Fifty Shades of Grey

Hello guys! I finally watched 50 Shades of Grey, which has been a huge talking point amongst women and even some men for a while now. I wasn't sure what to expect but I went in with an open mind (Like Mr Grey asked) and here's the verdict...

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Synopsis:

Based on E.L James' best seller fifty shades of grey is a raunchy tale about a masochist relationship between the powerful and successful Christian Grey and a college student named Anastasia Steele. He wants nothing more than to have her submit to him but Ana wants more than that, she wants a loving relationship but in an attempt to understand his desires she realises it may all be a bit too much.

Review:

I'll be completely honest, I wasn't expecting Fifty Shades to be a great movie. After reading the books and realising it is in fact a terrible piece of literature, I still somehow found myself enjoying them because it was mind numbingly fun and allowed an escape. I was hoping the film would be the same but it was just incredibly awkward, not because of what was on screen but the non-existent chemistry between the two main character's. God bless Dornan and Johnson for trying but it's clear that they're both uncomfortable in their roles and there wasn't a single likeable trait about either of them. In fact, it was 110 minutes of scripted talking, brief sex scenes and unconvincing sexual tension. I am well aware that the team had trouble with casting and these two weren't the first choices but that being said, with this film being so highly anticipated, I had just hoped for much more. Sam Taylor-Johnson wasn't brave enough to explore the true depths and darkest corners of Grey's character which makes the movie adaptation tamer than several teen slasher movies I've seen in the past. Fifty Shades also comes across as contradictory, Christian mentions that 'He doesn't do romance' several times throughout the film and yet he sends Ana gifts with personalised notes, takes her on a helicopter ride and even introduces her to his family which makes it seem a little bit like a cheesy love story in several parts.

Overall, Fifty Shades of Grey has been a big disappointment and yet, I'm probably going to go back and talk to my friends about it. Far from a blockbuster to be remembered but still has tongues wagging. 

2/5

What If (2013)

Being an avid Daniel Radcliffe fan myself, I have been meaning to check out 'What If' for a while now so I finally took the time to watch it today and it's actually rather heart warming.


What If:

Synopsis:

Wallace (Radcliffe) is a medical school drop-out who has suffered his fair share of heartaches. After deciding to give up on love he is introduced to Chantry (Zoe Kazan) and the two of them hit it off immediately. Discovering that Chantry has a long-term boyfriend means only one thing, Wallace is placed in the friend zone but their undeniable chemistry means it's not that easy. What if the love of your life just so happens to be your best friend?

Review:

It has always been difficult for Daniel Radcliffe to step away from his Harry Potter roots but in his first ever rom-com I think it's safe to say that there's much more to this pint sized actor than meets the eye. Radcliffe is charming, witty and strikes up amazing chemistry on-screen with his co-stars and that is what really brings this movie to life. 

Of course 'What If' is never going to be a classic that's remembered years down the line but it's fun and respectable and definitely leaves you with a smile. It's completely predictable but isn't that what we all secretly want from a romance story? Wallace and Chantry are unbelievably cute together, their sweet little inside jokes and flirty insults have you rooting for them the whole time.

My only problem with 'What If' is the disappointing and frankly rather dull ending. After watching almost an hour and a half of Wallace and Chantry battling against their feelings for one another it's a bit of a cop out to skip ahead several years and show them happily married and madly in love. It would have been nice to see a bit more of their story as a couple but I still enjoyed it nonetheless,

A witty and modern love story that has you smiling most of the time. A definite must-see, even if it is just the once.

4/5

Blackfish (2013)

Hi guys, so I spent my evening watching documentaries and decided to watch Blackfish again for the third time. It's such a powerful and heart wrenching story that uncovers the dark truth behind these glamourised shows. I visited Sea World back in 2013, before I had watched this documentary but it has had such an impact on me that I won't ever visit that place again. If I want to see orca's then I shall go out to sea and watch these wonderful creatures in their natural habitat.


Synopsis:

Blackfish goes behind the scenes of the magical façade that is SeaWorld and takes a look at how the Orca's are captured, trained and ultimately mistreated thus leading to several deaths and attacks of trainers. It contains eye witness accounts from those who saw the attacks and statements from previous SeaWorld employees which paints a pretty grim picture of this sea life prison.

Review:

Blackfish is gut wrenching, intense and completely eye opening and it most definitely changed my outlook on the SeaWorld parks and the franchise as a whole. Cowperthwaite's detailed storytelling includes eye witness accounts, archived footage and tapes from several court hearings which makes it almost impossible to ignore. The brutality of the deaths shocked me to the core but Blackfish looks beyond that and uncovers the aftermath and the cover ups to ensure these huge corporations can carry on making money.

