The Way We Live Now

I know I've gotten complaints before about my negative reviews. But I figured out why I prefer negative reviews: I like to give spoilers when I review, and out of respect for the movies I really like, I avoid spoilers. For movies that disgust me, I have no scruples spoiling the plot for two reasons; out of spite for the movie, and in confidence that no one would want to see the movie after I share the spoiler. So with that said...

"The Way We Live Now" was horrible. I'm sorry to say it about an Andrew Davies movie, but there it is. It was an interesting movie, I have to give it that, but the ending is such that you just think, "Wow, I just blew 5 hours of time that I could have spent watching the long version of Pride and Prejudice instead."

There are several interwoven plot lines. First, there's the young lady, Henrietta, who lives in England with a mother somewhat like Mrs. Bennet and a jerk brother (played by Matthew MacFadyen! Mr. Darcy! I'll never be able to watch the new Pride and Prejudice again. Ever). She "falls in love at first sight" with her cousin's ward, Paul (who's in charge of the construction of a railway in America). Paul "loves" her too, and her cousin, Mr. Carbury, is also in love with her. So the two men are at odds because they both want to marry her. Paul has a problem though: he's already engaged to an American woman.

Henrietta's brother, Felix, is a gambler and a cad. He has a woman he flirts with in the the country, and a rich woman in the city that he wants to marry, but only for her money. The woman in the country has a good man who wants to marry her, but she won't marry him because she thinks she's in love with Felix. And the woman in the city, Miss Melmotte, is starved for love and rather odd, and falls head over heels for Felix. Her father, Mr. Melmotte, is a greedy, rich Frenchman who is heading the board for Paul's railway. But Mr. Melmotte doesn't actually intend to BUILD a railway, he just wants to get people to buy the stock and then take all their money.

So. Felix proposes to Miss Melmotte, and tries to get her father's consent. He will NOT consent, because Felix gambled away all his money and is basically penniless, and Mr. Melmotte could get much richer men for his daughter. Miss Melmotte tries to convince Felix to run away with her, because she really loves him, but he only wants the money that she won't get unless she marries with her father's blessing and will not run away until she mentions that she has a lot of money of her own. She steals some money for a train ticket and ship passage, which he spends gambling and getting drunk. While he slouches off home to his mother (who dotes on him in a sickening way) she is trying to meet him. But she is "arrested" for stealing, and taken back to her father, who won't allow her to see Felix. Miss Melmotte manages to get a note to Felix's sister, Henrietta, who delivers the note to her brother and then returns with his message to Miss Melmotte: "he is giving her up. He doesn't love her, and never did." Miss Melmotte is heartbroken.

Paul tries to convince his fiancee, Mrs. Hurtle, to release him so he can ask Henrietta to marry him, but she refuses, and claims that he cannot break the engagement because "only the woman can dissolve an engagement." Finally, she tells him that if he spends one more night with her and takes her to the beach before he goes to Mexico (to oversee the railway) then when he comes back he can choose the woman he really wants. While they're at the beach, they run into Mr. Carbury, who is none too pleased to see his competition in company with another woman after all the trouble that Paul took to "steal" Henrietta from him.

Felix's country woman comes to the city to marry him, but he has no intention of marrying her. He just uses her for a little fun, putting her off about getting married, "Oh, of course, sometime..." He finally blurts out that he never intended to marry her, and she storms off. He chases her, and just then, the good man that STILL wants to marry her shows up and lays Felix flat with one punch. (That was good! Best part of the whole movie!)

Paul comes back from his trip and asks Henrietta to marry him, and she accepts. But Felix knows about Mrs. Hurtle and when Henrietta announces her engagement, he tells her the whole story. She talks to Paul and he tells her that he was trying to break everything off with Mrs. Hurtle, and that he thought it was already over between them when Mrs. Hurtle showed up in England claiming otherwise. Then Henrietta visits Mrs. Hurtle, and Mrs. Hurtle leads her to believe that she and Paul are still involved. So she breaks off the engagement.

Paul finally finds out about the railway scam, and leaks to the newspapers. Mr. Melmotte is ruined and commits suicide. Miss Melmotte, however, is still rich from the money in her own name that she refused to share with her father and goes off to live her life, hardened by Felix's betrayal.

Mrs. Hurtle comes to see Henrietta and confesses that she deceived Henrietta, and that Paul had been faithful to her, at least for the past 2 years. Henrietta still refuses to forgive him. He stops by one last time before he leaves for a second railway opportunity, and she hides on the stairwell while he give her mother all sorts of "I'll always love her" and "I wish her the best" messages. And then he leaves. And she runs after him. And we can only hope they live happily ever after.

And the last shot you see is Felix, with a new conquest in sight.

