Tag Archives: movie reviews
Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman
Ugh. I felt obligated to do a review of this movie because I KNOW that none of the boys are going to be able to make it through this movie, and since I had some cross stitching to do anyway I could focus elsewhere while watching the movie. Once I got started, however, it was so bad that I had to take notes as I went along.
The Movie: Snow White and the Huntsman
The Director: Rupert Sanders
The Leads: Kristen Stewart (Twilight girl, Bella), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Charlize Theron (awesome.)
The Time: Forever… ie: 2 hours
The Rating: 5/10
The Quick Summation: The plot was predictable at best, frustrating at worst. The acting was poor, the lighting was all blues and and dark corners. It looked like the guy from 300 hooked up with the chick who directed the first Twilight movie and made and abortion. Kristen Stewart is still awful, Charlize Theron is still awesome, and Thor is pretty to look at, but doesn’t have a whole lot of character development. Fairly obviously cast just to be pretty. Oh, and they (of course) did another of those stupid love-triangle things that EVERYONE and their mother have been putting in movies lately.
_________Don’t read past here if you’re not interested in SPOILERS
The TRUE Review: The story starts out much the same as every fairy tale. Princess is pretty and loved by everyone. Mommy and Daddy die so she’s left to be raised by an evil step-mother. Stepmommy sends her to the prison to be kept there forever and ever, but (for no understandable reason) never actually kills her. Just lets her live there to be her undoing some day.
Kristen Stewart (Snow White) wanders about with her mouth wide open, as usual, and is incapable for standing up for herself. The Queen is inexplicably angry at the world, but still wants to live in it so she goes to the greatest length to stay alive.
There is this odd scene where she dips herself in white paint and it looks bizarrely like Akasha from Queen of the Damned, and the paint doesn’t seem to have any purpose to the storyline but was thrown in because it looked kind of cool. It was used in most of the commercials. Also, the big black man voice of the mirror on the wall is kind of silly.
Also, apparently Snow White can talk to birds. She tries to escape from her prison, and the birds lead her to a loose nail that she can use to escape. The Queen’s brother comes to bring her up to the Queen just after finding out that Snow will be her downfall, and she cuts his face open with the nail and runs away. The brother-guy is super rape-y. Watch out for him in dark alleys.
So, of course, Snow escapes and gets out of the castle. When she falls into a river there is just a horse chilling there waiting for her to mount and let her ride it into the creepy woods. (A real plot would be great right about now, as well as a reason why anything is happening other than the writers made it that way…)
The Queen hires a Huntsman to find Snow in the creepy forest. He takes the offer only after she agrees to bring his dead wife back to life. He goes to the woods to find Snow. Meanwhile, in the forest Snow is getting her butt kicked by castle knights, and Thor just happens in with enough time to save her. He does, even though he’s contracted to kill her. The Queen’s brother says that she’s going to die and that the Queen can’t bring the wife back, so Thor goes bananas and kills the guards. Snow runs away (without even thanking him!)
The dialogue in this movie is awful. I shit you not this is actually said between Thor and Bella, “Do you drink to drown your sorrows or your conscience?”
“….”
“I suppose a man’s sorrows are his own.”
Ugh. At least Thor is pretty.
There was some nice imagery of the plants slowly being more and more green the further they get away from the Queen’s evil influence.
They meet the dwarves (who were played by normal-sized people which caused quite a bit of hubub in Hollywood when this first came out.) They are the last surface dwelling dwarves left and they can see the light in the darkness. Of course, they keep staring at Snow White because she’s the problem solver above all problem solvers.
The Queen does some sort of spell. Cut to William (her love interest since childhood who never gave up hope that she would still be alive. Because this is a fairy tale. That’s why.) who starts making out with her with all these gross smacking sounds. They talk about childhood and she steals his apple. She takes a bite and Will turns into the Queen who is now triumphant that she has killed Snow. Thor and the real William run into the scene, William kisses her, she doesn’t wake up, and so they drag her sleeping ass all the way to the next kingdom.
So, somehow or another, Thor gets in the room, whines about how dumb he was for letting her out of his sight for even a second and then kisses her sleeping form. She wakes up. Gives a pep talk to her ragtag group of knights and they decide to ride on the Queen’s castle. They win the fight, she goes up to the throne room to fight the Queen. Somehow she manages to win and becomes the Queen.
Do you see what I mean about predictable. Ugh. It wasn’t worth watching. Don’t do it.
