Beautiful Creatures

ROMANCE, SCI-FI/FANTASY

Dark Secret Will Come To Light

8.5 out of 10 | MOVIE - DVD

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Rated: PG-13 Violence, scary images and some sexual material.
Release Date: February 14, 2013
Runtime: 2 hours 3 minutes

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Director: Richard LaGravenese
Writers: Richard LaGravenese, Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl
Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum, Thomas Mann, Zoey Deutch, Kyle Gallner

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SYNOPSIS:  Ethan longs to escape his small Southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.

REVIEW: Richard LaGravenes, screenwriter of Water for Elephants and The Horse Whisperer, and director of P.S. I Love You, directs and writes the adaptation from the supernatural young adult romantic best-selling novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. 

Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich, Tetro) is a banned book bookworm who is also perky and popular. He loves Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five', William . Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch', and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. He dreams of leaving the small-minded and backwater Gatlin, South Carolina, to discover himself and the world before he decides on who he is. During the start of his junior year of high school, a new girl comes to town and to school. Lena Ravenwood Duchannes (Alice Englert, Ginger and Rosa) comes to school as an instant outcast, coming from a long line of rumored satanists and devil worshippers. The other girls make jokes at Lena expense and shun her, but Ethan finds her a kindred spirit and does not take part in his classmates' verbal abuse. When a chance encounter on a deserted road takes Ethan and Lena to her Uncle Macon Ravenwood's (Jeremy Irons, The Words) plantation doorstep, Ethan finds himself more intrigued and enchanted by Lena with every moment. The pair gets closer because of Ethan's gregarious nature, and in spite of Lena's misgivings, prompting her to reveal to Ethan of the fact that she is a caster - a witch with powers beyond that of mere mortals. What's more is that she tells Ethan that she has until her sixteenth birthday until she is confronted with the inevitable Claiming that will decide whether she will become a dark caster or a light caster. While Lena is desperate to stay in the light, her mother Sarafine (Emma Thompson, Brave) Disguised as the town conservative christian Mrs. Lincoln, Sarafine and Lena's cousin, dark caster siren Ridley (Emmy Rossum, Shameless) who was previously lost to the dark, plot an elaborate scheme to ensure that young caster Lena is taken by the dark. Can Ethan's love for her saver from the dark or will he only ensure that she succumbs to it?

The adaptation of the first book in the best-selling series by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Beautiful creatures will appeal to fans of The Twilight Saga and other young adult supernatural infused stories. For me, Beautiful Creatures is altogether different than what I expected - for the better. Set in the southern swamplands of Gatlin, South Carolina, lore for Richard LaGravenese uses the story's southern charm to enrich an already spicy story. The people of Gatlin openly cast aspersions to those who they deem as outcasts. Where Edward, Bella, and Jacob seemed to hide in plain sight with no one none the wiser, the setting of the South uses it's lore to make the idea of witchcraft and devilry center stage among those in the community. Appealing to tweens and young adults, this supernatural love story is refreshing and fun.

One of the decidedly different aspects of this film is that it seems a little more intelligent than what we have come to be used to. Sharp and witty, the dialogue is a great asset to the film. Sure kids may not talk that way but Ethan's use of the language is both gripping and fun.

Where I was never a big fan of Kristen Stewart as Bella, I thoroughly enjoyed Alice's Lena. Jeremy Irons brings great Southern hospitality and charm as Lena's uncle and protector, Using an accent similar to what he used in Die Hard with a Vengeance, just with a little less Texan drawl. Emma Thompson's Sarafine excels as the demure Christian housewife and community leader possessed by one of the most evil and powerful dark casters alive. Rossum's cousin Ridley just wants to dark cast and have some devilish fun, as well as being a bubbling henchman to Sarafine's schemes. And Viola Davis as Ethan's housekeeper Amma may know more than what she is letting on as she struggles to walk the razors edge of helping versus hindering.

The costumes, set design, and special effects suit the film well, used in just the right amount to enhance the story of a young witch and her first true love. From the foreboding exteriors of the Green Briar plantation, to the hyper-modern interiors of Macon's home, from the spell casting of Lena and Sarafine's, to a spinning dining room, from civil war re-enacters to Lena's party goers for her claiming party, LaGravenese and his team make great use to visualize the source materials.

Beautiful Creatures is a fine example of a young adult supernatural romance that works on all levels. From perfect casting, to wonderful set design, to quaint and effective use of the South, Beautiful Creatures breathes fresh life into a genre already filled with werewolves, vampires, and zombies - oh my!

