Mirror Mirror

Plot: This is the famous story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves told as a winkingly ironic comedy. There are departures from the story to make the story more modern and a better foil for the ironic humor. In this version, Snow White (Lilly Collins) escapes from stepmom, the Queen (Julia Roberts,) and is sheltered by the Dwarves. The Queen is vain and in need of a husband to buttress her finances. She targets Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer.) Soon Snow White meets Price Alcott, and next Snow White is battling the Queen for his affections. The movie ends with Bollywood-style singing and dancing.  link to imdb   Photos

Review: From its first moments, the ironic tone is the dominant element of Mirror Mirror. The Queen's monolog gets us into her head, and the comic motivations of her vanity and lust for power. Meanwhile Snow White is as nice as can be, and not at all helpless -- no 21st Century Princess is helpless. Lily Collins makes Snow White cute and likable, when she is not stabbing with her dagger or swashbuckling with her sword.

The love story is pretty weak, and the Prince is just going through the fairy tale motions. The art direction is strong and the scenes are fancy, but never really inspired. In many places it looks like a stage show. I wonder if there was a stage version.

There were some reoccurring jokes; like the dwarves stealing peoples clothes, and leaving them in elaborate under-ware. I don't think this is a movie for children, since I don't think they'd like it. I don't think it is for adults either since it is not dark enough. It is hard to tell what effect they were going for. 

Cast: Julia Roberts, Lily Collin

Directed by: Rarsem Singh

Rating:   2.0 stars: this movie is cute, and kinda fun-to-watch.

More: I did not see the twist ending. 

Even more: I liked Snow White and the Huntsman better. See my review.

The Hunger Games

Plot: In a distopian future nation, rebellious districts send two kids each to fight to the death as a punishment for their failed revolution. The bloody battle is shown on TV as a reality show. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) leaves boyfriend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and goes to the arena with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson,) whom she pretends to love and maybe really does love. Once in the arena, its like Survivor where kids kill the people they want to vote off the island. link to imdb   Photos

Review: This is the rare movie that is better than the book. I am a big fan of the Hunger Games, and this movie is everything I wanted it to be. I wish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had cast Jennifer Lawrence.

The fake reality show playing againt the political oppression and the deadly consequences provides so much natural drama and opportunity for satire.  I loved the giant faces of Ceasar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) on the TV set as he mugged for the cameras.  I especially liked the master control room full of Gamemakers pulling the strings in the background -- another great allegory.

The actual arena battle was more like hunting and being hunted -- a deadly hide and seek. It was suspenseful and not too violent. 

I thought the story in the movie was better than in the book. I liked the added scenes with Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) arguing with Seneca (Wes Bentley.) I thought the politics was clear without taking up too much time. 

Jennifer Lawerence was nicely restrained. In her situation, screaming and crying would have been appropriate almost continuously, but you can't have that all the time. She handled the emerging love triangle with nice ambiguity.

Top notch art direction and costumes. Realistic special effects.  The music in the movie isn't much. The soundtrack album has two good songs that aren't actually in the movie. I endorse Arcade Fire's Abraham's Daughter and One Engine from the Decemberists. 

Cast: Jennifer Lawerence, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, 

Directed by: Gary Ross; based on the book by Suzanne Collins

Rating:   3.5+ stars: Really fun to watch. Full of clever ideas.  For an action movie, it is about the best there is: better than last year's Harry Potter or Hanna -- almost as good Inception, but not as good as Avatar. 

More: Seneca's beard! That was outrageous.  

