At the Movies with General Havoc

[Charon]

If not for Prometheus and Dark Knight Rises coming out this year, I would already be calling it as Avengers being the best movie of the year.

My praise for the movie and the flaws I saw in it are much the same as what Havoc said. Pretty much everything was fantastic, but some of the constant snarky one-liners did tend to get a little old at times and a few dialogues didn't shine like the rest. But it is a movie that I plan on seeing in theaters again, and that is an accolade I RARELY put upon a movie. I have to consider them to be a magnum opus to do so, and Avengers lived up to that in spades.

*quietly sits at a diner and eats his shawarma*

[Dark Silver]

I loved tht extra post credits scene...the team just sitting there quietly, the shop keepers in the background cleaning up, and eating shawarma.

[LadyTevar]

I've had post-event meals like that, where we're so damn tired there's no words, just the slow chewing of food because we're too exhausted for anything else.

[Steve]

Personally I consider Avengers the new bar for comic movies, and to compare it to Dark Knight... I can't, because I think Dark Knight is overrated. Not bad, just overrated, and certainly not as fun. I would go see Avengers again and again if I could afford it; I saw TDK twice - once by myself and once with my Dad - and honestly that is enough. I have no interest in rewatching the film.

(Then again, I would see Green Lantern again over TDK.... but I've always said that when one day the ME looks at my brain, he's going to find it glowing green with the GLC symbol on it).

[General Havoc]

Personally I consider Avengers the new bar for comic movies, and to compare it to Dark Knight... I can't, because I think Dark Knight is overrated. Not bad, just overrated, and certainly not as fun. I would go see Avengers again and again if I could afford it; I saw TDK twice - once by myself and once with my Dad - and honestly that is enough. I have no interest in rewatching the film.

(Then again, I would see Green Lantern again over TDK.... but I've always said that when one day the ME looks at my brain, he's going to find it glowing green with the GLC symbol on it).

I certainly and unreservedly put Avengers on the same bar as Dark Knight, but... Green Lantern? Seriously? That movie defined mediocre.

[Steve]

I certainly and unreservedly put Avengers on the same bar as Dark Knight, but... Green Lantern? Seriously? That movie defined mediocre.

Allow me to quote myself.

but I've always said that when one day the ME looks at my brain, he's going to find it glowing green with the GLC symbol on it).

And on top of that... I just didn't find TDK as fun as GL, though I'm dying to see the GL Extended Cut to see how Campbell wanted to tell the story as opposed to the studio idiots.

[Stofsk]

TDL isn't fun, I'll grant you that. But honestly, the way the film is put together, the action and the themes and character arcs, make the film stand out IMO. I haven't seen Green Lantern, but I had no desire to - GL has always been one of DC's most goofiest characters.

[Steve]

I'm a Green Lantern fan, so my bias is obvious.

That's not to say that Dark Knight isn't a good movie. It was a great movie. But it's just not a movie I care to watch again. Sure, if I have friends over and they want to watch it I'll not refuse, but I won't be watching it on my own time by myself. It's just how I feel.

Avengers, however, I would want to watch again.

[Steve]

So, GenHav.... did you see Battleship? Or did you spend your money more wisely by going to see Avengers again?

[General Havoc]

Fuck. That. Movie.

I grant, I haven't seen Battleship, but it is nonetheless indicative of the depths to which the great Roger Ebert has fallen that he gave it 2.5 stars and Avengers 3. Nonetheless, I started this operation to see movies I would otherwise miss, not to catch movies that by rights should not exist.

I'm seeing something else tomorrow. I'll let you all know.

[frigidmagi]

My feeling is that Robert doesn't bother to pay attention to movies of certain genres he just shows up sits in the theater and gives them as low a score as he feels he can get away with. If it's fantasy, sci-fi or superheroes, he's not gonna judge it fairly.

[General Havoc]

Bernie

Alternate Title: The Nicest Guy in the Room

One sentence synopsis: An outgoing funeral director becomes the companion and slave of a bitter old widow.



Things Havoc liked: Jack Black is something of an acquired taste, by and large. I tend to like him, even in movies that are admittedly not very good (Nacho Libre for instance), and when Black is good (High Fidelity, Tropic Thunder), he's a blast to watch. Generally his appeal comes from his ability to throw himself into roles that other comedians (such as Jim Carey) would turn into simple gag reels of stupidity, and elevate them by appearing smarter than his character is allowed to be. Yet in this film, Black's character (the eponymous Bernie), is a smart, decent man with only the faintest hint of comedy lurking beneath the surface. This is probably the most understated I've ever seen Black, and given his usual fare, one is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the character to be revealed for the madcap lunatic that Black typically plays, yet it never is.

