Bend it Like Beckham

My mum says Bend it Like Beckham is Keira Knightley’s best movie, and I would probably agree. I mean, I really like Keira, but she does do some pretty neutral stuff, like Pride and Prejudice, and Love Actually, where she plays an average newlywed girl. I mean, they’re both great movies, but this is the first movie I’ve seen where she really plays it up. It’s also her first movie!

Bend it Like Beckham is feel-good, lovely, and hilarious. It’s about a young Indian girl, Jess, whose parents won’t let her play soccer (football). But luckily, Jess has some friends who are willing to vouch for and support her, Jules, her soccer team-mate who wants to play professionally in America, and Joe, their coach. Unfortunately there are one or two hiccups that almost prevent Jess and Jules achieving their dreams together, such as their mutual crush on Joe, the fact Jules’s mother thinks Jules and Jess are in love with each-other, and Jess’s father’s revelation that the reason he won’t let her play sport is because he doesn’t want her hopes dashed like his.

And I swear, if there is a funnier character than Jules’s mum somewhere on this Earth, I will die of shock. She is ultra-girly and extremely naive and prejudiced. There’s a part where she yells at Jess and her “lesbian feet”, and then later says she has nothing against gays. She’s fantastic.

Trailer!

3.5/5. Pretty excellent.

The Tooth Fairy

I’ve been a bit slack with this one… I saw The Tooth Fairy maybe two weeks ago.

I don’t know, I was kind of expecting The Tooth Fairy to be incredibly awful, you know, like one of those Disney-type G-rated movies the teachers get you to watch at primary school when it’s the day before the holidays and they’re sick of teaching. The movies everybody cringes at and talks over the top of. And I guess it was a bit like that. It had the same kind of message as those movies – dreams are good, you can do exactly what you want in life, everybody can be somebody, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Not that they’re bad messages, just a little cliche. But The Tooth Fairy was… different.

It was funnier than most of those films. Like, it had that geeky guy from the English The Office who’s also in Pirates of the Caribbean - you know, the wooden eyeball guy – and he was quite hilarious. There was one bit where he and the main character were discussing Facebook, and if they could ‘poke’ one-another, and it was so funny.

And the acting wasn’t fantastic, like in those school-movies, but it did have some great actors, like Julie Andrews. I have no idea how they managed to get her to do this movie.

And all in all, even though it was a little predictable, and a little cliche, The Tooth Fairy was lots and lots of fun to see. 3/5.

Short review today, guys. Sorry!

Bran Nue Dae

I just loved Bran Nue Dae. For those of you non-Aussies, it’s the latest Australian movie, and it’s right up there with Strictly Ballroom. It’s apparently the movie-remake of the stage musical with the same title.

Bran Nue Dae is about a young Aboriginal boy living in the late 60s called Willie whose mother wants him to be a priest and bring hope to the Aboriginal people. Willie has other ideas. He doesn’t want to go to boarding school in the city. He wants to stay at home in Broome and fish and play with his mates and be with his girl, Rosie. So, when he gets the chance, he runs away from school, meets up with his uncle, and hitchhikes back to Broome with a German hippie and his Aussie girlfriend.

The father from Willie’s school (played by Geoffrey Rush) follows them all the way to Broome. When they get there, it turns out that the German hippie is the father’s son, and his mother is Willie’s mother. Willie’s uncle is actually his long-lost father, and the hippie Aussie girlfriend had a child at sixteen.

I really liked the movie as a whole, but I have a couple of problems with that ending.

• What are the chances they would all end up related? I bet that has never happened to anybody before, ever.
• How does this man (German hippie):

Look like this woman (German hippie and Willie’s mother)?:

Weird…

Bran Nue Dae is a musical, but I didn’t really think the music was a prominent thing. There were some great songs, but only one or two of them helped along the story a bit, and none of them stuck in my head.

My favourite character was by far Missy Higgin’s character, Annie, the hippie girlfriend, with Missy being my most favourite music person in the history of music people. Annie was craaazy. She kept saying, “we’re free!” and stuff like that. Not bad for a first acting job, Missy.

3.5/5.

Enjoy the moovie!
Za.

Short Soup

I went to this short film festival a few nights ago with my family called Short Soup. It had three different ‘courses’ – Entree, Main Course, and Dessert. I was tweeting throughout it all so I could remember the movies, but I kind of stopped halfway through and just enjoyed them, so I’ll review just a couple, not even all the ones I tweeted. And also, we didn’t stay for Dessert, partly because Dessert was rated MA 15+ but mainly because we were tired.

ABSURD by Pan Chong

This one was probably the most disappointing out of all of them. It was obviously meant to be, like, a really deep message about peace and terrorism and politics and stuff, but it just was… weird. It was a stop-motion with these babushka dolls that had pictures of politicians and Osama Bin Laden on them. It all seemed weirdly phallic and pornographic, especially when they started throwing up worms and stuff. 1/5.

