My Review: The Host (2/10)

"Choose to believe. Choose to fight. Choose to love. Choose to listen."

Choose to stay away from this movie, unless like me you enjoy watching terrible films once in a while so you can say how terrible they were and be more grateful for the great ones when they come along. So let me begin by saying how terrible the script was. Andrew Niccol was once a great writer (Gattaca, The Truman Show, and The Terminal), but I don't know what he was thinking when he decided to adapt this script. I mean he had a wonderful novel to work with (note the irony here please). The Host was written by Stephenie Meyer, the successful novelist that brought us the Twilight saga. Meyer has a huge following, which mostly consists of preteen girls, but I have to say that this film was a lot worse than the Twilight saga and not even her fans went to see this movie. I actually enjoyed some of the Twilight films, but The Host was just too much for me. If you've seen the Twilight films then you know how ridiculous the scenes with the werewolves communicating with each other through voice over narration was. The Host is essentially the same thing as we see the main character speaking to her body's host and basically having a conversation with herself throughout the entire movie. Oh and how can I forget, you have yet another love triangle here although this time it gets a little weird because despite the fact that there are two boys in love with a girl she is two separate persons, so basically it is a love triangle between four people in three bodies. If I hadn't seen Saoirse Ronan before giving such wonderful performances in films like Adaptation or Hannah I would've thought that this young actress was going nowhere. She is terrible here, but I assume it's because of the poor script she had to work with because this is the first time she disappoints. With strong material she has been mesmerizing and I know she has a great career ahead of her. Meyer will probably continue writing best selling novels thanks to her fan base, but hopefully they will stay away from adapting such novels. 

Our planet has experienced several years of peace thanks to an alien race that has invaded us and taken over our bodies as hosts. A few humans have been able to survive by remaining hidden forming a resistance movement. Some of the aliens are in charge of finding these humans and inviting new hosts to take over those bodies. The leader is known as The Seeker (Diane Kruger), and after capturing a young girl named Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) she puts a host inside of her known as the Wanderer. The Seeker asks the Wanderer to get into Melanie's head and extract information of the whereabouts of the rest of the resistance movement. The only problem is that Melanie doesn't make it easy for the Wanderer to make decisions on her own, and she slowly begins to convince the Wanderer to help her instead of the Seeker. The Wanderer/Melanie escapes and reunites with her uncle Jeb (William Hurt), her boyfriend Jared (Max Irons), and her little brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury) along with the rest of their community which remains hidden in some caves. At first they don't accept the host, but Jeb convinces everyone they should help her and they slowly begin to realize that the Wanderer has come in peace. Ian (Jake Abel) begins falling for the Wanderer, who they now call Wanda, due to her kind spirit, and thus complicating things between her and Melanie. Meanwhile the Seeker doesn't give up on her search and continues to pursue the remaining humans.

I think I have written way too much for a film I really didn't like at all. This will certainly be on my list for the worst films of the year and it could be in the top 3. The cinematography wasn't bad here, the film does look good and the scenery is beautiful, but it suffers from a weak story with terrible characters. I can't blame the cast for their performance here because they really didn't have much to work with. I don't think they took their jobs seriously and just went for the easy money. The only character I liked here was Jeb and maybe it had to do with the fact that William Hurt is a great actor. I still don't know why he agreed to star in this film, but he still managed to do a decent job. I've defended Niccol in the past because he has directed some great films, I even enjoyed his sci-fi film In Time, but I can't defend him here. The Host is a terrible film. 

My Review: Unknown (5/10)

¨Do you know what it feels like to become insane? It`s a war between being told who you are and knowing who you are. Which do you think wins?¨

I really wanted to like this movie after watching Liam Neeson single handedly conquer Europe in Taken, and I had my hopes up for another one of his one-titled-European-action-thriller films. Unknown however is no Taken. Neeson plays kind of an opposite character this time because he spends most of the time confused and helpless while in Taken he was always smooth and in control of the situation. He was sort of a James Bond, while in Unknown he is more of a Jason Bourne, although way less gifted. This film was directed by Spanish filmmaker, Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan and House of Wax) and at some points during so many twists and turns I think he loses the direction. I really didn’t see the twists coming and thought the movie would take a completely different turn, but each time I thought the movie was going to go a certain way the film caught me by surprise again. For this I have to give the film credit, but the problem for me is that I didn’t really like the path Collet decided to take. Liam Neeson is a great actor, but I enjoy him much more when he is in control of the situation. There is something about him that just exhales confidence. Unknown is based on Didier Van Cauwelaert`s novel: Out of My Head, and it was adapted by relatively unknown screenwriters Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. I don’t know how the story played out in the novel, but in the screenplay some of the dialogue felt a bit forced, and some situations felt unbelievable.

The movie opens as Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) arrives at Berlin along with his wife, Elizabeth (January Jones). He`s travelled for a very important scientific conference, and plans out his schedule in Berlin while taking a taxi to the hotel. Once there he realizes that he has left a briefcase in the airport so takes a taxi back before getting a chance to tell his wife where he`s heading. On the way to the airport he has an accident and the taxi ends up running off a bridge and landing in the water. Martin bumps his head and is saved by the taxi driver, Gina (Diane Kruger). He awakens from a coma after four days and is surprised his wife isn’t by his side. Doctors say that he wasn’t carrying any identification so that they couldn’t contact any family members. The first thing he does is go back to the hotel and look for Liz, but once there he finds her with another man claiming to be Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). Liz says she doesn`t know who this man is and security officials escort him out of the hotel. Martin is still dizzy and confused, but he is sure of his identity and will stop at nothing to prove he is the real Martin Harris. He searches for Gina to see if she can help him and together they begin to work with a former East German spy named Ernst Jurgen (Bruno Ganz) who is willing to help Martin by looking at every particular detail of his situation. The movie then takes several unexpected twists.