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John Carter

Plot: John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) is a former confederate officer who stumbles on a Thern, an advanced space alien, whom he shoots and then teleports himself to Mars. Mars has two nations of human people and one nation of 4-armed green people. John Carter has super-powers due to having grown-up in earth gravity. There is a war between the human races, and the Helium nation is about to be defeated by the Zadanga nation. A princess of Helium, Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins,) has to marry Zadangan leader Sab Thane (Dominic West) as part of the terms of surrender. Dejah does not like this, and she leads an winged attack on the Zadanga. The Thanes are helping the Zadangas in win the battle when John Carter shows up and with his super powers stops the bad guys. In time, John Carter falls in love with Dejah, and he tries to prevent the wedding with Sab. This leads to the final battle, and post-climax scenes that set-up the next sequel.  imdb   Photos

Review: John Carter is enormously uneven, with a complicated plot. It has some great individual scenes, and it has a lot of connecting scenes that are less interesting. Like Avatar, it is a science fiction with a tall alien race that fights human people overlaid with a love story and it has 3D flying scenes. It lacks the beauty of Avatar and the depth of character development. The best scenes are the fighting scenes. The scenes with the animated green people never really worked because their range of expression was so narrow. They also have those stupid horns. I was always distracted by them.

A lot of the action scenes seemed very fast, which might have been deliberate to make the film move faster, but it made the movie less cool to watch. The idea of a walking city is kind of cool, but the appearance of it was not. It should be interesting to fly underneath the legs of the walking city, but somehow it wasn't.

In the end the love story was interesting, and John Carter's final triumph over the Thanes at the end was clever too. 

Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins

Directed by: Andrew Stanton; based on the book by A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Rating:   2.0 stars: Not so bad, especially for SciFi fans.

More: I loved Woola, the six legged dog, easily the best character in the movie.

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We Bought A Zoo

Plot: Benjamin's (Matt Damon) wife just died, and he and his two kids move to the country and buy a private zoo. The zoo has a staff of eight including zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson.) Soon Kelly's daughter Lilly (Elle Fanning) is flirting with Benjamin's son Dylan (Colin Ford), and Benjamin's excessively cute daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) is smiling and saying cute things.  The Zoo needs a lot of money and work to reopen it, and Benjamin climb hurdles to do that.  imdb   Photos

Review: We Bought a Zoo is a cute movie with several interesting and well-developed characters played by competent actors. The story is very simple and the poor performances by the child actors plus poor editing made some of the movie unnatural and saccharin sweet. 

There are some good scenes like the lock scene with the lion or the drawing scenes with Dylan. 

Cast: Matt Damon, Scarlett Johnasson 

Directed by: Cameron Crowe based on the autobiography by Benjamin Mee

Rating:   2.0 stars:  Some kids might like this move, but some may be bored by the dialog. 

More: The real zoo is called Dartmoor Zoo, and it is in England not California. They specialize in large cats. Before Mees bought the zoo it had been shut down for illegally breeding tigers and for poor conditions. 

The real and fictional Benjamin Mee.

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The Artist

imdb   Photos

Plot: The Artist is a novelty comedy done in black and white with no dialog and dramatic music instead of sound effects. It tells a simple story of the end of silent movies and a love story between a pretty young actress, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo,) and an older self-involved silent actor , George Valentin (Jean Dujardin,) who called himself, "The Artist," because he made only silent movies. 

Review: Once again the art movie world has pushed a 2nd rate film and larded it with awards.  How can we take "serious" movies seriously? (See my reviews for Melancholia and Tree of Life.)

The Artist  is a romantic comedy -- with the b/w silent movie gimmick on top. For a few minutes it was interesting that I could see the whole story from lip reading and the overacting of the actors to convey emotions silently.

There were some charming and funny parts. In the early movie, George Valentin, is likable because he is so cheerful and laughs so heartily. Later he becomes brooding, overly-serious, and unlikeable. 

There are several scenes that are clever from a directing point of view, especially the early dance scene on either side of the screen, and the drink spilled on the mirror.

Art Movies often have a serious purpose or an interesting character study, but The Artist has none of that.  It is novelty and film school exercise. It is only occasionally fun-to-watch.

Cast: Berenice Bejo, Jean Dujardin

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius 

Rating:   2.5 + stars -- I don't recommend it, and it does not have anything to say, but it is made with a lot of craft. It is also memorable. 