The documentary investigates the capturing of these majestic and intelligent creatures, how they are forced apart from their own families and jetted across the other side of the world to perform in front of thousands of people. Humans can never understand their emotional requirements but it's obvious keeping them in a small concrete pool with other whales from different cultures is not something they need or want. Cowperthwaite's argument contains plenty of evidence and facts to get viewers on board and of course it is always nice to hear both sides of the story but SeaWorld don't really help themselves by refusing to make a comment. Maybe because all of it is true and there really isn't anything left to say?

Hopefully Blackfish sets in motion some changes in the way these animals are treated and housed. I believe it is certainly powerful enough to persuade others not to visit these parks again and maybe some day these beautiful creatures can be left alone to live their lives out in the ocean.

Please watch this if you get the chance, it will change your perspective and if it doesn't then I don't know what will.

5/5

The Boy Next Door (2014)

The Boy Next Door follows a suburban school teacher Claire (J-Lo) as she tries to come to terms with the fact that her husband had an affair. Whilst getting back into the dating scene she is introduced to Noah (Guzman), a new high school student who just so happens to be incredibly helpful, polite and quizzed up on English Literature, the subject that Claire teaches at the school. After getting drunk one night she makes the mistake of taking Noah to bed which leads to an insane obsession with her and she soon realises he won't stop until he has her all to himself, no matter what the cost.

Review:

It's always nice to have a good looking cast on your screen but even that is not enough to help this film amount to anything. It's predictable and in all honesty, I've seen it all before, several times. Obsession, lust, crazy murdering stalker, you know the usual...

The Boy Next Door was much more endurable than I had first anticipated but it's slightly embarrassing to see Jennifer Lopez be an executive producer for a film which revolves entirely around Jennifer Lopez. It's obvious she has paid more attention to making herself look sexy in every shot than the actual production and narrative and characters, or anything for that matter. Yes there are times when The Boy Next Door provides a cheap thrill but it's so tediously obvious what the outcome is going to be in every single situation that it becomes a bit of a farce. 

Guzman takes up the role of a psychopathic stalker with great ease and he was probably my favourite part of the movie but that may just be because he is nice to look at because none of the character's have a lot of depth and when you finally discover Noah's back story it's so ridiculous you almost want to laugh out loud.

The ending did take me by surprise but not for reasons you would expect, it's gory and silly and doesn't fit in with the rest of the movie whatsoever. It's feeble attempt to go out with a bang but instead it switches over to a slasher/comedy movie.

Better than anticipated but not something I'd watch again, although there are much worse films out there.

2/5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWWB11YulPc

Taken 3

Hi guys, apologies for neglecting the page but I'll be blatantly honest with you, as of late I have been indulging in soppy, cheesy rom-coms and I am pretty sure you don't want to hear about that. Anyway I am back now and I am going to start you off with my review of Taken 3, hope you enjoy.



Taken 3 (2015)

Synopsis:

Bryan Mills is thrust back into a chaotic world after his ex-wife is brutally murdered in his apartment and he is being framed for it. Mills (Liam Neeson) is forced to go on the run from the CIA whilst attempting to discover who really killed his wife and why they are trying to frame him.


Review:

Taken 3 is just like the rest of the franchise; full of action, car chases and gun fights but a little bit far-fetched. I was more shocked at how good Liam Neeson looks for his age than the plot of the movie itself, but overall it's not as bad as everyone makes out. Taken 3 consists of the usual twists and turns, guessing games and almost unbelievable fights in which Mills manages to defeat several men with nothing but his bare hands and although nobody in the movie is actually 'Taken' it does make for quite an interesting change.
Many believe the Taken franchise should have stopped after the second but all in all it does what it's supposed to and provides the viewer with plenty of action, even if the plot is a little bit silly. The relationship between Mills and his daughter Kim runs much deeper in the third instalment and the character development does continue from the last but it also lets us see that Mills isn't a hero and is in fact, rather selfish. In Taken 3 we witness Mills drag his golfing buddies into his dangerous world and watch them pay the price so that Mills can protect his daughter, which seems to be his only priority. Saying that, I am still a huge Neeson fan and I would probably watch Taken 3 again if it was on the television.
If you're a huge action movie fan and love destructive car chases, repetitive combat scenes and Liam Neeson saying 'I will find you and I will kill you' then you should definitely give this film a watch.

3/5

American Sniper

Hi guys! I'm sorry it's been so long but I will make it up to you with a review of the eagerly anticipated 'American Sniper'. Being a huge fan of the war genre I was incredibly excited for it's release and I wasn't disappointed.