Miss Melmotte should have found someone to really love her, Henrietta should have married Mr. Carbury, Paul should have been devastated and gone crawling back to Mrs. Hurtle, Mr. Melmotte should have been put in jail instead of the escape of suicide, and Felix should have been left miserable in some way. Or at least shaped up and acting like a man. I didn't like it. At all.

However, the filming was spectacular, the acting was very good and if you don't mind a more "real life" kind of ending, then it's a pretty good movie. Personally, it left me feeling disgusted. But maybe that's just me.

~Lizzie

By Popular Demand

Here is a review of a movie that I like! Unfortunately, like all realistic people, I can't help not being *perfectly* pleased, but nevertheless, the enjoyment of this movie outweighed the slight flaws of a little flat acting and a bit too much preachiness.

Time Changer was a really good movie. As a Christian movie, it definitely has a 'B' movie flavor, but they did a really good job making their point interesting. Russell Carlisle is a young professor at a Bible college in 1890, and has written a book that he is hoping his colleagues will endorse. The other men must all unanimously agree to endorse the book, and only one refuses. Dr. Anderson has a slight disagreement with a statement in Dr. Carlisle's book. A seemingly very slight disagreement, which frustrates Dr. Carlisle, as his publisher is anxious to print, and is asking for the endorsement as soon as possible. Dr. Anderson invites Dr. Carlisle to his house to settle their differences.

Upon arriving at Dr. Anderson's house, Dr. Carlisle is sworn to secrecy, and then introduced to a time-traveling machine. Dr. Carlisle doesn't believe that time travel is possible, but Dr. Anderson gives him instructions about the "new world" he will be in, and persuades him to stand in the portal. Dr. Carlisle is transported to 2000, amid some outdated special effects of lightening flashes, and glittery particles left behind floating to the floor.

In 2000, he realizes what Dr. Anderson intended for him to realize: his statement that teaching good morals without Jesus would be beneficial to society, particularly if the people in the society don't want to hear about Jesus, is wrong. Without Jesus' authority, morals mean nothing. He confronts a little girl who stole his hotdog: "Don't you know stealing is wrong?"
"Says who?" Demands the girl as she runs off, having relinquished his hotdog.

He runs into many more shocking things, including an immodestly dressed mannequin, people kissing on TV, God's name being blasphemed in a movie and people in a church being uninterested in the service and more interested in all the activities (among which include going to the blasphemous movie).

After meeting a Christian librarian who helps him with some "research", and a "good" laundry owner named Eddie, Dr. Carlisle prepares to go back to 1890. He visits the church and gives an inspiring message about the culture. Then he stops by Eddie's laundry and gives him a Bible (written in his own language, Spanish) and shares the gospel. On his way back to the alley where the time machine will beam him up, he notices that he's being followed by two cops in the church who have been suspicious of him. They demand an explanation just as the time for his departure is arriving. He has time to tell them that Jesus is coming back and that he was a messenger before the time machine collects him. "Dude, I think we just missed the rapture" one cop mutters as he disappears.

Back at home Dr. Carlisle revises his book and finds a little boy he reprimanded in the beginning of the movie. The young boy tried to steal some marbles, and Dr. Carlisle told him it was wrong; now he tells young Roger about Jesus (and gifts him with a bag of his own marbles).

And thus the happily-ever-after-the-end.

Please be aware that I expect uproarious praise for finally posting a positive review, and certainly do NOT want to hear any criticism for the first movie I selected. I realize that those of you that had issues with my opinion on Eagle Eye will probably disagree with the principles portrayed by this movie, however, the point was that it was a positive review. And I really did like the movie. So there.

~Lizzie

Never watch trilogies..

Pirates of the Caribbean, LOTR, X-Men .... all started out okay/good and ended terrible. It's like the producers go, "Ah, I know, let's sucker some people in with 2 great movies and then bum them out with the 3rd. If we all do it, they'll never suspect that we're intentionally disappointing them, they'll just think it was slump. And then we do it all over again with another trilogy. And what really great is that when the first movie comes out, they won't know it's a trilogy, so even if they figure it out, we can still grab them with the first movie and have them so hooked on the story-line that they'll watch the others anyway, even though they know that it'll be horrible."

The director of the Bourne trilogy messed it up though. He did an entirely good series and woke up the public, and now we can recognize horrible endings. I'm not sure whether or not to be grateful. Anyway, all that to say, *spoiler*

Never watch the X-Men series. At the end of the trilogy, the hero kills the heroine to protect humanity when all he had to do was give her a shot. And it would have been just as easy to give her the shot as kill her. It royally stunk.

I can't believe the ratio of movies I like to movies I despise.

