Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie Review

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

                                                                   

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an American-German action horror fantasy film released in 2013. This movie is co-written and directed by Tommy Wirkola and produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Beau Flynn. The movie was filmed in Germany. The title roles of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters are played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton.  Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Peter Stormare, Derek Mears, Thomas Mann and Rainer Bock has played other important roles. This movie was also released in 3D.

A scene from the movie Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Plot:

The plot starts when two siblings, Hansel and Gretel were kids. One night, suddenly, their father takes them to a jungle and leaves them there. While wandering around, they find a house made of candy. They enter that house and find a witch inside. The witch tries to kill them, but they fight the witch and finally kill her. Later on, the brother and sister duo, Hansel and Gretel becomes professional and renowned witch hunters.

One day, in a small town where small kids were going missing, a lady is caught for the allegation of witchcraft and the sheriff is about to execute her. Just then, Hansel and Gretel appears. They are hired by that town’s mayor to solve the problem of witches. Hansel checks her and confirms that she is not a witch. Then, when Hansel and Gretel starts to look for the witches, the sheriff also sends a group of men to the jungle at night for the same reason. All of the members of that group get killed by the grand witch. Hansel and Gretel catches a witch, and by interrogating her, they learn that the witch leader is preparing for a grand ritual, for which, she needs to sacrifice six boys and six girls each born at separate months. Hansel and Gretel also finds a teenage fan of them in the town, who himself also keeps knowledge about witches.

Suddenly, the grand witch, with her team, attacks the town and takes their targeted kid. Hansel and Gretel tries to fight them. While fighting, Gretel gets hit and becomes unconscious. Later on, she is brought to safety and gets taken care of by their teenage fan. Hansel follows another witch to the jungle, but also gets hit.

The next morning, the lady they saved earlier, finds Hansel and helps him to get healed. In the meantime, Gretel searches the jungle for her brother and gets caught by the sheriff and his team. They beat her, but she gets saved by a somewhat human-like creature named troll. The troll takes Gretel to a safe place and helps her. When Gretel asks him for the reason why he has helped her, he replies that troll saves witches and then he leaves. Then Hansel and Gretel reunite at their old childhood home. To their wonder, they find the place as a witch’s layer. Then the grand witch comes there and tells them about their past. She tells them the identity of their mother, how their parent died and also reveals that Gretel is a white witch herself. Then they start to fight and again, the grand witch defeats Hansel and Gretel and abducts Gretel for her grand ritual.

Again, when Hansel wakes up, he finds that lady whom they saved. Then she says that she is also a white witch. Next, they gather all their weapons and the lady blesses them. Then, Hansel, that lady and Hansel and Gretel’s teenage fanboy from the town head for the place where the grand ritual was taking place.

The last part of the movie is about their attempt to save Gretel and the kidnapped children and about Hansel and Gretel’s challenge to take revenge on the grand witch.

My review about this movie:

First of all, I felt disappointed about this movie.

Actually, seeing the trailer and posters and most importantly, considering the casting, I had a very high expectation about this movie. But this movie has totally failed to keep up with my expectation. Both of Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton has grown a good reputation for themselves already and I don’t understand why they had to act in this movie.

The weakest part of this movie is its plot. The plot is too weak and simple to satisfy the movie lovers. While keeping everything as they are, just a more sophisticated plot could make this movie far, far better. And needless to say, it was pretty predictable. Its not that every movie has to have some twist in the plot, but at least it could be better than two siblings who are witch hunters, learns their past and then go on their mission.

And several unnecessary scenes of violence also add up to the negative side of this movie. The director could do better without them.

But on the good side of the movie, the acting and dialogues are good. Same goes for the make-ups. The witches also looked okay, where the troll looked like the “Ogre” from the animation ‘Shrek”. The location also looked good and the weapons looked old styled but fashionable.

This movie features a small scene of nudity. So considering it and the violence, this is not a movie for kids.

The special effects are also good, although they felt insufficient. A little more use of special effects would look good on this movie.

