Seventh Son (5/10): An epic fantasy adventure that wastes an all star cast

“We will meet again.”

Seventh Son is Sergey Bodrov’s (Mongol) latest fantasy epic film starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, and Ben Barnes. It’s a big budget adaptation of Joseph Delaney’s novel, The Spook’s Apprentice, which failed to make a splash at the box office. It is set in a Tolkien-like fantasy world where supernatural forces live among humans. There are witches, warlocks, boggarts, ghouls, and many other dark morphing creatures, and then there are spooks who protect the people by hunting down these monsters. Bodrov relies heavily on the CGI effects, but the film does look good thanks to its production design. Bridges plays the sole remaining spook, Master Gregory, who is trying to hunt down the extremely dangerous witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore). Malkin plans on using her powers to reunite her followers and unleash evil across the world. After losing his latest apprentice (played by Kit Harrington), Gregory must train the young seventh son of a seventh son named Tom (Ben Barnes) who really doesn’t seem to be an interesting prospect. He only has a week to train him before reaching Malkin and preventing her from fulfilling her evil plan. Along the way, Tom falls for a young witch named Alice (Alicia Vikander) who has been spying on them. She isn’t a dark witch, but is following her mother’s orders.  Seventh Son doesn’t take itself too seriously and Bodrov jumps from one action set piece to the next without spending too much time on the characters and thus not allowing the audience to think too much about the silliness of it all.

The greatest disappointment is of course the weak screenplay that never allows us to engage with the characters despite being played by a fantastic cast. It’s inevitable not to thing about The Big Lebowski when seeing Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore working together again. Moore had a fantastic year, winning the Oscar for her lead performance in Still Alice, but here she doesn’t have anything interesting to do. She plays a typical and cliched villain. Bridges goes extremely overboard with his character, reminding us that we shouldn’t take this adventure film too seriously. It’s hard to understand his drunken mumbling which will remind us of his work in True Grit. Olivia Williams and Djimon Hounsou also have some small roles in this film, so it is a huge disappointment to see such a talented cast wasted in a big budget film like this. Barnes and Vikander are young talented actors that try to do the best with the material they are given. The Swedish actress has taken Hollywood by storm after her performance in the Danish film, A Royal Affair, and she has five films coming out this year. She’s an actress I will be keeping my eyes on. 

Seventh Son has been receiving terrible reviews, but it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The plot moves along very quickly and in a very predictable manner, but it never tries to take itself too seriously and that is Seventh Son’s greatest strength. The action set pieces are fun and the film is short (under 95 minutes). Of course it isn’t a good film either, but considering it is light for the eyes it’s not a difficult film to watch. If you’re bored you might find the film entertaining and it’s a good way to kill time, but there is nothing memorable about it either. More than anything it’s a huge disappointment for wasting such a talented cast. There’s no character development, but the impressive set designs and quick pace make up for it.    

My Review: Dorian Gray (5/10)

"I am what you made me! I lived the life that you preached... but never dared practice. I am everything, that you were too afraid to be."

Dorian Gray is the third film Oliver Parker has directed based on the work of one of the greatest Irish writers of all time, Oscar Wilde. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is Wilde's only written novel and perhaps one of his most famous works which was censored at the time due to the source material. It has become a masterpiece for Wilde's sharp critique towards the aestheticism of Victorian society. This double life that Wilde's novel captured perfectly didn't really resonate with me in the film. I found it un-engaging and dull with characters that weren't developed really well. Dorian is completely hedonistic and there was nothing about him that made me believe that the people would be so sympathetic towards him. This double life he lived wasn't explored as well in the movie because everyone saw him as he really was, young and beautiful but completely hedonistic. Lord Henry Wooton's influence on him is the main theme in this film as he is the one that introduces Dorian to this lifestyle which he immediately embraces. Despite its good production, I felt the film wasted its potential and lost its appeal quickly. 

The screenplay was loosely adapted by Toby Finlay. The film begins with the arrival of the young Dorian Gray (Ben Barnes) to Victorian London. He has inherited a huge estate from his abusive grandfather. Dorian is a nice and naive young man who is quickly swept away with the charismatic Lord Henry Wooton (Colin Firth). Lord Henry also feels attracted to Dorian and reminds him to take advantage of his beauty and youth because it won't last forever. He introduces Dorian to the several pleasures the city has to offer. Lord Henry is married to Lady Victoria (Emilia Fox), but he isn't faithful to her. Lord Henry's artist friend, Basil (Ben Chaplin) also feels admiration for Dorian who hires him to paint a special portrait of him that will capture his youthfulness and beauty. When Basil finished his painting, everyone is entranced by it and it becomes one of the painter's best work. Dorian adores it so much that he makes a pledge saying that he will give his soul to maintain that youthfulness forever. As he becomes more and more obsessed with the painting he begins living a life of debauchery and hedonism. Nothing affects him, as the painting absorbs all his scars and unveils what his soul truly looks like. Dorian hides the painting and lets everyone see him as this beautiful and youthful young man.

Ben Barnes gives a decent performance but his character did lack more depth. It was very difficult to engage with him as he becomes completely obsessed with maintaining his youthful appearance. I couldn't see that spark that I needed to see from him to believe that all the Victorian society would become so obsessed with him. Colin Firth is a great actor and he played a key role in this film as he is the main influence for Dorian's narcissistic obsession. However I never felt this guy could have such an important influence in Dorian's life, he was lacking that magnetism. The addition of Rebecca Hall's character in the second half of the film didn't help either. I couldn't help but feel this film was missing something and it fails to draw the audience in. Dorian Gray is just too explicit in its portrayal of debauchery and nothing is left for the viewer to imagine.   