American Sniper (2014)

                                                     

Synopsis:

American Sniper was directed by Clint Eastwood and follows the true story of the U.S Military’s most lethal sniper, Chris Kyle. Bradley Cooper portrays Kyle as he is sent out to Iraq to protect his fellow soldiers but when the opposition realise how lethal he actually is, they put a bounty on his head and he quickly becomes a prime target. Despite the stress and worry his wife has been put through, Kyle goes on to serve four tours of Iraq but when he finally decides to retire he realises that he will never truly escape the war.

Review:

American Sniper is a powerful and thought-provoking film that delves into the realities of the Iraq war and the soldiers who risked their lives every single day. Cooper’s portrayal of Chris Kyle is so believable and moving, it allows you to distance yourself from the Hollywood star and invest in the character of Chris Kyle. I believe the film would have benefited from paying more attention to the after effects of the war and how soldiers deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. American Sniper does cover this topic briefly but it focuses more on dramatic gun fights and Kyle’s ability to somehow be good at everything.

Cinematic, action packed and incredibly tense, American Sniper looks beyond the ‘legend’ of Chris Kyle and allows the audience to almost put themselves in the centre of the war and witness the true horrors he had to endure. There were several points throughout the film when I had to hold my breath and even shield my eyes from one particularly brutal scene, it does shock the audience but that is the harsh reality of war and it’s clear Eastwood has created an inspiring and honest masterpiece.

I am a huge fan of the war film genre and American Sniper is definitely up there with the best, it manages to provoke all of your emotions. There were times when I was incredibly tense and hoping Kyle would make it out of the dangerous situations, it also brought a tear to my eye time and time again and most of all, it made me feel an overwhelming sadness about these wars and the effects it has on the soldiers. Bradley Cooper is the main attraction in American Sniper and his ability to take on this role with sympathy and elegance is worthy of an Oscar.

American Sniper is one of those films you can watch several times and enjoy it again and again it offers so many depths of the story and will never cease to blow you away. I would definitely recommend this film to all of my friends and I already know it’s going to be joining my DVD collection when it’s released.

4/5

The Woman in Black 2: The Angel of Darkness

Happy new year guys! Well, it's now 2015 and the reviews must continue, starting with The Woman in Black 2. Now, I hadn't expected much from this sequel because the original was fantastic but I have to say, although it was lacking any real scares, I wasn't disappointed and actually enjoyed it.
So here we go.

Synopsis:

The Woman in Black 2: The Angel of Darkness is set 40 years after the first Woman in Black film, it has all new characters but follows the same back story of Jeanette Humphreys and the death of her son in the treacherous marshes. The film’s lead character is Eve Parkins, a school teacher who accompanies a group of WWII evacuee children to Eel Marsh House. The village has been derelict for years and the group are told that they are the only people on the island but after a series of strange events and several sightings of a woman in and around the house, Eve begins to believe they are not alone.

Review:

The Woman in Black 2 is atmospheric and tense from the very beginning; it contains the perfect setting for a horror film with long, dark hallways, creaking floorboards and a sinister looking cellar but it tries too hard to live up to its predecessor and only provides the audience with cheap jump scares that are all too predictable.

Eve Parkins played by Phoebe Fox does bring the narrative to life and I thoroughly enjoyed the back story to her character, it allows you to connect with her and makes it much easier to invest in to her world. The character building in this film is incredibly strong, the audience gains all the information it needs on the main characters but of course, it still doesn’t live up to Daniel Radcliffe’s roll in the previous film.

Towards the end of the film I could predict every single jump scare and sometimes they weren’t necessary. The eerie silences, the deep shadows and the unnerving camera angles would have been enough to make the viewer feel uneasy and add a bit more depth to the film, rather than follow the stereotypical cheap, thrills but I wasn’t completely disappointed and I may have come off my chair a couple of times to begin with.

Although the casting didn’t include any big names I felt as though they exceeded my expectations and brought the story to life, they were all believable and had their own little back stories to give more information on their personalities. I was personally a huge fan of Harry (Jeremy Irvine) and really enjoyed watching his character develop. I wasn’t sure whether to trust him to begin with and feel that Irvine added a mysterious presence to Harry’s character, which we later discover more about his past and his strange actions.

Before watching The Woman in Black 2 I knew it would never live up to the first one but I enjoyed the film much more than expected. The film is let down by its overuse of cheap thrills and repetitive scenes to fill up gaps in the story but the characters are likeable and relatable and the setting of Eel Marsh House will always send a shudder up my spine. Unlike the original Woman in Black, I wouldn’t want to watch this film again but it’s definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of this genre and you scare easily.

3/5