Black's Bernie is a warm, outgoing, friendly-to-a-fault funeral director, who sees nothing whatsoever oxymoronic about these two attributes. He sings in church and at the amateur theater, gives money and goods away freely to all and sundry, and is well liked by practically everyone in the small town of Carthage, Texas. His character is hinted at as being gay, but never is this either confirmed nor made a matter of ridicule. Certainly he is the toast of the "blue hair" crowd, including Shirley MacLaine's Marjorie Nugent, a bitter, evil woman hated by the rest of the town, who becomes Bernie's sugar momma and slave driver all at the same time. MacLaine is always at her best when playing an abrasive curmudgeon, but outdoes herself here, portraying a character whose appeal is entirely inexplicable to one as nice as Bernie, a fact most of the rest of the townsfolk comment on at length.

Speaking of the townsfolk, they are by far the best element of the film. The movie's framing device is a mockumentary, wherein much of the time is taken up with members of the local community looking into the camera and talking about Bernie and the events that involved him. Normally this approach annoys me, as it seems somewhat lazy for a filmmaker to have characters tell you about a character instead of showing him to you, but in this case the townsfolk themselves are so well drawn, with a perfect combination of small-town aphorisms and rustic "charm" that they steal the show (as well as giving us most of the best lines in the film). As the insanity that is the plot plays out, they are the ones who ground us in what's happening when, and why the various characters are doing what they are.

Finally, the villain of the piece, if he can be called that, is the local sherrif, played by Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey's not my favorite actor in the world, as he usually plays insufferable mugging assholes whom we are expected to accept as leading men (Sahara and Failure to Launch come to mind). Recently though, with movies like this one or The Lincoln Lawyer, he has been transitioning to insufferable mugging assholes whom we are expected to find sleazy. That may not sound like an enormous change, but it makes all the difference in a movie like this. McConaughey does an excellent job as the stuck-up, vaguely homophobic small-town sheriff, all without pushing the boundaries too far into outright villainy.



Things Havoc disliked: The first half of this movie feels like an extended "setup" piece that simply won't end. I was conscious about 45 minutes into it of wondering when the director was going to stop giving me quirky exposition and actually get to the story. In reality, the quirky exposition sort of is the story, in a strange way. It's not a terrible method, and it works better than I thought, but this is a very slow-paced film, taking its sweet time getting anywhere at all. Those coming in expecting a high-energy Jack Black comedy will be sorely disappointed.

Other than that however, there isn't much that the film does wrong, more simply that the material here may not support a runtime of two hours. Much of the film consists of filler material, and while it's good, entertaining filler, it doesn't do a lot to actually advance the story beyond telling us what we already know. I appreciate that the filmmakers intended this, at least to a point, but good as their disguise was for the lack of material, it remains a disguise. While this certainly isn't enough to ruin the film, it does necessarily limit the horizons of the movie.



Final Thoughts: Again though, there's very little that this film actually does wrong. In addition to being one of the best performances I've seen from Jack Black, the entire movie has a warmth and verisimilitude to it that is rare in an age where even quirky independent films bear the mark of Hollywood polish. Though its lack of material keeps it from the lofty heights of the best films ever made, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with a simple story, well-told and acted. And given that the cinemas are presently hosting such brilliant pieces as Battleship, one could certainly do far worse.

Indeed, I suspect next week that I will.

Final Score: 7/10

[frigidmagi]

Havoc you're not gonna watch Battleship are you? For the love of all that's Holy Man don't do it! Think of your family, your friends, your own peace of mind! Don't do this!

[Dark Silver]

I demand you review MiB3 Review Monkey!

DO IT

[General Havoc]

Men in Black III

Alternate Title: Too Old for this Shit

One sentence synopsis: Agent J must go back in time to save Agent K from a time-traveling nemesis.


