Halloween Marathon: Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Sigh…the first movie to come unexpected in the Halloween line-up. I will tell you a little story about why I was hesitant to actually see this. I actually turned it on in the background one day and didn’t watch much of it but the dialogue itself and just the loud noises bombarding my ears made me cringe so bad and curse in pain respectively. The reason this still ended up being a thing was because I had to get some writing done and the husband decided to play it since I already had an idea of what this movie was about so yeah… low expectations and play!

Let’s check it out!

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Director and co-writer: Michael J. Bassett

Cast: Adelaide Clemens, Kit Harington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, Malcolm McDowell, Martin Donovan

When her father disappears, Heather Mason is drawn into a strange and terrifying alternate reality that holds answers to the horrific nightmares that have plagued her since childhood.-IMDB

 Silent Hill is a video game adaptation. At this point, there’s a whole lot of bad feelings towards how they are. In fact, maybe David over at That Moment In has a point when he wrote this piece about how video game adaptations will never quite work HERE. His feelings are really about Lara Croft and perhaps more action-based games, just like how I was picturing how to do Layers of Fear as a movie. My point is that, I haven’t played Silent Hill much but horror games and horror movies are starting to merge in my mind. Why? Because these people are forgetting the key of horror. Sure, jump scares are important but they are only relevant when the atmosphere has helped create it with adding mystery and suspense and getting the audience/player involved. That also affects the effectiveness of well-designed disturbing characters but put them in an unengaging movie. Plus, jump scares are about actually feeling scared, not startled by loud noises bombarding our ear drums. Those are all faults of Silent Hill: Revelation.

Silent Hill Revelation provoked a lot of ideas for opinion pieces which I don’t actually do here. Fact is, there is a lot of cliche dialogue here. I can’t say the performances are bad. They did the best with what they had in terms of dialogue. How many times have you heard the answer to “Go to Hell” in some paraphrase form of “You haven’t noticed? We’re already there.” And obviously going where everyone tells you to not go and heading straight for danger. There’s a lot of eye rolling moments like Kit Harington’s character, Vincent who has in reality only known the main character Heather, played by Adelaide Clemens for a grand total of 2 days and has somehow fallen in love or seems to know her super well or like “known you all this time.” When all means a total of 24 hours, you have some problems of convincing me, buddy. But these are all faults of the dialogue. And it continues on to other things just don’t piece the story well enough together.

 Mostly because of the previous point, a lot of what could make this a scary movie turns into one that is quite lackluster. It throws around loud noises to unsettle the audience or utilizes some creepy looking enemies but then particularly the spider-like enemy shows some pretty unrealistic computer graphics and lacks the same level of scares like the blind nurse killers or triangle head. I don’t know the Silent Hill franchise so pardon my lack of knowledge to what these enemies are actually called. With that said, the best part of the movie goes to the triangle head axe-man although I did make fun of him in one part where he operates the horse carousel and you’ll see in the opening moments so not much of a spoiler. Second part is whats below with the blind nurses. The character design and how they move abruptly with sound with their knives or whatever weapons is just so creepy.

Overall, Silent Hill Revelation is really hard to love. With badly developed characters and bad dialogue and the overly serious tone and rough CGI, bombarding loud noises to create jump scares, it falls into a lot of bad horror cliches. The story is also not done well to give it some purpose. The only redeeming qualities are for two villains that help give the movie just a tinge of a few better moments. For someone like myself who gets scared incredibly easy, this one didn’t give me any spooks except for two startled jump scare moments.

Have you seen Silent Hill Revelation? Did you like it?

The Martian (2015)

Moving right along, up for a few Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Role along with adapted screenplay and production design and more is The Martian.  I had meant to see this in theatres but I believe it landed in a time when I didn’t find much time to go anywhere or do anything other than the normal routine.  Regardless, I came home from a weekend getaway with a friend and decided to start this one up!