~Lizzie

WALL-E

This will probably do a number on my nice little facade of being a mature 17-year-old, but I have to confess.

We went to see WALL-E yesterday, and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I didn't think I would, because the previews were so sad (please don't ask me how an animated robot can look cute and sad enough to evoke emotion) but it was really good! Even if it did ALMOST make me cry..... that's the really pathetic part. A Disney Pixar film for little kids almost made me cry.... *shakes head* But I guess that's how they make their money. All the mature people taking the little kiddies to see the movie like the movie too.

*Spoiler warning*
The problem? Earth was completely covered in trash, and all the humans are on a "cruise" in outer space, waiting for robots to clean it all up before they return. The hero? A lone robot - WALL-E - who is still cleaning up earth, with only the companionship of a cock roach (a CUTE cock roach). All the other robots have apparently stopped working, as you see when WALL-E visits a huge pile of other WALL-Es to borrow a pair of "shoes." WALL-E compacts trash into cubes, and builds huge towers out of them. At the end of a day of work, he goes home and watches Hello Dolly, obviously longing for the companionship he sees in the movie.

Then one day, a gorgeous white robot arrives in a huge space ship. He's immediately smitten.... and almost gets killed when she blasts him upon sight. She's looking for something.... he tries a various line of gifts to get her attention and approval, then finally breaks through and learns her name: EVE. Then a sand storm comes up and he takes her to his home, where he shows her all the neat things he's collected from the trash, the last of which really excites her. A plant. She puts it inside her internal container, and shuts down with a green light flashing on her panel.

WALL-E desperately tries to revive her to no avail. The ship that brought her arrives to take her back, and WALL-E rides along..... to the cruise spaceship, containing the world population, all as fat as beached whales and lying on floating chairs with TV screens in front of their faces. They've been in space 700 years, and they aren't interested in returning to earth. But the plant that WALL-E gave EVE is proof that earth is ready for rehabitation. The captain's interest is revived by the plant, and he researches everything about earth that they've forgotten over the 700 years and decides to go back.

But the robots on the ship are determined not to go back. They have their orders.... from the original cruise director: Never return. They try to destroy the plant and incriminate EVE and WALL-E. Just to skip all the boring stuff, EVE and WALL-E get the plant and take it to be evaluated by the ship. If it is a plant from earth, the ship will set a course back to earth. Just before they insert the plant, the co-pilot (a robot) intentionally crushes WALL-E into the stage with the receptacle that is supposed to identify the plant. The captain disables the robot (and learns to walk!), but WALL-E is already crushed.

The plant is identified, and the ship returns to earth, where EVE tries to repair WALL-E with spare parts. He works again, but doesn't recognize her. She tries everything and is just about to give up when he snaps out of it and remembers her. And they lived happily ever after; The End.

It really was a cute movie. My new Pixar favorite! I can't wait to see it again. :P

~Lizzie

Prince Caspian

We saw the midnight showing of Prince Caspian (and the theater was almost empty! I expected more fans would be there for the first showing.) and I have now stewed over it long enough that I can write a lengthy opinion on it. Be warned that there are spoilers, and that my opinion is most decidedly negative, so if you haven't seen it yet and hope to enjoy seeing it, please don't read any further.

The very first moments in the movie began destroying Peter and Susan's characters. Susan is looking at a magazine when a young man introduces himself and says that he's seen her around the school that she attends. He asks her name and she lies, obviously in disgust of him. Lucy runs up and calls Susan just after she tells him that her name is Phyllis. Lucy came to get Susan because Peter is in a fist fight. Cops break up the fight, and Susan asks Peter what it was about "THIS time." And Peter replies that the person bumped into him and then demanded an apology.

Peter and Caspian have a very rocky relationship. Both seem to not like the other, and Peter is very arrogant and demands power. He seems proud of his status as "High King" and unlike in the book, seems to want to reclaim his throne, rather than help Caspian claim HIS throne.

Susan fights all during the movie in a very feminist manner, including dive-bombing the Telmarine castle on gryphons. I've never liked Susan very much, even in the books, and the way she was portrayed in both of the Narnia movies so far just disgusts me. I have a lack of respect for Anna Popplewell's acting and everything in the movie annoyed me. Especially how the romance between her and Caspian was played up. She kisses him at the end and I was nearly gagging. Don't get me wrong, occaisionally I enjoy romance, but this... ugh. Anyway. Moving on.....

Actually, not moving on. Now I have to rant about how the romance ruins Caspian before I move on to what else I hated about Caspian. I'm so mad that they made Caspian appear to be in love with Susan. Now I won't be happy in Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Caspian marries Ramandu's daughter, because it will seem like he's being unfaithful to Susan, even if she does drive me crazy. Augh, I can't believe how terrible this all is. I am SO glad that Andrew Adamson won't be doing any more Narnia movies!