Things Havoc liked: It has become somewhat typical of these reviews for me to start by praising the previous work of some actor or another. In this case, that actor will be Josh Brolin, a man whose work I've been a consistent fan of in movies from True Grit to W, Milk, and No Country for Old Men. The decision to cast him as the younger version of Tommy Lee Jones' K is probably the best single decision that went into this film, as Brolin doesn't merely do an impression of Jones, but flat out transforms into a younger version of the quintessential Texan. I don't believe I've ever seen two actors whose look, sound, mannerisms, and general demeanor are so identical, and in fact I'd say that Brolin's take as Agent K is, if anything, more interesting that that of Jones (whom we'll get to). Though we've seen Jones' no-nonsense schtick a hundred times, Brolin manages to infuse a bit more energy and humanity into the exact same archetype, despite playing it in the exact same way. His presence in the film makes it notably lighter and more interesting, and managed to re-energize my interest in a series that, with its last movie, had begun to seriously wane.

Not that Brolin is the only thing the movie has going for it. The villain of the piece, played by Jermaine Clement (of Flight of the Concords) is well beyond the villains of either of the first two films (particularly the second). Campy as all hell, with an unsettling and yet very clever design, Clement chews scenery like he's trying to derive nourishment from it, but in a movie like Men in Black, that's entirely appropriate. The scene where he confronts himself (don't ask) is a riot, and his growling, refined manner of speech (which sounds like a cross between Hugo Weaving and Tim Curry) livens up the otherwise pedestrian chase or combat sequences that the film puts him through. On a no-less campy but completely different note, Michael Stuhlbarg plays an alien named Griffin whose concept (an alien who can see all possible outcomes of all situations at all times) is actually fairly intriguing, and whose segues into metaphysics are actually well-thought out and provoke a sense of the wonder that the first movie had in spades. Finally, a series of cameo roles, from the always fun Emma Thompson as the new boss of MiB to SNL alum Bill Hader's drop-dead hilarious sequence as Andy Warhol, are all wonderfully conceived, written, and put together.

As a time travel flick, the movie makes a great deal of the art design and style of the 60s infused with the Men in Black space-age chic. The results are actually damned impressive. Much hilarity is had from seeing the older, clunkier versions of Men in Black standbys (such as the Neuralizer), or what the people of the 60s consider to be reasonable for portable phones or jetpacks. Though more could probably have been done with these sorts of gags, what ones made it into the film are well done, and buttressed by hilarious send-ups to the high-culture world of the late 60s. Even if some of the uglier aspects of American 60s culture are ironed over (I'm not sure how many black US Army Colonels there were in 1969), the nostalgia shines through regardless.



Things Havoc disliked: There are certainly many things going for MiB III, but unfortunately, two of the things that don't go for it are the two leads, both of whom, frankly, are too old to play the characters they originally played 14 years ago. Tommy Lee Jones simply looks tired in his (surprisingly limited) scenes, a bitter old man who has passed his sell-by date and is merely going through the motions of his position in a daze. While I get that this is part of the point of the film, the original had Jones looking like an grumpy old man whose dedication and skill were still at their peak, turning his crotchetiness into impatience and his weariness into jaded cynicism, both attributes which play better in a comedy than exhausted indifference. Lest I sound like I'm insulting one of the great icons of American cinema, contrast this performance with Jones' stellar send-up to George Patton in last summer's Captain America, a movie in which he stole every scene he was in, and where his lines seemed sharper and wittier than the rest of the (still quite good) cast. I must therefore conclude that this performance was the result of poor directing, especially since it reminded me of the same soporific turn he gave us in MiB II.

But Jones, honestly isn't the problem. The fact is that at age 43, Will Smith cannot play the fresh-faced young partner anymore. Oh, it's not that he doesn't look the part. Smith can do all the physical stunts required, and certainly doesn't look over the hill at all. But his character doesn't seem to have changed a bit in 14 years, still refusing to take any situation seriously, and reacting to every situation with more of the same jokes that he used in the original film. What worked when he was a 29-year old rookie, simply does not fly with a middle-aged veteran agent, and it's perhaps telling that Josh Brolin, who is a year older than Smith, plays his role of a literal 29-year old agent far more effectively than Smith does. Smith's one-liners feel forced and old-fashioned, neither as sharp nor as biting as they were in either of the original movies. I like Will Smith, and I've liked him more as he's gotten older, but this role needs to be updated if he's going to continue to play it, and trying to emulate the Fresh Prince isn't the way to go.

