Monday, January 25, 2010

Wendy and Lucy, 2012, The Lovely Bones, Eden Log, Planet in Peril







Wendy and Lucy’s movie description is so misleading and was an utter let down. Michelle Williams stars in this movie that has won several awards and hailed as “the pleasures of classic storytelling” I can sum the story up in a few sentences “Woman’s car breaks down while moving to Alaska with her dog, woman gets caught stealing and dog gets lost, woman looks for dog, woman realizes that dog is better off with foster family.” The End. It was by far the most pompous movie I have seen in a very long time. The whole time I was watching the movie I hoped it would round out and have a great ending. The back summary calls this a traveling movie, and it is not even close. There is no traveling. What kills me about this movie is that it is obviously made by someone who has never had money problems or had to budget. I am sorry but when you have $600 you do not steal two cans of dog food, you just don’t. Why risk it? They are like 50 cents a can. It’s completely lame. All the characters are bad people except for one person. The movie takes place over a span of two days but it feels like forever, it is drawn out and boring in most places. I do not find this movie realistic in any way shape or form and I have been relatively poor my whole adult life, since I was 14 and moved out and me and Fish started paying for everything. This is the kind of movie where “artistic” people watch it and talk about how “real” it is and what an amazing view of real life it portrays when in fact it is not even close and just because you call it a “politically urgent road movie” does not mean it actually is. The actions do not make sense in real life, there is no logic used in this movie at all. Michelle Williams was very good as a real person however, how hard is it to play a normal person?? I am angry I wasted one of my rentals on this movie.
**UPDATE: Movie written by college professor, and Michelle Williams stayed in her guest house while they filmed it. She must have a fantastic grasp of what it is like to be poor. Having only $600 left to a college Professor must seem like such a little amount of money!**
Eden Log is a sci fi movie about a future where we get energy from tree sap. I enjoyed this movie; however I could not understand most of the dialogue. After the movie was over I found out you can watch it in the original French language. We are a dub hating household so I was very angry that we watched a dubbed movie. It made it seem really bad to us. However, I think if I had seen it in the original language I would have had no complaints about the dialogue. The movie takes place in an underground facility where almost all of the people are dead or turned into these creatures. The camera works is very interesting and they use lighting very effectively in the underground cave scenes. The summary of this movie was a bit misleading as well but it turned out fine because I did like this story very much. Online reviews have many people confused by the ending but I enjoyed it very much. If I purchase this movie I will make sure to watch it in its original form. Dubbed movies suck!
2012 is another end of the world movie, however this one is based on what everyone knows by now: the Mayan prediction of the end of the world in just 2 more years. So, prepare yourselves! The movie is centered around an unsuccessful author and his family as they fight to save their lives as the world is ending. There are some really cool special effects and Woody Harrleson is awesome in this movie as a crazy conspiratist who is finally shown to be right all along! The interesting thing about this movie is that it didn’t seem that farfetched to me. I am not the greatest scientist in the world, I’m an artist by birth, but I love me some science, always have. I still enjoy the old giant meteor coming to destroy the Earth and we have to find a way to save ourselves, even though I think if a meteor was coming they certainly wouldn’t tell us about it. That is one thing that 2012 got spot on, if the world was gonna end they certainly wouldn’t tell the populous, and they would sell the seats to the highest bidder. The science in this movie just seemed to make a lot of sense, it wasn’t like a “we’re gonna drill to the center of the Earth with our magic drill bits that can withstand immeasurable heat” movie, it was a nature is killing man kind of movie and that just makes sense to me. I did like this move, which is saying a lot since Jake Gyllenhal or some other piece of eye candy was not staring in it! ;-) Fish’s complaint: They manage to take off from every single disaster. They were always near feet away from the disasters in all their modes of transportation.
The Lovely Bones. I did not read this book and so maybe that is indeed why I can enjoy this movie. The visuals were beautiful and really made the environments she was stuck in pop. The movie is based around a girl who is killed by a serial killer and she is stuck in the in between until she can make peace in her family. The biggest problem I had was knowing they cut the rape scene out so that Peter Jackson could allow his daughter to watch this movie. That is a lame excuse to take something so big out of the movie. However in the end they do discuss some issues that are much more shocking and scary than that but Im not a father or a director so I have no idea where his mind was. The movie has several pieces that do not make sense and if they happened in the book with no explanation then I cannot imagine it being a good book. The characters act in ways that don’t make sense, there is a very important moment in the movie where time is of the essence and they just kind of sit on it. This kind of hurt the last 30 minutes of the movie for me. The ending is very weird but after I thought about it I liked it very much. If I had read this book, maybe I too would hate the movie and see it as a who dun it mystery with too many special effects, but since I went into this movie knowing that that is what it was going to be, I rather enjoyed it. Not the best movie I have seen recently, but still a pretty good movie.
Planet in Peril is my pick for this movie set. If you missed this CNN documentary you get on down to your local library and rent it. Yes, the library is THE best place to rent movies, they have new movie, foreign movies, documentaries, everything you could want and most libraries have an inter library loan program so you can order it if you library doesn’t have it. I like to get more off documentaries from the library, that and foreign movies, been getting movie from the library since I lived in Troy. This movie is about the awful state of our planet right now. It stars Jeff Corwin, Anderson Cooper, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta as they travel around the globe to show real issues that are affecting our planet. From the illegal trade and slaughter of animals in Taiwan to the deforestation of the rainforest resulting in the most CO2 gases of any place in the world, They tackle as much as they can. They show the effects of global warming on the glaciers that make up Greenland, and the lakes that are now desserts in Africa. The whole show is amazing. It is very heartfelt and the presentation of all these facts makes you want to get up and do something. I love Anderson Cooper, I have since I saw him give up his mike to go help load people in rescue boats in New Orleans. Say what you want, but he doesn’t have to help people but he does because he is a human being. The news is supposed to stat objective but when people were throwing concrete blocks at people he ran in to save an injured child. He has a lot of heart and it is nice to see in the news. Poor Sanjay Gupta though, he is always getting the short end of the stick from getting the swine flu to being in all the sickest places on Earth, but I guess that comes with the doctor territory. The only bad thing about this movie is how helpless you will feel with most of the things. The laws in other countries and how other countries react to these issues, but you will also feel angry about how our country treats our own citizens. I do hope you will all go out and rent this or you can check out more pieces on here: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/planet.in.peril/
No matter what you believe, our planet is in trouble right now and it will stay in trouble until everyone makes some drastic changes. So, #1 pick is Planet in Peril

No comments:

Post a Comment