(some) recent-ish movies
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: Despite Gregory Maguire's books sounding like they're right up my alley, I haven't been able to get into them. (Specifically, I've tried reading Mirror, Mirror twice and the cook this is based on once.) Nothing wrong with them in what I read, I just couldn't get into them. Moving on, this is a retelling of Cinderella throughthe POV of one of her stepsisters. I was wary going in as the setup sounded like it would be a case of "give generally negatively portrayed female character her voice by villifying traditional heroine," but that wasn't the case at all, and the relationship between the stepsisters was generally positive. I was hoping that it'd be like Ever After in expanding Clara's (Cinderella's) relationship with the prince beyond just meeting at the ball, but aside from that, I liked this a lot. Especially Stockard Channing as the stepmother.
Cracks: Strange and disturbing Very Serious Drama set in a 1930s girls boarding school in England in which a swim team is essentially in love with their enigmatic and charismatic teacher, Miss G (Eva Green), who is scarily intense. Things get shaken up by a new student who isn't impressed by Miss G and sees many hypocracies and deceits in her dealings with her students and portrayal of her life. And then things get a bit odd and eeryone drinks the Dark And Intense juice. I don't know that I actually liked it (actually, I don't think I did), but it was certainly compelling.
From Time to Time: A movie that shocked me largely by being a Julian Fellowes product and having less than a dozen main characters. Set towards the end of WWII this is about a young boy who goes to stay with a relative in the country and encounters the family ghosts, frequently travelling back to the early 1800s as a ghost himself, as he learns how a wing of the house burned down and what happened to the family jewels. It reminds me of a lot of "kids and ghosts" books I read in junior high (actually, I suspect I read one or mor of the Lucy Boston books this is based on) and was pretty fun. (Even if Dominic West was having a Very Bad Hair Movie. At this point, I'm just going to assume that if I watch a movie that appears to involve kids and ghosts, he'll be in it, because this is the third time he's shown up in one for me this year.)
Honey 2: I've never seen Honey so I can't compare the two movies, but this was entertaining, if a fairly standard example of the "troubled teen finds purpose through "cool" activity and proves to be the most superawesome at it ever" genre and with a few too many stereotypes. I suspect a lot of its entertainment value rests in the viewers's interest in seeing Katerina Graham be sassy and perform a variety of dances for an hour and a half. (This is very prtinent to my interests due to my inability to continue watching TVD thanks to it's ever increasing love of expecting me to like men and find them hot/interesting by having them abuse women.) Also, there's a lot of combat dancing. The opening scene looks like Maria (Graham) and another girl in juvie with her are about to have a knock-down-drag-out fight with riot potential, and then...COMBAT BREAKDANCING.
Mamma Mia!: I don't know why I never watched this movie before, but I hadn't. (And I didn't know Christine Baranski was in it until I was watching. I...may have watched it sooner had I known) It's...kind of ridiculously adorable, despite all sorts of room to go faily with the plot (which it doesn't.) I think Sophie looked and acted more like a 16-year-old than a 20-year-old (not immature, just...younger than she was supposed to be) and my brain never adjusted to Dominic Cooper out of period dress, but this was exceptionally fun, though I kept going "Her potential fathers are Remington Steel, Mr. Darcy, and...another dude" throughout. (BTW, Pierce Brosnan, I love you and all, but please don't ever try to sing again. Ever. Please.) It's a ball of musical fluff, and that's just fine.
War of the Arrows:Recent Korean movie centered aroundthe second Manchu invasion during the Joseon era. The main characters, Nam-Yi and Ja-In, are the children of a traitor executed by King In Jo and raised by a friend of their father's. Ja-In's wedding is attacked and she and her new husband are taken captive along with a number of other. Nam-Yi is off hunting in the mountains, because there has to be a reason he isn't killed or captured too, and he basically hunts down every Qing raiding party he can find looking for her. I was chiefly interested in this because of the siblings aspect but put off because the descriptions made it sound like Ja-In would be the only major female character (true) and a Damsel In Distress (true, but pretty well subverted). There's a lot of violence and some offscreen rape (several captive women are dragged off to tents and the intent is clear though entirely offscreen) though the latter isn't dwelled on or eleborated on nearly as much as I neared it would be going in. Since both Ja-In and her huband were taken, you know there's going to be at least one tragedy mixed in with the three becaise Korea might let Ja-In and Nam-Yi be reunited or Ja-In and her husband escape, but they'd never let both happen and last. (My first 2 sageuks were "History happens, EVERYONE DIES," so really, I'm just happy when Korean period dramas let anyone I care about live.) Pretty good movie though, especially if you like archery in your action. It also made me want to try Princess Man again (Moon Chae Won plays Ja-In). I watched and enjoyed the first episode when it came out but never really worked up the interest in more.
Wind Chill: A fun (if somewhat slow in the first half) horror movie about a pair of college students who get stranded on a sideroad while driving to Delaware over the Christmas Holidays. instead of a chainsaw killer chasing them through the woods there's a creepy cop and people who keep appearing and disappearing in the snow and not noticing the people yelling at them from a few feet away. It's kinda of a standard haunted house with long kept secrets plot, but set on a deserted road with lots and lots of ssssnnnnnnooooooowwwwwwwww. No one, incidentally, has a name in this movie. While I was watching I just assumed that I'd missed the named but then the end credits rolled and the leads were "Girl" and "Guy" and all the other characters were named by who they were in terms of plot role. "Girl" is played by Emily Blunt, of whom I am quite fond despite always being a bit thrown when she has an American accent (and i've actually seen her in more things with an American accent than without) and "Guy" is played by the guy who played Tyler in Revenge. He manages to be creepy in a whole different way, though I think we were meant to find him endearing and not worry about the creepy due to harmless intentions.