Finally, even ignoring the two leads, the movie simply isn't well-crafted. Subplots (like Jones/Brolin's relationship with Emma Thompson/Alice Eve's Agent O) are introduced, developed, and then completely forgotten about. Questions established at the beginning of the film never receive answers or even acknowledgment. The subplots that are fully developed are handled in a leaden, clunky manner, particularly the subplot with the sympathetic colonel, which comes across as a completely misguided attempt to add pathos into a film series that was supposed to be about light-hearted alien comedy. The first movie managed to generate a sense of wonder, despite the comedy, by subtly shifting tone within a given sequence. This movie has all the subtlety of an anvil, bringing string orchestras into the soundtrack from nowhere whenever we are meant to feel "sadness" for a character. Though the writing isn't bad, and some scenes manage to work despite this tendency, the overall result looks rough and amateurish. Barry Sonenfeld has directed his share of disasters (Wild Wild West comes to mind), but even by his standards, this work is very poor.



Final Thoughts: Despite all I just said, there is an earnestness to this film that shines through the boring tropes and tired characters, and when Brolin and Smith get together, it almost becomes fun. Ultimately though, while this movie is better than the one that preceded it, it hardly serves as a shining moment in the franchise. When someone asked about the possibility of an MiB4, Sonenfeld is said to have joked that, for that one, Will Smith would be out, and his son Jaden would take over the series. Frankly, given this movie, I'm not sure that's such a bad idea...

Final Score: 5/10

[frigidmagi]

I think part of the problem is the series refusal to advance the characters and the relationships. In every MiB movie, K must be the world weary veteran and J must be the wide eyed rookie. Frankly I wouldn't have brought back K for part II, his story was done, we saw the beginning, the middle and the end. MiB II certainly didn't add anything to that story, nor did it advance or change the relationships between the character. The forced stasis as hurts the series and leaves it feeling somewhat unnatural. I honestly think it a result of upstairs meddling as the suits try to recreate the first movie as much as possible even when it doesn't make sense to do so.

[General Havoc]

Dark Shadows

Alternate Title: The Fall of the House of Munster

One sentence synopsis: A two hundred year old vampire returns to his family estate to rebuild its fortunes and defeat an evil witch.


Things Havoc liked: What is there to say, really, about Johnny Depp? The versatility and breadth of the man's work speaks for itself, and while I do not love everything he's ever done, he's rarely (Nick of Time) not fun to watch. The same applies to most of this cast. I could write an elegy on the merits of actors and actresses such as Michelle Pfeiffer (Batman Returns, Dangerous Minds), Eva Green (Kingdom of Heaven, Casino Royale), Jackey Earle Haley (Little Children, Watchmen), or Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In), every one of whom has proven time and again that they know precisely what they are doing. Even those actors in this film whom I do not automatically like (such as Helena Bonham Carter) have definitely turned in excellent performances. A cast like this assembled for the purposes of a quirky romp in the style of Tim Burton can't have started out poor. Throw in the compositions of Danny Elfman and Burton's trademark visual style, and one might expect something special. This is how Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice came about, after all.

And the visual style is indeed quite good. The film is set in 1972, and Burton takes full advantage of the cultural insanity that was the early 70s. Unlike some of Burton's earlier films (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for instance) the stylization isn't overdone. Instead of some kind of ludicrous over-development of what was going on in the 70s, Burton simply picks out trends, hairstyles, clothes, and other visual props that fit the era and lets them stand by themselves. As a result, the movie still looks campy and insane, but without looking completely farcical. Depp's vampire is done up in full Hammer Brothers regalia, contrasting well with the pastel lunacy of the era, particularly when (in one of the movie's better scenes) he sits down with a group of young hippies around a campfire. Meanwhile, Eva Green's witch is done up like a porcelain doll, complete with fissures and cracked paint, a touch I don't think I've ever seen before. Whatever the movie's sins, it certainly looks good.



Things Havoc disliked: Where do I even begin?

If it sounds like I'm reaching for good things to say about this movie, there's a reason. This film is downright awful, and the responsibility for why lies upon the shoulders of one man: Tim Burton.

To begin with, this film has the slowest pacing I've seen since the first half of Hugo. But unlike Hugo, which had an hour of story stretched into three, the massive number of characters and subplots in Dark Shadows mean that we have two hours of story artificially compressed into one simply because the director can't move the goddamn plot without taking a hundred years to do it. There are lengthy pregnant pauses between and even inside almost every single line of dialogue in this movie, with the result that it physically takes three times longer to say anything than it realistically should. Scenes that could be over and done with in two minutes inexplicably take six or seven minutes to laboriously drag through, as after every line, the camera has to flash to silent reaction shots from five different characters, as though to remind us that they're in the film.