Frank Langella also has a secondary role as Rodney Cole, a long time friend of Martin who could point out he is the real Martin, but who can`t be located. It`s always a plus to have someone like Langella in a secondary role because they can bring so much to a movie, but in this particular case he goes by unnoticed. He only serves the purpose of revealing to the audience an important twist the film will take. I thought that entire scene was totally unbelievable. I really enjoy suspenseful thrillers, but I just wasn’t pleased with this one because the pace of the film was to slow and the ending just didn’t pay off for me. I don’t have a problem with slow films as long as the wait pays off at the ending, but in this case it didn’t. I was disappointed because I really like Liam Neeson and consider him to be among the best actors in the industry, but this just wasn’t the right movie for him. He was meant to play cool characters in control of their own destiny. I really missed the Neeson from Taken who destroyed entire cities in search of his daughter. In Unknown he is just lost, confused, and less scary. Unknown isn’t a terrible movie, it has its moments and had me hooked for a while. It’s better than Jaume`s debut film House of Wax, but it’s still far from being a great film.

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My Review: Inglourious Basterds (10/10)

(10/10) Inglourious Basterds is by far the best movie of the year. Quentin Tarantino once again directs a masterpiece; a film that combines a lot of violence, funny and inteligent dialogues, and great characters. I`m a huge Tarantino fan and have enjoyed all his movies. It`s very hard to pick a favorite since all his movies are great: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and now Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino is a master at what he does and he knows everything there is to know about films, and in this movie which you would expect to be all about World War II he combines so much film history knowledge into it that the war actually seems to take a second place. No other director can tell a story the way he does and combine so many diferent characters that you actually care for and hate seeing them get killed off. I had huge expectations for this movie and I wasn`t disappointed. Tarantino seems to combine the same formula he uses for all of his movies mixing funny dialogues with violent sequences, but he has a way of telling each story that just ends up captivating you every time.

The opening sequence was just brilliant and it actually set the tone for the rest of the movie since the film seemed to focus on long dialogues (which explains why the movie is two and a half hours long) that contributed on building the tension and anxiety of the viewer. In this opening scene we are introduced to Col. Hans Landa (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) who has a long conversation with Perriere (Denis Menochet), a family man who has a milk farm and is hiding jews. Col. Hans is trying to find out if Perriere is hiding jews and we are introduced to his character in this dialogue where he explains his position, his occupation, his nickname, and so on. Everything we need to know about him, we learn through the conversation that these two characters have. In the meantime, we the viewers begin to feel the anxiety that this Colonel is putting us through. Col. Hans doesn`t just storm in and turn the place upside down in search of the jews, instead he loves torturing his adversary and has long conversations with them prooving his intelligence and superiority. Christoph Waltz creates one of the best villains (I would rank him up there with Ledger`s Joker and Hopskins`s Hannibal Lecter) and surely will get an Oscar nomination for his work in this movie where he switches back in forth from german to french to english to italian. In this opening sequence he proves his talent by being able to soften Perriere and making him talk despite seeming to be uncorruptable at first. His character does this several times during the movie and enjoys torturing his victim`s psychologically. After Perriere gives away the hiding spot of the jews, one girl escapes, Shosanna (played by Melanie Laurent) and she will become a key character later on in the film when she finds an opportunity for revenge. In the second chapter of the movie we are introduced to the basterds. They are a group of about a dozen American Jews who are in France with the sole purpose of torturing and killing Nazis. Their leader is Lt. Aldo Raine (who is also played extremely well by Brad Pitt and his character is probably the one that delivers most laughs). Some of the basterds include: Donny Donowitz, the bear jew (played by Eli Roth, the director of the Hostel films) who kills nazis with a baseball bat, Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Scweiger), Lt. Archie Holcox (Micheal Fassbender), and Wilhelm Wicki (Gedeon Burkhard) among others. Some of these characters share a key scene with Bridget von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger) in a tavern where they plan on ambushing the nazis in a theater. Diane Kruger also delivers a great performance as Bridget, a famous movie actress that is actually a spy against the nazis. The performances by Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, and Melanie Laurent were all outstanding and there were a few other characters that played smaller roles that were also great. The perfomances combined with Tarantino`s script add to the overall suspense and tension of the film.

This movie introduces so many different characters that I wish they all had a chance to have more screen time. Brad Pitt is not in this movie all that much as the trailers made you think, but it all worked out for the best becuase every character brought something different to the table. The language switching from german to english to french and then to italian all contributed to give this film a more realistic touch. I loved the diversity and complexity all these factors brought into play. The film isn`t actually as violent as you would expect it to be. It does have some of the classic Tarantino elements of over the top and suprise violence, but there is much more to it. The way the story is told and put together is what I enjoyed the most along with how Tarantino builds the suspense and tension. All these elements contribute to make this a complete film. It is hard to say if this is his best work because I have come to love all his other movies, but this films feels more mature and maybe Tarantino feels the same way about it. He even might have subconsciously said it through Lt Aldo when he told his partner at the end of the movie: I think this might just be my masterpiece. His masterpiece or not this is still a great movie and the best I`ve seen all year.