Love Actually

If Donald Trump can become the President of the United States, why can't we get Hugh Grant for PM?

Director: Richard Curtis
Writer: Richard Curtis

First of all, before I even watch this I'm gonna talk about the short film sequel that definitely won't have Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. The sequel which was announced last week has sparked a hell of a lot of excitement because apparently, this is a damn good film, I've never seen it so once I've done with this little bit I'll watch and talk about it. After the still painfully recent passing of Alan Rickman, (yes I know it's been over a year since but he played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series which I grew up with, he was a pretty instrumental part in my life and it still pains me that I'll never get to meet one of my absolute favourite characters and that such a talent was lost so early in life, let me take my time to get over this yeah?) there has been some news that Emma Thompson won't be taking part in the short film sequel which will air on March 24th for Red Nose Day. The reason? She says it would be too soon and that anything written for her would most likely be too sad. Quote: "It's too soon. It's absolutely right because it's supposed to be for Comic Relief but there isn't much comic relief in the loss of our dear friend, really, just over a year ago." This is 100% a good decision with that reasoning. There's no way anything funny could be written to soothe the blow of the loss of a character and it would be a pretty big insult if a look-alike was cast in his place or even a damn good impersonator. I've seen people complain about Thompsons and Curtis' choice to not include her in this short film which isn't fair and I honestly hope those people come around to see that this was the best choice for everyone involved. Anyway, I'm now gonna go and make myself a brew and start watching this and making notes. I'll also leave a link to the Guardian article I got that Quote from and you can read more up on this.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/24/emma-thompson-love-actually-sequel-alan-rickman

~2 hours, 16 minutes and two cups of coffee later~

Oh my gosh, why was this so cute and so painfully English? Those two almost never go together and when they do they either result in something terrible or Daniel Radcliffe. This film is one of the best I've seen that deals with the concept of love, from old romance to new romance, hidden love to young love, the love between family and the love between friends. Pretty much everything is covered and it's lovely, it really is just lovely.

Of course, the film has its bad points too, such as Daniel (Liam Neeson) being step-father to Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster). Sam's biological father's whereabouts aren't exactly explained. Neeson is his step-father and his mother's dead. That's about it. Not to say Daniel doesn't love Sam as his own but it'd just be nice to know his dad didn't want anything to do with him or didn't know he existed or anything like that. At one point I even thought I'd misheard Neeson saying he was the step-father but towards the end, he spelt it out for a woman at Sams school and it was confirmed.

Another issue for me was that this had better sex scenes than either of the 50 Shades films and the sex scenes weren't even actual sex. It was either two actors doing test shots for a feature film or something or two actors doing test shots for pornography. I'm not 100% sure, they were pretty short and a lot more like realistic sex than anything in those "erotic" films. I'm not even sure whether this is even a problem or not...

I honestly can't find anything else negative in this aside from Bill Nighy's singing and the fact that, regardless of the fact that Juliet (Keira Knightly) had just gotten married, she runs out and kisses her husband's best friend because he held up some signs telling her how much he loved her. Kinda bullshit, unless she never even loved her husband or just fell for him at that I don't know but...I just don't believe it. Personally, I'd find it a bit weird and have a conversation with my best friend before considering anything else, that's just me though.

Honestly, I don't think I can pinpoint specific golden moments in this film without listing the entire script. I mean...at one point I kinda thought a spinoff short film about that Nativity play was necessary and hopefully, the idea comes about that they end up doing it for the next Comic Relief, or even Children In Need. Everybody's performance in this was just beautiful, and throughout it, I kept thinking about just how nice it all is. I may make notes like I'm about to write up my own version of a Cinema Sins video picking apart every little thing I can find but honestly, I did and the amount of positivity this thing produces is amazing. From how sweet it is to just how British it is.

The last thing I'll say about it is this; if there's any possibility we can get Hugh Grant's character as the PM rather than Teresa May then let it happen, even if it's just Hugh Grant as this character as the face of the politics in office, let it happen, it'd be nice to have a genuinely charming politician in power for once.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear you how feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Mr Wrong

Mr Wrong has some issues.

Director: Nick Castle 
Writers: Chris Matheson
                Kerry Ehrin
                Craig Munson

I'm just gonna say that this film got a 7% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 25% audience rating. I don't get why it got such bad reviews. This wasn't a terrible movie, I mean it wasn't the best but it wasn't especially terrible. The first half was pretty bad, full of romantic clichés such as a blind date not going well and ending with Quote: "Can I french kiss you?" And yes...that's an actual line here. There's the cliché of having the lonely person flipping channels but all that seems to be on the tv is romantic movies where people kiss as the channel is turned on to, the end of another date ending with a kiss and the lines Quote: "I think I'm gonna faint." "I'll catch you." Again that's real dialogue in this movie. The first half of this seems like it's trying to copy the formula of all the other romantic comedies, it's so cheesy and painful I spent most of it thinking "this is pretty shit, how long is left?"

Then we got to the good stuff, Martha (Ellen Degeneres) feels like the relationship has gone as far as it can go and tries to break up with Whitman (Bill Pullman) he then proceeds to make her life a genuine fucking mess. He breaks his finger in front of her and tells her it's for love, he dresses a clown and dances outside her bedroom window as a callback to an earlier scene where she talks about something similar that happened to her as a child, he gets her really big romantic gifts like massive teddy bears and big bunches of roses and even a portrait of himself, he gets involved in her work and almost gets her fired, he gets her run over after he turns the private investigator she hired to look into him against her, (this part has the best line in the whole film Quote: "you dick, you stupid private dick dick!" I don't care if sounds stupid, I love it) gets her run over and spreads that it was a suicide attempt, kidnaps her, sort of adopts his mothers' housekeepers children, drugs her with chamomile and LSD and finally tries to force her into marrying him. I love how bizarrely extreme it got, to the point where she has to shoot him in the church to rid herself of this crazy guy.

I see why this movie didn't work when it came out because the same thing happened with The Cable Guy. That thing was hated when it came out, it was too dark and unrealistic and nobody liked seeing Jim Carrey as a creepy stalker or even seeing Matthew Broderick...at all really. The point of that film was what if that slightly odd person you knew was fully realised and pushed to the extreme, was completely obsessed with you and was relentless in pursuing you. This is pretty much the exact same thing but more for a romantic comedy. What if that kinda stalker-y ex was fully realised and pushed to the extreme refused to let you go and got more dramatic in his attempts to keep you and the real kicker being that nobody believes you that he's a complete walnut? If you were in that situation in real life, of course it would be scary as shit and not at all funny, but as a film idea and you're watching the absolute golden rule of comedy: all comedy is based on suffering, it's fucking hilarious to watch.