And speaking of the characters, if ever there was a case of too many characters spoiling the plot, it would be this film. I appreciate that this was a soap opera before it was a movie, and that fans of said soap opera will expect to see this character or that one. But soap operas tend to have casts in the dozens, and this movie consequentially has characters in it that have nothing meaningful to contribute (the father and doctor, for instance), but who nevertheless get generous allotments of screentime, further decreasing the amount of time we have to actually run through the story or the main characters. Similarly, what should be a simple cameo for a youthened Alice Cooper is expanded into a multi-minute performance set, as though Burton was actually stretching for material to add. The result of all this wasted time, is that the movie has to rely on multiple clunky scenes of "Allow-me-to-soliloquize-my-life-story" style exposition just to squeeze in the backstory of several characters. Even then, they can't fit it all, and one particularly vital piece of backstory is actually shoehorned into the plot at the last possible second with no setup whatsoever, leaving the audience scratching their collective heads as to where the hell that just came from.

But even when the plot isn't falling over itself, everything else conspires to take up the slack. I can't conceive of what direction the various actors in this movie were given, but it appears to have been assembled randomly out of a hat. Depp does all right with a standard Vincent Price impression, but Green seems to have been encouraged to chew enough scenery to choke an elephant, and goes so far over the top that she manages to make Johnny Depp playing a vampire look restrained and understated. Pfeiffer, whom I usually like, plays her matriarch role so woodenly that one would imagine she had never been in front of a camera before. Confronted with the sight of literal piles of riches that she can use to rebuild her family's fortunes, she can barely muster the energy to raise an eyebrow. Meanwhile Moretz, who was so good in Kick Ass, Let Me In, and even Hugo, plays this one in a constant stoner-monotone that makes it hard to even hear what she's saying. She has exactly one line that sounds like something a human teenager would say, otherwise retreating so far into caricature as to render her unrecognizable.



Final Thoughts: I love these actors, I really do, and my love of these actors probably inflates this movie's score by a point or so. But when I say that I walked out of this film unsure if my decision to see this movie rather than Battleship was a wise one, I'd like you all to take my full meaning. Simultaneously too long and too short, poorly executed on almost every level, if this film doesn't finally put the long-delayed nail in the coffin of Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaborations, then I don't know what will.

If it comes down to watching this movie or Battleship, do yourself a favor go see Avengers again.

Final Score: 3.5/10

[frigidmagi]

she manages to make Johnny Depp playing a vampire look restrained and understated.

I... Huh... Wow?

That sounds scary. Especially since myself and one of the roomies almost went to see it last night. I guess we're waiting for Brave or Spiderman then.

[Josh]

That's one of the reasons that a lot of TV shows tend to translate poorly to movies. Look at Star Trek- TOS became the Kirk, Spock, and some McCoy show, while TNG became the Picard, Data, and basically cameos for everyone else show. When you have an ensemble cast and the compressed timeframe of a movie, you have to go with your most popular characters in order to keep the story streamlined.

Or you get a mess that tries to serve everybody and ends up serving nobody.

[Stofsk]

That's one of the reasons that a lot of TV shows tend to translate poorly to movies. Look at Star Trek- TOS became the Kirk, Spock, and some McCoy show, while TNG became the Picard, Data, and basically cameos for everyone else show. When you have an ensemble cast and the compressed timeframe of a movie, you have to go with your most popular characters in order to keep the story streamlined.

TOS was always the Kirk, Spock and McCoy show. The movies merely continued that, while giving the supporting cast a chance to shine.

TNG was more of an ensemble show, but the movies had bad writing in general. It's not that you can't have a movie where every character has a chance to shine, it's that well the writers clearly couldn't think of a way to achieve that.

[General Havoc]

I'll also remind you all that there are more than a couple Star Trek movies (Wrath of Khan, Journey Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and IMO even the new one) that are legitimately awesome films, despite their ensemble casting. In some of those movies, it's because the film became the Kirk, Spock, and McCoy show, and in some of them it's because the writers let a more ensemble feel creep into the movie. It's difficult, but possible.

My point wasn't that you can't turn a Soap Opera into a good film (though admittedly I cannot think of an example). My point was you can't do it like this.

[LadyTevar]

I am a fan of the original Dark Shadows, and I really liked the restart they tried back in the 80s.

I absolutely REFUSE to see this farce of a movie, even BEFORE you did the review. I could smell the stench from the first leaked shots.

