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erinlale
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
loved the references to classic martial arts movies
This turned out to be an unexpectedly serious action picture with a lot fewer jokes than I was expecting. When the opening made such a big deal about Japanese fighting style versus Chinese fighting style I was really expecting a joke on the old --"Kung Fu no good, Karate!" / "Karate no good, Kung Fu!" / "Now we fight! Waaaa!"-- kind of thing, but instead of the predictable joke we got a delightfully subtle reference to the master who snatches flies out of the air with his chopsticks, with Liz as the master. The actual fighting in the movie did a great job with presenting the Japanese trained characters actually fighting Japanese style plus Western style with the Western fencing, and the Chinese trained characters fighting soft style and using firearms that were realistically unreliable as they were in the time period.
I really loved the costumes and props, too. I also liked how the movie kept me guessing by presenting what I expected to be clichéd action sequences and then not doing the expected. And I liked how it kept me guessing about the capabilities of the zombies and whether the zombies could be reasoned with, and about who was a zombie. There's at least one character that I'm pretty sure was a zombie that all the characters treated as if she was just a normal sick person, kind of the elephant in the room.
The weird 19th century dialogue, which I presume is a holdover from the original Pride and Prejudice, was not boring at all because there was only a little at a time and it was mixed in with the action.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Star Wars is Star Wars again
Spoiler warning If you don't want to see a spoiler, just scroll right on by.
Not that anyone could actually spoil this. I mean, if you've seen the original Star Wars movie, you already know the plot. This is basically the original, disassembled for parts, put in a basket, shaken, and reassembled into a different droid. Perhaps not quite the one you're looking for.
Starring: Rey as Luke Finn as Han BB8 as R2D2 Han as Ben (also that short lady alien had a little of Ben's function) Luke as Yoda Leia as Mon Mothma Kylo as Vader The Emperor as the Emperor (except who is the new Emperor and where did he come from?) Chewie as himself Poe as Biggs Wait... there's something missing... who's playing Leia? Ah, her functions have been split in half. Her function as Strong Female Character has been given to Rey. Her function as Luke's love interest has been given to Finn. Ah, OK then. All complete.
Starting with the Biggs and Han characters was different, and that's probably why the beginning felt odd. The one part of the plot of this movie that was not precisely like the original was the part that didn't work for me. Well, that scene did include the Vader character, who did appear near the beginning of the original, but until we find out later who is under that mask the Kylo character came off as a wannabe Vader (which he IS, but, there's more to him than that. The only times the Kylo character seemed to be a real person with his own motivations and not just a cheap knockoff of Vader that wasn't up to the quality of the original was when he wasn't wearing the mask.) In the opening scene Kylo came off as pathetic instead of intimidating. The beginning felt like a prologue. I hate prologues.
Then BB8 appeared and the plot got on track. I never really connected to the droids in the original, but the BB8 character did recreate the original movie plot well. The original started with a droid carrying important data falling into Luke's hands, and so did this one. The whole movie felt strangely unoriginal, but it worked as an action movie AND it worked as Star Wars. It kind of felt like a formula genre novel in that it had an utterly familiar plot backbone with sort-of-new characters inserted. But that's what made it work.
There was one new element, and that was the young Rey fangirling over the original Han and trying to find the original Luke, and getting to meet the original Leia. The celebrity pars were there for the fans of the original, to identify with Rey and get what we wanted from the movie, which was more of our original heroes. That part wasn't in the original, but it was a great addition. It wasn't really an addition to the plot, though, it was just some moments along the way. This movie didn't end where the plot of the original movie ended, but a little past that where Rey/Luke goes to find Luke/ Yoda. It was a good place to end this episode, but it wasn't really an addition to the original plot.
The action was great. The space battles, gunfights, sword fights, and hand to hand fights were all great. I saw it in IMAX 3D and the effects were superb. I thought Finn was a little too good of a swordsman for a stormtrooper. I mean, when would he have learned how to sword fight? A totally untrained person with a lightsaber would be likely to hurt himself rather than hold his own against someone like Kylo who clearly had real instruction. That didn't really detract from the movie too much, though, since the entire thing has fantasy-logic. It was a great spectacle. It was definitely worth watching on the big screen.
Review by Erin Lale, acquisitions editor, Caliburn Press
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
fun, but don't expect the Aesir of mythology
I like this movie. I recommend it, for movie fans, for action fans, for Marvel fans, for f/x fans, and even for my fellow heathens -- but for us, I must add the caveat that there are scenes that one might find shocking if one goes into this thinking one is actually watching a story about our gods. Think of the Marvel Thor movies as an alternate universe. I'm not going to list the scenes because I don't want to get too spoiler-y, but...
