Category: Movies

Reviewing The Reader is not going to be easy. In fact, I wonder why I even bother. Maybe it’s because The Reader managed to touch all my strings and I have the feeling I need to write something about it just to be able to get said strings unstrung. Maybe. Hopefully.

One day in Europe

Before I let myself get carried away in the morality-versus-law discussion lying at the core of the movie, I have to say something else: the fifties and sixties Europe created in The Reader is reason enough to go see this movie. It’s right to the very toothbrushes, houses and bikinis. It’s breathtaking how they pulled off a two hour feature without breaking the illusion of Europe once. I’ve never seen an American production do this – the fact that a German production team, along with a bunch of Germany’s most talented actors, was involved, really helped.

With that out of the way, time to get lost in endless tirades about… other stuff. Like Kate Winslet winning an oscar. An Oscar that was well-deserved if you ask me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female actor pull off these kinds of performances. Before you jump on me and eat me alive, allow me to elaborate. A common tendency in Hollywood is the fact that most big actors and especially actresses seem to spend more time trying to make themselves look good than actually act properly. The Reader is somehow different: never is Hanna, Kate’s character, truly sexy or pretty. She’s always small and jagged around the edges. She walks like an old woman torn apart by guilt. This is simply beautiful. And it makes her beautiful. And sexy. If that makes sense. Doing something like this as an actress takes a lot of nerve and confidence. And lo and behold, it worked: it made the sexual tension between Michael and Hanna very… human-like. Very credible. Very recognizable.

The lady with the dog

And that’s what this movie is about. Humans. Not illiteracy, not sex, not the holocaust… humans. And how humans make mistakes, even if they know they’re making them. It’s a tragic fact that Hanna joined the SS because she was trying to hide her illiteracy, a tragic fact that lead to the destruction of her life. Every event that followed during the Second World War was a mistake in the past.

That’s one side of the coin. The other side is the story we actually experience during the movie. Michael and his decision not to help Hanna by exposing her secret is a mistake of him in the present. A mistake he can only face at the very end of Hanna’s life.

That’s it. Humans. No more, no less. Humans making mistakes and paying for them dearly. Interesting. There’s not a single hero in this movie – not even the judge that convicted the ex-SS women. It was obvious that these verdicts were only there to appoint blame and to get the trauma over with. To forget. Something we can all see for a great part in this day and age, but something that was blasphemy when you said it in the sixties.

It’s not just about you

But should Michael have saved Hanna? Is Hanna a poor woman in need of saving? The movie does a great job trying to tackle and avoid this question. You see, the thing is: we don’t seem to know this Hanna character at all. Other than two things (the fact that she’s illiterate and that she needs order) she’s kept relatively open. We can’t actually determine whether “saving” her would have been right or wrong. An interesting thought worth pondering.

That being said, however, this movie does go to the bone… and beyond. When Michael changes his mind on whether he should visit her it just takes your breath away. It’s so sad. But then again: you don’t know whether it’s the right thing to do or not. And neither does he. He’s only human; he can’t deal with it.

In All…

This is a movie about life, love and dealing with mistakes. In that way, it’s a movie about learning. And, in that way, this movie isn’t all that special; in fact it’s what we expect to see in a movie. We want our characters to learn. But the way in which our main characters learn throughout the movie is not through one another, it’s next to one another. And that’s what makes this story so special and so tragic: because it’s – unlike what movies tell us nowadays – the way in which learning seems to happen.

Favourite Quote:
Teacher: What we feel isn’t important. It’s utterly unimportant. The only question is
what we do. If people like you don’t learn from what happened to people like me, then what the hell is the point of anything?

You can see that before the Oscars, people didn’t exactly know what to do with Slumdog Millionaire. Sure, it was heavily marketed, but it appears they just couldn’t wrap their brains around how exactly they would market it. Was it bollywood? Was it drama? Was it a comedy? Something more alternative? The (final) answer to that question: it’s a little bit of both, but at the same time something else altogether. The chaiwalah has done it again!