[Josh]

I'll also remind you all that there are more than a couple Star Trek movies (Wrath of Khan, Journey Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and IMO even the new one) that are legitimately awesome films, despite their ensemble casting. In some of those movies, it's because the film became the Kirk, Spock, and McCoy show, and in some of them it's because the writers let a more ensemble feel creep into the movie. It's difficult, but possible.

My point wasn't that you can't turn a Soap Opera into a good film (though admittedly I cannot think of an example). My point was you can't do it like this.

Heh. I'm with you right up to Undiscovered Country, which I thought was overrated and lazy writing for the cheap Cold War parallel, and First Contact finished the Borg conversion of their original status as an unstoppable force of nature into a generic menace with a laughable queen.

My point was, though, was that the way they succeeded was to largely trim back the ensemble to a duo or trio. Chris is right, TOS was pretty much already a trio show, but most of the TNG movies airtime and salient developments were spent on Picard, then Data, with a few bones thrown to the rest of the characters to tie off their outstanding plotlines (Riker becomes Mr. Troi, etc.)

I'm not knocking it- it's the best way to go in the timeframe of a movie. As you say, you can give some continuity nods to an ensemble cast, but you really have to laser focus on one or two characters. For its faults Serenity did do that fairly well in centering the action on Mal and River, while giving enough of the rest of the characters to please their fans as well.

[General Havoc]

Snow White and the Huntsman

Alternate Title: Once Upon a Twilight

One sentence synopsis: Snow White and the Hunter hired to find her must fight against the evil queen who wishes to kill her.


Things Havoc liked: I was not expecting a lot from this movie, indeed I almost decided to miss it, save for two factors. One was the trailers, which, I have to admit, made this thing look, if not good, at least promising. The other was a question of fairness. Having been told that, contrary to Twilight's evidence, Robert Pattinson can act (though I've yet to confirm this personally), I felt it was only fair that I determine if the same was or wasn't true of Kristen Stewart. Given everything, this seemed like the best place to find out.

Not that Stewart is the only draw here, far from it. Chris Hemsworth, whom I've seen a lot of in the last few weeks, plays the Huntsman, and is easily the best thing in the movie. His character is nothing special, a woodsman who lost his wife in some unspecified disaster and has turned to being a drunk and a dissolute, but Hemsworth plays it very, very well, appearing less as a love interest (a wise decision, considering the acting differential) and more as a recovering believer who sees Snow White as a possibility to improve his own life and self-worth. That may sound trite when written down in a sentence, but it actually works quite well on screen.

The villain, meanwhile, played by Charlize Theron, is something else. Theron's always good (aberrations like Mighty Joe Young aside), and here appears to be either insane or attempting to channel Al Pacino (which amounts to the same thing). Her character is a vengeful, wild-eyed madwoman, burning with ferocious intensity as she takes eternal revenge upon all the world for some terrible trauma (kidnapping and rape, one assumes from the flashbacks) that she suffered long ago. Her backstory elevates the character out of the Disney-trope of the evil queen who is evil for its own sake, and gives Theron license to simply lose her mind in more than a few scenes. I can't call her performance tremendously layered, but she certainly livens the film whenever she's on-screen. Meanwhile, side characters, such as the seven dwarves (led by an always-wonderful Ian MacShane) are well done, drawn apparently from the Lord of the Rings, but given depth and background beyond the scope of the original fairytale.

Getting beyond the cast, the movie has a wonderful visual style, equal parts fairy tale and mature fantasy. Every location, from the evil forest to the sanctuary to the wicked queen's castle has an inspired design which seems to be channeling some kind of fantastical version of Scotland. The movie is unafraid to dive deeply into fairy tale imagery, particularly in the less dank-evil bits, even managing to update Disney's forest-creature-chorus from the 1937 animated version. Color is sparingly used, only to be deployed in full glory for key sequences, cutting the overall "realistic" grey of the rest of the film for fantasy interludes. The result looks like a somewhat more child-friendly version of Pan's Labyrinth, and while I didn't like it as much as I did Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece, the style definitely works for the type of film they're attempting to produce.

Finally, while the plot is both age-old, and nothing terribly special, there's a certain refreshing simplicity to the archetypes used here, helped in no small part by the visuals. Snow White is presented as being so pure that her very presence restores life and vitality to the land and the people around her, conjuring forth fantastic beasts out of hiding and calming monsters with only a glance. In any other film this would seem stupid, but the visuals allow the film to show the concept instead of telling us about it, and their quality manages to sell the premise well. Fairy Tales are simple tales, not exercises in winking subtlety, and if nothing else, the filmmakers seem to know this.