So, overall, although this movie has a better than average IMDB rating of 6.1 (while I’m writing this review), I didn’t like this movie. You can consider watching it by considering its casting, but I will not recommend Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters to anyone who is looking for good movie to have some time spent pleasantly.

How much did you like this movie? Feel free to comment.

For those who are interested:

IMDB link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters IMDB

Wikipedia Link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Wiki

The Amazing Spider Man Movie Review

The Amazing Spider Man Review
                                                                      

The Amazing Spider-Man is an American superhero film released in 2012. As we all know, this movie is based on the famous Marvel Comics character “Spider-Man”.  The Amazing Spider Man is the fourth movie of this Spider -Man series, but after the third, this one starts again from the very beginning of the original story, thus serving as a reboot. This movie is written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, directed by Marc Webb and starred by Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. This movie is released also in 3D.

A scene from the movie The Amazing Spider Man

Plot:

The plot starts when Peter Parker was a kid. One night, in a hurry, Peter’s father takes Peter to Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s house and leaves him there taking Peter’s mother with him. They never returned. Their fate was not shown at that time of the movie.

Peter grew up to a teenager. In his school, he was regularly bullied by some other teens. He always carried a camera with him as he was fond of photography. But one day, some bullies beat him and break his camera when he refuses to take photos of those boys bullying another student. This incident also helps him to earn respect from beautiful Gwen.

One day Peter accidentally discovers his father’s secret documents. From his uncle Ben, he learns that his father was working with Dr. Curt Connors of Oscorp and then we see how his parents died. To learn more, Peter goes to Oscorp and enters there taking the identity of an intern. Then he sees Gwen from his school is taking the interns to a tour in Oscorp and he mixes with that team. Soon, with his brilliance, he gets noticed by Dr. Curt Connors, who, at that time, was working on cross species genetic exchange to cure the human from different disease. Dr. Connors target was to cure the head of Oscorp and also to get his arm back.

Peter gets detached from the intern group and sneaks into a special lab, where he was bitten by some exceptional type of spiders. His suspicious activities got caught by Gwen and she throws him away from the group. While returning home, he starts to feel his extraordinary abilities.

Soon Peter learns to control and use his new abilities and teaches the bullies at his school a lesson. Peter also meets Dr. Connors in his house and gives him some clue (which he has found from his father’s research) to complete his unfinished research. Peter gives Dr. Connors his identity and starts to help him with his research, which finally brings the success to regenerate an arm on a mouse. But after returning him, Peter gets scolded by his uncle Ben for forgetting his responsibility. Angrily, Peter leaves the house and his uncle follows to search for him. In a store, he meets a thief who helps him, but accidentally kills his uncle Ben. Peter finds the body of his uncle. Peter also realizes that it was him, who saw the thief stealing and had let him go. Later on, police gave him some clue about that thief.

Peter starts to beat up criminals to find that thief. From a painting on a gym’s wall, he gets inspired to make a costume. He makes that costume and also creates some kind of machine to shoot web from his wrist.

In the meantime, Dr. Connors’ boss pressures him to apply his newly found serum on human. When Dr. Connors rejects, his boss threatens him that he will shut down the whole project and also says, Peter’s father also didn’t agree to test his medicine on human. Out of desperation, Dr. Connors applies the serum on himself and turns into a big human-lizard.

Peter goes to Gwen’s house to attend her invitation and finds that, Gwen’s father is the police chief, who is looking for spider-man. They both had a little argument on the dinner table. After the dinner, Peter reveals his identity (as spider-man) to Gwen and they kiss. Then he hears police siren and Gwen’s dad rushes to a bridge where the lizard-man attacks. Peter also rushes there and saves some people.

On the next few days, Peter does some research and finds a possible hiding place of the lizard-man in the sewer. He then fights the lizard, but loses and escapes from there. Peter tells the police chief about the identity of the lizard-man, but he doesn’t trust him completely. The lizard man (Dr. Connors) learns Spider-Man’s identity from his camera and attacks his school to stop him, but Spider-Man again saves the students.  Later, he finds the plan of the lizard-man, that is, to use a special machine of Oscorp to convert all the people of the city to a stronger version of human, i.e., lizard-man.