A thousand billion million Rupees

Jamal and his brother Salem are two sides of the same coin. But still throughout their lives two things are predominant: money and love. Jamal leans towards the love side of things, whilst Salem craves money. We start our journey with Jamal – our main character, a low-payed tea servant at a callcenter, who by chance enters the Indian “who wants to be a millionaire”. Whether by luck or not, he appears to know the right answer to just about every question. That’s the reason he got arrested and tells his interrogators his life story, and how he managed to know all of those answers (and wishes he didn’t).

The premise is a stroke of unconscious genius: as unknown the country of India might be for us westerners (and believe me: once you see this movie you’ll notice you know nothing of the place), the show “who wants to be a millionaire” is an international standard up to the point where you can actually compare the chairs and the lighting and see it’s all the same. I don’t think this was done on purpose, but it is an interesting idea that makes your head spin and broadens your mind.

Is that your final answer?

The story is undoubtedly one of the strong factors in this movie: it constantly rushes around between past and present, takes twists and turns you can’t always see coming. And once you get the idea of what the movie is about and what the storytelling rules are, the fun changes from seeing what is being told to how it’s being told. You can never predict the relationship between the questions and the answers in advance. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

But story aside, even if you don’t like jumping through time the way I do and find the whole premise too absurd for words, you can just go see this movie as well. Reason? It looks very, very good. In fact, it has a style to itself I have never seen in a movie before – but I have seen it. I’ve seen it in animation, but never in a live action movie. The way the kids run through the city in the opening scene is simply breathtaking: it’s alive with colours and the camera shakes, pans and zooms like there’s no tomorrow, treating us to a piece of visual poetry.

In All…

This is a movie you will want to see. It’s pretty, it’s well-written (if you can ignore the corniness of the dialogues) and it just drags you in. It never drags or gets boring, but always keeps the pace
flowing. And: if you came to see it expecting to see Bollywood… let’s just say there’s a little surprise somewhere in there. It’s not very subtle. You can’t miss it.

Favourite Quote:
Jamal: The guide book was written by a bunch of lazy good-for-nothing Indian beggars!

I had been wanting to see In Bruges for quite a while, but you know how it goes with some movies: they’re always the third on your priority list, and never seem to get up to the first place. So when you finally get it, a lot of time may have passed. This time, though, seeing how the store was empty and had no copies of “Aanrijding in Moskou” (which seems to be doing a better job in Germany than in Belgium) left, it was finally time for “In Bruges”.

It’s in Belgium

As I expected, this movie is filled to the brim with insults towards Belgium. These are just like the ones we used to see in Monty Python: silly mockeries that make little to no sense – a fact acknowledged by the writers themselves. I guess it’s the fact that it’s a small place with no identity (even after the government crisis and the whole molesting children thing) – like a rural town. A rural town much like Bruges. So that means: you’ve got a rural town inside a rural town. Are there any larger shitholes left than Bruges? Not for the British.

The movie had a lot more than just touristic antitourism though. It had brilliant acting too: it was wonderful to see Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes (of Voldemort fame) perform such lovable assholes. The moment where Harry (Fiennes’s character) apologizes to his wife for calling his children “fucking cunt kids” is a good example of this, as is the chat he has with Ken (Gleeson) whilst drinking a beer. You love to hate them. They’re cuddly motherfuckers.

Maybe that’s what hell is

What really struck me though, was the solidness of the script. I was expecting a lot of swearing, a lot of anti-belgianism and loads of black humour, but I got so much more: the movie slowly but certainly delved into this “night of the living dead” kind of feeling: Bruges is a place where you go to die, sort of the like the river Styx: when you’re inside you’re not quite dead yet, but you’re certainly not alive. Only in Bruges, there’s cocaine. And midgets.