Things Havoc disliked: As I said before, one of my purposes in this film was to see if Kristen Stewart could act outside the dreadful medium of Twilight films. I doubt I'm surprising anyone when I report that she cannot.

Actually that's unfair. I spent a good deal of this movie trying to analyze precisely what about her didn't work for me, and I've come to a couple conclusions. The problem isn't her line delivery. She delivers them well overall, and even manages to pull off a (very weird) "rallying the army" speech late in the film fairly well (she's no Aragorn, but I've heard far worse). Her physical presence in the action sequences is reasonably good, and I have to admit, while the notion of her being "fairer" than Charlize Theron is utterly laughable (yes, I know it's about "inner beauty", shut up), she ain't that bad to look at either (particularly in armor). Ultimately, the problem (I think) is her expressiveness, or rather the lack thereof. Stewart has essentially one facial expression throughout the entire movie, that of vague worry mixed with slight confusion, or as someone I know puts it, her "who farted?" face. Perhaps in Twilight, that's all that's required, but here, it unfortunately makes her look downright stupid in quite a few scenes, and totally disinterested in most of the others, even when she's trying to emote outrage, delight, or vengeful anger.

Sadly however, Stewart isn't the only problem. Several of the other actors in the film deliver performances considerably worse than hers, one of whom (and I can scarcely believe this in retrospect) is Bob Hoskins, playing the Doc character of a blind, wizened dwarf who presciently perceives Snow White's "destiny". Hoskins is an amazing actor, but this performance is just embaressing, arguably worse than his turn in Super Mario Brothers. His attempts to channel Gandalf mixed with Merlin fall completely flat, and drags down the hard work of Ian McShane and the rest of the dwarves. Worse still is Sam Claflin, whose character of William is both boring and totally superfluous to the plot, neither of which would be as big of a problem if the actor could give the character some form of depth. Forced to compete with Chris Hemsworth, who can apparently do this sort of thing in his sleep, Claflin comes off like a third-rate Renfair escapee who stumbled onto the set by accident, and the movie's efforts to turn him into a badass bowman seem incongruous with the boredom he exudes on screen.

But beyond the acting, there's the simple fact that, apart from the visual style, this movie is just badly made. Director Rupert Sanders has never done a feature film before this one, concentrating instead on television advertisements, and it shows here. The film's continuity is riddled with basic framing and editing mistakes, making it difficult to determine where many of the characters are in relation to one another and what role they are playing at any given moment. Claflin's character joins up with the evil army at one point, then seems to fight against them, and then joins them once more inexplicably between scenes. Many of the characters, including but not limited to the Dwarves, are allowed to lapse so far into thick scottish accents that I had real trouble understanding what they were saying, further confusing the issue. To make things worse, the movie is horribly overscored, with generic orchestral anthems boiling up at the drop of a hat, completely overselling many scenes and taking them from straight fantasy interpretations to ludicrous self-parody. And as though all of the above wasn't bad enough, when it comes time for a fight scene, the terrible spectre of shaky-cam rears its ugly head, rendering, as usual, all the careful choreography and cinematography completely pointless.



Final Thoughts: It's really hard to score movies like this, which is one of the reasons I try to avoid seeing them. Snow White and the Huntsman looked like it had the potential to be a truly different film, and while the result isn't terrible, neither is it a tremendous success. Though the concept, and several of the actors, are worthy of a better film than this one, the movie is dragged down by a poor choice of main actress, inexplicably bad co-stars, elementary mistakes by a first-time director, and a script that just seems to run out of steam by the end.

Somewhere in here was an interesting movie, but unfortunately none of the people making the film had the skill to find it.

Final Score: 5/10

[LadyTevar]

You're not the only one to mention Kristen's lack of emotions other than "Emo Child", Havoc. I read a review by another friend about the Battle Speech as well, and she said it would have worked much better if SnowWhite had simply walked though those gathered, asking for a sword from one, a horse from another, armor, etc. Lead the men not via words, but by simply being "pure & innocent", the same as she was able to call the Fae out of the woods.

or, as my friend put it "Hell, lead the Fae against the Queen!"

Still, everyone of my friends have said the same: good idea, bad direction.