Let’s check it out! 🙂

The Martian (2015)

Director: Ridley  Scott

Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristin Wiig, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.-IMDB

The Martian is a smart and thrilling action adventure.  Its adapted from a novel by Andy Weir with the same novel. I’m going to be honest that I’m not a huge fan of Matt Damon.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen many of his movies and the ones I’ve seen are somewhat forgettable.  The premise of The Martian looked good and one that could amount to some fun and intense moments.  All these expectations were met and exceeded.  Its rare for me to stay engaged in lengthy movies and coming in at 2 hours, I’d say it borders along the length I’m not a huge fan of although most movies are averaging around that sort of runtime nowadays.  However, it never feels like its that long.  Even if he stays on that planet for something like 3 years or whatnot. This has to do mainly with pacing and the tone along with some good performances.

I can’t compare it to the source material but nothing in The Martian ever felt like it was lost in translation.  The story pieced together well.  For one, The Martian is kind of like Cast Away but in space except it shows the other side of the spectrum working hard to bring him home, almost as hard as he is working to stay alive.  Its because of that, our endearing characters go from Matt Damon’s witty attitude towards this as he slowly transforms over the time in Mars by himself to the scientists at NASA working to get him back as soon as possible and to his crew that reluctantly had to leave him behind in the first place.  While this can be dramatic, it also is strewn with comedic moments to mellow out the seriousness of the situation.  In many ways, its the heart of having a positive heart that keeps you going in the first place or just its better to try to work stuff out then to give up. On top of that, the production design was great along with the visual effects.

The cast here is pretty fantastic.  I’m loving that Jeff Daniels is in this one also.  Back to back movies with him is refreshing (the last one was Steve Jobs that I reviewed HERE).  Its also with a very different and much more serious performance from Kristin Wiig which I liked quite a bit.  At the same time, Chiwetel Ejiofor is a fantastic judge of picking decent movies to be involved with and his role in this one is dynamic to say the least.  Jessica Chastain might not feel like she’s in here for a long time and honestly, I didn’t even think her role was that groundbreaking, especially considering the crew also included Sebastian Stan who should get more bigger roles. A young actor Rich Purnell gets the small role of being the astrophysicist who kind of solves all the problems here and I’d truly love to see him in more movies because I loved his part.  But, Matt Damon blew me away.   It was a memorable performance full of energy.  Smart and funny; the latter adjective is something I never quite associated him with before.  Mark Watney is a great character and he did a great job bringing him to life on the big screen.

Overall, The Martian is a fun action-adventure movie.  It carries a good message, adds in some thrills, puts a little space twist, and is smart and comedic all wrapped up in a little bundle.  It works well and is an engaging story.  The cast and their performances were great from Matt Damon to Kristin Wiig to Jeff Daniels and much more.  Is it a Oscars material? Maybe not exactly fitting the normalcy and the format of it but it does have rewatchability and that’s even more important to me. It exceeded my expectations and I love that! 🙂

Did you see The Martian? What did you think of it? Are you a fan of Matt Damon? Any of his roles stand out to you?

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Today I’m pretty proud of myself.  Not so much the weekend because I didn’t even get a romantic comedy review in for my Valentine’s marathon.  But then its always kind of quiet during the weekend.  Now, I’m proud because on Friday  night I said that I was going to go see Jupiter Ascending (one of my most anticipated movies of 2015!!) on Sunday afternoon and early this afternoon, I managed to get my ass to the theatres despite the snow.

Honestly, although this is still my most anticipated movie despite the pushing back of the release from last year to this year, I can’t help but be a little worried that it might let me down, especially since this is kind of trash season at the theatres.  Plus, RT has it at like 22% rotten, but then, I don’t always agree with RT so I kind of pushed that out of my mind and still went.  Channing and Mila haven’t disappointed me for a long time and I’m sure they won’t.  Got to stay positive, right?

Let’s check it out, shall we?