I love it when a movie has a defined style, and sticks with it. You can tell when you look at In Bruges that the director (Martin McDonagh) wrote the script himself and chose to make this movie something of his own. A product he loved and nurtured like a child, if you may. It has this incredible sense of stylistic oneness, this absurdism which sticks by its own set of rules, almost like poetry. This story has not been conceived by ten semi-gifted people sitting around a table shoehorning semi-good ideas into a semi-good script. This story has been written by someone who knew where he was going.

He was going to fucking Belgium.

Favourite Quote:
Ken: Harry, let’s face it. And I’m not being funny. I mean no disrespect, but you’re a cunt. You’re a
cunt now, and you’ve always been a cunt. And the only thing that’s going to change is that you’re going
to be an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.
Harry: Leave my kids fucking out of it! What have they done? You fucking retract that bit about my
cunt fucking kids!
Ken: I retract that bit about your cunt fucking kids.

I am aware of the fact that my Berlinale reviews are way overdue. I am also aware of the fact that I don’t care. So, for those who dig achronicity and who are just dying to read a review about skirts and a Swiss mountain village: allow me to make your day. So coming now and later: my Berlinale 2008 double review! Because I only went to see two movies and I don’t have that much to say about them!

Today: Winterstilte!

What do you get when you let a visual artist with no experience in directing whatsoever make a movie? Either you get utter trash, or you get the most brilliant movie of all times. But never, ever have I had such mixed feelings and love-have-annoyance towards a movie than I had towards Winterstilte. But more on that later.

The (very thin) premise: A Swiss mountain village. Five women – a mother and her four twentysomething daughters – mourn for the loss of their father who ironically fell down a mountain. There is little to no talking. But there is the following: a little girl that has nothing to do with the movie, the synchronized making of a broidery, an owl throwing up furballs in a straight line, a whole lot of mountains, a jester and sex with moose men. Yes, you read that right. All in seventy minutes of film.

And the truth of the matter is that this isn’t actually a bad movie. The above make for a nice symbolic movie where every piece of footage is so pretty it’ll make your jaws drop to the floor. When the camera pans up and down before the mother, there are no shocks in movement to be seen. This camera man was a genious. Also finding the way to bring these scenes from script to actual shots takes a hell of a visual director.

But that’s where it ends. End of the line. As it turns out, something that feels so symbolical on so many levels, can be a bit of a turd when the explanation comes afterwards. When the director came on stage afterwards for a little Q and A, it immediately became apparent that she had had no clue of what she was doing storywise. So the owl is wisdom and the girl is innocence, we get that. But why is the owl waking the girl? She could not tell for the life of her.

You know, if you use pretty metaphores in your movie but cannot explain then, I think you can just admit that to your audience. If people buy a ticket for your seventy minute long movie with about 20 sentences of text, they can take a bit of weirdness. Just admit that you approached it as if it were a moving picture and not an epic tale about the fairer sex.

In all, the movie itself was pretty good. Emphasize the pretty, and upgrade it to gorgeous. So she can do it. She just shouldn’t say her movie is something it is not. Because it isn’t.

I am aware of the fact that my Berlinale reviews are way overdue. I am also aware of the fact that I don’t care. So, for those who dig achronicity and who are just dying to read a review about skirts and a Swiss mountain village… allow me to make your day. So coming now and later: my Berlinale 2008 double review! Because I only went to see two movies and I don’t have that much to say about them!

Today: La Journée de la jupe!

If you only have time and money for two movies and given there are hundreds of movies to choose from, what do you do? You just choose two movies that seem vaguely familiar yet entirely different, and you go for it without thinking. For La Journée de la jupe, this might have just been the best random luck ever. We got a nice movie with some cool twists and a wonderful, wonderful actress: Isabelle Adjani.

The plot – the thing that attracted me to the movie – is as follows: Sonia teaches French at a public school. Her class is completely out of control: they don’t listen, they are loud, they threaten her… when one day she finds a gun in one her pupil’s bag, she is suddenly holding a group of them hostage.