I'm pretty surprised it never got a sequel because it closed off nicely with a possible set up for a continuation, with all the needless sequels to everything like Fast and Furious 8, Toy Story 4, Cars 3, Alien: Covenant, and a hell of a lot more, how about we get a sequel to this out, it'd be interesting to see what extremes Whitman can go to in his pursuit of love. Maybe Martha and Walter (John Livingston) are married and going through some issues but Whitman shows up and charms his way back into Martha's life, acting like another man, the extremes he goes to breaks the couple up, it could be another dark satire on the romantic comedy film which is sort of needed really. Even if it wasn't that story outline I'd just love to see how this story could carry on. Don't put more money into a new Pirates of the Carribean movie and whack it into getting this project out there.

Please watch this if you get a chance, the first half is kinda painful to get through if you don't like naff dialogue and cheesy set ups and at some point, you're probably going to question why she's telling the whole story starting at her sister's wedding to the two police interrogating her about shooting Whitman. Aside from that..pretty quality movie, if nothing else it's got Ellen Degeneres so...y'know that she's gonna do pretty great regardless.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

This is a damn good dive into the human brain.

Director: Michel Gondry
Writers: Charlie Kaufman (story and screenplay)
                Michel Gondry (story)
                Pierre Bismuth (story)

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this one, not because I don't know how to talk about it but because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. So yeah, this is gonna be fairly short.

What's this about then, it's about a couple who after a slightly messy breakup, erase each other from their memories. Well, actually it's more she erases him, he finds out and the whole film is him going through the erasing process. It's really a beautiful story about someone who is traveling through his own mind while regretting the choice he made to fully erase a person from his life.

I can't believe that I've never even seen this film, the lengths that Joel (Jim Carrey) goes to, to protect his good memories of Clementine (Kate Winslet). You see an entire relationship in reverse, from the end to the beginning, bad to good. It really makes you think about past relationships that you feel negatively about, you may think that there were no good times and if you really think about it, by diving right into untainted memories and remembering the good.

This sort of reminds me of Annie Hall, a dive into the mind of someone who is remembering a relationship, the difference between these films would be that in Annie Hall, these memories are presented how Alvy (Woody Allen) remembers them. These are tainted memories in the sense that he remembers how he wants to remember. Such as the scene where Annie (Diane Keaton) says wife rather than life. Alvy says "you were there, she said wife". He's presenting this as he heard it not how it happened exactly. In this film, however, you see them how they happened because of the machine targeting these memories. You're of course seeing how these memories are changing when he's realizing how he's made a mistake and obviously these are still being presented as his perspective and you never see Clementine's side of this but this feels closer to what really happened in this relationship rather than being shown a perspective on the relationship.

I'm sorry I couldn't talk more in detail about this but honestly, that should make you want to see this more. It's hard to make a film diving into the human brain because we don't know what goes on in there. As far as I know, filmmakers aren't experts in the brain. Please go watch this film if you haven't already. It's really beautiful and Kate Winslet looks absolutely beautiful with blue hair, she really does, then again who doesn't. Blue is a gorgeous colour and it's also a bit strange (for me at least) seeing Jim Carrey in a fairly serious role, he's great in this but it's just weird you know? I'm rambling anyway so go watch this, regardless whether you have or haven't seen it.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

50 Shades Darker

More like 50 Shades of Bored.

Director: James Foley
Writers: Niall Leonard (Screenplay)
               E.L.James (Novel)

This is a boring, boring, boring film. I was hoping that considering E.L.James didn't like the first movie that some of the more entertaining stuff from the books would make it into this one but that's apparently not the case. This thing is full of just talking and awkward sex, and bullshit that doesn't add up and bad editing. At least the first film had more entertaining dialogue, still awkward sex but it wasn't as awkward to look at, less stuff that didn't add up and at least it was well edited and looked like a good film.

Honestly, I don't even remember what this film was about, I saw it two nights ago and I only remember certain little bits that didn't add up, such as a scene where Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) is just stood in some absolutely gorgeous underwear while she's getting ready to go to a charity ball with Christian (Jamie Dornan). While at the charity ball they sneak off to his old bedroom and they have painfully awkward rutting sex that lasts around 3 - 6 seconds. Problem here, apart from one of the most awkward sex scenes I've ever seen, is that the beautiful underwear she was wearing in the previous scene is now just a pair of panties. I suppose she decided against the complicated set up for a backless dress but why put it on in the first place. There's more nipple here than in the last film so why bother covering it up?

Another pointless scene would be where Christians copter goes down, all of his family (and Jose played by Victor Rasuk) is in his apartment watching the news for...well news on what's going on. No surprise but just in case somebody reading this has no idea of what's coming, SPOILER, Christian waltzes back into his apartment looking like he's a little dirty literally a second after the news said he'd just been found and was on his way back. Why wasn't there any officials there? This honestly feels like a situation where the family shouldn't just be sat around stressed and watching the television, there should be somebody sat with them giving them updates before they're leaked on the news. Why was Jose there? Aside from being that guy in the previous film that liked Anastasia and tried to get with her while drunk, what connection does he have to Christian and his family? Was Scotty just on hand to beam Christian into his lift to make sure he got there just as the news said he was on his way back? What sort of bull is this?

The only things in this that could have been interesting would be seeing the relationships between that creepy girl following Anastasia and Mrs Robinson/Elena Lincoln (Bella Heathcote and Kim Basinger) with Anastasia. It'd be nice to see the way his first and most protective partner deals with him moving on and getting on with his life and another previous submissive dealing with her mental health but they're both done just so poorly. Elena is played as a bitter scorned ex and Leila is played as some crazy stalker, telling Anastasia she's not what he wants but honestly, it doesn't come across how it's probably meant. I'm not saying these women can't act, I've never seen Heathcote in anything before that I can remember but she clearly has some talent, and Basinger has been in some pretty good films but her performance in this was just...horrible to watch.

I wish this was more like the first film, I really do. It wasn't the best movie out, in fact, if you took out the gorgeous cinematography and music then you'd have a pretty shit movie. The problem is if this is the second film in this series and it's this much of a downgrade then we can only hope that the third, and there will be a third because we all know that there are people who think this is a genuinely good story, is a lot better than its predecessors. Maybe one day these films will be remade with the narration from the books and it will be a good, funny film for once. Of course, there would still be concerns about the BDSM community being misrepresented but if these were remade I'm almost certain they could make the insults more like a playful joke at the whole thing rather than insults.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support its creators by buying the books, buying a ticket to see the film (18+) and when the time comes, buy the DVD or Bluray (18+).

Mamma Mia

I didn't write notes, I wrote a hell of a lot of questions though.

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Writer: Catherine Johnson (screenplay & musical book)

Back in 2008, I loved this film, my parents got me the DVD for Christmas and all I did for weeks after that was sing. Looking at it now, I'm not its biggest fan. It raises way too many questions and doesn't really answer them, the songs barely even convey what they're trying to get across, in a lot of places the choreography looks like it was done by a middle-aged housewife who's only dance move includes the I'm listening to Take That while doing the dishes. Fucking painful.

