him. He can’t fall. He can skateboard well. He can do some telepathic shit. Even his (sister? cousin? Not sure?) Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) is getting involved with the shenanigans.

Then you know. Shit starts getting creepy. Bad stuff happens. Paranormal Activity.

Do you see it? Do you see the paranormalness?

I’d say my biggest beef with this series is its overall lack of direction. Why are they being piss poor at explaining what is going on with the witches and the demons and the possessions? Because they don’t know, and have no game plan. They are just winging it as they go. That is the only explanation that they can make a prologue movie (#3) and not give any real answers, just more confusion, and make a movie about a different family (#4) that just adds more confusion and no coherency.

But…I think…I think more of it is making sense with this movie. Shocking I know. Yes, it does bring more elements. But it introduces one very cool concept to the series, which really shows itself off completely in the ending, which made it a tad bit more wicked in the grand scheme of all the things.

Yes, elements of the film are basically identical to the end of 3 and 4. Bunch of old white ladies mostly wearing black at night. But they changed it enough. They made characters who can fight back a bit, which was exciting to see. The two male leads had fantastic chemistry together, and made the earlier parts more amusing.

Although they definitely fit this spinoff into the main series pretty well with cameos, I think parts of it do contradict other elements of the series. They really don’t know who they want their main villains to be.

This film I wouldn’t classify as super scary overall, but it did have its moments.

Fuck it. I didn’t like really any movie in this series. But this one was okay. I am glad they did the spinoff, this is now my favorite Paranormal Activity. Which sucks, because if I want to buy it, I kind of have to go and get the other 4 or else I won’t have the complete set… Sad times.

Stop getting excited this instant. The Deep Blue Sea is a different movie than Deep Blue Sea. Note the The. This movie is not about sharks or shark attacks or smart sharks or Samuel L. Jackson.

No, but it does have something else you might enjoy. The potential for Loki jokes.

Some would argue that Loki in a bar is a type of shark…

Turns out this movie is actual a remake of a movie that came out in 1955, and when that came out, it was actually topical. Based on a play only a few years earlier.

The story takes place in the 1950s in England. Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) has found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place, (or, I guess, the British expression being the Devil and the deep blue sea. That expression is dumb). She is the younger wife of Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale), a judge of the British High Courts. Very stable lifestyle, decently wealthy, but dreadfully boring.

Which is why she becomes infatuated with Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), formerly a member of the Royal Air Force during World War II. He is young, and impulsive, and full of sexual energy. That makes sense, of course Hester falls for him, and eventually gets discovered by her husband.

But after leaving her husband, it isn’t just puppies and rainbows. She may regret her choice to follow lust. What is better: stability or affection?

Or even reflection, if you are looking into a mirror.

Drama drama drama. This film comes at you with its hardcore stance about drama. There are no amusing moments in it, only dramatic. Of course overall it is a sort of Romance as well. Just don’t come in expecting a lighthearted tale.

The acting from the main two lovers is much better than I expected, only knowing Tom as Loki and a smaller role in War Horse. Who knew he could be such a hopeless romantic and also messed up individual? (Clearly it is all just a ruse, his trickster persona).

The only thing that really bothers me about the movie is that I do find it quite hard to really get in to. The story is a powerful one, probably more powerful though in the 1950s when it wasn’t as popular of a story subject as it is now. Because really, my biggest issue with this remake is that it doesn’t offer anything new. The entire plot line of the story I can kind of see coming a mile a way, I know how it will end, and I know what bad decisions the characters will make.

Knowing a train is going to wreck doesn’t mean you can stop it.But eh, the experience is I guess what matters for movies. The acting is good. The story is tragic. But to me there isn’t enough else going on for me to really enjoy it all.