Kelsey Reviews: “Secretary” (2002)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

Mr. E. Edward Grey (As played by James Spader) is a lawyer in a small town looking for a secretary, as his others have quit recently. Thankfully for him, Lee Holloway (As played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) has just been released from a hospital for her self-harm issues and is looking for a job. She comes across him and they experience many themes, beginning at Secretive and leading into the huge theme in Mr. Grey’s life, Sadomasochistic. This did not surprise me in the least bit judging by how he acted from the beginning. An evidently dominant character, 100% type-A personality. This forms the basis of the title itself, Secretary.

Wait. Don’t we know a character like this already? Mr. Grey was his name, too? Some of you may know and some may not, but all I could think of when seeing this movie was the fictional billionaire character of Mr. Christian Trevelyan Grey. Although this movie was made in the year 2002, Fifty Shades of Grey by Miss E.L. James was made 9 years afterward. What I question myself is this: Was Christian Grey’s character’s persona inspired by E. Edward Grey’s? That’s quite a coincidence if you ask me. Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism. High-class job (although Christian is clearly richer than E. Edward Grey. Either way, I found this instantly when watching the film. I don’t think a Fifty fan could miss that connection.

Despite the odd (and possibly coincidental) similarities, Steven Shainberg did a good job directing this film for what it is. This was the first of his movies I’ve watched, personally, so it was a taste of something new with him. There was a stillness of the film that lingered throughout most of it, and there could have been a bit more action for an 100-minute movie. The movie took place in a few different areas, but mostly in Mr. Grey’s office building and Lee at home. There could have been a change in scenery a little more often than there was.

Strange enough as it is, Lee went straight form a hospital to working for this man. She never once quit or questioned him. Is it really that realistic that someone would naturally be that submissive? It happens often, but not as often as to make a film about it. To me, it seems a bit far-fetched, but still has an good yet intense story line to it. I question Lee and how she is personally with this issue. How can a girl give up cutting herself when…
1. she has since 7th grade, steadily
2. she cant control herself but can easily go under the order of someone else to abruptly stop? Again, far-fetched.

As for the actors, James Spader did a FANTASTIC job portraying Erin Cressida Wilson (writer of the screenplay)’s character of Mr. E. Edward Grey. He was intense, sincere, and doesn’t joke around. Just as a dominant should be. Exactly his character, there. Maggie Gyllenhaal deserved her awards and nominations for this independent film. For being the main actress, this is the best film I’ve seen her in, but it’s up there with her performance in The Dark Knight.

I would recommend this movie to those who enjoy a short, quirky movie. It has its funny moments and is very unpredictable. IMDb gave this movie a 7.1/10.0, but it deserves more than that. It’s not a 10.0/10.0 of course, but it’s one of the better independent movies I’ve seen and deserves more praise than it’s gotten.

Kelsey Reviews: “Blue is the Warmest Colour” (2013)

My Rating: 3.0/5.0

It was the blue hair of a cute girl that first caught troubled high schooler Adéle’s eye. But for me, the first thing that caught my eye in this movie was the unorganized (but interesting) plot. Adèle only wants love, and she’s curious as to what it’s like with a woman. Being kissed once by a peer just for fun, she realizes that’s the love she wants. Emma, a lesbian in her town, piques her interest and as Adèle gets to know her, she knows this is something she wants. This story “La vie d’Adèle”  (Also known as “Blue is the Warmest Colour”) follows the life of their love; how it begins and what happens throughout the time they have together.

For me, the movie had a lot of plot holes and was not as outstanding as the critics said it was; not worth all the awards. This film won 45 awards and was nominated 35 times, in total during the years of 2013 and 2014. It wasn’t the best foreign movie I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t the worst. It had a cute plot line, but just too many unanswered questions. I personally am 100% pro-LGBT. If you are against the lesbian/gay community, I would suggest to stop reading here, this movie is not for you.