What I loved about this movie, is how it tackles a very serious educational problem (the so-called black schools and white schools – the names have nothing to do with cultural roots of the pupils, even though the end results do) on different levels. There is mystery. There is suspense. There is drama. There are emotions. There are humour. Someone (Jean-Paul Lilienfeld) feels the same way about drama I do: humour is a great way of getting a dramatic point accross. It certainly worked in this movie, which at times bordered the downright absurd but was still credible.

This has a lot to do with the great acting work – not just by the female lead, but also by all the (unknown) teen actors. They delivered their lines in wonderful banlieue French – French I cannot understand for the life of me but which made the whole experience very immersive. Other than the teens, there was Denis Podalydès, who was funny and dramatic at the same time.

In all, I really loved this movie. It’s basically everything I stand for in a movie, and something more which I’m starting to stand for now. These guys knew what they were doing. It’s worth every second of your time.

(Little disclaimer before we start: I usually always call movies by their original names – in this case it would be Inkheart. But seeing how Inkheart is based on a German book and I just can’t shake the book’s original name off me, I am going to call the movie like the book: Tintenherz.)

Messes and where they come from

It’s a movie about a book, based on a book, with characters from books. Not an easy task! Tintenherz could have been a revolution in movie making. Why? We have a very successful (at least in the US and Germany) author, Cornelia Funke, who promised fans she’d be keeping guard over her story and even signing up as producer of the movie. She cast Brendan Fraser herself, kept a close look on the scriptwriters… Nothing could go wrong.

But they did. This movie is a horrible mess. More than that: it is a horrible mess in the typical places where book-to-movie adaptions tend to be messes, but this mess is so inexplicable and so random that I for the life of me can’t seem to understand who made said mess and where it came from. Like having two cats, and one of them takes a dump on your carpet. It boggles the mind.

Where does this movie go wrong? Strangely enough – with a mediocre actor like Fraser at the helm of the performance ship – not in its casting. Every actor does a great job. The typical book-to-movie give-ins do apply: Meggie is actually a lot younger than the person playing her, Mo has the voice but not the looks… But one is used to that. Special kudos to Paul Bettany for playing the role of Staubfinger (Dustfinger) and doing a great job at it. He is one creepy guy. No kudos to Andy Serkis, who plays Capricorn in such a manner that he’s so unscary it’s laughable. And, oddly enough, the introduction of Capricorn in the movie (after about half an hour) is the point where things start going terribly, terribly wrong.

Now, I have to say I wasn’t the biggest fan of Capricorn while reading the book. He’s pretty dull, does little to nothing and isn’t really scary in my opinion. But he was never laughable – which is exactly what he is in the movie. Every other line is a joke – but not a good one. Now I realize this isn’t Serkis’ fault, but he performs the character in such a way that it becomes plain and boring at best.

Up to the point where we first see Capricorn, the movie is pretty decent: it’s moody, mildly scary (just like the book) and we search together with Meggie for the truth about her mother’s disappearance. But once we travel to Capricorn’s village, the movie repeatedly starts straying from the book. Why? There is only one possible explanation: every change has something to do with closing plotlines that were left open at the end of Tintenherz. Tintenherz is a trilogy – but Inkheart will probably never see a sequel. They made sure of that, and not just by means of making a poor movie.

In all…

I was honestly pissed off when I exited the movie theatre after seeing Tintenherz. This movie had just about everything it needed to be: a nice plot, source material that can be ported straight to the screen (it’s short and very little happens but it’s still exciting), good actors and a capable producer. But it wasn’t meant to be. And that pissed me off: bad movies are made all the time because incapable people get loads of money, but when capable people screw up like this… that pisses me off.

So Tintenherz: thank you for making me angry!

How do you top the insane success of Ratatouille? How do you top the most adorable rat, the coolest world and the best soundtrack? Insert a lovable robot, a completely empty, lonely world and fifties music. Ladies and gentlemen, Pixar has saved best for last with their latest film: Wall-E.

