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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The Words

Fiction or Life

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Rated: PG-13 Smoking and brief strong language
Release Date: September 7, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 36 minutes

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Director: Brian Klugman, Lee Sternthal
Writers: Brian Klugman, Lee Sternthal
Cast:  Dennis Guaid, Jeremy Irons, Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, J.K. Simmons, Olivia Wilde

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SYNOPSIS:  When a struggling writer Rory cannot catch a break, a found manuscript propels him to a successful book and awards. When an old man confronts Rory to tell the writer that the words Rory wrote were his, Rory struggles with what to do next.

REVIEW: Writer Brian Klugman Lee Sternthal, writers of Tron: Legacy, step up their game by writing and directing the words they scribed. The writing, and now directing, duo trade the inside of a computer built on written code to the inside of several paralleling stories revolving around the written word.

A struggling writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper, Limitless) spent three years writing a book. Shopping it around to the literary agents, Rory is eventually contacted and told that although the book is a beautiful work of creative art, there would be no way for the agent to shop this type of work to any publisher from an unknown writer. Rory, already going to his father (J.K. Simmons, Contraband) for financial help, realizes he must make a choice between his fiction and his life. He takes a job at a literary agent office, now able to make ends meet and able to support and marry Dora (Zoe Saldana, Takers). On their honeymoon to Paris, Dora and Rory happen upon an old worn satchel in a second-hand shop that Dora promptly buys for the man she sees so much potential in. Back at home, Rory now has problems writing anything new. One day, he discovers a complete manuscript in the satchel and reads its. Realizing that he will never be the writer of stories that he had just read, Rory is haunted by what he just experienced and rewrites the entire manuscript word for word just to feel the words flow from the old parchment through his fingers onto his laptop. Dora finds the new work on the computer and pushes Rory to shop the work to his boss. When the agent loves the book, it is published and becomes a great success. Torn up inside by his plagiarism, Rory is uncomfortable with his success. Things get worse when an old man (Jeremy Irons, Margin Call) confronts Rory in Central Park about stealing his work and tells Rory of a Young Man (Ben Barnes, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) after the Second World War and his enlightening experiences in Paris with a local girl named Celia (Nora Arnezeder, Safe House) that became the genesis of the work that Rory copied. The question is... what are the old man's real motivations, and what can Rory do about it?

The Words is a layered piece of fiction with stories within stories, fiction intertwined with reality. At the onset, we catch a glimpse of a man preparing to read excerpts from his book 'The Words'. What we do not expect is the fact that the author of 'The Words' is Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid, What to Expect When You're Expecting), not Rory. Immediately we find that Rory and Dora are characters in Clay's newest book. As the story unfolds, Clay recites the words that brings Rory and Dora to life. But as we get deeper into these characters' lives, we find more layers as a found manuscript typed decades earlier unveils an even more heartbreaking story written by a man who was struggling in his own life. Artistic inspiration comes from heartache, struggle, loss, joy, and pain. In The Words, catharsis comes from pouring one's soul from the heart and mind through the fingertips into fiction that imitates life.

The Words is well crafted, each perspective of the story differing from the others. The writer of 'The Words', Clay Hammond, lives in a world of accolades. A young woman, Daniella (Olivia Wilde, The Change-up), corners him and asks him about the book. When they retire to his modern high-rise apartment, she realizes that the glorious city skyline is tempered by stark modernism and sparse furnishings. In the New York City where Rory and Dora live, they are surrounded by a more earthy bohemian environment, struggling to make ends meet but loving each other. The discovery of the old manuscript brings uncomfortable success and the old man who actually wrote, then lost the story decades earlier. As the old man recites his own tale that led to the writing of his manuscript, the world of his younger version and Celia in post-war Paris, the world becomes softer and grainier, the streets fit for a world recovering from a violent era in history.

The story captivates most of the way through, offering intriguing dialogue and scenes. The weaving of the three tales allows the slower pace to be more interesting and varied. The music is driving and harmonious to each scene, helping to tie the worlds together and providing another unspoken character to the film. The pace is slow and deliberate, but not distracting. Only when you return to the outer shell of the story with Clay and Daniella does the film truly slow down to the point where you wonder whether Clay's writing and reading of 'The Words' is truly necessary.

Each character is portrayed with capable hands by each of the actors and actresses. Some of the best scenes are those between Bradley Cooper's Rory and Jeremy Irons' Old Man. Their dialogue on the bench in front of the pond is riveting. And the period work of Ben Barnes as the Young Man and Nora Arnezeder as Celia could be a beautiful film unto itself. 

The Words could have been a superior award-winning film, up to the same standard as The Reader. Maybe the slower pace, the twisty ending, or just the novice status of the directors keep it from truly transcending into classic status. A fine film in many regards, there is still an intangible that seems to keep The Words a little too reserved.

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WORTH:  DVD or Rental