First of all, I want to talk about how convenient the plot is to this thing. So Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) finds an old diary of her mothers from the year she was pregnant with her, fair enough. She then reads to her friends from the diary and reveals she has three potential fathers, again, fair enough. She then somehow manages to track them down, it could happen if she read out the surnames of these men but...she didn't. Maybe her mother had written the names but she didn't read them but why would her mother write their surnames in her diary? Isn't it also a little convenient that one of her ex's is a banker and another is an architect? Both of which are high enough up in their jobs to be tracked via the internet? And that the final ex turns out to be a popular writer, It also turns out that she managed to get their home addresses, fair enough for the writer and maybe the architect but definitely not the banker. I just don't believe it. Did all these guys have MySpace pages where they blasted all their information? How did she find these guys surnames if they weren't written in the diary anyway? She couldn't ask her mum, she'd get suspicious, couldn't ask her mums friends, they'd get a little suspicious and tell her mother and she couldn't ask her grandmother because she told Donna (Meryl Streep) to not come home when she got pregnant so I'm assuming they're not in contact plus the fact we're given indication hat Donna's mother is dead. How did this girl do it?

How is this movie set in Grece yet features an American girl who is marrying an English ma, she has an English and Scottish best friend. Her mother is also American with an American best friend and an English best friend who's ex's are English and American? I dunno, this just bothered me, I'm all for talented actors taking on role's but...how did they all even meet? I'm all for show don't tell but...tell us something, please.

The singing is terrible. I heard Meryl Streep said that all she had to do was just sing and was told she sounded fine but when she heard herself in the film she was shocked and got lessons. My question is...how did Christine Baranski, a trained singer, hear her and think "ya, that's good". Doesn't that say something about who she is as a person? I don't know but if I was trained as a singer and was as good as her, I'd probably offer help. Or maybe she did and Streep rejected it. Either way, Streep and a couple others should have had help, I can't sing and I know nothing about it but even I could tell something was off.

That whole entire number "Lay all your love on me" is almost an example of what an unhealthy relationship is. Quote "And I'm possessive it isn't nice, you've heard me saying that smoking was my only vice" ... "Don't go sharing your devotion, lay all your love on me." I'm not an expert but...possessiveness isn't good, regardless of whether you admit it or not. That vice thing sounds a little aggressive, almost as if he's blaming her for only having smoking left, and "Don't go sharing your devotion"? Why not? Obviously, they won't devote themselves to another person but what about their passions? Their families?

In fact where the hell is Sky's (Dominic Cooper) family? Why don't they ever get mentioned? He barely even gets a backstory, why does Sophie love him? What drew her to him? Aside from his looks what is there about his personality other than he doesn't want a big white wedding and that he wants to travel? Character development is important. Also, side note, I was looking up Dominic Coopers surname on IMDb because I kept thinking it was Dominic Wood but I knew that wasn't right. Anyway, I looked it up under the Mamma Mia cast and crew list and you wanna know where he came up on the list? Below Gregoris, who is Gregoris? The guy who comes below Arina, and who is Arina? The woman who comes below Stavros. Who is Stavros? That guy on the boat toward the start of the movie who asked for Rosie's (Julie Walters) autograph. That's where this guy's character gets listed on IMDb, I mean you'd think he'd be listed with higher importance considering he's marrying the main character but whatever.

Quote: "Alone here on your own." Just a terribly written line. Did nobody look back on that and think...let's think about that for a second, does it sound stupid? That's it, stupid line. Next.

All of the potential fathers, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) and Harry (Colin Firth) somehow work out they're her father but then none of them seem to think "hey, I'm here because I'm her father...what about these other guys?" Especially Sam, he came back and found out that Donna went off with another man so he should have at least thought "maybe Donna was a slut and these two could possibly be her father too...huh." Stupid.

Speaking of stupid, that scene in the church near the end. The wedding is about to start and Donna is the first to interrupt, then it's Sophie, then it's Sam and then they let the wedding start again. Only this time, Sophie interrupts to then cancel the wedding which it turns out that everybody is happy about. 1) If I were a guest at that wedding, I'd be pretty pissed that I walked up that big fucking hill to watch someone cancel their wedding. 2) If I were that child guest I'd be even more pissed. 3) If I were her mother, I'd be extra pissed that I paid for this whole big white wedding, that's wasted money right there. 4) Why the hell was Sky even that happy the wedding was called off? Not a good sign for your relationship there. Then Sam decides that the woman he loves has been avoiding him for three days and that when he last saw her she told him she wanted nothing to with him, that this would be the absolute perfect time to propose to her with Quote: "why waste a good wedding?" How romantic. And of course she accepts and they get married which I'm calling bullshit on because I doubt any priest from any church would accept this.

And finally, this thing holds you hostage like every other musical ever. It's trying to cram in as much Abba as it can and I'm just not a fan, you don't need to hold us hostage to applaud a movie. In the theatre I kind of get it because...applause is due in there, the actors work hard and it's nice to show your approval of what you've just seen. But in a film? Not necessary.

There is some good in this though, I mean, I love Julie Walters and Christine Baranski. Both are top actors and I love pretty much everything I've seen them in. Colin Firth is also a pretty enjoyable watch. Dominic Wood is pretty nice to look at even though his performance isn't that wonderful. The music and some of the choreography is pretty good. I mean that's pretty rare but when it's good it's good and should be given credit.

I guess that's it, looking back on the film it's not as good as I remember it with all the holes and stuff but I'm probably still gonna watch it as a guilty pleasure. That's it for tonight...bye bye.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Lego Batman

Ooooh look at that, two reviews in one day.

I also wonder what this would be like as a live action movie with Ben Affleck and Jared Leto....

Director: Chris McKay

Writers: Seth Grahame-Smith (screenplay & story)

                Chris Mckenna (screenplay)

                Erik Sommers (screenplay)

                Jared Stern (screenplay) 

                John Whittington (screenplay)

                

So before I went to see this I watched a couple reviews of the Lego Batman movie I'll whack some links at the end of this because I really do love watching these two guys. Anyway, they've both said it's a really funny movie and I disagree with them. It is kind of funny but not...laugh a minute anyway.

I actually wouldn't say this is just a comedy, it's more of a romantic comedy. Yeah, there's some sort of romance between Batman and the clown prince of crime, I mean..romance is probably the wrong word but then so is bromance...hatemance? I don't know but the Joker is played like that girlfriend who is dating a guy who won't admit he's in a relationship. It's weird in a way but there's weirder shit in this...like did you know Voldemort, King Kong, Godzilla and a few others are a part of the Lego DC universe? It's pretty damn cool right? Except the fact that now I want a Lego Harry Potter movie series because I saw Lego Voldemort and I really hope that idea gets some sort of backing to become a reality.