One bot to clean it all

The premise of the movie seems simple at first, but turns out to be deviously political as it goes along: Wall-E is a little robot given the task to clean up a deserted and dirty earth. While doing so, he runs into Eve, another robot with a mysterious task – a robot with which he soon falls in love. This is just the surface of a complex movie about a love for our planet, and an (in)evitable future in which the human race propels itself. Or you could just ignore that message altogether – then you’d have a nice, fun and stylish children’s movie. But that would obviously be a waste.

As always, Wall-E is – on one hand – chock-full of little details; but on the other hand, nothing really feels stretched or over-used. This is in part thanks to the series of miniature plots the movies progresses to: there is Wall-E’s lonely existence on earth, him meeting Eve, then discovering the space-ship Axiom and its inhabitants, and then the main plot of the movie: the plant. This is both a strength and a weakness: it has the risk of screwing with the fl
ow curve of the movie; but thankfully the nice people at Pixar have a knack for polishing something until it’s just about right. Wall-E is no exception.

Wall-E is a pearl, a diamond, the cream of the crop of the Pixar movies so far. It contains the best elements of all pixar movies: an incredibly immersive world (Ratatouille), great characters (The Incredibles), an unexpectedly creative and unconventional plot (Monsters Inc) and a great deal of extra cast members to bring comic relief (Finding Nemo). It’s like the ultimate Pixar Pudding!

In All…

I cannot stress enough how great Wall-E is. If you have not seen it, you should most definitely do so. It is a moving tale that will have sucked you in five minutes after it’s started. And you will laugh and clap like a ten year old when it does!

Favourite Quote:
Wall-E: WwAaAaAlLlLlYyYy?

(Editor’s note: try reading this review aloud with a scottish accent)

The Water Horse was a movie I had wanted to see for ages now. It looked cute, genuinely scottish and with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, once the movie was over, I was filled with nothing but laughs at a flimsily executed world in an anachronistic era with piss-poor child actors – laughs which I promtly let loose on the world with the help of a “Don’t shake your baby” infomercial. What a bummer, lads. What a bummer.

Crrrrrrruusoe! Din run aweigh laddeh!

As soon as the movie starts off, you’re treated with some very nice, authentic sounding Scottish accents, accents which usually get on my nerves. This time was not an exception: the accents were so repetitive and the intonation so boring, I eyerolled every time the little lad said “Crusoe” (the name of his beloved water horse). I know Scottish people don’t actually talk in a boring and repetitive tone, so this can only mean one other thing: bad acting.

Yes, it is safe to say that there is only one good actor in the entire bunch of Scottish sounding geezers, and that is Nessy him/herself. Baptised Crusoe (after Robinson – why they didn’t pick “Robin” is beyond me; “Crusoe” in Scottish accent sounds like throwing up), she/he never ceased to impress. The little version is just awesomely cute, while the older version feels like that old tiger that never forgets. I’m seriously impressed they achieved to bring Crusoe to life, and nail it. Unfortunately, every human being that comes within three hundred meters of said beast is affected by the “horrible acting” curse. Because, you know, big creatures tend to do that to people.

What else is there to say?

I really, truly wish it wasn’t so. I really wanted to like this movie. It’s bound to be slightly silly – we’re talking the Loch Ness monster in a toilet here – but I wanted it to be… magical. And magical, it just isn’t. The actors aren’t there. The believability isn’t there. Those “present day” scenes in which the old drunk talks about his good times with the Loch Ness Monster are just corny. The whole “Loch Ness and World War II” plotline is a nice find – and the era set-up surely is credible enough – but it’s entirely ruined the moment history is attempted a recreation by mimicing the making of the famous Loch Ness Monster picture, a picture taken in the thirties. Seriously. How do you let that happen?