The next part of the movie is about the plan of the lizard-man and the attempts of the spider-man to stop him.

My Review about this movie:

First of all, I liked this movie. Although I didn’t find it mind-blowing or extra-ordinary amazing, but I still liked it.

The plot is simple and pretty predictable. Almost all of us know the story of Spider-Man, like what happened to his uncle, how he got transformed etc, and this movie gives no surprise. The ending is also very predictable.

The dialogues are okay, not bad or nothing special. I didn’t like the acting of Andrew Garfield. I mean, his acting was not bad at all, but to me, he seemed too smart to be a kid who is regularly being bullied by his classmates. Here I missed Tobey Maguire, who’s innocent (and sometimes, confused) face and beautiful acting matched perfectly with the character he was playing in Spider-Man (part 1). The acting of all other characters were also good, but again I missed beautiful  Kirsten Dunst. I’m not complaining about the artists here, I just missed the old ones.

The make-ups are goods, except the lizard-man. To me, it looked funny, not the image of a scary villain. Here the villain is not evil, his intentions were not bad, but harmful and wrong. He himself is a tragic hero.

The special effects are very good in this movie. Specially, the continuous shot in the action scene in the school where the Spider-Man was running over the lizard all around it trying to put it in nets looked awesome. All other flying and action scenes also looked beautiful.

At the last parts of the movie, I was really hoping to see some more lizards after the lizard -man used gas on some police, but there was nothing like that. I think it could be a good addition to the movie.

To all Spider-Man fans, this movie should come as a big relief after the last part (part 3) of the previous Spider-Man series, the series which started with an amazing movie but kept getting worse at each sequel.

If you think after watching pervious three movies, there is nothing new to watch in Spider-Man, you’ll make a wrong guess. There are a lot of differences in this movie with the previous one. For example, here Spider-Man doesn’t enjoy public fame like the previous ones, here he doesn’t have a photo-journalism career, here webs doesn’t come out of his hands, he makes an electronics device for that, here he hunts criminals for his personal vendetta, not to help people. In this movie, most of the Spider-Man’s moves are also different.

In my judgment, between Spider-Man (part one) and The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ll keep Spider-Man (part 1) on top. But The Amazing Spider-Man has a great potential and I’m looking forward to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Whatever, this is a nice movie. An IMDB rating of 7.1 supports it. By watching this movie, I felt my time nicely spent. If you are a Spider-Manfan or a superhero movie fan, I’d recommend this movie to you.

How do you feel about this movie? Feel free to write in the comments.

For those who are interested:

IMDB Link: The Amazing Spider-Man IMDB

Wikipedia Link: The Amazing Spider-Man Wiki

Mirror Mirror Movie Review

Mirror Mirror

                                                                

We all have seen different adaptations of the famous story of Snow White by Brothers Grimm and Mirror Mirror is another of them. It is released in 2012. This movie is directed by Tarsem Singhand and  starred by  Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, and Sean Bean.

A scene from the movie Mirror Mirror

Plot:

Snow White is a princess, who’s mother dies at childbirth. Her father loves her very much and raises her. When she was a child, her father marries another woman. He leaves the castle for a fight and never returns, which, at one point, puts Snow’s new mother as the ruler of the country as the queen.

Snow White grows up to her teenage and wants to visit the land. But she can never go beyond the strict regulations of the queen. The queen never allows her to go outside the castle. Then we can see the greedy nature of the queen. She always lives in her royal comforts, where the costs for those come from the poor people’s taxes. 

One day, Snow White manages to go outside the castle. While passing the jungle (which is rumored to be haunted by a mysterious beast) she meets a prince along the way, who is robbed by some dwarfs. Snow White goes to the nearby town and finds the people’s sad condition. In the meantime, the prince reaches the castle and meets the queen. By noticing his smartness and wealth, the queen falls in love of the prince. She throws a ball to amaze the prince, but secretly Snow White joins the ball. But Snow white gets caught by queen and the queen orders her servant to take Snow White to the jungle and to feed her to the beasts. The servant releases Snow White in the jungle and Snow White ends up at the cabin of the dwarfs.