More: I saw all nine Best Picture nominees. This was the poorest.  

More: I was unimpressed, but my wife nearly walked out. She hated it. 

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Secret House of Arrietty

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Plot: Arrietty is three inches tall, and she lives with her family under the floorboards of a house in Japan. A teen boy, Shawn, comes to visit to rest before heart surgery, but he spots Arrietty in the garden, and they become friends, kind of.

Review: The great parts of Secret House are the childish purity and the colorful nature scenes. It has a sincerity and purity that you never find in the movies, even kid's movies.

An example is the lyric to "Arrietty's Song," which is more sincere and happier than any American pop song, with floating butterflies, picking flowers, summer rain, and a dreamed-of boyfriend. American music does not do sincerity: not since the Hippy's of the '60s.

Unfortunately there are slow parts inside the house after the novelty of the little people wears off. There are also parts that are a little creepy like the father's odd stoicism and the cat. I know films need dramatic tension, but creepy is not an effect I want to feel.

Arrietty is classically animated, and that creates the opportunity for the purity of color and artistic scenes. A good story does not need great animation, but sometimes the animation is noticeable.

The music is a highlight. Some songs are on iTunes including some from the Japanese soundtrack.

The end is not typical Hollywood style, and I hope I am not grading it down since it has a realistic ending.

Be sure to stay for the animated credits which are as cool as the rest of the movie.

Directed by: Hiromasa Yonebayahi, based on the book by Mary Norton. Written by famous Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki

Rating:   2.5 stars: Worth seeing.

More: The cool parts are very cool.  Perhaps the film is targeted to kids a little too much.

Even more: My daughter is a Studio Ghibli fan, and so I feel bad giving a middling review to Arrietty, but I call them like I see them. 

Exceptionally Loud and Incredibly Close

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Plot: Nine year old Oscar (Thomas Horn) was very close to his Dad, Thomas (Tom Hanks), and they played scavenger hunt games in New York City. Thomas was killed in 9-11, and had left heart rending messages on the answering machine for Oscar. One day Oscar finds a key hidden in his Dad's closet, and Oscar begins to search for whatever lock the key fit. He visits hundreds of people in New York looking. At one point he is helped by an older mute man (Max von Sydow.) 

Review: Exceptionally Loud and Incredibly Close is an ambitious movie because it takes on the meaning of 9-11 from the point of view of the survivors. Of course, the movie works hard to make us experience the senselessness of this, and to experience the horror, guilt and loneliness the families experienced.  It is only a film, and so it takes some melodramatic turns and plot twists designed to comfort the audience from the bleak, existential message.

Many have found solace in God after 9-11, but EL&IC does not. The approach to 9-11 is notable for its absence of faith. It stares emptiness and doubt right in the face. There are outstanding scenes including one where child actor Horn rants for 2 minutes about the hopelessness of his search for more clues from his father. The recognition that the search is hopeless is like accepting that his father is irrevocably dead. 

The film takes a while to get going, the plot lacks believability, and Tom Hanks is like a cartoon of a good Dad. A more believable plot might have been too bleak for audiences to sit through. It has a series of great scenes that make the movie worth seeing mixed with scenes of lesser quality.

I liked young Thomas Horn throughout. Sandra Bullock underacts the whole time, and only has a few good scenes. Tom Hanks is likeable enough, but is not a realistic character -- probably by design.

Finally, EL&IC generally avoids trading on the horror of 9-11 for entertainment value. Aside for 15 seconds at the end of the movie, the film is not offensive because it is about survivors  not the disaster itself. It avoids gallows humor about the towers falling -- which would have been very offensive. There is no humor in the movie at all.

Cast: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock

Directed by: Stephen Daldry, based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer

Rating:   3.5 stars: The good parts are good, and it takes on tough issues. It is imperfect though.

More: Lots of great pictures of New York City


Even more: I want to see it again. Maybe even buy a copy.

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