Most of my problems with the film were because of its major plot holes. In the movie, when Emma and Adèle get together, we never find out what happened to Emma’s girlfriend. She had a girlfriend at the time but we never know what went on with her and where she went. She just kind of…faded away from the story leaving us with questions about it. There are a few more instances like this within the movie, but was it purposely? Was it meant to show that the characters that got lost weren’t important enough to draw a conclusion to them? It’s like ending a story in mid-sentence; and leaves you wanting to know more about –

The movie is rated NC-17 due to the immense amount of nudity/sex scenes. These seem like they’re thrown in at random and are not needed when they are put into the movie. It is fine for one or two or even if it is implied, but this kind of ruined the romance factor/feel of the movie. There is no dialogue within these 8-10 minute, therefore I’m sure the writers could have added more to the story instead of these. Or even taking them out as a whole, seeing as how the movie itself is almost exactly three hours. The movie has a few long parts, more than should be in a movie, and this may be because there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. Many awkward silences were within the film, and they could’ve saved a ton time had they not had so many of them. Some are fine, of course, but this isn’t a very suspenseful movie, there could have been a lot less.

Now, the movie is not all mistakes and cliffhangers. Though I personally rated the movie 3.0/5.0, there are still some up-sides to the film. The plot is one of the cutest, with a realistic ending and a bit of a twist that wasn’t expected by me. I love the idea of two people falling in love by chance, and the movie’s more of a chick-flick than anything, but if you like foreign films, the French in the film is beautiful. I would recommend it to people to watch it and hear opinions on it. Was it as great as all the critics thought? I think it’s a bit overrated, but a great storyline.

Kelsey Reviews: “The LEGO Movie” (2014)

My Rating: 4.0/5.0

Nearly every popular kid’s product out there at some point comes out with a movie, or TV show. “My Little Pony” very recently became popular movies and TV shows both, loved by all ages. The “Barbie” industry has about 25 movies out since they started booming in 2001 with “Barbie and the Nutcracker”. Care Bears, though they may nowadays be a bit outdated, had a few movies along as well. Now, in 2014, “The LEGO Movie” is introduced, with an outstanding opening weekend grabbing in an estimated $69,000,000 in the United States alone. Thousands of children, teenagers, and adults saw the film and it came back with rave reviews. An 82 on the metascore, which I think is great a score especially for a movie aimed mostly toward children.

To start off with a short summary, this movie is about the ordinary life of a LEGO mini figure man, named Emmet. He’s one of those people who follows the crowd and does his best to fit in to society without discrimination against him. He finds a lego piece known as the “piece of resistance”, the key to saving the LEGO world. Everyone thinks he is this master builder who knows how to build everything very easily. But really, he wasn’t that special. And, of course, there’s always a bad guy, and in this case, it’s “President Business”, a man who wants perfection for the world, and everything to be how he wants it. In the end, Emmet finds out that everyone is special, but in their own way. This message is portrayed through a very clear, not forced, way.

My biggest problem with this film is that it left you on a bit of a cliffhanger in few parts. A few friends and I got confused as to if a particular character died, but I highly doubt it. Another slight problem I found was that Will Ferrell’s character was known as 3 different people, and two of them were “Lord Business” and “President Business”. They referred to him as both (and a completely different one), but that got to be a bit confusing. Why would they call him both, when a president and lord could be interpreted as two separate people?

It really did seem like there was a foreshadowing of some sort that could lead to a sequel. It certainly got reviews great enough to make it happen. The LEGO industry is so big that they could easily make another. I believe this is why there are so many movies/shows made from products. Media like this has so many new possibilities as to what we can do with movies nowadays, the possibilities are nearly endless. You could probably do more with the movie than you could with the actual product. Other than those few parts I was confused on, it was an overall great, funny, kid-friendly movie, but made for all ages.