Going back to the point about this film being advertised as really funny, the film doesn't know what it's even doing with its jokes, there's a pro Suicide Squad joke followed up a moment or two later by a joke bashing the idea of it. There are a couple of jokes about Robin's suit but they sort of don't make sense. For me, the best jokes were the outside references and anything to do with the Joker being mopey about his relationship with Batman.

Character design was pretty good too...I mean, it's Lego so...y'know it's gotta look like that and the characters the material is based on but they looked good, aside from the first scene that you see with the Joker. There's a moment where he smiles and the way the animation makes his face change almost looks like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas, this choice in animation also prompted a small child to start crying a couple rows behind us but I thought it was a weirdly cool thing to put in there. Whether it was intended to be a reference to the Pumpkin King or not, I liked it.

Other than that. this is a pretty good DC related film, it's finally a good entertaining satire of the dark knight that isn't dated and doesn't seem like a complete insult to its fan base. In fact it felt quite true to the character of Batman in a somewhat alternate reality where the party boy Bruce Wayne persona is quite a big part of the Batman rather than the dark and brooding side we've all come to accept that is just Batman as cinema goers.


Anyway if you haven't seen this film I highly recommend it, and here are the links to the two reviews I saw on Youtube before I went to see the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVbTC2UXRgI - Chris Stuckman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU6ZgiX-KUM - Jeremy Jahns

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support it's creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.

Annie Hall

Ayyyyy, I finally found one of these on Netflix.

Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen
                Marshall Brickman

I really did love this film, I now understand why people love it so much and so many people reference it. Just take a look at Family Guy, a lot of the scenes I've seen there are either parodying scenes from here or are directly referencing them. I don't know how I'm going to talk about this film but I'm just gonna get it out because I'm a little behind on my schedule. Anyways, enjoy.

When I first heard about this film, I already had a preconception of Woody Allen and the sort of person he is so I just sort of gave it a pass any time the opportunity came up. As time went by however I seemed to forget how I thought of Allen and heard this film was a romance, which of course I tried to avoid like the plague because I honestly don't have the patience for that sort of stuff. Eventually, it got to the point that enough people had told me about it and how funny it was that I thought maybe I should take a look at it. The film doesn't really play out as a traditional film, though at the same time it does. Boy meets girl and takes time to fall in love. That's probably the only way this sticks to a traditional film. No surprise the couple break up but remain friends, they're not bitter about the breakup and they don't get back together and get married. It's very mature in that sense, but this is also a strange picture. You'd expect a romantic film to show all the discussions between the couple so you know where the scenes will go but that's not it, all you see are little snippets from Allen's character Alvy Singer's memory and (in some cases) how he wishes those moments went down. The humour here isn't laugh a minute but you can get a decent chuckle out of it from either the surrealness of the situation, the irony in a situation or the reality or even all three.

Allen plays Alvy Singer, a comedian who hasn't had that much luck in his marriages. I'm not sure how to describe his performance other than...an almost stereotypical Jewish man, take from that what you will. Diane Keaton as Annie Hall plays her part as any girl would, she does a good job of playing a character who possibly has some sort of commitment issue, with using weed to be satisfied during sex to replacing that with therapy which then leads to the end of the relationship. It's not as dramatic as it sounds, but just like the rest of the film, it's pretty subtle.

The scenes here are also quite different from how they would be in a typical film. Scenes go on longer than they usually would, such as a scene towards the beginning where Alvy and Rob (Tony Roberts) are walking down the street discussing whether Alvy should move to LA. The scene plays out slowly but doesn't feel like it's wasting time, it looks like a one-take scene but you don't even realise it, the dialogue is saying something and nothing at the same time. For me, half of the scenes in this feel a lot like what you'd see in a Kubrick film.

I'm sorry if this one is a little shit but I've been a bit ill lately and my head's still probably a bit fogged up. Either way, if you've not seen this you've gotta check it out.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use"  under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators but buying the DVD or Bluray.

Ghost

This isn't a scary movie but you might cry...

Director: Jerry Zucker
Writer: Bruce Joel Rubin

I don't know a single person who doesn't like this film, and I get why I haven't, it's just so damn good. Even my mum was into it, and she was never much of a film person but whenever this was on tv she'd watch it. She wasn't one of those people who were only into it for Patrick Swayze either which is cool. Anyway, this isn't about my mum's opinion on this, it's about mine. I love this film, it's one of the few films outside Disney and Pixar productions that make me  ̶s̶o̶b̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶b̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶b̶a̶b̶y̶  cry.

Aside from the crying, though, I just have a couple of nitpicky points I'm gonna get out of the way. First of all the effects are a both a little dated but still look damn good, not like Jurassic Park but still good, the biggest fault with the effects would be the animation on those ghost demon things with the chains that take the bad guys away once, that stuff's pretty dated and looks a little off but at the very least it's creative and you definitely can't fault it for that. The cat in this film is named kitty, I'm honestly not sure whether that's even a criticism or not, like it seems lazy but if I suddenly got a new cat in my life I'd probably call it kitty. Hell, I even call my own cat kitty now, not even sure whether he even knows his name anymore he gets called that much other shit. There's a moment where Molly (Demi Moore) breaks a jar with a lucky penny in it. I understand the meaning behind it but it bothered me more than it should because...that shit's on her stairs now, she's gotta clean it up and with the mood she's clearly in, that's not gonna be a fun thing to do and she's gonna be pretty annoyed with herself.  What else is there? There's Carl (Tony Goldwyn) flirting with and kissing a crying Molly, what a shitty move. It's not indicated how much time has gone by since Sam's (Patrick Swayze) death, but obviously, it's still in that raw stage for her. Pro tip, don't make a move on anyone that's crying. Finally, at the end of the film just after the big climax, the light comes back for Sam, she can see and hear him, yet the first time the light came for him she couldn't and there wasn't really any explanation for that. That's it I think like I said it's mostly nitpicky aside from that last point but every film has its problems.

That paragraph is bigger than what I thought it would be...wow. Ok positives, Whoopie fuckin' Goldberg. She plays the psychic Ode Mae Brown and she's obviously the comedy relief in this thing but damn is she good at it. Though no matter what situation she finds herself in, it's oddly relatable. I'm not sure how to explain it other than, if you were being haunted by a stubborn ghost, you'd more than likely be just as irritated. She has an incredible fashion sense, the first time you see her she's in this gold dress thing and I swear I want that thing. She's also got this skirt and bright pink blazer with black decoration and I really want that too. This woman is just all over my favourite thing here. Towards the end of the film, Demi Moore (no surprise) finally believes Goldberg about Swayze being there, there's a short conversation and then Golberg suggests Swayze jumps into her body and has his final contact with Moore. He does this and we see Swayze and Moore spend an emotionally intimate moment together. The funny thing about this is that yeah, we see the two lovers have what could be their last moments together, but if anybody else saw this, they'd see a silent room with Goldberg and Moore having that intimate moment. It's a sweet sentiment but when you think about it, it could create some odd fanfiction.

