Warcraft: The Beginning (2016) Review

Warcraft: The Beginning (2016)

Directed by Duncan Jones

Based on Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment

Starring: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Daniel Wu, Glenn Close?!?!

Plot Synopsis:
The peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course that will decide the fate of their family, their people, and their home.

My Opinion:

I really didn’t fancy going to see this movie at all but the hubby kind of wanted to see it and, well, I never really pass up the opportunity to go to a movie… So I went! I have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about Warcraft so I figured it would be best to just go in totally blind & see what I thought. You know what? The movie isn’t bad. I was worried as I mentioned the other day that I’ve never seen such a wide gap between public opinion at IMDB (7.9/10) & the metascore (the opinion of critics – a very low 31/100). I’m usually somewhere between the two scores but I’m closer to public opinion on this one. Critics never really rate fantasy highly anyway so screw them – if you like this sort of thing, give it a go! I enjoyed it just fine.

I’ll admit that the thing that interested me the most was watching another film from David Bowie’s son. I thought Moon was great and Source Code was entertaining but not perfect. I’d say the same of Warcraft – it definitely has its issues but I found it entertaining. I think I may have even enjoyed it a little more than Source Code. The characters were pretty strong (for a fantasy movie based on a game, anyway) and it has me interested enough to watch a sequel if one gets made. It doesn’t have me interested enough to explore the story/game at all but I do actually hope there’s a sequel.

The movie starts off with the orcs & I thought I’d find the look of them really distracting but it didn’t take long to get over that. I think the movie looks pretty good – it’s not like the orcs look any weirder/cheesier than creatures in the Lord Of The Rings movies. We got a good story involving that orc dude in the above photo & I like that – I want to give a shit about characters in movies. I think this movie did a pretty good job in developing several key characters (considering that there are quite a few to get to know) & giving us some good back stories plus loads of potential for more to come in any sequels.

Yeah, I said “that orc dude” up there because the one thing I really struggle with when it comes to fantasy are all the damn names. Here are some examples from this movie: Gul’dan, Durotan (chieftain of the Frostwolf clan!), Draka, Orgrim Doomhammer (lol! that last name kicks ass), Sir Anduin Lothar, Khadgar, Medivh, Garona, Daenerys Stormborn, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, blah blah blah. Okay, I threw some extra shit in at the end there. I did feel like I do when watching Game Of Thrones – the hubby must get so sick of my “Who the hell is that dude?!” questions. There are orcs, there are humans, there’s a sexy half orc/human, there are these cool wizard dudes (my favorite! I love cool wizard dudes!), there are kings, queens, chieftains, cool scary beasts & birds that the orcs & humans ride, Glenn Close (!), and an adorable uglycute orc baby. And they all go to war. And use cool blue & green magic. And I was never really sure what was going on and I sure as hell still don’t have a clue what any of their names were. Meh – it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s meant to be a bit of fantasy entertainment & I think it does achieve this quite well. The very low critic ratings are unfair.

The wizard dudes were the best. Or whatever they were called as I don’t think they were called wizards…

Besides the wizard dudes, I also really liked the sexy half human/half orc (Paula Patton), the main good guy orc dude & his family (okay okay – I looked his name up! it’s Durotan played by Toby Kebbell), the human king (Dominic Cooper) & his family, plus the main good guy human (Travis Fimmel). I’ve never seen Fimmel in anything before & he’s fine but I was distracted by him being this weird cross between Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison and Richard Tyson as the bad guy in Kindergarten Cop…

Summary:

Ignore the snobby critics – if you like this sort of genre, I don’t see why you wouldn’t like Warcraft. It has all the elements I expect from a fantasy film plus characters I liked & storylines I enjoyed. What more can you ask for? No, it’s obviously no Lord Of The Rings but it’s a decent movie based on a game. Hell, it’s probably one of the very best “game movies” as most of those are complete & utter shit. The one thing I’ll say is that it could’ve used slightly more comic relief – the movie has a small amount of this (mostly with the young wizard, who was probably my favorite character) but a little more would’ve helped me warm to the characters a bit more. I’m not gonna lie – this is a movie I probably won’t remember a thing about in a couple of years. But, hey, it does the job. And I do want a sequel.

My Rating: 7/10

I did like the hero’s eagle thingy. I want one.

Is There Anything After The Credits? Nope! Not at the end or even halfway through. So go have a pee!

An Education (2009) Blind Spot Review

An Education (2009)

Directed by Lone Scherfig

Screenplay by Nick Hornby & Based on An Education by Lynn Barber

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB)
A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960s suburban London, and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age.

My Opinion:

This is my first Blind Spot review of 2016 (you can see all 12 of my Blind Spot choices HERE). I’m even managing to do this in January! Maybe I can aim to do these on the last Monday of every month. Maybe. I did start with the “easiest” watch, though (I’ll have to work up the nerve for things like Battle Royale). This movie was pretty good. Nothing too memorable but a solid film all around with Carey Mulligan in a star-making role.

There were two main reasons I’ve been meaning to watch this movie: Nick Hornby & Carey Mulligan. I like Nick Hornby’s books (High Fidelity being the best) so I was interested in this as he adapted the screenplay, which earned him an Oscar nomination. I also should really try to watch Brooklyn now since he’s again nominated for the adapted screenplay Oscar for that as well. Anyway, An Education is a well-written film (I suppose credit also goes to the novel’s author, Lynn Barber) with a good story and a strong young central character played convincingly by Carey Mulligan (which also earned her a best actress Oscar nomination). Oh, and the film itself was also nominated for Best Picture that year so it was up for three big awards and I’d say it deserved each of those nominations.