At first she finds it a little hard to gain the dwarf’s trust, but soon they love her and she helps them to gain the love and acceptance of regular people. The prince meets Snow White and informs the queen that she is alive. 

Being angry, the queen uses her spell and turns her servant into a cockroach. She then uses another spell to make the prince fall in love for her, which creates a ‘puppy love’ in the prince for her. Bound by the spell, the prince agrees to marry her.

Then the queen uses another of the dark magic to kill Snow White and the dwarfs. But Snow white defeats them. Then she, with the dwarfs, crashes the queen’s wedding party and kidnaps the prince. At the dwarfs’ cabin, she breaks the prince’s spell.

Next part of the story is about Snow White’s confronting the queen and bring happiness to the kingdom.

Julia Roberts and Armie Hammer in Mirror Mirror

My reviews about this movie:

First of all, I’ll say, I’ve enjoyed this movie.

If you are looking for a serious movie, Mirror Mirror will disappoint you. This movie is a childish and funny movie, it is made to enjoy in a light mood. We know about “Snow White and The Huntsman” which is made on almost same plot as this one and is a rather serious one, but Mirror Mirror gives you a complete different feeling than that one and I must admit, watching Mirror Mirror feels better. 

The plot is nothing new, almost everyone who is reading this blog knows the story of Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, so you may find very little twist in the plot.

The dialogues are good, specially of the dwarfs’. The dwarfs here are very funny characters and pleasant to watch (unlike the ones from the Snow White and The Huntsman). But other dialogues are also a good fit for a comedy movie. 

Acting of all the characters are also good enough. There is no question about the acting capabilities of Julia Roberts, and here, she has done no injustice to her name and reputation. Although Lily Collins has not done a big number of movies, but I loved her acting in this movie, pretty fluent and cute. Other characters has also played their parts well, no over-acting or lack of expressions.

The special effects are okay too for a fantasy film.

There is no nudity or violent scene, so feel free to watch it with children. 

So, finally, as I said, I liked Mirror Mirror  But remember, this movie is a light childish movie, don’t look for much depth or seriousness in it. If you are looking for a movie to lighten your heart, I’d definitely recommend it. Other than that, Mirror Mirror a nice one, watch it. 

What do you think of this movie? Feel free to comment.

To learn more about it:

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667353/

Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Mirror_(film)

Life of Pi Movie Review

Life of Pi
                                    

Life of Pi is an American drama film directed by Ang Lee. It was released on the year 2012. This movie is based on Yann Martel's 2001 novel of the same name. The leading characters of this film is played by Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Gérard Depardieu, Tabu, and Adil Hussain.

A Scene from the movie Life of Pi

Plot:
The movie starts with a conversation between the adult Pi and a tourist. Pi tells him about his childhood and how he gets the name “Pi”. Pi’s father owned a zoo and since childhood, Pi is familiar with the animals. One incident about a tiger is shown particularly from his childhood, as that experience has some special importance for the rest of the movie.

One day, when Pi is 16, Pi’s father decided to close the zoo and sell the zoo animals to some American buyers. His father also plans to settle in Canada. So few days later they start their journey in a Japanese ship, taking all the animals with them. Their ship falls in danger on a stormy night. Pi want to save this family, but the crews of the ship throw him in a lifeboat. The ship sinks and Pi, along with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger ends up in that lifeboat. Gradually Pi loses companion and the last two survivors are Pi and that tiger.

Pi’s struggle for life starts from here. His challenges are to keep himself alive in the sea and to stay as far as possible from the tiger, again, to keep himself alive. Luckily, he finds some supplies in the lifeboat.
The next part of the movie is all about his journey and struggle. On the way, he finds different technique and has various experiences like a strange killer island, flying fishes, gigantic whale and so on.

My Reviews about this movie:

First of all, it’s a beautiful piece of work. I guess everyone will enjoy watching Life of Pi.

The plot is exceptional and enjoyable. Although, at the beginning of the movie, you can see that Pi has survived, but this movie was never about the ending. Its all about the journey.