JUPITER ASCENDING (2015)

Director & writers: The Wachowskis

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton

Jupiter Jones was born being told she was destined for better things as a baby.  As a young woman in Chicago, she wakes up at the brink of dawn to be a caretaker with her mom cleaning toilets and other people’s house.  Hating her current stagnant life, her only dreams are to have the money to get a telescope to gave in the wonders of the sky just like her father.  Until one day, a genetically engineered ex-warrior, Caine Wise under command to search and save her from the surprise attack from the current leader of Earth in the faraway planet in outer space, Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne).  Being whisk into this outer space world that recognizes her a recurrence of a past authority and mother of the current leaders of the world, she gets caught up in the fight between her past life’s children, Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), Titus (Douglas Booth) and Balem. The only person she can trust is Caine but she also needs to make decisions to save herself and possibly her family on Earth as well, while deciding if she can take on the rightful responsibilities to reign Earth.

Man, thats a really long synopsis. I just don’t know what to cut out and what is saying too much. Either way, when I make long synopsis, that usually means that I enjoyed that movie a lot.  Jupiter Ascending was absolutely not disappointing.  Sure, its not a perfect movie and its obvious that it wasn’t.  I’ll explain it a little more later but I was able to get past some of it and really fall in love of in for various reasons.  If there is no other reason to see this, the CGI is awesome in this.  Everything is so beautiful to look at it, from the Earth, the planets, kingdoms.

Another element to really love was ALL of the intense action.  Hell, every single time there was an action sequence it was crazy intense.  I was grabbing tight to the edge of my seat.  It was convincing to make me wonder if they would achieve their objective.  Channing Tatum’s Caine Wise was just absolutely bad ass! LOL! Plus, all that outer space technology was so fun!

However, visuals and action means little to some viewers and the one thing that a lot of people probably will critic will be the story itself.  I fully acknowledge it, especially because I kind of found the love story a little bit forced BUT, I was able to get through it because Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis took Caine and Jupiter and added this awesome chemistry.  I just couldn’t resist their presence together and I kind of fell in love with their characters more than the love story itself, plus some of the dialogue was pretty awkward and funny at the same time.  But hey, if you don’t see pass this, I’m guessing its going to be a big flaw. I’m just saying, I was able to get pass it.

Even if its not the love story, Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis both started out as an actor and actress that wasn’t extremely appealing to me but they’ve really stood out and improved so much that I always look forward their performances.

The love story however is the side story to the actual plot of this whole dictatorship and reigning of Earth’s story.  Everyone want a piece of this valuable land because it holds a lot of value and each sibling wants a piece of it.  Titus and Kalique both don’t have the rightful reign of it so they have to charm Jupiter to believe them. Its a game of whether who is lying and for what reason. Now, lets take a look at the siblings a little.  I’m going to put Tuppence Middleton’s Kalique away because sure, she was good and sufficient for what she did but the main ones here is Titus, played by Douglas Booth.  I spent a good bit of the movie trying to figure out where I saw him before.  It was in LOL and thats a movie that I kind of want to forget I saw..haha! I really liked the whole charming Douglas Booth because he really gave a convincing performance for Titus.  I hope that he gets more roles in the future.  I’d like to see how he progresses as an actor.

My surprise was that Eddie Redmayne was part of this.  Honestly, I only saw the preview once or something and I can’t even remember much of it but the concept of Jupiter Ascending was what drew me in even before I knew too much.  Sometimes, thats the best way to go see a movie.  I’ve loved Eddie Redmayne since Les Miserables so seeing him as a villainous ruler definitely a change in pace because he got a funky voice but also a very good performance on his part.

Overall, Jupiter Ascending has great CGI visuals and the set is lovely to watch.  The characters are engaging because of the casts’ outstanding performances and the action scenes which cover a good 70% of the run time is always intense to watch, keeping the movie at a solid pace.  However, the story has its flaws especially with a rather forced side love story between Jupiter and Caine.

Still, I had a lot of fun with this one and I’m definitely adding this to my movie collection when it comes out on Bluray 🙂

Valentine’s Marathon resumes tomorrow! Remember to check back!