3 Small Reviews: Witches, Moscow and Planes

It has been a quiet few weeks, nothing significant has come out in the cinema’s around me, so I went on and watched a few of my guilty pleasures – Hollywood blockbuster flicks.

 Hansel and Gretel
Yes, I do admit, the people that have been around me when I saw a trailer for this one can attest, I am not ashamed to say I was kinda excited. I generally have a soft spot for modernized or Hollywood-ized fairy tales, but this one did not miss to basically disappoint. It has a very attractive cast, especially on the female side, yes I am not gonna deny that, it has nice visuals and opening theme and also really awesome-ly ugly witches(great job to the artists who came up with so many versions of witches). But I think this is pretty much where the positives end. All in all, the movie is like a Disneyland attraction – very short, full of explosions, killings and such, aimed at presenting a great show but with no actual substance. The movie is too short and too dense, while in the same time it leaves the potential of the storyline, characters and twists unused. It is also another perfect example of a “it is all in the trailer” overkill – every single cool shot of it is shown in the trailer, what is up with that? All in all, the movie is bad, but the good news is that at least it does not pretend it takes itself seriously. Unlike my next review. So, do not expect much, though I doubt anyone in their right mind would.

 A Good Day to Die Hard

Hollywood needs to learn there is an end to certain things and that keeping an end to certain things makes these things better, more appreciated and perhaps even more profitable in the long run. This Die Hard is a perfect example. I felt so angered when I left the movie theater. I am not going to talk about the fact that the screenplay writers seemed to have lost all kinds of inspiration by involving yet another mystery kid of Mcclane’s as a leading plot line, or the fact that it seems the villain in this kind of movies will always be the same (at least the Russian they spoke was real this time). I am also not going to talk about the blunt impossibilities of the plot, such as driving from Moscow to Chernobyl in a few hours, blowing up a helicopter with enriched uranium on it with no consequences or removing the radiation there with a magical gas ( I am not even going to warn you that these are spoilers, you better know what you are getting yourself into if you go see it) – ridiculous segments like that stretch the original badass unrealistic fuck-yeah moments of Die Hard way too thin. I am not even going to talk about the shallow conversations and one-liners, the lack of character and spicyness Mcclane exerts throughout the whole movie or the shallow plot twists. I will only talk about the fact that this movie made even the previous one look like a masterpiece. The fourth Die Hard was not much of the old movies, that much we all know, but at least it was fun to watch – it had suspense, nice cast, great action scenes. It seemed to be the modern explosive farewell to the old saga, the last get-together of the team for the fun of it. so what are they trying to achieve now? Why? This one is just sad – it has lost absolutely all the original flare. It is forced, shallow, flat and unoriginal. That’s it.

 Flight

This one does not necessarily qualify in the blockbuster flicks category, but it does fall in the “Hollywood tries to provoke a bit too hard” category. The movie has an interesting plot line with good acting, though Denzel Washington seems to have a thing for taking up the roles of corrupted yet righteous men, so that is rather anti-climactic. The movie has one of the most convincing crash scenes I have seen. In fact, if you actually have fear of flying, might wanna skip that one, it kinda gave even me the gitters. For the rest, I cannot explain it but I did not enjoy the movie so much, but I do admit that must b mostly a personal thing. Generally it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth, as they say. It is almost as if it tries so hard to be provocative and gross, that it just tries too hard and fails at everything else. Additionally, it is full of absurd character (such as Goodman’s comic relief role), as well as underdeveloped ones, like Kelley Reilley’s character. Her role in the plot starts off as a leading one, but kind of gets lost in the second half of the movie (also, SPOILER: how did she give up drugs so easily?!). So to cut the long story short, I did not enjoy the movie too much and would not recommend it, but I can understand and would be curious to hear if anyone of you thought differently?