Jack the Giant Slayer

Jack the Giant Slayer is the first film in a while where I had some mixed feelings beforehand. This film was supposed to be released in the summer of 2012 but it got moved back to now which sometimes is not a good sign. It is also a film from director Bryan Singer who can be good or bad. It does however have Nicholas Hoult in the lead role and he was very fun to watch in Warm Bodies. My mixed feelings before the movie turned out to be on point as the film is an up and down affair.

This has the same familiar plot of an old kingdom with a bean stalk leading to the sky with something up there. The film is beautiful with great aerial and ground shots. There are castles, forests, trolls and period costumes that really give the feel of being in a far-away land. It's all good  but none of it is really new as we have seem stuff like this in the Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings movies. This could really appeal to followers of all those films but frankly I didn't really love any of those films.

The plot involves a love story between the princess of the land, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) and a farm boy Jack (Hoult). There is some chemistry between them but not full or intense. There is a repeat of the Shrek and Shakespeare story lines with Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci) who has been chosen to marry a reluctant Isabelle and of course Jack comes between them.

                                            


One thing in this movie that is above average is the cast. Nicholas Haut is good and quite likable. Eleanor Thompson is kind of a weak link and maybe a little bland but she tries. Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor as leader of the King's elite guards are as usual very good in their roles and I should add that it is fun to watch McGregor's hair change in every scene.

Act 3 which closes the movie is kind of a mixed bag. It is mostly a climatic battle between the king's army and the invading Giants who came from above down the bean stalk, but I kind of got lost in the battle once we got in it. It felt a little too easy and it also had a few silly draw-bridge scenes. Finally, the characters did not age at the very end of the movie which is a pet peeve of mine.

Fantasy-adventure is not really my favorite genre but that said, I found Jack the Giant Slayer to be an average movie and something I would probably watch again.

3/5

Warm Bodies

As you might know, horror is my preferred genre. I find horror just more appealing than other movie genres and I watch horror movies practically daily. Warm Bodies kind of fits into the horror genre, well somewhat. It is a mix of everything and will appeal to the tweens and teen audiences in addition to horror fans. Well anyway, I liked Warm Bodies a lot.


The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Isaac Marion, and is set in the world after the  apocalypse. There are your typical zombies walking around but also boonies who are degraded zombies and are the most dangerous of them all. We follow a dead zombie character called R (Nicholas Hoult) who falls in love with a human named Julie (Teresa Palmer) and they both find a strange liking to each other and eventually find love between them.


As with any "love story", the performance of  the lead characters is crucial. Here, Teresa Palmer and Nicholas Halt who have both done their share of good work, provide just what  we want. They have a good, though different, chemistry with each other, and both are very hard not to like. The love story between them is easily watchable.

As I alluded to before, this movie is far from a love story though. Warm Bodies has a zombie plot but for some reason it is lacking in details regarding the recent apocalypse. The plot really picks up in it's last act with a pretty good zombie idea and this is where the movie really hits it's mark. With  the combined horror/zombie/love story theme, it contains a mix of little things to make it work. There is also a homage to the 80's through the music, a strong supporting cast that has Rob Corddry and David Franco and a lot of neat sets that are fun to watch as the story unfolds.

What likely might be forgotten in this movie is the well made-up zombies. They are all original, and done with a gritty style and the boonies couldn't be more cool. The zombies have a terminator-like gray color to them that makes some scenes very tense and makes the film as scary as it could possibly be considering the theme.


There is also a message to the film which might get lost with all the zombie talk and that is that in this world, everyone is kind of the same in a lot of ways and that love can happen in ways we can't imagine. The movie also suggests that the apocalypse might not be what we think it will be.

As a 16 year old, I was one of the few males in the theater and I noticed that there were mostly teenage girls around me. Warm Bodies might have a kind of  a Twilight feel to it but actually it is more like a sappy Shakespeare story with a cult feel. Warm Bodies is a film that probably should have had a bigger audience but it was released Super Bowl week so that was a limiting factor. Regardless, I recommend it to all.


4/5