Christopher Miller, who directed and wrote the screenplay, talked about how they made the movie on twitter. He tweeted on February 3, 2014:

@DrewAtHitFix it was mostly CG with some stop motion & also some real LEGO still sets comped in. But Animal Logic made the CG photoreal.

He would not tell what was stop motion and what was CGI, but I find it really fantastic that both were used in the film. It takes a lot of time, effort, and talent to do that kind of thing. So many people worked on this movie; 2 directors, 6 writers, and 18 producers, as well as a countless number of guest voiceover actors. Will Ferrell, as I stated before, was the bad guy in the situation. Liam Neeson’s character was distinct and he was a funny character. And, of course, Morgan Freeman was perfect for the role he was put in. More actors such as Charlie Day, Allison Brie, Dave Franco, Jonah Hill, and Nick Offerman played a part of this outstanding movie.

Lastly, may I say again, there was a huge moral to this story, which is perfectly tied into the plot. It was not forced into the movie like lots of recent movies. The first movie that comes to mind when I think of this problem is “Wreck-it-Wralph” You could tell the writers were pushing that lesson into the movie, and a lot of other movies today (specifically animated children’s movies). I don’t think that’s a good way to show kids what’s morally “right” and “wrong”. There are much better ways to do this, and a great example, is, in fact, “The LEGO Movie”

Kelsey Reviews: “The Devil Inside” (2012)

My Rating: 1.0/5.0

Many horror films nowadays center around CGI and gore, and some, I’ll say, are done very well. But then there’s the scary movies that just plummet straight to the ground. Terrible acting, mixed up plot, or a dumb ending. Some movies, just simply aren’t frightening enough to even be contained in the horror genre itself. All of these descriptions are straightforward factors contributing to what a bad horror flick can be considered, and also simply stating what “The Devil Inside” was. A god-awful movie that is lucky to get four stars on IMDb.

The Devil Inside is about a woman, Isabella, who sets out to discover why her mother, now living in a mental hospital, killed three clergy people in the past. She is told to go to Italy to talk to some experts on the subject, and ends up discussing the matter with priests. These priests say that it may not be a medical issue, but her mother has a devil inside her, which then leads to more chaos and insanity.

This movie is a very cheap, unscary, and an unconvincing mess of a movie. It came out in January, too, which usually means a low-grade thriller movie. Horror/scary movies mostly come out in the summer or fall season, getting into the mood of halloween and later months of the year. But January seems pretty odd for this thriller to come out.

The acting in the movie alone is really, really mediocre. You can easily tell that the people are are trying to act like they’re really reacting, they’re definitely trying much too hard. This was aimed to be a movie that was a “found footage” type, like most of you know, the Paranormal Activity movies are, but it wasn’t convincing at all. I’m not saying that all of these kinds of films are bad, but if you’re planning on making a fake horror-documentary, at least get some good actors to portray the characters that are created for that movie.

The source material that the characters got information was very vague and unclear to the audience, but most of the audience seemed to care about the gore factor or the scary parts. Speaking of, those weren’t even scary. Nothing was really startling, and I distinctly remember that there was a dog about a quarter of the way into the movie that barked at a protagonist passing by, and that was the scariest part in the movie, because it was so sudden.

The movie has no conclusion whatsoever and just abruptly ends without a wrap-up, and it didn’t even make sense. Most characters end up killing themselves at the end. When my sister-in-law and I went to see it, we were honestly laughing by this point. It was utterly ludicrous. At the very end, the screen just cuts to black and has a title card that says something like “The facts of the Rossi case have never been fully established, but to follow the investigation, go to TheRossiFiles.com.” and then the credits role. It was terrible. So, I would definitely not recommend this movie to anyone, whether you like horror movies or not, this is not a good one.

Kelsey Reviews: “Trick ‘r Treat” (2007)

4.0/5.0

Fall season is approaching, we’re in the month of October, and it’s that time of the year for Halloween movies! Scary films leaving you on the edge of your seat waiting to know what happens and horror films having you check twice under your before you sleep. I’m more of a classic horror film lover, but I decided I’d review a more recent halloween movie, 2007, Trick ‘r Treat.