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Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

SCI-FI / FANTASY

Spellcast Action

★ ★ ★ ★ out of 5 | Movie - DVD - Rental

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Rated: R Fantasy horror violence and gore, brief sexuality/nudity and language.
Release Date: January 25, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

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Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writers: Tommy Wirkola, Dante Harper
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Zoe Bell, Peter Stormare, Thomas Mann, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Robin Atkin Downes, Derek Mears

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SYNOPSIS:  In this spin on the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel are now bounty hunters who track and kill witches all over the world. As the fabled Blood Moon approaches, the siblings encounter a new form of evil that might hold a secret to their past.

REVIEW: Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola moves from Nazi zombies to child-eating witches with a script he crafted with new-comer co-writer Dante Harper. Originally a well-known fairy tale of German origin and published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, Wirkola looks to up the ante with adult siblings with a mysterious past, a cache of weapons, and a perchance for hunting down and killing patrons of black cauldrons and darker magics.

As children, Hansel (Jeremy Renner, Marvel's The Avengers) and his sister Gretel (Gemma Arterton, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) are led into the woods by their father by behest of their mother. Left alone in the woods, they find a house made out of candy. They enter the house, cold and hungry, suddenly finding themselves the prisoners of even hungrier witch. With a little bit of luck, Hansel and Gretel kill the witch and escape with their lives. As they grow up, the siblings continue to hunt down and dispatch witches wherever they find them. They become renowned as witch hunters. Years later, in the town of Oxford, several children have been abducted by witches, forcing the sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare, The Last Stand) to perform public hearings and forcing the mayor to contract with Hansel and Gretel to find the children and kill the witches. But the actions of the witch they seek baffled the hunters. As another child get taken, Hansel and Gretel must overcome extreme odds against a cadre of spellcaster and a troll led by Muriel (Famke Janssen,Taken 2) to prevail. The question is... with only a local fan named Ben (Thomas Mann, Fun Size) and a woman named Mina (Pihla Viitala, Must Have Been Love) who was formerly accused of being a witch... will they live to slay another day?

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters follows in a long line of classics including Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Red Hood: Werewolf Slayer, and Teddy Roosevelt: Rough Riding Zombie Killer... Wait, some of those do not sound like real films!? The colon titled films continue, most recently with a supernatural bent. While Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter came from modern literature which followed the literary mash-up 'Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies', writer/director Tommy Wirkola takes a page from network television's 'Grimm' by taking a fresh look at the German born and bred Brothers Grimm and their dark literary works. Most of their tales feature savage acts and dire consequences. What happens, though, after the children kill the witch and escape from the dark forest? In today's age, those kids would have spent years in therapy at a huge expense. In the simpler age of man, Hansel and Gretel take out their psychological scars the old fashioned way... they burn it (witches, that is).

This new twist on the dark fairy tale is very tongue and cheek. From the moment you see glass milk bottles with parchment tied to the side with 'Missing Child' information, you know that this production does not take themselves or the story too seriously. And that works to its advantage. The town of Oxford is a generic hamlet that could have seen a multiple of creatures - from dragons to vampires to, yes, witches - fly through it. Everyone has Americanized accents. And the word "awesome" is bantered about from the younger generation residing in the burg. The weapons, apparent early Galileo designs, are so far advanced for the time period that any historians may find their heads literally exploding. But where Hansel and Gretel fall short on period accuracy, they make up for it with action, explosions, and general ass-kickery!

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton take on the roles of Hansel and Gretel with relish and fun. Renner reprises his Hawkeye role from the Avengers, trading in a high-tech compound bow for iron boom sticks that Tony Stark would have been proud of. Gemma, the lighter weight of the siblings, still carries herself like a girl who had grown up decapitating and burning witches for a living. Both clad in leather, Hansel and Gretel take on all comers of the spell casting variety. They seem outmatched against hags with flying brooms and magic wands, but their passion for killing evil witches and ingenuity seem to balance the scales.

The witches in the tale are hideous and unique, each resembling the lands in which they roam. Murial is joined by Horned Witch (Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Chernobyl Diaries) as her main accomplice, but as the blood moon draws near, others flock to the mountain stronghold with their own creepy looks and powers. And as we all know, witches hate to do any menial task, so they have troll Edward (Derek Mears, Gangster Squad) to carry out their heavy work. Plenty of unique details are added to each witch to give the audience some great eye candy. Sorry, Candy Witch!

A fun popcorn movie with plenty of gory action from beginning to end, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters may surprise moviegoers. As long as you can join in the fun that the story seems to convey, this new twist on a dark fairy tale may actually spellbind you!

