Movie Review: The Huntsman: Winters War

My sister is a huge fan of the movie Frozen. Nothing against the movie, but when you watch it over and over again it gets a little on the annoying side. So when I saw this week’s movie had its own version of an ice queen, I was interested to see a different point of view on this character. The Huntsman: Winters War had one bonus to it right away, no "catchy" songs that would get on my nerves after a while.

The movie starts with a narration on how you know the Snow White story from the other movie, Snow White and the Huntsman, but there was a story before. It then goes on to tell us how the story began with the tale of two sisters, Ravenna (played by Charlize Theron) and Freya (played by Emily Blunt). Freya had fallen in love with a man and is carrying his baby happily, until her sister informs her that she knows while playing chess. After the chess game, Freya and the man make a plan on leaving together. On the night of their planned departure, she sees a fire coming from the tower where her child is. She runs up there to find her love having burned her child saying he had no choice. Freya gets sad and angry, giving her the power to freeze everything around her, starting with the man she once loved. 

To get away from the memories and have a kingdom of her own, Freya leaves and goes to the northern country, turning it to a frozen wasteland. She takes children from their homes to her castle where she tells them that they are now free. There is only one rule, they are never to love, as it is a weakness. She calls them her huntsmen and starts their training. We watch as a young boy, Eric, and a young girl, Sara, grow into a well trained man and woman (played by Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain, respectively). They secretly fall in love with each other, however Freya finds out with an owl made from her ice.

The plot and story line of this movie seems to be a little bit all over the place. You think it will be a movie about the war between the sisters, but then you find that it's the people against one of them, but then against both of them and then them against each other. If that sentence seems confusing to you then you understand how watching the movie felt. There was so much back story they were trying to put into it that they could not find a focus. The visuals were stunning though, and I think that made watching the movie a little easier.

The other thing that made the movie easier to watch was Chris Hemsworth's portrayal as the Huntsman. He was relaxed into the character and brought us great chemistry in his interactions with Jessica Chastain. He had good banter with the other characters he traveled with and that made the mixed up story line bearable. The chill in the acting from Emily Blunt, who is usually on point, just made us all cold to her character. Charlize Theron's over acting had me thinking that she was just there for the paycheck and not to make a good movie.

I would rate this movie 7.6/10 based on the good visuals and enjoyable performance by Chris, but the story not making too much sense. I would have made a joke about putting "Let it Go" into the movie, but that song was the part that made Frozen so annoying.

Movie Review: The Jungle Book (2016)

This has been a challenging post to write this past week. There was a small fire in the kitchen at home and then the next day a large fire on the family property that was pretty scary. I find it ironic that it should happen during the same week as when I am writing a review about the Jungle Book, which fire plays a big part in.

The movie starts out with the Disney castle, as all Disney movies do, but then it transforms into a jungle setting in India where soon see Mowgli (played by Neel Sethi) running through the trees. It looks like he is running from something and then we see glimpses of wolves running around him. Just as we think he might get away a tree branch breaks under him and he is pounced on by a Black Panther. We soon discover that this is Bagheera (voiced by Ben Kingsley) and he is training the wolf cubs and Mowgli to survive in the jungle. He gets upset with Mowgli for going into the trees instead of staying low to the ground like a wolf.


They head back to the wolf den and we meet the wolf pups and their mother, Raksha (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o). After Mowgli talks with them, Akela (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) calls the grown wolves together and do the wolf motto. It then goes to a porcupine claiming rocks and sticks until it finds a huge rock called peace rock, which alerts a bird that informs everyone about it. All the animals go to peace rock for water, and Mowgli throws something to get himself water, startling the other animals. Bagheera has Mowgli dump it back in the rest of the water, telling him not to use his "tricks", because it's not the wolf way. All the animals then get scared when Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) arrives for water, then he smells Mowgli and threatens the wolves that Mowgli will destroy the jungle unless they give Mowgli to him. The wolves refuse to give him up, and Shere Khan tells them that they have to give Mowgli to him by the time peace rock gets covered or he will take Mowgli by force.

This was a great movie to watch. I really enjoy the 1967 original movie from Disney, so it made me interested to see what they would do with this one. They kept a lot of the elements from the animated movie but brought in more from the book than before. It made the movie more interesting and terrifying. What I really found incredible was the computer animation. I have read many people talking about the live animals used, but in fact they were all computer animated. Jim Henson productions came in with puppets for the new young actor Neel to work with, but he is the only live actor in the movie. Even more impressive is how the entire movie was filmed in a green screen studio. This movie truly shows how amazing computer animation has become over the years. There were a couple of continuity errors but really they are are a drop in the bucket to all the hours of work put into making this production.

Take the great computer animation and add in first time child actor Neel Sethi, who did an amazing job and you have a hit. As mentioned he acted with just puppets to play off of and some live movements from the voice actors. With this as his first movie credit to his name I am sure we will be seeing great things from him. However, having some of Hollywood's great actors there to voice the animals probably made for some great learning experience for him. All of the actors were spot on in the voicing of the characters. Turning Kaa into a woman and having her voiced by Scarlett Johansson was a brilliant move. Ben Kingsley and Bill Murray killed it as Bagheera and Baloo, respectively, however my favorite pairing of voice actor to character is Christopher Walken for King Louie. His strong personality was the perfect choice for the larger than life gigantopithecus, a great and accurate replacement to the original orangutan.

This is probably one of the best family films I have watched doing this blog. Disney hit it out of the park with this remake. Only because of the continuity errors do I rate this movie 9.8/10. This is a must see for the entire family.