My Review: The Big Wedding (2/10)

"Would somebody just punch me in the face again?"

The best thing I can say about The Big Wedding is that it is only 80 minutes long. If it were 10 minutes longer I don't think I could've made it through the entire thing because it is such a forceful mess with cliches thrown all over the place. At least in other mainstream romantic comedies you have a main story that reaches its conclusion nicely wrapped up with a beautiful ribbon on top, but here you have like five different conflictive stories that magically reach their resolution in less than 10 minutes. Not even Houdini could pull off a trick like that. The entire film focuses on this one messed up family where each member is going through some difficult moment in their relationship and after hearing them ramble for 70 minutes they all peacefully find their resolution and live happily ever after. The Big Wedding is class 101 in Introduction to Mainstream Movie Cliches. What made things even worse is that director Justin Zackham (whose major film credit is writing the screenplay for The Bucket List) had an all-star cast to work with here and none of the characters felt like a real human being. Everyone played a one dimensional and stereotypical character. This is one of the laziest and most shameful movies of the year and I doubt many people will enjoy this "comedy."

Alejandro (Ben Barnes) and Missy (Amanda Seyfried) are a young couple preparing for their big wedding, which means that Alejandro's dysfunctional family has to come together for this special occasion. Alejandro was adopted and raised by Don (Robert de Niro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton) until they were divorced and Don's mistress, Bebe (Susan Surandon), moved in. Don and Ellie had two other children prior to adopting Alejandro: Lyla (Katherine Heigl) and Jared (Topher Grace). Apparently after their divorce Ellie abandoned the country and Lyla broke ties with her father. Now 10 years later everyone gets together for Alejandro's marriage. The only problem is that Alejandro has always kept close ties with his real mother from Colombia, Madonna (Patricia Rae), a devout Catholic who disapproves of divorce and therefor he has never told her anything about his adoptive parents separation. He asks Ellie and Don to act like a married couple and that pretty much leaves Bebe out of the picture thus creating a bit of chaos and building tension along the way. 

There isn't anything nice I can say about this movie so I will keep my review short. There are several other stories and things going on in this film that barely get touched on the surface or are simply used as a gag and not dealt with. Robin Williams plays the priest who is going to marry the couple (we've seen him play this same role in the past). Alejandro is not a catholic and doesn't want to lie to the priest about his beliefs because he doesn't think it would be right, but on the other hand he is capable of lying to his mother about his adoptive parents. I had an issue accepting this and I guess it was a main concern because at one point this is addressed in the film, but it is resolved rather lazily like pretty much every conflict that arose in the film. Everything just felt so fake that it was hard to really identify with any of the characters because none of them played a real human being. This isn't the way conflicts are resolved. Nothing about this film is recommendable, and what makes matters even worse is that such a talented cast was put to waste with this terrible screenplay. The Big Wedding is one of the worst films of 2013.

My Rating: 2,7/10

My Review: The Chronicles of Narnia - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (6/10)

¨You have returned for a reason. Your adventure begins now. ¨

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the third installment of The Chronicles of Narnia series which is based on C.S. Lewis`s best selling children adventure books. Due to the fact that the second film, Prince Caspian, didn`t do as well in the box office there was a change in the direction and production of the movie, but the cast is still the same. Michael Apted (The World is not Enough, Gorillas in the Mist) directed this sequel which stays pretty faithful to the book and is similar to the previous Narnia movies. The first movie is by far the most popular of the franchise (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) so it comes as no surprise that this third part isn`t as good nor fun as that one. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader still is an entertaining movie, but it has lost some of the magic along the way. Fans of the series probably won`t be disappointed by this movie, but those who haven`t seen (or enjoyed for that matter) the other two films will probably not enjoy this movie as much since it follows a similar formula. The movie relies heavily on the special effects and for that reason the characters haven`t been developed as well as they are in the books. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a fun and entertaining movie, but I enjoyed the book a lot more.

The movie takes place one year after the adventure that the four Pevensie children had with Prince Caspian. Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are staying with their aunt and annoying cousin, Eustace (Will Poulter from Son of Rambow fame), while England is still at War. Peter and Susan are in America and they have short cameos since they have already been told that they won`t be able to return to Narnia. Lucy and Edmond begin to argue with Eustace over a painting of a Narnian ship sailing in an open ocean when all of a sudden water begins to come out of the paining and flood the room. The next thing they know they are swimming in the ocean and being rescued by Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) and his fleet in Narnia. Together the three kids, Caspian who is now the King, Reepicheep (the brave mouse voiced by Simon Pegg), and the rest of the crew have to search several islands for the seven lost lords of Narnia. The adventure begins aboard the Dawn Treader.

Liam Neeson is back again as the voice of Aslan, the lion and creator of Narnia. Aslan represents Jesus Christ in this sort of parallel universe that C.S. Lewis created since he was a known Christian theologian. Several things throughout the movie have a biblical significance and serve as Christian parables. The movie also mixes several Roman and Greek mythological creatures from the book as well which add a little more magic to Narnia. The main characters of the film however are Lucy and Edmund, but I think that Henley`s performance as Lucy is what has carried these movies so far. She is very likeable on screen and is the best character. Poulter gave a good performance as Eustace and will have to carry the series from now on if they decide to go on with the fourth film (The Silver Chair) since Lucy and Edmund aren`t allowed to return to Narnia. I remember reading all seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia, and my favorite one was The Horse and His Boy although it has nothing to do with these characters so I´m not sure if the producers are thinking of continuing with the franchise. I really enjoyed the books so I was a little disappointed with these movies as I was hoping they would have a production like the Harry Potter films had. It is still a fun and entertaining ride nevertheless, but not as good as the first film. What it lacks in character development, it makes up for with the special effects.

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