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Fun Size

Sugar Rush

★ ★ ★ 1/2 out of 5 buckets | Matinee or Rental

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Rated: PG-13  Language, sexual references, adolescent hijinks

Release Date: October 26, 2012

Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes

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Director: Josh Schwartz
Writers: Max Werner
Cast: Victoria Justice, Jackson Nicoll, Chelsea Handler, Jane Levy, Thomas Mann, Thomas McDonell, Osric Chau, Josh Pence

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SYNOPSIS: Wren's Halloween plans go awry when she's made to babysit her brother, who disappears into a sea of trick-or-treaters. With her best friend and two nerds at her side, she needs to find her brother before her mom finds out he's missing.

REVIEW: Gossip Girl and Chuck writer and first time director Josh Schwartz takes his stab at female teenage angst with a tale of Halloween hijinks. With a script from The Colbert Report writer Max Werner, Schwartz takes several teenage comedy concepts and wraps them up for the trick-or-treat season.

Wren (Victoria Justice, The First Time) and her best friend April (Jane Levy, the upcoming Evil Dead reboot) finally gets a chance to hang out with the cool kids when uber popular Aaron Riley (Thomas McDonell, Dark Shadows - 2012) invites them to his annual Halloween bash. Unfortunately, Wren's mother Joy (Chelsea Handler, This Means War) has other plans that involve Joy going to a party with her twenty-something boyfriend Keevin (Josh Pence, The Dark Knight Rises) and Wren saddled with taking her silent pudgy younger brother Albert (Jackson Nicoll, The Fighter) out trick-or-treating for the night. When Albert, dressed as an one-armed Spider-man, disappears in a local haunted house, Wren and April must hunt the pint-sized wall-crawler down with the help of nerds Roosevelt (Thomas Mann, Project X) and Peng (Osric Chau, 2012) and Roosevelt's moms' car.

Fun Size is an amalgam of so many teenage film concepts. Remember Jake Ryan and Porsche from Molly Ringwald's Sixteen Candles? Aaron Riley and his similar model luxury sports car could be from the same genetic material. Throw in an 'epic' party thrown at Aaron's house and the setting for the cool boy that all the other boys want to be and all the girl want to be with is complete. Add in a pretty girl Wren who doesn't think she's pretty, her selfish girlfriend April whose only goal is to get the epic party in order to raise her social status, and a couple outcast nerds who do not consider themselves nerds and must try to rise to the challenge of champions for the damsels they desire - and you have the classic teenage comedy formula flick!

Halloween is a fun-filled holiday of dress-up and sweets, a night where you shed your own skin for the night and masquerade as someone or something else. They say that you typically dress as someone opposite as who you really are. That is most true with mother Joy dresses as Brittney Spears in order to attend a party with her too-young boyfriend. And, of course, some of the young ladies shed their 'timid' demeanor in favor of anything with 'sexy' in the title. Sexy witch, sexy nun, sexy nurse - BFF April goes the classic, tasteful route as a sexy kitty. One thing about film created Halloween parties... you always see the best costumes ever! I will have to say that Fun Size does keep a little bit of realism with Albert's store-bought Spider-Man costume and novelty fake severed gory arm.

With any successful teenage angst-ridden movie, you have to have conflict and obstacles. Girl searching for true love? Check! Grownup responsibility that ends up with something lost? Check! Best friends with your best interest at heart, as long as it coincides with their own quest for higher social status? Check! Irresponsible youth adding to the overall hi-jinks? Check! Fun Size is not Superbad, but it is closer to films like Elizabeth Shue's Adventures in Babysitting (hey, there was a girl as Thor in that film!), Jonah Hill's The Sitter, or Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer. Fun Size is exactly what the title implies, a perfectly sized fun teenage film. Not enough for a sugar rush, but enough for a fun time with a little bit of heart.

Victoria Justice is great as the girl desperate to get out of the shadow of her mother's house and the constant reminders of a beloved father who had passed away. Future Evil Dead reboot 'Ash' Jane Levy channels her own version of Emma Stone with her scene stealing turn as the sexy cat best friend. Chelsea Handler, as Wren's mother, proves that mothers sometimes do not make any better decisions as the children they are charged to care for. The always quiet Albert, played by Jackson Nicoll, is funny just by staring at you and shaking his head. Besides Albert's antics, Thomas Middleditch's (The Campaign) Stop and Sip counter worker Fuzzy takes toilet paper revenge to a new level as he tries to reclaim his pride against a thug dressed as Dog the Bounty Hunter (Johnny Knoxville).