Speaking of Moore, she did a good job of playing the grieving girlfriend. There are parts I personally didn't understand, such as where she talks about not wanting to go outside but after thinking about it Swayzee get's murdered out in the streets so...it's pretty understandable that she wouldn't want to go out, if not through fear, it'd be that she wouldn't want to be where her loved on died. That's just a nitpick, grief is different for everybody. Aside from that Moore did a great job of playing someone trying to move on with her life while all these odd interruptions happen to block her from doing so. I also heard that whenever she had a romantic scene with Swayze, she kept farting. I'm not sure if that's true or if it was Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing, I just thought it was pretty interesting.

Then we got the talented, late Patrick Swayze. Personally, I never found him all that attractive, I mean yeah for the time he was decent and he definitely had a good bone structure, it's his acting that I always preferred. I absolutely love his performance in this, from his death where he's not even sure he died to his irritation of Whoopie Goldberg singing I'm Henry The Eighth I am the whole night, to learning about his life as a ghost to finally being able to move on, every single facial expression that comes from him is just golden. I don't think I even found anything I could say totally blew me away or was especially bad about his performance but it was just good. That's it...next.

Everything else in this was pretty good, nothing amazing that completely stand out like WOW but other than that, it was pretty good, if you've not seen it like, then go see it. It's pretty good.

This is just my opinion adn if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which os considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support it's creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Gigli

It's turkey time guys.

Director: Martin Brest
Written by: Martin Brest

"The violent story of how a criminal lesbian, a tough guy hitman with a heart of gold, and a mentally challenged man come to be best friends through a hostage" That's the description of the romantic comedy that I just saw. What the fuck kind of description is that? At least it was partly accurate, there is a lesbian, a man with a heart of gold and a mentally challenged man in this picture and it is quite violent in parts.

First off,  I'm gonna start with the positive stuff and there's not really much of it, I'm looking back through my notes and all I'm seeing that's positive is Ben Affleck's face. That's essentially it. Ben Affleck's face is beautiful, that's the positives over.

Negatively speaking, there are 3 main problems, and that's the 3 main characters. Jennifer Lopez plays Ricky, a lesbian criminal hired to help Ben Affleck's character Larry Gigli look after his hostage Brian, played by Justin  Barfa. Let me say that again, Jennifer plays a lesbian in this romantic comedy with two male co-stars. Y'all already know something stupid is gonna go down here right? She basically accidentally seduces Affleck's character and somehow entices him into bed with the line quote: "It's turkey time...gobble gobble." And in turn, she is then seduced by Affleck and rides off into the sunset with him. Her character is just bland and more than likely very sexually confused. Why would a lesbian want to sleep with a straight man? Any lesbians out there that wanna answer this just let me know ok? I'm genuinely interested.

Moving onto the "mentally challenged" Justin Barfa. I say "mentally challenged" in quotes because we're never given any clear indication of what his characters mental handicap is, I mean we get insights into some Tourette's syndrome at the beginning but that's pretty much it. His character never says anything about it which I guess would make sense if it was never brought up but the thing is, his character is asked the question "what is up with you?" a fair amount of times, considering this character doesn't know these people you'd think he'd tell them. Or that Ricky and Gigli would have done their job better and found out more about this kid. Another thing, this character just feels insulting to me. He's written as a complete idiot. There's a scene where just after he's kidnapped Affleck gets out his walkie-talky which is actually a flashlight and somehow this kid is just buying it. He's also just accepting that he's being kidnapped, like yeah he's mentally challenged but I think he'd know that he's being kidnapped, he's mentally challenged not an idiot, to quote Klaus from the Netflix series A Series Of Unfortunate Events "the two aren't mutually exclusive." (Go check out that series when you're done reading this, it's soooooo good. If you've already seen it go watch it again.) I guess it's not that bad but...I don't know the whole performance just made me feel a little uncomfortable. It was no Leonardo Dicaprio in Gilbert Grape but it wasn't like that Donald Trump impersonation either. This guy obviously did his research and did his best to do the part justice but I just wasn't into it.

Finally, we got Affleck as Larry Gigli. Fuck this guy (both literally and figuratively). This guy does his business out in the open, like stuffing a guy in a washing machine at a laundromat and discussing a kidnapping in the street. Both in broad daylight and both very stupid moves if you ask me, don't do your illegal business in open spaces where you're likely to get caught. He uses a flashlight as a walkie-talky and then a moment or two later he uses his phone in front of the person he was trying to pass off a flashlight as a walkie-talky. Stupid move again. He apparently fucks up all his jobs, prompting his boss to say to him, quote: "I don't like hiring you, then hiring someone else to do your fuckin' job. Do your fuckin' job." Like, if he's so much of a fuck up why hire him at all? Hire the someone else instead of him and you won't lose as much money. Idiot. He is essentially seduced by a lesbian, I'm not saying that's a bad thing but she wasn't even trying and she managed it. Before he knew she was a lesbian though, he was flexing his muscles in bed, that's a hilariously awkward thing to do if you're trying to sleep with someone. He also screams and pushes Brain (Justin Barfa) around when he first gets him back to his apartment, that's just a dick thing to do, right? Overall, I just didn't like this character, he was just a gorgeous dick.

Aside from the characters, the film's description is a lie..mostly, like I said there is a (possible) lesbian, a guy with a heart of gold and a mentally challenged man and it is violent in places. What's a lie is that they all become best friends. They don't, I'm pretty sure Affleck and Lopez get together and just leave Barfa on his own. Not something a best friend would do...I think, I mean me and my best friend kinda bully each other but it's just all fun. I don't think we'd leave each other in unfamiliar places alone with a group of strangers, though...maybe. They don't cut his thumb off which is good though I mean no best friend would do that..no decent human being would do that either but the point is, that no best friend would ever do it.