LOG JAM by Alexey Alexeev

What a gorgeous thing. There are like 5 Log Jams in a series, and we got to see them all, and they’re all so cute. They’re about these 3 animals (wolf, rabbit, bear) who are in a band together, and they all play instruments made out of trees. The bear plays log base, the rabbit is log percussion, and the wolf sings (or howls). There’s also this weird hunter who is totally fail at hunting who tries to find them, and they always get away. It’s an animation and it’s so cute. Actually, here:

Ah-dorable. 4/5.

xxx
Za

Star Trek

OMG. Star Trek.

I was actually really reluctant to watch this movie. We had just bought all these new movies from JB and I really wanted to watch Bend it like Beckham, but everybody else wanted to watch Star Trek, and boy am I glad they made me.

Star Trek is awesome. Rally. It is like, the bestest.

It’s the perfect blend of comedy and romance and action and thriller. I swear, it’s so cool.

I haven’t done this in a while, but anyway:

Fave character: Scotty is the guy who deals with warping to and from the space ship Enterprise. He is hilarious and quite cute, if I do say myself. His last name is Scott and he’s Scottish, hence the nickname Scotty.

Fave scene: When the second in command, Spock, and the awesome girl-power attendant Ahora (I think that’s how you spell it, someone correct me, and that’s her last name, not her first) are smooching it up on the base-pad warpy thing, and they stop and the captain, Kirk, says, “do you know her last name?” and Spock replies, “I have no comment on the matter”. It’s hilarious because nobody does know her first name.

Fave baddie: Well, the only real baddie, Nero.

Fave machine: The syringe that extracts red matter from the red matter holder.

Fave explosion: When Spock watches his home planet, Vulcan, implode. My brother says this isn’t technically an explosion, but whatever. It counts.

Star Trek is really good for not-Trekkies, like me, because it’s a prequel, not a sequel, to Star Trek: Enterprise. It explains most things. But my stepdad’s a Trekkie, and he loves it, so I guess it’s good for everyone. I have to give it 4.5/5.

Are you proud of me? I wrote this whole review on an iPhone! Talk about commitment!

Za.

The Cable Guy + YouTube

Hell-o, my friends. Today is a good and a bad day, for two reasons:

1. I have to tell you all how frightfully bad The Cable Guy is
2. I have a YouTube!

So, let’s start with the bad news, and then move on to the good stuff, hey?

The Cable Guy is a Jim Carrey/Ben Stiller movie. And, in the natural vein of Ben Stiller, every moment is excruciating. And I mean EVERY moment. From “Let’s ride the information highway” to “The password is… nipple.”

It’s about a poor, sad fellow who has broken up with his girlfriend and is in the process of moving out, so he needs to fix his cable TV. He calls the cable company, and a cable guy who desperately wants a friend comes round. He decides that the sad guy is his new pal, and starts messing with and gradually ruining his life.

There is no way to get around this movie. To fully understand the excruciatingness of it, you have to watch it. And, because of the excruciatingness, that is not something I would recommend. Really. DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM IF YOU ARE GIVEN THE CHOICE. It is awful. One of my least favourite movies ever. And I hate to give two bad reviews in a row, but I just can’t avoid it.

I can’t resist putting The Cable Guy to shame. I have to give it 1.5/5. I would love to give it 1, but it does have around 3 laugh moments, so it gets an extra point 5 to bring it up a little.

OK, I’m glad that’s over with, because I do not want to dwell on it. Good news time!

I HAVE A YOUTUBE ACCOUNT!

You can access my channel here, but I’ll also put the link in the blogroll over this side of the page. ———————————>

My username is cooleronaunicorn, which, in case you can’t read it like that, says Cooler On A Unicorn, because everybody is cooler on a unicorn.

I’m going to post random things up there, hopefully at least one every few weeks. It’ll be cool! If you have a YouTube, subscribe me!!!

Signing out and enjoy (or at least try to) the moovie,
Za.

Bright Star

You know, I was really, really looking forward to eventually seeing Bright Star, because the trailers looked good, and Margaret and David gave it a high review, but I thought it was a let-down.

I mean, it’s supposed to be so great and all and the reviews have been really good, and apparently (haven’t seen her other stuff) all Jane Campion’s movies are great, but this one was a bit boring, to be honest.

It’s about this 18-year-old girl who falls in love with the famous poet John Keats. Now, I almost fell in love with the actor who plays Keats, Ben Whishaw, because he is extremely very outrageously cute and a fantastic actor too, but that is beside the point.

Now, to really get an idea of what I thought of Bright Star, I will have to make some lists. Hooray! Who doesn’t love lists? OK, so:

GOOD THINGS:

• Ben Whishaw *sighs*
• Abbie Cornish (she plays Fanny, the girl who fell in love with Keats). Great actress.
• Thomas Sangster (he plays Fanny’s little brother). I’ll see any movie he’s in, because his story in Love Actually, my most favourite movie of all time, is my most favourite.
• The camera work. My God, is it gorgeous. The movie could be paused at any frame and the shot would be extravagantly amazing. Loved it.
• The poetry, which I think is all real, John Keats did right it all. I haven’t read any Keats personally but I think I might have to, now, because I loved the stuff in the movie so much.

