Woman in Gold (4/10): A dull take on an interesting subject matter.

“If life is a race, you beat me to the finish. But if life is a boxing match, I'm the last one standing.”

Based on true events, Woman in Gold is one of those films that ended up being far less interesting than the actual story it was trying to tell. If The Monuments Men failed to appeal to a wide audience I wonder what the producers of this film were thinking. It too centers on stolen artwork during the Second World War, but it takes us through the litigation process that Maria Altmann went through to try to regain what rightfully belonged to her family. At least The Monuments Men focused on a group of men trying to save famous artwork from being destroyed with a touch of comedy, but Woman in Gold is more of a dragged out drama with forced sentimentality. The general premise might be similar to that film, but in a way it also can be compared to Philomena considering the lead characters are played by an unlikely duo. In The Woman in Gold the pairing is between Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is Randy Schoenberg, a young attorney who gets involved with a case that Maria Altmann (Mirren) presents him with. She’s a Jewish refugee with a wealthy Austrian background. When the Nazis occupied Austria she had to watch how all these valuable art pieces were taken away from her family by these soldiers. Among them was one of Gustav Klimt’s famous paintings, a portrait of her aunt known as Woman in Gold. Now almost have a century later she asks Randy to represent her and help her get the painting back which is held at an Austrian Museum. When Randy discovers the painting is worth more than one hundred million dollars, he doesn’t hesitate to help her and so their unlikely relationship takes off as does their difficult task. 

The chemistry between Reynolds and Mirren is solid, but I wouldn’t say it comes close to being as charming as Coogan and Dench were in Philomena. The pacing in this film was tedious and I found most of the dramatic moments manipulative and overly sentimental. As good as an actress Mirren is, she wasn’t given strong material to work with. She makes some witty and sassy remarks during a couple of confrontation scenes with some of the Austrian diplomats, but that is about it. Reynolds gets the look and the style of the 90’s spot on, but there wasn’t much to his character. I felt like this film worked basically as a timeline where we are introduced to important events, but we never really got to know these characters or how they related with one another. Fortunately the timeline wasn’t told in chronological order, we get several flashbacks to when Maria was a child and to when she was a young woman fleeing from the Nazi officials, so at least we get some parallel action scenes. I’d say that those flashbacks were the most entertaining part of the movie. Tatiana Maslany played the young Maria Altmann and she delivers the best performance in the film. There is a great scene where she and her husband are fleeing from the officials, but that was one of the only few scenes where I felt engaged with the film. The story is a fascinating one, but one that I would’ve been better off reading about considering the film only seemed interested in telling the story rather than letting us get to know the characters. 

Despite having a talented supporting cast, the screenplay by Alexi Kaye Campbell fails to give these characters any life. Take Katie Holmes for instance, who plays Randy’s wife. She is given nothing to do except play the role of the wife without any dimension whatsoever to her character. The film fails to explore these dynamics between the characters because it’s only interested in presenting the facts. Daniel Bruhl is also underused as he only seems to be in the film to remind Randy and Maria what a difficult task they are going to have despite the help he provides for them. The same can be said about the rest of the supporting cast including Max Irons, Charles Dance, and Jonathan Pryce. The film tries so hard to be about something important (mostly about being able to reconcile with the past) but Simon Curtis’s film is unfortunately so dull that it fails to do so. It doesn’t bring anything new to the familiar David versus Goliath tale and despite taking so much time to remind us what a difficult task this is going to be, the resolution seemed way too simple at the end. There are far better films that tackle the subject matter in a less manipulative way.      

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: Red Riding Hood (2/10)

¨ If you love her, you'll let her go.¨

We`ve all heard the fairytale before about little red riding hood and her visit to her grandma`s house, but this film takes a much darker spin on the familiar story; unfortunately it takes one for the worse. The story is so ridiculous that I think this will probably be the frontrunner for the worst film of the year. It`s too bad they couldn’t make a better film considering the director and the great cast that was involved in this project. In the first place you had director Catherine Hardwicke who has directed several interesting projects like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. Her most notorious movie, however, was Twilight and I know she got a lot of critiques for that, but even I enjoyed that film. Red Riding Hood is by far her worst film and doesn’t live up to her early work although she also missed the mark with The Nativity Story. The magnificent cast is also wasted in this film: Amanda Seyfried is an interesting actress but there was nothing she could do with the script she had to work with. Then there is the always dependable Gary Oldman, but I couldn’t help but think his role in this film was one I already had seen before. The great talents of Virginia Madsen and Julie Christie were also put to no good. David Johnson is the man responsible for massacring the story and his screenplay is probably the worst thing about this film since the dialogue is beyond ridiculous.

The story takes place somewhere during medieval times in a small village that is tormented by some sort of werewolf. The villagers have made a truce with the wolf by offering some sort of animal sacrifice every full moon as long as the beast stays away from them. Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is one of the local girls that is very much in love with a woodcutter named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), the only problem is that her parents, Cesaire (Billy Burke) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen), want her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Valerie and Peter decide to secretly run away together when all of a sudden a bell rings which serves as an alarm for a wolf attack. The beast has slaughtered Valerie`s older sister and the whole town is outraged. They decide to hunt the wolf in order to get their revenge. They also hire a famous werewolf hunter named Solomon (Gary Oldman) to help them with the hunt. Solomon brings along his guards and claims the wolf could be anyone from the village so he keeps a firm hand on all the villagers and his methods are rather harsh. The wolf proves to be a difficult match for Solomon and many more people begin to disappear. At the meantime Valerie has to decide who she can trust, Peter her longtime love, or Henry her soon to be husband. Anyone could be the werewolf and not even her grandmother (Julie Christie) is off the hook.

It would be hard to avoid comparisons between this movie and Twilight since the same director was involved in both projects and we have the whole love triangle deal, and yes even a werewolf. The difference in my opinion is that Twilight had a far better story and an unbelievably strong chemistry between the lead characters. The characters in Twilight are much better developed, and in this film they just seemed out of place in such wonderful scenery. Not even the beautiful white snow seemed real as the characters wore light clothes and no mist came out of their mouths. It was as if it were snowing at 80 degrees. Frozen is another film I watched this year which I hated and even that film at least captured the cold and freezing sensation. This movie wasn’t able to transmit any emotion at all. I didn’t feel entertained, scared, or amused by anything that was going on. The only highlight of the movie was perhaps the scenery, but that was it. The suspense doesn’t exist, and the ending is rather ridiculous. I completely hated this movie and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone at all. It was a waste of some talented people. I didn’t have a problem with the performances as much as I did with the story.

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