The violence is fairly short lived but it's almost as if the writers came up with the description before the film and just forgot that violence was even meant to be in it so just came up with a couple of scenes to throw in to not seem as if they lied. At least one of those scenes tied into the plot...kinda...I guess. The first scene doesn't tie in, it's just Lopez's ex bursting in and cutting her wrists in a suicide attempt, blood practically pours out and the scene goes nowhere. The second is just an excuse to fit in an Al Pacino monologue. Pacino kills a guy then allows Lopez and Affleck to end the hostage situation? I think? Honestly, I'm not 100% sure on what happened in that scene, it felt like a solid 10 minutes of Pacino just going on with himself and I watched it back about 3 times and none of it sunk in. Also, the word fuck is just disgustingly abused. Looking at the trivia part of IMDB, the word fuck is used 124 times which almost makes me want to go back and watch the film again to see whether that number includes the word fucking too or not. That's a pretty interesting thing if it does though 'cause it seems as though every other word in this fucking thing is fuck. The final "violent" thing I'm gonna mention is how long this thing feels. It's 2 hours 1 minute long and I promise you, you feel every single second just draining your existence. This film wants to waste your time and rather let you think it's taken 2 hours 1minute of it, it lets you think it's taken 6 hours and 3 minutes. Barely anything happens to keep you interested in this thing. It's just really boring.

I almost forgot to mention, the other actor that was kinda shoehorned in at the last minute for a scene that goes nowhere was one of my absolute favourite actors, Christopher Walken. God bless this guy. He plays a policeman who knows of the kidnapping and goes to Affleck's place to talk to him about it. I'm not sure whether he's telling him he knows it's Affleck and leaving him to it or just warning him that other cops might be wanting to come over at some point but what I do know is, is that this guy wanted some ice cream. Easily the best scene in the whole film.

Anyway, that's what I think, easily one of the most boring and pointless things I've ever sat through, and I managed to get through The Revenant without falling asleep or going on my phone. I wouldn't advise seeing this film, it just isn't worth it.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Moonstruck

This has to be the best 3-day romance since Romeo & Juliet.

Director: Norman Jewison
Written by: John Patrick Stanley

Oh my God where do I start with this. I loved pretty much everything about this film and normally I completely hate romance films. I really do, they're often cheesy and a bit naff and always tend to play towards the female demographic, but not this movie. I feel like this could win over just as many men as it would women. It's adorable, charming, cute, funny and has intelligent conversations about male infidelity and a lot of chemistry between the leads that's so believable. Of course it has it's stupid moments and of course, Cage has to get his (for lack of a better word) Cageyness out when he's performing but it's just so entertaining that you let it slip, as you would with a lot of Cage's performances.

As always, negatives first but there's so little of them it's gonna be in one paragraph. Loretta (Cher) wears her engagement ring on the wrong finger, slight nitpick but it's there and I'm gonna point it out. She also is more concerned about luck within her relationship and for her wedding than she would for her fiance's dying mother, pretty dick move of a character but it's pretty understandable with her previous marriage starting off in the registry office and ending with her husband under a bus. Johnny's (Danny Aiello) supposedly dying mother practically tells him to get gone by waving him away while he's crying at her door then all of a sudden making a miracle recovery when he tells her he's getting married. I swear she was trying to pull some sort of scam. And finally, Rose (Olympia Dukakis) calling her husband Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) out for his affair at the breakfast table right in front of their daughter, the guy her daughter is having an affair with and his father. This could have been better if there was just a small scene where they're lay in bed together in silence and just brings it up quietly, not sure whether she should because her husband may be happy with this other woman and if he's happy then she could just pretend to be naive to it and go about the rest of her life. Like Joey's parents from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. And before I forget, Ronny's (Nicolas Cage) worst timed proposal in the history of cinema.

Now to the good stuff...if I even knew where to start. How about dialogue. More or less every word spoken in this is as if a specific family was studied and their words were taken from them and put in a script. It doesn't feel like it's a script, it feels very real. Aside from Cage's speech about love but I'll get to that later. The mild insults they throw at each other felt as if they were from my own family. For example;
Quote: Pop - "I don't like his face Loretta, when he smiles I can't see his teeth. What does he hide?"
            Pop - "I don't like him."
            Ma - "You're not gonna marry him Cosmo."
If I said to someone that me and my mother had that conversation at some point, and said it to somebody who had never seen this film they would more than likely believe it. Obviously, I'd have to change the names around but you get my drift. I don't think I could say anything else about it other than it was very realistic and relatable. For me at least.

Another great thing about the dialogue was the interesting conversations about why men chase women. Rose has made an educated guess that her husband is having an affair with another woman. She goes to a little restaurant where a couple breaks up, the woman is definitely a lot younger than her partner and it's revealed he's her teacher at her university. That's a little unprofessional if you ask me but each to their own. She asks him to have dinner with her and I'm not going to give away details here but it is a fairly interesting conversation that takes place between them. She then asks "Why do men chase women" to Johnny when he gets back from seeing his miracle mother, and he gives her a different answer to the previous man along with a similar answer her own thought on the subject. It's pretty interesting and I don't want to cloud any judgment here with it so I'm gonna encourage you to at least see these specific parts of the film if not the whole thing and think about the question and your own answer to it.

Onto the acting, and we got some good some acting to talk about here. We'll only go through the leads because obviously there's more to talk about there and in all honesty, I barely wrote any notes on anybody else. Cher, is probably one of my favourite actors, ever since I first saw her in Burlesque (Note to self, talk about that one sometime.) I fell in love. How could anybody not, though no matter what she plays on screen she plays it strong, confident and sassy and that's exactly the character we get for Loretta. She, of course, changes it up enough for her style to always seem different and never seem stale. That's good acting. Moving onto the impressive style of Cage, we first see him acting a little mental in his own Cagey way. I sort of got the feeling, when he was having his little breakdown at the start, that this could be what it's like if Christopher Walken had a baby with Nic Cage creating a performance complete with the weird freak out and accompanied weird inflexions. My favourite line that would also demonstrate this point would be the bread line.
Quote: Ronny - "What is life? They say bread is life, and I bake bread, bread, bread!"
Each time those final breads were said, they were punctuated by Cage throwing bread sticks down, getting more and more aggressive with each throw. I loved it. I really did. Eventually, he mellowed out and became so charming and lovable that at one point I even wrote a note stating that if Loretta didn't take the opportunity to go with him to the Opera, then I'd find a way to put myself in this reality and take her place. These two shared a genuine chemistry that I found myself thinking that these two could have possibly made it as a couple in the real world, not as characters, but as Cher and Nic. How nice would that have been?

Looking back on my notes I made a weird one but I think I should share it. Cage and Cher have similar face shapes and bone structures. Not sure if it was the angle of the shot or the lighting or whatever but if they were to play brother and sister in something else then I could believe it.

I really don't know what else I could say about this that wouldn't come across as gushing over the film. Yeah it's a 3-day romance and the film has that going against it but the chemistry between these characters is so powerful that you just buy it. I've fallen in love with this and I couldn't possibly recommend it enough. Please watch this film.

I'm going to end this post with the speech I mentioned earlier, where Ronny is talking about love. I think it's beautiful and really captures what love is for a real human being. Not everyone. Just maybe a select few.

I love you. Not...Not like they told you love is. I didn't know either. But love don't make things nice, it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect...The snowflakes are perfect...The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and...and to break our hearts and love the wrong people. And die. I, I mean that the storybooks are bullshit!"

