Some Movie Reviews

Hello Earthlings,

So I've decided to do a post about some of the movies I've seen in the last couple months. I've been meaning to do a long rant about a couple of them but also have have some PRAISE, believe it or not, for a few others as well.

Tori's Rating Scale:

$- Just despicable

$$- That's a rental

$$$- Go see it if you're bored

$$$$- Pretty decent

$$$$$- Great

$$$$$$- Fucking Awesome!!!!!

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Rating: $ $ $ $ $

First thing's first: the actress who plays the title character, Rooney Mara, was aesthetically perfect for the role in my opinion. She looked as I imagined the character should look from my few minutes of viewing the original film. I must say I have a massive lady-crush on the main character Lisbeth Salander. Her "I don't give a fuck" attitude and amazing hair, piercings and make-up make my heterosexual heart leap high in the air (alliteration FTW).

Daniel Craig also did a fantastic job playing Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist prosecuted for libel who is hired to uncover the mystery of the death of the young Herriet Vanger, ex-member of the wealthy Vanger family.

The film was excellent. Many surprises and a couple gruesome rape scenes shook me to my core. Though the movie started off pretty slow, it seems that David Fincher, who also directed Fight Club and Panic Room, purposefully began with a slow pace to make the mystery more of, well, a mystery. Instead of making all the plot points clear, Fincher developed a somewhat unclear storyline that ended in one of the most shocking twists I have seen in a long time.

Unfortunately, I did not get around to reading the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson until after seeing the movie, but while doing so I did notice that Fincher kept to the story very well. He left out only details that didn't have too much relevance to the plot line of the film making it both slow at the right points and exciting at unexpected points. The movie was a hit in my opinion and deserves to be seen by all feminists and those who can stomach the intense rape and violence of the film.

TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN
Rating: $
I must say that my rating seems a bit high. Maybe it is because I WAS a sucker for these movies before I saw Breaking Dawn. What a miss!
To start, the acting was just awful. Normally the acting is a bit cheesy, but not to the point that every minute you're in the theater you smell what you believe to be rotten parmigiana. The actors just didn't seem into it, almost like they are as sick as this franchise as all us regular people who are pretty much forced to stay with them until next November, when Breaking Dawn II comes out and we can finally finish this damn series and stop bitching about it.
The worst of the worst is undoubtedly Taylor Lautner, who jut cannot hack it in the wonderful world of acting. He is the pits (not Brad, just THE pits). It hurts to see him try to suckle at the acting teats of Billy Burke and R-Patz (yes, I do believe him to be quite awesome in the acting universe, even though he emits a foul pretension in his interviews that makes me want to vomit).
Though the movie had a few good parts such as Bella's wedding dress, their eerily cute almost-sexless honeymoon and the gory birth of a vampire-human hybrid, the bad definitely outweighed the good. One of the most obvious flaws was the music. It was awful and added a distinct cheddar odour to the parmigiana stench, farted through the screen by the terrible acting. Since, after leaving the theater, my eyes were bleeding from not only the stink but also the forks I shoved in them to end my pain, I believe that the film is the worst of the four currently released in the Twilight Saga.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
Rating: $ $
HOLY CONFUSION BATMAN! Normally I'm good at figuring out what is happening throughout a movie. Wait, that's not entirely true. Sometimes it takes me a little while to figure out what's going on. BUT I always figure it out. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the exception. By the end I felt that maybe I understood 45%. That means that at least some of the movie-viewing population really did not understand ANYTHING. I went into the movie knowing I would have to follow along and couldn't let my mind drift but I left feeling ridiculously dense for not understanding the plot and wasting $10.00 on this snore-inducing film (I say this because my roommate and I literally heard snoring behind us).
To start off with, roomie and I realized it was difficult to follow because there was not one character that was in the dark about what was happening in the film. They were all in the know. Therefore there was no way for the context to be explained properly to the audience. Secondly, the time jumping throughout the film, combined with the sheer number of characters, complicated things to the extreme. It wasn't clear until maybe the last half hour who was where when. MOUTHFUL.
The only positive I could pinpoint in the entire movie was the acting. Unlike the preceding review of Breaking Dawn, the loaded cast of Tinker Tailor was a treat. Gary Oldman as the main character was a perfect choice since he portrayed the patience and wisdom of George Smiley perfectly. Colin Firth's role was also done fantastically (obviously). He played a mildly sarcastic suspect in the mystery of a Soviet Mole within the Circus, the highest echelon of the British Secret Intelligence Service during the Cold War.
The movie originated from the book of the same title by John le Carre. I feel as though maybe reading the plot and being able to go over it line by line would be a better experience than the confusion that is the film. Since there were so many characters it was impossible to flourish any kind of attachment to any of the characters except Smiley, who you feel sympathy for due to an affair his wife participates in. Really the only emotion I felt during the film was envy. Envy of any character that was murdered, since that is exactly what I wanted for myself to end the suffering I endured for two hours. You know how I said my eyes were bleeding due to the stench emitted from the cheese of Breaking Dawn? Well, my eyeballs were bleeding during Tinker Tailor because they were trying oh so hard to escape my sockets and run straight into the theater playing Tin Tin (yes, I do believe Tin Tin wold be better than Tinker Tailor).

I have seen a few other movies but I have exhausted the extent of my humour for the day (I am in class and extremely hungry as I await the hour in which I get to consume Mexican food at Ottawa's wonderful restaurant Ahora).
Stay tuned for a detailed analysis of the trouble that Breaking Dawn is causing for modern, gender-equal thoughts and rights (YA I'M PISSED AT THE MESSAGES IT SENDS YOUNG GIRLS)
Peace Out Home Skillets!