Fun Size is just the perfect sugary sweet size for a teenage spooky holiday romp. The film may have all the earmarks of dozen of other adolescent flicks, but this October party is just funny and sweet enough to not rot your teeth out.

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Project X

Epic, Plus One

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Rated: R Crude and sexual content throughout, nudity, drugs, drinking, pervasive language, reckless behavior and mayhem - all involving teens.
Release Date: March 2, 2012
Runtime: 1 hr 28 mins

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Director:  Nima Nourizadeh

Writers: Matt Drake, Michael Bacall
Cast:  Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown, Dax Flame, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Peter Mackenzie

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SYNOPSIS:  Two high schoolers throw a birthday party for friend Thomas while Thomas' parents are away for the weekend that quickly spirals out of control.

REVIEW: New director Nima Nourizadeh takes a script from Matt Drake (the upcoming The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman) and Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) to give us a glimpse of how teenagers truly spend their space time when unsupervised. 

In Pasadena, Thomas (Thomas Mann, the upcoming Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters) has a birthday coming up on Saturday when his mom (Caitlin Dulany, Maniac Cop 3) and dad (Peter Mackenzie, One Hour Photo) are away for the weekend for their wedding anniversary. Thomas' friends Costa (Oliver Cooper, Weekend Dad) and JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown, Pretend Time) want to use his birthday as an excuse to plan and execute an epic party that will be a game-changer for their reputations at school and in other social circles. Where Thomas wants a quiet get together with a few friends and his longtime friend who is a girl Kirby (Kirby Bliss Blanton, Scar), Costas talks him into upping the guest list to fifty. Costas then takes control of the whole party with DJs, a bouncy house, security in yellow wind breakers, blow-up dolls for the pool, plenty of alcohol, and a viral invite to the hottest and coolest teenagers around. All the whole, AV geek Dax (Dax Flame) shoots the entire event from beginning to end on film as per Costas' instruction. As the guests start arriving and the party gets into full swing, the event starts to spiral so far out of control that none of the hosts can wrap their hands around it.

Shot in hand-held first-person documentary style and presented as if the party actually occurred in Pasadena, with title thanks to the people who allowed their footage to be used and apologies to the local police department for the occurrence, Project X even uses most of the actors' first names. For the trained eye, though, the actual known actors make it pretty evident that this film is just another in a long  line of hyped mockumentary-styled flicks that thrive on the user's assumptions of reality. Not to say that  the film does not deliver on its promise of mayhem and chaos.

Starting off as a mild-mannered tale of a boy's birthday and the party that his friends want to throw for him, Project X is reminiscent of films like Animal House, Porky's, Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, and Superbad. Throw in the hand-held style of the film and you have a coming of age story for the second decade of the new millennium. Filled with nudity, loud music, alcohol, drugs, poor decision making, destruction of property, and rebellion against parents and authority figures, Project X is a case study of what every teenager dreams of doing and what every parent fears their teenager will do. With kids surfing on top of a Mercedes Benz, a midget punching guys (and girls) in the crotch, and a flame-throwing maniac lighting up the block in full view of the Pasadena police department and SWAT, this story has enough mayhem and laughs to keep almost everyone entertained. Just be sure that you meet the target demographic of 18 to 25. I was smiling, laughing, and oohing throughout, but the college crowd in the theater enjoyed the film even more.

Thomas Mann, who plays the lead character Thomas, is one of the few young cast members with a resume longer or broader than one or two films, shorts, or videos. As the story revolves around him, it was a good choice to settle on him after several auditions. Oliver Cooper, who plays Costa, channels a Queens olive version of Jonah Hill's Seth from Superbad, especially when he lies next to Thomas and JB and professes his bro love for his friends and laments about the crappy things he has done to them - especially the chubby JB. Kirby Bliss Blanton and Alexis Knapp play the ying and yang - the good girl and bad girl, respectively - directly in Thomas' drug- and alcohol-induced sights. Other highlights are a brief glimpse of the cameraman Dax, and the pint-sized security detail Everett (Brady Hender, Infamous) and Tyler (Nick Nervies, Role Models). The phrase, "Don't taze me, bro!", takes on a whole new meaning.

Project X is a drug- and alcohol-addled, and bare breast-filled teenage boy rite of passage to becoming a man. A perfect film for moviegoers with valid college IDs, this film is funny, vulgar, and over the top. Is  Project X for everyone? No. But it is certainly fun enough for the people who go to the movies the most!

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WORTH: Matinee or DVD