So anyway, the rest of what I hated about Caspian. Oh, wait, changed my mind. What I liked will be a shorter list, and therefore easier to write. I actually kinda liked Ben Barnes' acting. Amazingly enough. But I didn't like him as Caspian. I like how he looked. He looks like I wanted Caspian to look. I liked his accent. And I liked when he meets Aslan for the first time, and Peter, Susan, Edmund and he are kneeling and Aslan says, "Rise, kings and queens of Narnia" and Caspian remains kneeling. That was cool. And that's all I liked about Caspian.

I absolutely loved Edmund. That's the good thing about this movie: as much as it made me hate Peter and Susan, it doesn't really matter because they aren't in Voyage anyway. Edmund was awesome. I loved that he helped Peter in his fight, even if the fight was stupid, and I loved when he stabbed the ice that the White Witch was in, and I loved his line after he destroyed the Witch to Peter "I know, you had it sorted" (Peter was gazing at the witch in spellbound stupidity). Skandar Keynes did a great job with his part. And I was ecstatic at the end when they included my VERY favorite line from all the books "Bother, I left my new torch in Narnia!"

Lucy still kinda irritates me. I don't like Georgie Henley. But I liked Lucy much better in this movie, and I anticipate liking her even better in Voyage. She was really cute when the Telmarine army was marching over the bridge of Beruna, and she stood at the other side with her tiny little dagger held up like a sword.

I'm wildly excited about Reepicheep!!!! He was sooooooo perfect!! I've never seen a picture in the books or anything that perfectly captured how I imagined him, but they really did it. He was exactly right. Absolutely perfect. (Infinitely better than the horribly huge costume in the BBC version... *choke*) Everything about him was PERFECT. And they included the bit about his tail, which I had been so scared they would leave out.

I hated that they had a battle at the Telmarine castle (which was a huge failure and made Peter look like an idiot) before having the battle after the duel. I liked how they did the duel. That was pretty cool. The battle afterwards was ridiculous though. There were hardly any Narnians and tons of Telmarine troops and yet somehow the Narnians weren't wiped out.

But as long as I just try to forget about everything that I hated, it's so nice to finally have the perfect image of Reep, and I really liked Edmund. So hopefully, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which is my favorite book) will be good. I trust Michael Apted to do a good job. (You can't imagine my disgust when I found out that the director of 'Shrek' was going to do Narnia. I hate Shrek.) I think it's set up perfectly for Michael Apted to refresh the series.

~Lizzie

King Kong *spoiler warning*

Greatly against my wishes, my family decided to watch King Kong as our family movie today. I didn't even want to begin watching it because I know Kong dies at the end, but Sarah talked me into it, promising that I could always watch all of it except for the end and then create my own ending like I always do for movies that I don't like. So I consented, and tried to eat my pizza as the movie got worse and worse.

First creepy natives tried to sacrifice the girl (that NEVER happens in Jane Austen!) to Kong and then she escapes, and discovers a huge lizard thing that tries to eat her... but instead the lizard thing is eaten by a T-Rex. And then the T-Rex goes after the girl, and 2 more Rexes magically appear and then are fought by Kong... who just finished killing and injuring the rescuers. The surviving rescuers are in the bottom of a ravine, being attacked by huge spiders. Then ginormous cock-roaches appear. When slimy wormy things started attacking them and the cock-roaches plastered themselves all over guy that the girl is in love with, I decided that I'd seen enough. Read: I ran out of the room.

I did go back long enough to discover that the movie has a whole hour left! *shudders* Ooooh, I can feel the cock-roaches crawling on me. Augh!! There's nothing I hate worse than not finishing a movie. Even now with how creeped out I am, I feel the draw.... I'm being pulled downstairs... Ahhh!!! Help! I. Will. Resist. *deep breaths*

*cringe* I'm scarred...... *shudder*

~Lizzie

The Most Horrible Book Ever.

I finished the first book in the series that Sarah tricked me into reading (The Binding of the Blade). I hated it. With a passion. It was THE most devastatingly awful book I've ever read. I actually hate it more than I hate Pirates 2 & 3, and that's really saying something.


HUGE SPOILER WARNING: Only read if you don't ever want to read the books. (Highlight to read.)


The main character actually dies at the end of the book. He's murdered by one of his "friends" because he married the girl that his friend wanted. It was the most retarded tear-jerker book I've ever read.

END SPOILER.

I refuse to read the rest of the series. And now I'm going to mentally edit the story so that it goes the way I wanted it to. And then I'm going to forget about it.


Disgusted,

~Lizzie