The acting of all characters is good enough.

The special effects are beautiful. Several time I wondered how they managed to shoot the scenes, specially the scenes with the man and the tiger on the same boat. The other effects like the sinking ship, the strange island, the whale, the lighting sea creatures, the flying fishes and everything else are a pure pleasure to watch.

The best thing about this movie is its cinematography. All scenes are played really well. The mixture of good dialogues, good make-up, beautiful acting and splendid special effects has made it beautiful. The director has put special efforts to make u enjoy the scenic beauty of the nature throughout the movie. And these efforts are a complete success. Even if the plot or the acting was not good like this, I’d still enjoy watching this movie just for the beautiful scenes.

There is no nudity in the whole movie, so everyone can watch it. This movie has a very little romantic story, which ends before the journey of the ship starts.

And “Life of Pi” also gives its own philosophy about religion and life. May be, some of them can make you think.

The only thing I didn’t like about this movie is the accent. No offence to anyone, but personally, I’m not a big fan of Indian English accent.

Overall, any movie lover should love Life of Pi. So I’d recommend it as a ‘must see’ for all the movie fans.

For those who are interested:
IMDB Link : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/
wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film)

Feel free to put your comments :-)
  

The Cabin in the Woods Movie Review

The Cabin in the Woods
                                                           

The movie "The Cabin in the Woods" is a horror film released in 2012. Although, according to wikipedia, the film is a comedy horror one, I've failed to understand the 'comedy' part of it. i'd go with the imdb's criteria, 'horror, mystery, thriller. This film is directed and co-written by Drew Goddard and co-written and produced by Joss Whedon. The role of the main characters (5 friends) are played by  Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, and Jesse Williams.

A scene from the movie The Cabin in The Woods

Plot:

5 college students go to a vacation trip to a forest cabin. From the beginning of the movie, some technicians are seen to be working at a control room, preparing for an event. When the students start for their trip, someone waiting at a rooftop, updates another about their journey through wireless. On the way to the cabin, the students stop at a gas station and meets a stranger who behaves with them very rudely. As they take a turn on the road, it is shown that they are entering inside an almost invisible protective border.

When they reach the cabin, they like it and very soon, one of them discover a two way mirror, showing the activities of another room. In the meantime, the technologists from the control room starts some kind of bet with their colleagues. All this time the people from the control room is observing and sometimes controlling the groups movements from there.

At the night they find the cellar filled with some strange items, including the diary of a girl. suddenly strange things starts to happen, like zombies appears and kill one of them. the zombies keep on haunting each of them and their game of survival. 

The next part of the movie is all about their fight, survival and finding the room.

My Review about this movie:

First of all, i did not like the plot of the movie. This is a mixture of science, ghosts and myth. And to me, they got mixed in a bad way, which doesn't make any sense. 

From the time when zombies appeared, i kept on wondering where are they coming from and how come they are not dying after all those attempts. After seeing the control room with big equipments, the hidden camera etc, i was not ready to believe that they were actual zombies. And there came the ghosts. Every type of ghost you can imagine, every type of ghost you've seen or read about, all of them were there. And they were locked in glass boxes. So how come you have those ghosts and still need electrical control system, lifts to carry them? How come u need cameras to see inside the cabin? Why not use magic globes to see them and use some teleporters to carry them? and about the Gods... and the very ending........ no comments.

So as I told ago, this movie makes no sense to me. I know there are a lot of movies also which makes no sense (actually, most of the the movies) but still pleasant to watch, but to me, this movie is not one of them. Actually I don't understand what the producers or director was trying to do with this movie. You need to have at least something you like in a movie, but here I haven't found any. 

The acting and script is okay, but nothing extra ordinary. 

Seeing an imdb rating of 7.2 indicates that most of the peoples' opinion about this movie is opposite to me, but here is me, writing my reviews. 

In the whole movie I've found nothing for which i may recommend this movie to someone else. So I won't. 

Anyway, feel free to share your comments.

For those who are interested,

imdb link :  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/

wikipedia link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabin_in_the_Woods