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

All About Steve

So today I watched All About Steve...

Director: Phil Traill
Written by: Kim Baker

Y'know what, this film wasn't as bad as people have said it is. I mean it's definitely crap but it's not that bad...I guess. In all honesty, I don't even know where to start with this because this film just kinda left no impact on me, I don't feel offended or let down or angry or sad or anything. I suppose I could start with the negatives but...it's just mostly surface things that are naff. I dunno, I'm just gonna go into my notes and see what comes out of those. This is probably gonna be a short review.

I've got a lot of notes on the writing, most of them are pretty much just "What the fuck is this?" "Who talks like this?" "This is really boring dialogue". For example, there's a part where Mary (Sandra Bullock) is just jabbering on talking at these people on the bus after thinking she's been genuinely invited to go and travel with Steve (Bradly Cooper). The bus driver gets sick of her just going on and somehow she's 100% certain that only Mary will want to get off the bus and pee so she pulls over and lets Mary off and drives away leaving Mary at this roadside cafe. Mary then goes into the cafe and asks someone for a ride, and also asks him not to rape and kill her, and also asks him if he has a "trashcan full of kittens". What the fuck? Who the hell even asks that of someone you want to get a lift from? The way the people talk in this film is a little all over the place really. Sometimes it flows naturally and then other times it's like two introverts with nothing in common are being forced to have a conversation about something that they're not even interested in. This whole film just sort of feels like sometimes the actors are slightly invested and in other places, they're just reading their lines. I'm sure the director was just holding their paycheck off screen to help them along.

The characters behaviours were a little off as well, with Bullock getting slightly obsessed with Cooper upon their first meeting and quite literally puts her career in danger by acting like a 13-year-old fangirl. The "All About Steve" crossword thing was something a child would do, not something a grown woman who is fairly intelligent would do. Cooper's character was also a little off, in the way that he goes almost insane at the thought of seeing Mary again, going to the extent of throwing all the food they have out of the van because he's convinced that she's poisoned the food. I do understand where that's coming from considering he thinks he's getting stalked but...it just happens a little too instantly. I can see this sort of behaviour coming up after weeks/months of being stalked but not two days. I guess everybody's different and would react differently but this just seemed a little bit rushed.

Last point I'm gonna make negatively is that this film got dark right the fuck out of nowhere. And I mean dark. Like there was a line that was similar to "what do you have to do to get a good news story" or something? I'm not 100% sure because I was finishing writing up a previous note and wasn't fully paying attention but the next thing I see is a bunch of deaf kids falling into a hole in the ground. I'm not even joking, I think the film is trying to make a joke but...it didn't really land as a joke. At least it tied into the plot though so...deaf children falling into an abandoned mine was...worth it in the end? The worst part about this joke is that they left a kid down there in the mine! Why? They make a joke out of the rescue services by doing that. It also didn't really tie into anything so...yeah.

Probably the best thing in this whole entire thing in that at the end, Mary doesn't end up getting together with Steve, she doesn't end up with anybody but instead, she comes to the realisation that she shouldn't have to change to be "normal" for anybody. All she needs is someone normal like her if she even needs a man in her life at all. Kind of an out of nowhere thing to close on but it's a good message to any woman who sees this film.

Finally, I know I bitched about the dialogue before but there is just one golden gem that I'm almost surprised nobody has dug up since Donald Trump started his campaign as president but, no that he is the President of the US, maybe I can get the ball rolling. You'd have to switch the names out but it could still definitely work.
Quote: Where do I begin? Harman, stop tanning, you look like a cheese nip, you look like an orange with lips, you look like a wrinkled peach.

I would say that that quote could save the film as it's pretty much the only laugh I got out of this entire thing but...it doesn't really. If you wanna see this then go for it, there's nothing especially harmful in this so...that's my opinion, this film was just ok...that's it...Good afternoon, see ya soon.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

My first review - Grease

Kicking off my February reviews with Grease, a film I'd only ever seen parts of but never the whole thing, I was always led to believe it was a sort of love story between two high school kids in the 50's. I think that's what I saw, I mean yeah there was a love story between the two obvious adults acting as teenagers but I didn't feel like there was a set story to this, plot points just kinda came and went and I didn't really get a sense that time was passing at the rate it was. I'm bitching and I've not really gotten into the film itself...

Here we go then.

Director: Randal Kleiser

Writters: Jim Jacobs & Warren Casey (Original musical)

                 Bronté Woodard (Screenplay)

                 Allan Carr (Adaptation) 

Let's first start off with the negatives because...personally I think there's a fair amount of it in this. First of all, the guys in this are just total pigs, and I mean fucking disgusting pigs. Danny (John Travolta), starts off this film by destroying a sandcastle...lead as you mean to go on I guess. The boys in leather then proceed to bully a geek stereotype named Eugene, drop a dead frog in a girls bag, look up another girls skirt, acting "too cool" in front of friends, finally getting a date and acting as though they don't really wanna be there, looking at another girls booty when dancing with their date, spiking the punch, elbowing their girlfriend then proposing to her only to then try and cop a feel, knocking your pal out with a slight bump from a car door etc. That's a pretty big list but there are about 5 of the leather guys..I think, I didn't count, if it's any different I'll edit it in. I didn't even mention the coach who enjoys the word "primed" too much, that butt head who sings Beauty School Drop Out or Vince Fontaine, who these days would be branded as a predator or pervert considering he quite openly messes around with a young high school girl. The guys in this are just gross, you can blame it on the time period this is set in but damn, if this was made and set in the present day, there would be more controversy than the 2016 Ghost Busters movie.

The problems didn't just lie with the guys, the women were also had their share of shitty behaviour, starting with the headmistress, shouldn't she have had her paperwork ready way before the start of term? I don't care how lax the system would be back then, there is no excuse for not keeping your paperwork up to date. Also, how did she not have Sandy fill in those forms before school when she would have met with her parents to get her enrolled in the school? Wouldn't that be more effective than making a new student who is obviously going to be very lost and confused on her first day late for her first class? I don't know whether that's a real thing that happens within the American education system but it just seems a little weird to me. Not like I know much about moving schools, only ever did it once when I was six but whatever. Aside from that, near enough every woman in this is portrayed as a bitch, or an idiot. The only strong female character in this is Rizzo, and she makes some stupid decisions. Let's start with Sandy, she's an idiot. No other way about it, she's pretty much just some silly girl who fawns over and constantly forgives Danny when all he does is act like a tit towards her. Then there's Frenchy, another idiot, she might be cute but she's portrayed as a ditz who drops out of two schools, the first time because she wants to pursue her passion and the second time because she's struggling. There isn't really a lot of screen time dedicated to her to really get a grasp on any sort of personality she has. Then there's Jan. Jan is a horrible friend who tells her best friends secrets the second their back is turned. Never trust Jan. Finally there's Rizzo, a strong confident woman who has unprotected sex with apparently multiple guys. That's honestly so stupid I don't know what else I can say about that. She also thinks she's pregnant because her period was late and rather than wait it out a few more days she goes and tells her backstabbing friend Jan. These are both crazy stupid moves made by a character who's made out to be strong, smart and assertive.

