My Own Little World

I'm going to put two of my cards out on the table before starting this review. The first: Into the Woods  is one of my favorite shows from a musical standpoint. The second: I have never seen it performed in its entirety on stage. Now that those two things are out there, let's talk about this film. I knew from the second that Disney picked up this project that it had enormous potential. They, more so than any other studio, have done musical fairy tales right almost every time they make one. When the cast list started rolling out, I became even more excited for Into the Woods . Bringing in heavyweight talents like Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt instantly brought some credibility, while the musical talents of Anna Kendrick and others would bolster the film in that perspective. Then, my school's drama department announced that this would be our spring musical, I knew I had to go see it. From the very first line, I knew that the music would be done justice. The score was wri...

Sometimes, movies can surprise you. Other times, they don't. Strangely, the latest creation of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, The Interview , does both. On one hand, it definitely had a B-movie feel and was supposed to be campy, overdone, and exaggerated all around. On the other hand, I was surprised at how deftly it delivered blows through its satire. I'll confess that I'm generally not a fan of comedies these days. Most films placed in the genre just seem to be unfunny and stale (I'm looking at you, Adam Sandler). However, The Interview was one of the first films in a long time that I can say was genuinely funny. Granted, there are your lion's share of crude jokes that somewhat repeat throughout the film, but the delivery and timing of James Franco and Seth Rogen is impeccable. From the opening scene, every single viewer can tell that this is going to be a ridiculous movie, and that's exactly what it is. It's exaggerated, improbable, outlandish,...

In all my years of watching movies, I have never waited so long and with such great anticipation for a conclusion to such a mediocre series as I have for The Battle of the Five Armies . To be honest, I didn't love the first two films of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy all that much. They were overly long and quite poorly paced, making the short length of its source material obvious. However, they were good entertainment and definitely deserving of being seen in a theater, and because I loved Tolkien's novel so much I decided to give this final installment a chance. Similar to both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug , The Battle of the Five Armies is well-written and almost replicates Tolkien's novel on screen. However, Peter Jackson has added a lot of material and back story to the original to fill in the two hour running time; but this does not distract from the story as much as the previous films. This is mostly because this inst...