Tag Archives: Chris Hemsworth

Snow White & The Huntsman – Movie Review

It’s official. We can call 2012 the year of Snow White. Let’s see, there’s a whole TV show – Once Upon a Time – centered on her story. There has already been a movie, Mirror Mirror, which tackled the infamous fairytale with a comic approach and now Hollywood has decided to bring the world yet another adaptation which plays with the Brothers Grimm story: Snow White & The Huntsman.

Following a war that he wins, the father of Snow White (Kristen Stewart) finds a hostage with his enemies and he’s entranced by her beauty (as an aside, who wouldn’t be?). The woman’s name is Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and he immediately marries her. However, on their wedding night, Ravenna kills the king and takes over his kingdom, taking the still-young Snow White as a prisoner. Years pass by and Snow White comes of age, threatening the queen not to remain the fairest of them all. As she manages to escape her prison, Snow White joins forces with the huntsman the queen hires to kill her (Chris Hemsworth) and eight (yes, not seven. Eight.) dwarves to try and dethrone the queen.

Snow White & The Huntsman starts off promisingly but quickly fizzles away as Theron gets less screen time. In fact, the only person cast correctly in the movie is Charlize Theron who manages to do the impossible: pull you to her side. You actually root for the bad person in this movie and do so whole-heartedly.

Kristen Stewart, on the other hand, is entirely miscast. I have seen Stewart in other roles (no, not Twilight) and despite what people want you to think, she actually has potential. But she keeps choosing the wrong roles. Snow White is no different. To begin with, when it comes to being the “fairest of them all” how could she exactly compete with Charlize Theron? But let’s leave that argument aside for now. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I may have a thing for blondes. Her performance is not as riveting as Theron. She dwarfs in comparison when their scenes come after each other. Their characters meet only twice, one of which is an entire action scene. Theron still outshines her there.

She’s not feisty enough and when she feigns strength, it comes off as forced and not natural. Perhaps she could pass as Snow White in another version of the story. But in this Joan of Arc-esque take on the fairytale, Stewart fails miserably. She’s sulky and passive most of the time, while she needs to be commanding and strong. The attitude just isn’t there.

Chris Hemsworth is simply there most of the time. He doesn’t add anything substantial to the movie as he does in, say, The Avengers. He just hovers around, providing input when needed. Apart from that, the role of the huntsman in the story of Snow White is nowhere near how this movie makes it out to be. But I guess twists to the fairytale are needed in the 21st century.

When it comes to Snow White & The Huntsman, the movie’s main problem is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It aims at being an epic version of the story of Snow White but still manages to take Snow to a land of fairies and legendary elks. It aims to keep the feel of the fairytale alive but fails at that, totally losing the charm of the story the people fell in love with many years ago. It relies heavily on its visual effects, which were very well done – the eight dwarves are all regular-sized actors, as an example, but loses itself in the fact that it has diluted the story up to a point where those visual effects serve as the wheel moving the movie forward.  At the end of the day, Snow White & The Huntsman is visually pleasing, enough so to keep you entertained for two hours, but is essentially hollow. Blame it on the Hollywood rehash of the story.

Walt Disney’s 1937 take on the story still stands unscathed.

6/10

The Avengers – Movie Review

Before you start reading this, you need to know that I am a superhero-movies enthusiast. Those types of movies always manage to thoroughly entertain me, whether they get critical acclaim or not and whether their die-hard fans think they’re good or not. Case in point? I enjoyed watching Captain America, Thor & Transformers (please read on) among others.

The Avengers, a movie that has been hyped for years, has been well received by critics. But I would be the first to tell you that critics loving a movie isn’t always a recipe for a good movie. Is this the case here? Definitely not. Once again, my inner superhero fanboy was awed at what was happening on screen in a movie that brought together not one but four superheros from four different movie franchises that he likes.

Bringing in characters from the movies: The Incredible Hulk, Captain American, Thor and Iron Man, The Avengers manages to create a story weaved out of the fabric of all those movies. The Tesseract, which first appeared in Captain America, is a source of unlimited energy. It is also sought after by an alien species using Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the exiled brother of Thor, as a key element in its plans of dominating and destroying Earth. In order to deter those plans, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) decides to bring together a team of superheroes: The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). Helping Fury in his plans is agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johanson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner).