Out of all the scary movies I have seen in my lifetime, I think this is one of my favourites. IMDb rates it 6.7 out of 10.0, and I think it’s more underappreciated than it should be. It’s not my favourite, but it definitely scared me when I first saw it, unlike some of the more recent films that are just in for the gore factor with bad acting.

The movie itself centers around these groups of people on Halloween night. They do not know each other, but they all intertwine in the end, which is one of the main things I love about the movie. Some of my favourite movies being that same way. Two examples could be Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, both good ‘ole Tarantino films. I think it’s a great method for some movies, because then when you re-watch them, you notice more connections and you see things being foreshadowed. It also makes the first time you watch the film all the more special because you don’t know what’s coming.

Now, for the acting in the story. Anna Paquin is a great actress in this, one of the first I recognized. Most of the other actors I’ve not seen in much else. But, then again, I’m a huge True Blood fan, so it’s not surprising. I’d recognize Anna in her other films. She does a wonderful job hiding her accent. She has a natural New Zealand accent, and in this movie she has a Northern American accent. The other actors did a good job as well.

This film takes us on a throwback to the old age traditions and rules of trick-or-treating on Halloween, including a serial killer, adventurous middle-schoolers, and women looking for lust, causing trouble. There is one specific villain who appears in a lot of the movie. This villain doesn’t get many parts in the movie until one specific scene toward the end. But the fact you see him here and there before that scene makes you wonder why he’s so important and why he is appearing so much. Once you find out, it’s surprising and ties everything together!

I recommend this film for anyone who likes an eerie October movie with a great storyline and characters; The actors portray those characters really well. I’m not sure as to why it is so underrated and underappreciated, but I think that it is a wonderful horror flick for the fall/Halloween season.

Kelsey Reviews: “Amélie” (2001)

Rating: 5.0/5.0

A great foreign film from France, filled with adventure and romance; Suspense and bliss. My personal 2nd favourite foreign film in general, once I thought about it for a while. Out of all of the places in the world that film is released for it to be considered Foreign, England and France are my favourites.

Amélie focuses on the life of a girl in Paris, France, working at Montmartre café, who decides to help those around her along with her personal life, and finds a love interest along the way. Meeting new people and helping them express themselves in creative ways, Amélie lives out a life with  a lot of emotion and mystery throughout.

This movie has to be pretty great for my rating being 5.0/5.0. It being my 2nd favourite foreign film next to Pan’s Labyrinth. Amélie Poulain is a quirky and fun character who likes to create mysteries of her own, I really like that about the character. Most of the characters in the movie were big roles, so there weren’t too many characters and traits that it was overwhelming or confusing. You learn a lot of each character throughout the movie, and the backstory of Amélie. I like how they introduce the characters in the beginning, instead of revealing that later in the story for you to find out. This shows how straightforward and easy to follow this film is.

Amélie herself is a peculiar yet simple character and I love the way the writers portray her personality. They go into the a very fine history of her without being too broad in the beginning to know what her life is like and what she is like. The rest of the movie is essentially about how she enjoys helping the lives of others. This is a really great movie that shows selflessness and care to others, so it’s also showing a message through a film full of mystery, affection, and exhilaration.

I love the fact that this is not your typical love story; Girl finds a boy, falls in love, deal with a problem, problem is resolved and they live happily ever after, the end. This is not Amélie. Amélie discovers how she wants to assist people in their lives, and then takes a boy (Nino)’s possession that he lost, and makes it a mystery to help him find it. I won’t tell how it ends because I do not like including spoilers in my reviews, but I just loved the originality in it. I love how it is mostly about Amélie and her life, but including a bit of romance with Nino as well. Not so much about the two of them together. Not from two perspectives, mainly focused on one.

