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Reviews
October Baby (2011)
A good story but technical faults hinders this film from being a good movie
To be perfectly fair this movie was not really on my list of movies to see this year. Mainly because this isn't the kind of movie I typically see. When the local youth group I help out with decided to see it I chose to tag along and I decided to analyze the movie to keep myself busy.
For those of you that do not know the film revolves around Hannah coming to grips with her being the product of a failed abortion attempt. The plot of the film is the basic story of our protagonist discovering who she is after her parents for one reason or another covered up the fact that her biological mother had attempted to have her aborted which failed and then after having given birth put her up for adoption amongst other things as well. In summation a basic plot of self-discovery and forgiveness. Overall the film does a fairly good job of handling the subject. This brings me to the first of several gripes I had with the film.
The writing is not bad overall but it at times can feel rather dull. There are times when the dialogue felt forced and personally it felt like the information regarding Hannah being the survivor of an attempted abortion felt forced and came out of nowhere, that's the kind of information you tell someone in the privacy in their own home not in front of the family doctor. In the film we learn that Hannah's father is a medical doctor but it's never stated or I never caught when it was stated what he studied, it to an extent bothered me that if he's a physician why she had to stay overnight at the hospital, after a blackout that occurred early in the film, when even at home she's under watch by a medical professional. I don't know because I'm not too well versed in the policies and practices of medicine. There were two times that our main character and obvious love interest had run-ins with the police, first illegal parking and the second breaking-and-entering and both times told both police officers what she was trying to accomplish. I know this is a movie but in reality I find that hard to believe that the police would really let them off the hook in either situation and I find even harder to believe that an officer would also provide information about prior cases he had dealt with regarding one of the workers of an abortion clinic. Another thing was I could have done with less comic relief in this movie, I know you want to have some laughs to give a break between some serious moments but this movie covers a pretty serious subject that calls for a more serious tone.
Overall the acting in the film was alright. The cast did an alright job handling their roles despite some weaknesses in the script. There was one moment when the lead actress Rachel Hendrix did seem to have some difficulty portraying the frustration her character, Hannah, was undergoing.
My biggest complaint about the film was very much distracting one: the camera work. The directors Andrew and Jon Erwin I'll say that at least one of them knows where to point the camera at times and they really need to figure out that just because one character finishes speaking does not mean they need to cut to the face of another character for when they speak after almost every line. Now that works a little when Hannah spoke to the priest in the cathedral near the end of the movie but that only worked because there was some distance between the two of them, but the camera will cut to each person when they'll be sitting close together having a conversation. Why couldn't we have both characters together in the same frame exchanging dialogue? There were a couple moments when that happened but those were few and far between. With the way the camera moved around and with all the cuts I'd swear I was seeing the camera work for an action movie not a drama, when I see classic dramas I see characters conversing usually in the same frame with one another and not having the camera cut back and forth between them. As an assignment for the directors I recommend that they look at the camera work in some older dramas where what I expect to see is done.
Overall is October Baby a bad movie? No it is not a bad movie. From my perspective and upbringing it has good values in it. It's when the movie starts being analyzed for its writing, the camera work, and such is when the movie starts coming undone at the seams. It's simply not enough to have a good story; to truly get the most out of any film and bring around a greater dramatic impact requires knowing how to properly employ the elements of film. Had the directors knew more on how properly film this genre of film and had the writers made more of an effort to deliver a story that was not as forced as this was October Baby could have been a great film but sadly it suffers from technical details.
Grendel (2007)
What can I say it's an above Average Scifi movie
Overall Grendel is an average movie taken from a great story. The only people that may love this movie are those who haven't read the epic poem "Beowulf".
It keeps the same basic plot elements from the epic poem, other than that the only thing used from the poem are some of the names of the characters. The acting for once in a scifi original movie is actually half way decent, same went for the dialogue of the movie too. Special effects are the same Scifi average cgi, fake and outdated.
Disappointments in the movie (SPOILERS ARE FOUND HERE!): The scenes in which Beowulf fights Grendel were incredibly disappointing to those expecting a close adaptation, especially if you were expecting Beowulf to fight Grendel bare-handed instead of using the ridiculous cross bow that fired exploding rounds. If you watched Grendel expecting to watch Beowulf rip Grendel's arm off with his own strength you will be disappointed because instead Beowulf hacks off Grendel's arm with a sword.
The overall the movie's average and unless cheesy Scifi channel "orginal" movies are your cup of tea than the movie is for you. Most of you should be like me who were some what disappointed should wait for the release of Beowulf in theatres later this year.
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Could the Sharks be any worse?
To me Deep Blue Sea was more a comedy than that of a thriller, I laughed just as hard as when watching a comedy, because it's very simple in this movie the sharks at times looked fake, and when I mean fake I'm saying the robotic sharks from JAWS looked better by a long shot, the sharks even sounded fake and the reason I say this is because that sharks do not and can not produce sounds yet you the sharks snarling and growling, then sharks can not swim backwards, they can't do it because their bodies were not meant to move like that. Seriously this movie was so poorly made it made me laugh at how much the special effects crew or who ever else was responsible for the designs and animations of the sharks knew about shark biology because I'm seventeen and I'm smarter than adults, now that's funny, but if thought that this movie was better than JAWS, well it's time for you to reconsider why you like terrible movies in the first place.