SNIPER ELITE V2: Brofist
At first glance, I was not at all thrilled about downloading this demo. And as soon as I got started working toward downloading it, I went through all manners of hell to get the damned thing to download. I ran out of space on my xbox. (Then I realized I had kept each INDIVIDUAL save file from Bioshock…) After getting through all of that nonsense I sat back and I looked at the cover art of this game.
It looks like Brofest 2012 on this cover.
I suppose the cover is to make you feel like a badass while you’re out shooting pixels at guys represented by pixels. Sure. Striking angles with a gun in your face. Yeah!!
Anyway, I found that the font was wayyy too tiny, I couldn’t read anything. I like the way that they have someone telling me what is going on instead of throwing me into a shitty combat situation with a general trying to explain everything with bombs going off around me.
I think they did a really good job on the graphics in this. I know it isn’t technically first-rate, but I thought they were beautiful. The textures were great, all the way through the gaudy wallpaper on the walls of the demolished homes. (Which, in their defense, totally would have actually been on the walls during that time period. People like what they like.) The fires were pretty. Too pretty. I think my screen might be on fire…
Because this is a sniper shooter, there is a strong resemblance to Splinter Cell, in that you suck nuts at hand to hand combat, but from afar you’re really good, and you can sneak around like a B.A. The markers are decently helpful, but since it’s a demo I would have thought that there would be a bit more direction about where we’re supposed to go, what we’re killing, and why. The little blurb at the beginning of the level was helpful, but not perfect. The slow motion kill when we killed in cover was really cool looking, and I felt a little more sweet upon performing it. I think it happens whenever you shoot someone under cover.
The guys you kill can take quite a beating, too. 3-4 ill placed bullets, or 1 in the head. Oh, and it’s a 3rd person shooter, so I can actually play it without getting sick!! Oh, and the ability to hide the bodies was really freaking cool!
I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by the cover. I had a fun time playing, and if given the chance I might actually borrow it from Redbox.
Technology— up, up, and away!
Technology, the REAL final frontier. Today, instead of focusing on a movie that I went and saw (because we fell off the bandwagon this week and didn’t see one on Tuesday as we usually do) I want to talk about tech and the quickly moving world that it has given us. And how jaded we’ve become because of it.
When I look at some of the old school games that I’ve been playing lately I can’t help but think about how far the game industry has come. Back in the day, when I earned a cinematic cutscene I was so proud of myself! The art in a cut scene would be so much more beautiful in the cutscene than anything we would see in the game, and we worked hard for those cinematics.
Today, those scenes are in High Definition, sporting 1080p LCD craziness (terms that don’t really even mean anything to me.) When I walk through the tech section at the local store, it blows my mind how cheap an HD TV has become. We don’t even flinch at the difference in quality anymore, we just know that we want it, and we want it now.
My microwave has an LCD screen. This blows my mind. I wonder where it will take us? Are there repercussions to the speed in which tech moves? Will we start having trouble keeping ourselves employed because of how quickly we have to relearn? As video games advance will we have problems adapting?
I know I already have issues with FPS’s because I get motion sickness. As we move toward 3D graphics, will I start to have issues with that, too?
….Yes, these are the things that I think about when I’m supposed to be sleeping.
Wrath of the Titans
The Wrath of the Titans was a really great movie…. and by really great I mean that the battle scenes were really pretty and I have a thing for men in skirts.
This is the follow up movie to Clash of the Titans, and takes place somewhere around 10-12 years after the events of the first one. The plot, as per the norm of this series, was predicable through and through, but fun! I LOVE Fiennes as Hades, like LOVE him. He’s very believable as the character. As for Mr. Neeson, you can’t walk into a movie theatre and throw a pebble without hitting a poster for this man, but I still can’t get enough. Perseus was great, though a bit more of a wuss than he was in the first one–but I guess that’s what happens when you settle down for a decade and don’t pick up a sword a single time.
Helios (Perseus’ son) will probably be the front-man for the next movie in the series if they ever make another one, and I’m totally ok with that. Cronus looked like a total BA, and Ares looked great too. Speaking of, Ares, I have a bone to pick with you. You are the goddamned god of war, how did you get your ass beat by a fisherman?! Seriously, dude, get your life together!
Guys: I give it a 6 out of 10. It’s worth seeing if you like men in skirts with big pretty muscles fighting big scary mythical monsters and talking to gods.