Despite some sequences in the dialogue being trite and somewhat cliché, as is expected from movies of the sort, The Avengers doesn’t leave much room for you to dwell on such shortcomings. There’s always something taking place on screen: when it’s not a special effects-loaded scene that has been fine tuned to perfection, it’s a quirky, fun, or hilarious interaction between the characters of the movie.

The director Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, has managed to give a movie where he balanced comedy with the sci-fi aspect impeccably. The leeway he gives the characters to breathe and let their wings stretch is very welcome. Whedon knows how to set up the character interactions. He knows which characters to place together, he knows who’s the gunpowder to the other’s lead. He knows how to work the chemistry of the superhero characters. The overall effect gives the movie an organic feel that is at odds with the underlying theme it’s working for, giving a product that is quite interesting in its contrast.

As mentioned before, the special effects in The Avengers are top notch. The camera work is really well done. The performances by all the actors involved are engaging, especially Robert Downey Jr. who definitely takes the cake when it comes to being the most engaging and interesting of the superheros. Chris Evans, as Captain America, is the refined old-fashioned man full of confusion and disorientation. Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo give way to some needed comic relief. Scarlett Johanson is stiff at times but she’s beautiful enough to get away with it. Jeremy Renner is terribly underused.

However, despite its flaws, The Avengers left me thinking at some points how much better the Transformers movies would have been had they been taken this route. There’s something about this movie that is simply charming and captivating. As the movie culminates in an epic battle scene in New York – speaking of that, how many times has New York been destroyed and rebuilt by Hollywood? You’d think it’s the new Beirut – and some hilarious comment by Robert Downey Jr. about shawarma, you don’t want The Avengers‘ last minutes to tick away. The movie entertains you for the entirety of its duration. It will make you laugh and it will make you catch your breath. There are no dull moments. I don’t know about you but I just can’t wait for round two.

9/10

Thor – Movie Review

I think I may be a sucker for Marvel-related movies but I have failed not to like any Marvel superhero movie and Thor is no exception, albeit some of those movies are better than others… Thor, however, ranks as one of the best superhero movies I have seen.

Not as famous in pop culture as Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, etc… Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is the son of Odin (Anthony Hopkins), a man who waged a war against the Frost Giants of Jotenheim and their king Laufey and stole their source of power. Thor, however, is not as reasonable as his father and is more reckless-material than king-material. As he prepares to ascend to become king of Asgard, the festivities are interrupted by an apparent breach in their fortress’ security by the Frost Giants. Thor becomes overly furious and leads an act of vengence against them, despite his father telling him not to do so. As a result, he is banished to Earth, without his power, in the form of the almighty hammer Mjolnir. But there is a traitor in the house of Odin, one that will do everything to prevent Thor from coming back.

On Earth, Thor meets Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a physicist, her assistant Darcy (Kat Dennings) and mentor Erik (Stellan Skarsgård). And when Mjolnir is uncovered in the desert and seized by government officials, Thor needs to do everything to recover it and get back home – but that will not be as easy as it seems.

Thor is a very, very entertaining movie. It has everything you could expect from a superhero movie: fight scenes (although I would have liked to see more of those), a story (a very interesting one at that), comedy (there will be some scenes where you fall down off your seat laughing) and ultimately some romance, which is always necessary in superhero movies.

The performances by the actors and actresses of the movie are spot-on. They do not underperform but on the other hand, they do not really excel and give powerhouse performances, mostly because this is not the movie vehicle to do so. But there is no miscast here. Chris Hemsworth, the actor portraying Thor, has probably spent more time at the gym than the time he spent pursuing a college degree and it obviously shows. Natalie Portman is, well, Natalie Portman and she never does anything less than credible with her movies. And how perfect can Anthony Hopkins be in the role of a the “father of all things”?

The special effects are great as well but the 3D is sort of useless here. The directing is also very well executed and the music is not bad. There are some corny moments and some parts of the movie are overly predictable as well but that does not deter you from enjoying it.

Overall, Thor is awesome! It is a movie that will immerse you. It focuses on character development more so that blinding action sequences and that is definitely a good thing because the characters in Thor are interesting to say the least but I would have preferred if the action scenes already present in the movie were extended a bit. Sure, Thor has its flaws but if you felt like going to a movie simply to have fun and get out of it with a need to google the existence of a sequel, this is it.