BAD THINGS:

• The whole film is DULL. Yes, DULL. It is the most boring movie I have ever seen. And that’s even after I fell asleep the first time I tried Pride and Prejudice. The whole thing is slow, and you can see what’s coming, and it is not unlike every other young-girl-falls-in-love-in-19th-century movie at all. In fact, I would almost go as far to say it is exactly the same, except it has a tragic ending when these sorts of movies normally have happy ones.
• And right there is my next point. It’s very tragic. And who am I to judge, because apparently the whole story concerning Fanny and Keats’ romance is true. But it couldn’t have been as tragic as Jane Campion made it out to be. Like, “Ohhhhhh, how will I ever part from him… how can I ever not be with him, we must see each-other always… I must kill myself because he was sensible and said we cannot marry because he and I are too poor… ohhhh…” Unless of course that’s how first true love is, in which case I hope I never fall in love with a poet.
• Fanny is very naive. I don’t know how she thought he could ever support her, how they could ever survive. When they fell in love, John Keats was unknown and had no money. In early 19th-century Britain they would have died, homeless and poverty-stricken. If she had even a quarter of a brain cell she would have realised that. But of course, she was deeply in love for the first time, she wasn’t thinking, how could she have known, blah blah blah…
• Thomas Sangster has barely five lines throughout the whole movie, even though he’s ALWAYS hanging around Fanny! Outrageous!
• The first bit of the movie is a bit hard to follow. If I hadn’t seen the trailers/Margaret and David’s review I would have been lost. It was too piecey.

OK. There you go. Quite by coincidence, equal amounts of good and bad things, but if you noticed, I wrote a leeeetle more on the bad things than the good. So, by that information, I give it 2/5. Oooo, you say. Well, if you think about it logically, it’s half marks (2.5) for the equal bad and good things, then half a mark off for the extra badness.

Oh dearie me. As bad as High School Musical 3.

The Devil Wears Prada

“That’s all.”

I decided that since I haven’t posted in a LONG time, I might as well post now. A while ago I came back from a very fun sleepover at a friend’s b’day party and we watched 3 movies in total: Mean Girls, Step Up 2, and The Devil Wears Prada. I decided to do The Devil Wears Prada because it was pretty much my favourite out of all 3.

Ok, so let’s start with the plot. The plot was actually really interesting and funny because you’d always get twists and turns whenever you think the main character, Andrea, has finally calmed down. The characters were very strongly portrayed, especially Emily, who was played by Emily Blunt, ironically. I think she did a really good job at getting Emily’s uptight, arrogant yet cool personality through and the British accent made her all the better to watch. As for Marilyn Priestly, Meryl Streep did a really good job as well of getting that bossy, strict and commanding attitude through.
All of this aside, i think the fashion in there was fantastic, and I couldn’t help saying: “ooh, I like that outfit!” at times. If they had a more detailed makeover scence in there, it’s be really interesting.

Overall, 4/5. ^^

Chick Flick

The Young Victoria

Yet another movie I watched on the aeroplane.

The Young Victoria is the true story about Queen Victoria and how she grew up with a royal power-struggle, and how she mostly managed to make her own decisions when she was young.

I liked it. It was sweet, in a way. Queen Vic in the movie was pretty average for a movie-type 19th-century girl. You know, happy, wanted to make a change, believed in herself, sweet, pretty, and all the rest. And then, towards the end, she kind of hardens up. She becomes an adult. It’s really a coming-of-age film, but for the Queen of England.

Queen Vic falls in love and gets married, but then gets cross with her new husband, Prince Albert, because he keeps making the Queen’s decisions. She makes up her mind that she will be her own person. She will not be a Queen led by her consort, but a Queen who stands with her consort. And from the stories I’ve heard about old Vic and Albert’s relationship since I saw the movie, they did stand together, and they did love each other very much. But everything gets cleared up with the public concerning the Prince when he throws himself in front of his wife and takes a bullet in the arm intended for her. He heals up fine, and then sweet young Vicky gets knocked up! It’s very sweet. Her family “congratulates” her, with light cheek-kisses and such. It’s a bit weird watching that scene, because my vision of telling my family I’m pregnant (hey, it could happen) is one where my mum squeals and throws her arms around me. Not at all like the Queen telling her mother that she is “with child”, and said mother kissing her on the forehead. It’s a bit odd.

I like in this movie that it’s very straight-forward. There’s no messing about. They get the story down, and then work in the niggly bits, not the other way around. It’s very simple. I also like how Prince Albert and Queen Victoria’s relationship is very real for true love. Not everything was perfect, but there was nothing that a bit of talking through couldn’t solve.

I give this 4/5. Very nice and simple, and an actually well-made movie. Good to check out, if you haven’t already seen it.