Movie Review - Snow White and the Huntsman

*Warning: Contains Spoilers*
Well, I finally got around to seeing this movie for myself, so the friends who've been telling me to for ages can now rest easy. : )
Fairytales can be very tricky to work with, I've learned, especially when it comes to fleshing them out so that the classic fairytale coincidences aren't so... well, coincidental (i.e. 'and then the prince just happened to come riding through the woods and decided to kiss the dead princess and voila! she wasn't dead after all and she woke up! The end.), but I thought that this one was very well done in that regard. All the plot threads concerning character relationships and connections were done very nicely, in my opinion.
The characters were a bit of a mixed bag for me, though.
The huntsman was definitely the most interesting character; I loved the relationship between his backstory and his natural personality traits. Not all of his decisions made complete sense to me, (Remind me again just exactly how leaving the princess alone makes her safer than she would be with you when she's the one the evil queen is really after?) but he was still a fairly well-developed character and a rough-around-the-edges but still really sweet guy.
Snow White was rather... oh, how shall I say this?... muddled? Maybe it's the result of some residual fairytale 'just because'-ness. We know the princess is as beautiful inside as she is outside, and she's kind and warm and loving and compassionate and sweet-spirited... but we have no idea why. She's just that way, just because. The years she's spent in solitary confinement seem to have had no lasting ill effects on her, which is quite interesting considering the young age at which her imprisonment began. Due to my own pathetic lack of ability when it comes to acting, I'm a little hesitant to criticize someone else. However, I will say that Snow White was very lacking in expressiveness. I think that was what created the muddled feeling of her character - her lack of expressiveness made it very difficult as a viewer to tell what she was feeling or thinking, which made the whole thing feel confused and rather shallow. Her unwavering confidence in herself was a little odd, too. Never once over the entire course of the movie did she wonder "What if I can't do this? What if it isn't enough? Am I really the fairest of them all? Is that really enough to undo all of this?". It was just rather strange. I like characters who have at least enough sense to question themselves from time to time.
The evil queen Ravenna, while indeed exceedingly evil, was in my opinion just downright bizarre. I understand, evil people do evil things. No problem there. However, I fail to understand what bathing in a strange, white, paint-like substance has to do with being evil. At first I thought "Oh, this will come back later and be connected to something significant"... but it didn't. I have no idea what it had to do with anything at all, actually. There were also some cliche aspects to her character - portrayals of cruelty that didn't contribute anything of real significance (We know she's evil. We don't need to watch her eat the hearts of songbirds to figure that out.).
The movie as a whole was extremely dark - the darkest movie I've seen in quite a long time - with very little relief. I understand, the queen is holding the kingdom under a spell of black magic which necessarily means there has to be some darkness, but with only a few moments of relief over the course of the entire movie it got a bit depressing.
There was also a slight problem with randomness, and things just sort of dropping into the story without being attached to anything else or given any kind of a segue. The bath-in-white-paint thing was one such instance. Another one was when the huntsman and Snow White are on the lam through the Dark Forest, and he suddenly stops, hands her a knife, and teaches her one move with it. Then they're off again. But at the very end of the movie, that one move ends up being the one that both saves her life and enables her to kill the evil witch. But between those times she's successfully used a sword to fight her way through dozens of soldiers. So... yeah.
And of course there was the love triangle that was completely unresolved. All I can say is that it had better be resolved in the sequel.
On the whole, not a movie I would necessarily get excited about seeing again, but a good one to have seen.

Any thoughts from others who've seen it?

Movie Review - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey! (And a Giveaway)

*Warning: May Contain Spoilers! If you're interested in the giveaway, but don't want to read the review, just scroll down until you see bold font.*

While I wasn't able to go to the midnight premier as I had originally hoped, I was able to go see The Hobbit on its second day in theaters. Definitely the earliest I have ever gotten to see a newly-released movie. I hope I don't get uppity...
But enough of that! I'm sure you're all dying to hear my erudite and witty opinions of the film, right? (Or, more truthfully, I've already exhausted my entire family with my ravings and swoonings and shriekings and carryings-on and just need someone new to blather to.)
So here goes:

I was rather uneasy about the whole idea of The Hobbit being made into a trilogy of movies, and apparently my unease was shared by quite a few people. But after seeing An Unexpected Journey, I am no longer worried in the least.
There was quite a lot of filling in and fleshing out done, with a few additions that weren't in the book, but in my opinion it didn't harm the story in the least. (Like the air raid scene at the beginning of the movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - it just helped ground the story and set up a rich, well-developed stage.) And, it's going to make for an absolutely fabulous trilogy of movies!
Much of the additional material ('additional' meaning 'not in the book') was for the purpose of setting The Hobbit up more solidly as the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, making it a little easier for viewers to see how events are leading up to the War of the Ring. There were plenty of fun references and remarks included, too, that are only meaningful if you've seen the Lord of the Rings movies or read the books, which makes it fun.
There were other things added or expanded upon too, most of it for excitement and/or action purposes. For instance: for a resident of Middle Earth, it's perfectly natural that you should have a pack of orcs hunting you for no other reason than you tromped through their territory. But for a movie viewer, it's more exciting if the orc leader has a long-harbored grudge against the leader of your party and is hunting him down for vengeance. As I said earlier, I don't think it harmed the story at all.
I have to say, in spite of how many times I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I never really grasped just how cool dwarfs could be. I absolutely love what Peter Jackson and the production team have done with the dwarf characters in this movie (and I'm totally going to have to write a story about dwarfs now!). And of course, the hats must go off to the actors who have done such amazing jobs with their roles!
I have this thing about dark, brooding characters, so naturally Thorin Oakenshield had my full attention from the get-go. But I also love the light-heartedness of the brothers Fili and Kili, which they blend perfectly with their skill as warriors. Oftentimes in characters of that type, one side is overdone while the other is left wanting, or else the transition from 'fun' mode to 'battle' mode seems awkward and unnatural. Not so with these two. They make it perfectly natural, and in fact remind me a little bit of my own brothers. : ) And of course, what's not to love about sweet, unassuming Bilbo Baggins? I love, love, love the honesty and sincerity that Martin Freeman has brought to his character, blended so well with Bilbo's feelings of inadequacy as a member of Thorin's party.

And Bilbo's speech at the end of the movie... one that wasn't in the book but is so good that it could have been... just made my heart melt. Gotta say it.
The cinematography of the movie was just as amazing as it was in the Lord of the Rings movies - sweeping landscapes that leave you totally convinced Middle Earth is a real place that is out there somewhere, panoramic shots of mountains, amazing CGI settings and graphics, and great action shots and sequences. There was just one kind of weird, distracting thing I noticed, when the dwarfs have all been captured by the goblins and the goblin king is taunting Thorin. The camera is cutting back and forth between them during their exchange, but every single time it cuts to Thorin his head is down, and he's slowly raising his eyes to fix the goblin king with a withering glare. Don't get me wrong, he's got glaring down to an art and the whole slowly-raising-his-eyes-which-are-blazing-with-hatred thing made for a great shot... the first time. The third and fourth times, it started getting a little weird. Probably just an editing error, and really nothing that even matters in light of the rest of the movie's sheer and massive epicness, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
And the soundtrack... oh, the soundtrack! I had chills listening to the dwarfs sing 'Misty Mountains' around Bilbo's hearth, the battle music was amazing, the Ring theme came in at just exactly the right moment, and the Shire theme (also coming in at exactly the right moments) was as heart-tugging and beautifully sweet as ever.

Which brings me to the second part of this post: The Giveaway!
The Ink Slinger is having a giveaway of The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey soundtracks, and you're invited to enter! I'm not familiar with The Dark Knight soundtrack, but it's by Hans Zimmer so it has to be amazing. And I am here to testify that the Hobbit soundtrack is one you will definitely want to add to your collection. So Click Here and get over to the Ink Slinger to enter the giveaway. And if you haven't seen The Hobbit yet, get thee to a theater and do so with all haste!

Movie Review: Brave

From the moment my brothers and I first saw the trailer for Brave, we knew we had to see it. We figured any movie that A) is about Scotland and B) contains lines like "We'll expect your declarations of war in the morning" and "No weapons on the table" (which sounds remarkably like our house) was worth our attention.
So one afternoon when we all got off work, we drove into town to see it. It was well worth the trip, and we loved it.
As a nice change of pace from the romance movies flooding the market today, Brave is actually a lovely mother-daughter story. Of course, I was a bit edgy about that too at first, considering Pixar's less-than-glorious track record of botching parent-child stories (case in point: Finding Nemo). However, I was surprised and delighted to discover that in Brave, they actually did a good job handling the development and struggles in Merida's relationship with her mother. The way they executed the final turning point had me ready to stand up and cheer, simply because I was so happy to finally see a Disney movie with a moral of humility and admitting when you're wrong.
The music was wonderful (you can't really go wrong with bagpipes and fiddles), the animation was incredible, and the story itself was delightfully entertaining - a great way to get my Scottish blood flowing.
A few things to be aware of:
One, I wouldn't show this movie to very young children. Mordu, the giant bear Merida faces, would be pretty scary for a little kid.
Two, there is some brief partial nudity at one point, when all the men get stranded on the roof of the castle and tie their kilts together as a rope to get down. I admire their resourcefulness, but still... yeah.
Three, one of the castle maids is rather well endowed by nature, shall we say, and wears a very low-cut dress that makes the issue rather difficult to ignore.
Four, magic plays a key role in the story. Merida sees will o' the wisps, meets a witch, asks for a spell to change her fate, etc. The lessons Merida learns over the course of the story subtly emphasize that magic is what got her into trouble in the first place, which I appreciated seeing, but the presence of magic as such might be a problem for some families.
Aside from that, as I said before, this was a delightful movie that I definitely plan on seeing again. And for anyone of Scottish heritage who plans on seeing this movie in the future, be warned: you might be surprised by how vividly some of your own personality traits show up in various characters. ; )