I first noticed Carey Mulligan in the absolutely fantastic Doctor Who episode Blink, in which she carried the whole show. I think this was back when they decided they’d have one episode each season which wouldn’t really feature The Doctor? They should do that again since Blink was a million times better than Doctor Who now – I don’t even watch it anymore. 😦

This photo is from Doctor Who, not An Education. Although it would’ve been cool to have some Weeping Angels in this movie…

Anyway! I’m assuming that role may be what got her noticed as An Education wasn’t long after that? I have to say I’ve been disappointed with some of her roles since (especially in The Great Gatsby) but I don’t know if some of that has been a fault with those scripts. She’s perfect in An Education, though, and utterly believable as a 16/17-year-old girl in 1960’s London. It looks like she was about 23 when she filmed it but I had to look into it as I did wonder if she was actually only a teenager at the time – it did seem like she could be (she doesn’t look like the thirtysomething cast of Grease!).

This isn’t a big flashy film and it’s not one that everyone would necessarily go for but it’s a good “Sunday afternoon” watch. Which sounds kind of insulting but I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’m also doing my best to not call this film “nice” as that word annoys the hell out of my husband. But, well, that’s how I feel about this one! So I’ve looked up “nice” at thesaurus.com:

An Education is “admirable, amiable, approved, attractive, becoming, charming, commendable, considerate, copacetic, cordial, courteous, decorous, delightful, ducky, fair, favorable, fine and dandy, friendly, genial, gentle, good, gracious, helpful, ingratiating, inviting, kind, kindly, lovely, nifty, obliging, okay, peachy, pleasant, pleasurable, polite, prepossessing, seemly, simpatico, superior, swell, unpresumptuous, welcome, well-mannered, winning, winsome”.

HA! I like “ducky”. This movie is ducky!

1960’s London (and also Paris) is a great time period & setting so I really enjoyed that. And Mulligan was adorable in that dress in the movie’s poster! The story, although slightly less relevant nowadays, is one I’d like to have my daughter watch when she’s the same sort of age as Mulligan’s character. Basically, the story is about Mulligan falling for a charming older man and how she’s willing to give up everything for him (mainly, her education – she’s a smart girl who plans to go to Oxford University).

I guess the only complaint I’d have about this film is that I hated Peter Sarsgaard’s smarmy character. I honestly don’t know if that was the point, though, or if that’s just how he happened to come across? I was thinking “how could she fall for this idiot?” but maybe the whole point is that a 16-year-old girl doesn’t know any better? He actually gave me the creeps. It just kind of sucked as I felt he let the film down and I wonder if I’d have liked it a bit more with a different actor. He just seemed so “wrong” while Mulligan felt so “right”. That’s my only real complaint, though. Overall, I enjoyed An Education although it’s not really something that would become a favorite or anything like that. It’s worth watching just once if you think you’d like it. It’s ducky!

My Rating: 7/10

Starter For 10 (2006) Review

Starter For 10 (2006)

Directed by Tom Vaughan

Produced by Tom Hanks, Pippa Harris & Sam Mendes

Written by David Nicholls

Starring:
James McAvoy
Alice Eve
Benedict Cumberbatch
Rebecca Hall
Dominic Cooper
Catherine Tate
James Corden

Running time: 92 minutes

Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia)
Starter for 10 is a 2006 British comedy-drama film directed by Tom Vaughan from a screenplay by David Nicholls, adapted from his own novel Starter for Ten. The film stars James McAvoy as a university student who wins a place on a University Challenge quiz team.

My Opinion:

I decided to watch this the other day after reading a review from the lovely Emma on MovieRob’s blog (HERE). I’d known about it but hadn’t known that it was set in my beloved 1980s until I read her review so that was all I needed to convince me to watch it.

Starter For Ten is a book by David Nicholls. I’ve not read it (but Emma has & says it’s of course better than the movie). I did read One Day by David Nicholls and, although it’s very flawed, I still liked the book & the movie (despite the fact that Anne Hathaway was in it – staring at Jim Sturgess & his big brown eyes helped a little). Plus, as I said, Starter For 10 is set in the EIGHTIES! Woohoo! Well, unfortunately, the movie is a bit bland. And as for the 1980s, this is one of those movies where it doesn’t actually look or feel all that much like that decade even though they throw in as much music as possible from that era. Don’t get me wrong – I love 80’s music. At one point I looked at the hubby & said “are they actually playing my playlist?” as it’s filled with things like New Order, The Smiths, Tears For Fears and LOADS of songs from The Cure. It’s nice hearing a bunch of my favorite songs but, at the same time, it also feels very lazy on the part of the filmmakers. It’s like “See? Our movie is set in the eighties because we’re playing The Cure! Ignore Alice Eve with her big boobs & her very un-eighties clothes & blonde highlights – just listen to Motörhead!”

I will say this movie is only really worth a watch if you’re a fan of any of its stars or if you enjoy similar British films. There are some very big names in Starter For 10 so it was fun seeing them just before most of them made it really big in blockbusters like the X-Men, Star Trek & Iron Man series of films. The storyline was extremely predictable to the point of almost being annoying (I’m talking especially about the romance!) but, when the group finally appear on the game show they’ve been preparing for, the film does get a little more fun. The movie is very “British” and I couldn’t help but compare it to Nick Hornby’s books & movies. I have to say I far prefer Hornby & would recommend his stuff over this (especially the book High Fidelity). Overall, Starter For 10 just didn’t really work for me. It’s not a bad movie but the predictable plot and one-dimensional characters just left me feeling “Meh. So what?”. Watch it if you like the actors but first check out some Nick Hornby. And The Cure’s greatest hits!

My Rating: 5.5/10