But Amélie Poulain is not all rainbows, puppies, and  sunshine. If she sees someone being utterly disrespectful to another that she knows is not doing wrong, she’ll sneakily get revenge on that person. Not too terrible of a happening, but enough to teach them a lesson. Amélie has her personal problems, too, just like everyone else, and loves to help people out, whether that means doing it the easy way or the hard way. But she’s definitely not 100% happy all the time, so don’t hold me to describing her as emotionless. She’s just like any other character, but more of an optimist than a pessimist. This is why I describe this film as more of a feel-good movie than anything.

All-in-all, Amélie is a fantastic movie. If its in my top 5 foreign movies and it’s at #2, that shows that it’s pretty fantastic in my eyes. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves a good romance while not being too lovey-dovey and basic for any other romance. The soundtrack is fantastic as well; It all seems to work out pretty great when they put everything together. The original plot, the music, and everything, it’s all great.

Kelsey Reviews: “V for Vendetta” (2005)

Rating: 4.0/5.0

V For Vendetta is an action-packed film about A shadowy freedom fighter known as “V” who fights against his terrorist, totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally.

The movie was written by Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix), so I watched this movie with high expectations. I didn’t know much about the director, and later found out James McTeigue hadn’t full-out directed anything before V For Vendetta (Besides being a Second Unit/Assistant Director). I was quite surprised to hear that. He did a fantastic job with the film, and the actors were just as great. Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman especially, being the two main characters of the film. Hugo needed to have a lot of emotion shown in his voice and actions since you could not see his facial expression, and he did a great job with that.

This film was also an adaptation of the Alan Moore book that he made in 1982. I haven’t read the book, but I plan to soon. The beginning of the movie really brings you in and wanting to see more due to the fact that within the first 10 minutes, there is a fight. I think a beginning full of action is a great way to start, well, anything, really. A book, a movie, a television show, etcetera. This is why Romeo and Juliet is one of my favourite Shakespearian plays; it begins with a fight between a Montague and a Capulet, which brings the viewer in wanting to know more (For example, Romeo and Juliet):Why are they fighting? Who are these men? What is this importance to the rest of the play? I think that was great on the director and writer’s part.

Throughout parts of the movie, the government is trying to find V and Evey, and there are scenes from both V and Evey’s perspective. I think this is a key element to a film. If a filmmaker just stays on one straight path through a movie, it can become either predictable and/or rather unexciting. This is a important because one of the most important things is keeping an audience when writing/directing a movie. If you lose them, you get bad reviews. If you get bad reviews, that’s just not a good sign for a successful film headed your way, and I’d hope nobody wants that.

One thing about the movie I disliked was, of course, like with most films, there were some small slow parts, but that’s typical. It’s not a perfect film, but there really isn’t one “perfect” film. But that is just my opinion, it depends on what your definition of “perfect” is, and how you see it. Another thing I didn’t like about this movie was the fact that this terrorist known as V is trying to make England a better place. If that did happen, I think more people would follow him in his act of terrorism and break out in riots, but coincidentally, they all follow the dictatorship like nothing is bothering them (but clearly, you could see that it is). So the citizens are really on the government’s side of they’re all against V, which I don’t think would be very realistic if this were an actual situation. But, looking at it in a different perspective, that is really not much of a problem at all because comic books—and movies based off of them— aren’t always supposed to be realistic, they’re really to tell the story of a fantasy.

In the whole of the movie, I see a very strong message trying to get through. Now I don’t know if this was stressed in the book as much as it was in the movie, but I have recognized it in many other movies as well. From V’s perspective, he is trying to be a hero and make his country a better place by threatening the government and killing off people. This is just his personal thought process, everyone thinks different, but he thinks violence is the way to help. As he even said in the movie, “Violence can be used for good; Justice.” An outsider would see V as an enemy and that is why everyone acts defensive, but in actuality, he’s just trying to help. He doesn’t just want to help his country, he also wishes to help Evey live without fear.