Spoiler alert! Don't read any further if you don't want to read spoilers! Let's just say that at least scene one involves character death. You might not want to take young heathen children who might be confused about the difference between the Marvel Asgardians and the Aesir. It could be upsetting for little Asatru kids to watch a god they honor get killed.
There is a lot of "fantasy violence" in this movie, so it's probably not one that kids that small would get taken to see anyway, but I thought it was important to warn heathen parents about that.
That aside, this is a really enjoyable movie. The effects were seamless. The plot twists never stopped, right up until the end (which left me scratching my head and wondering if I missed a clue somewhere. I really didn't see it coming.)
Vikingdom (2013)
this movie is religious hate speech
What if a Muslim director made a movie full of the same kind of hateful propaganda as "Innocence of Muslims" about someone else's god? That is this movie.
Asatruars and other heathens tolerate Marvel's Thor movies because they portray him positively, if a little inaccurately. Some of us are offended by Marvel's Thor movies but most of us enjoy them. But Vikingdom says our god is evil. That is offensive. This movie is clearly trying to ride Marvel's coattails, but it fails.
Don't give your money to this anti-Thor propaganda film. It is hate speech.
A respected member of our religion, Karl E.H. Seigfried of the Norse Mythology blog, sent a letter to director Yusry Abdul Halim asking him how he could claim on the movie's official website that this movie was "based on research" and is a "collision of myth and history" when it turns everything we know about Thor upside down. He responded that there is no proof that either Thor or the Vikings ever existed.
What if Hollywood made a movie where Allah was the villain and if Muslims complained about it the director said there is no proof Allah ever existed? Heads would roll.
Asatru, Forn Sed, Theod and other forms of heathenry for whom Thor is one of our gods are small minority religions but we demand the same respect one would give to any other religion.
Erin Lale, gythia of Asatru and author of Asatru For Beginners
Yi dai zong shi (2013)
Real martial arts action
This is the martial arts movie that martial artists have been waiting for. The action is real and human, not the usual Hollywood fakery. Every stunt looks like something a person is doing, not something a video game character is doing. In that way it's like the early martial arts and action movies of the pre-CGI era. The cinematography also harks back to the beauty of black and white films, although this film is in color. The way the cinematographer handles light reminds me of noir films where every frame could be printed and framed individually and hung on a wall as a work of art.
The only reason I'm rating this a 9 instead of a 10 is that I sometimes found the plot confusing, especially in the second half of the movie. I understand that this is nonfiction so it's not going to follow the neat and tidy plot arc of a fictional thriller, but: SPOILER ALERT -- THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS I think it could have been made clearer from the beginning exactly who is the title character (it isn't Ip Man, it's Master Gong) and who does the work of a hero in the plot (that isn't Ip Man either, it's Master Gong's daughter Er.)
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
surprisingly fun for adults given it was based on a children's book
Background about my expectations: I am a huge Tolkien fan. I didn't expect to enjoy this movie that much because The Hobbit is a kid's book. I read it when I was 5. Lord of the Rings was written as a sequel to The Hobbit, but for an adult audience because of the amount of time that passed between when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and when he wrote Lord of the Rings. I only went to see The Hobbit because my best friend took me for a Yule present.
How this movie exceeded my expectations: I enjoyed The Hobbit very much. I was surprised and delighted to see all the cameos by Lord of the Rings characters, which did not appear in the book. Also not in the book, but very welcome for an audience of adult LOTR fans, was the extended storyline about the Necromancer, the Council of the Wise, and the way the movie brought in the story of the Moria orc / dwarf conflict that had been told elsewhere in Tolkien's writings. I loved Radagast. His story had not really been told anywhere in Tolkien's writings, only hinted at, and he was a delightful character that I'm sure appealed to kids as much as he appealed to older Tolkien fans hungry for new Tolkien-y stuff. All of that is stuff that was not in the book, so if I was in "Tolkien book purist mode" instead of "Lord of the Rings fan fiction reader mode" I would have hated it. This movie is not actually The Hobbit, a movie based on the children's book. It's a completely new work intertextually inserted into the story of The Hobbit, much like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Ways the movie stayed true to the book: I was very happy that all the humor and song from the book did appear in the movie. The costumes, props, sets, makeup, etc. looked right for the characters and the story.