Going back to my point about Frenchy not getting enough screen time to get a feel for her personality, looking back on my notes it seems as though that statement applies to all the main characters in this, I never felt any sort of connection to these characters because they were just sort of stock characters and nothing they ever did made them seem anything more than just stock characters.

Another issue was the music. Now I'm not saying that the music in this was terrible, far from it. I loved every piece in this film, the problem was that sometimes the numbers felt as if they were well integrated in places such as Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee fitting into the scene well but Greased Lightning and a couple others felt very...stage production-y. Not that I'm against that but it felt as if the people working on adapting this from the stage just couldn't really pick a lane on what they wanted to do with the numbers. Like they really wanted some parts to be worked in nicely but then forgot about others and just kinda threw them as they would have been on stage. Final issue with the music was that the number Hopelessly Devoted To You seemed vague enough to be played on the radio as some sort of promotion for the film, like Can't Stop The Feeling by Justin Timblerlake for the 2016 movie Trolls. It unintentionally feels manipulative and as much as some people love this song, I just couldn't get into it.

To end the negative portion I'm gonna talk about the pacing. The whole thing felt very rushed, I'm not sure why but at near enough every point in this film I kept thinking "wait...how much time's passed?" I mean, the film played out the way you'd think this sort of thing would but there just didn't seem to be any indication of the passage of time from the start to the end.

I'm all about fairness when talking about something and so I'm gonna talk about the positives because despite my bitching there is good in this. The choreography is very good in this and Patricia Birch and Carol Culver did a great job of making the big musical numbers more memorable by the choreography which accompanied them. The standout choreography would be at the school dance, I mean yeah big group choreographed dance scenes in a school dance scene are a little unrealistic but it's a musical so who even cares, there's group choreography everywhere, get over it. I mean unless you watch CinemaSins a lot and find yourself nitpicking like them then...I guess don't get over it because nitpicking is pretty fun. Just do it for fun though and don't apply it to your personal life because that's gonna make look like a dick and that's not good for anyone. I got way off topic there, moving on.

I LOVE the language used in this film, with things like "Dingleberries on parade" "Peachy keen" "Divoon" and many more just..oddly beautiful lines are what makes this film enjoyable. My personal favourites would definitely be "Peachy Keen" and "Dingleberries on parade" like...can we make those a thing? They're just lovely. They seem as though they're plucked from the 50's but it's more like how the 70's would see the 50's. I personally don't know the language of the 50's but that's definitely not it, but maybe it could become the language of 2017. Crazier things have happened I mean...look at the state of 2016, what could be worse?

I also loved the fashion in this film, I don't know about other people but I would definitely wear pretty much everything anyone wore in this, it came across as both stereotypical 50's and the 70's imagines the 50's style and I even saw things that I've recently seen in Primark and H&M in there. Hopefully some of the stuff I see in this will bleed into the modern fashion because it is just lovely. Good job costume department.

Finally, for as much as I bitched about the characters I really did like them. I mean I really identified with Rizzo's take no shit attitude and Frenchy's slight dimness and commitment to following her passion and Sandy's stupid determination to constantly fall back into Danny's arms without him giving her a reason to forgive him for any shit he pulls. To say that the guys were disgusting pigs is for me an honest statement but the way they treat each other is pretty much how my friends and I treat each other, it's probably not healthy or very nice but we're not people who enjoy showing emotion. I say friends like I have more than 2 that I have any sort of regular contact with. Hahahahaha.

If you saw the notes I made on Grease you'd think I absolutely can't stand this film, I don't, I've just tend to find myself finding all the negatives and very few positives in things, call me a pessimist if you like. Actually thinking about it I probably am a pessimist...damn I'm all over the place with this. Despite how my notes might look I did enjoy this film enough to not...dislike it, I mean it's just Ok. It's nothing special but it's not anything terrible either, it's just...Ok.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.

Introductions. (I'm sorry I rambled)

Alrighty, let's get this out of the way, my name's Jess, I was a performing arts student at Oldham University, I have a gorgeous little cat whose name changes constantly depending on my mood and how he's acting. I'm a huge Harry Potter fan with major beef with Dumbledore, I'm a proud Slytherin so you can take that as whatever and I have very high hopes for the rest of the Fantastic Beasts series. I haven't seen Lord Of The Rings or anything related to Star Wars yet, hopefully I will one day. I also love reading and makeup and performing and baking and just so much other stuff that I'm not gonna get into here.

Now that that's out of the way, why am I even doing this blog? Well for one I've been wanting to do this for about a year now, I've just never known where to start with it or had the time. Secondly, now that I've suspended a year from my course at uni and with being unemployed I have a hell of a lot of time on my hands so while I'm job searching I can also be looking at Netflix and thinking about what the hell I'm even doing with my life. 

I think for this blog I'm mostly going to be doing reviews on stuff I find on Netflix, or anything that looks worth it on a WatchMojo list, or if I go out with someone and we go to see something, or even a live performance, I'm down for talking about anything really. If anything notable goes down in my life that I wanna talk about then of course I'm going to talk about it, though I will keep certain aspects to myself, I'm not down for big drama, so the "notable" stuff that goes down in my life would be getting the Androgyny pallet by Jeffree Star or any cool stuff like that. I'm not going to talk about anything super personal. I'm also going to be (hopefully) posting a few times a week, more than one at least if not you can just pull me about it.

I'm honestly so bad at introducing myself and talking about myself etc, I feel like I've just rambled on and on with myself but hopefully I'll get better at communicating when I'm not talking about film / television / live stuff. Hopefully, 'cause I really am shit at this part.

I'm gonna wrap this up now because I've held you hostage long enough and y'all deserve a good nights sleep, I'm going to my best friends flat tomorrow and we're gonna be looking at some shit on Netflix and and the films she has already, real girly day where we just veg out and live on all kinds of crap. Goodbye diet. So we're gonna be looking at those and seeing what I can write up about, hopefully I can find a theme of romantic movies because it's February and that means Valentines day is around the corner and I guess that means it's the month of love. 

If you wanna contact me you can do so through these things listed below;

~ Email: jessm1199@gmail.com 

~ Twitter: @ItsJessxox

I've rambled so much, I'm so sorry. 

So goodnight, I love y'all (whoever even finds and reads through this post) and I hope you come back in a couple days and see what I've got to say about my first review.