There are hundreds of things wrong with The Water Horse. Thankfully, the water horse itself is not one of them. If you want to see a cute creature that looks real enough and acts like a champ, you should see this movie. If you’re hoping to see anything else, just move along. Maybe you’re thinking I’m being hard on a kid-oriented movie, and I’m sure I am. But I enjoy kid’s movies. I just think all that money should’ve gone to making an actual quality movie about said monster. I don’t think it’s that hard, Laddeh.

P.S.: Once again, obvious anachronisms in movies should not happen – especially if your “making of” featurette reveals the mistake!!

Favourite Quote:
Angus: Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrusoe!
Crusoe: Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaeeeegh!

By this time, you should already know about my guilty pleasure – the one other than LOST. I am obviously talking about musicals: nothing gets me going more than a wonderful musical, with great music, a wonderful setting and sublime dancing moves. We ask, and Hairspray delivers it with a motto: So delightfully wrong on so many delicious levels!

Petticoats!

Hairspray (2007) takes us back to the 1960s, where petticoats and wet looks ruled the western part of the planet, and everything seemed bright and sunny – even despite the lack of colour TV. Yes, the US of A has it made: the Kennedys are dominating the world in their popularity, and everyone in the entire world wants to be as perfect as those North-American lucky bastards. The sixties are golden, the sixties are… perfect. But what do you in such a world when you’re different? Hairspray shows us the answer: just do whatever the hell you want to do.

I can in all honesty say that it has been a while since I had seen such a feel-good movie. Ratatouille faintly comes to my mind, but it was still a different kind of happy: Hairspray made the world a better place, a shinier place, a place where everyone could live in. It completely immersed me – not only through the wonderful costumes and dances (I love the fifties) – and left me wanting more.

Flash flash!

Hairspray is a deviously cliche movie, using all the usual tactics: people singing wherever, whenever without anyone else finding it even the least bit strange; greatly exaggerated costume design (John Travolta performs as the obese mother, which is saying enough on its own) and unbelievably funny slash catchy tunes and lyrics. It does this which such great flair and in such a wonderful combination with the script, that it sometimes becomes a parody (I am thinking of the song the parents sing halfway through the movie) and sometimes an homage to soul (queen Latifah being the prime example).

If you are any bit into musicals, this is really worth 117 minutes of your time. You shall not be sorry.

Favourite Quote:
Tracy: This is just so afro-tastic!

I like The Chronicles of Narnia. There’s so many things you can throw against them: they’re really, really poorly written, the characters are somewhat lame, and last but not least there’s the annoying presence of Aslan, the great talking Lion slash metaphore for the Messiah. When he comes, the dead rise again, the blind can see and the tailless get their furry ass aspect back. I mean seriously, is there a character more annoying in literature?

Even despite my rants about Aslan – who seem to be going on and on once I start – I am reading every book (I’m almost done with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and I do tend to go see the movies. To, you know, see what they did and stuff. See how they made a non-epic, poorly written essay into a poorly executed epic masterpiece (in the case of the first movie). Beause here’s the deal with The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe: while the movie was enjoyable and quite magic, some of the set pieces looked flimsy and unreal, killing everything it had hoped to build.

However! It is with joy in my heart I can say that Prince Caspian has been turned into an epic movie that’s so immersive it’s actually – dare I say it – exciting. If, of course, you can forgive them for the first half. You know, the half that was in the book?

Losing Faith

C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian is all about doubt and losing faith. This theme was carried over nicely from the books – in fact, it was even enhanced. While the book doesn’t really invest in the children’s psychologies that much, the movie does: Peter’s struggle in faith becomes more of a manly feeling: we can see him giving up hope in Aslan – even though it pains him to do so – and trying to do things the manly way: on his own. Susan’s losing faith has more to do with her interest in the other sex – even though it was carried out a bit too much, I feel – and once again, we could feel the pain it caused her. It was part of growing up.

Lewis never used this approach in this book – in a way, it appears to me that Lewis was underestimating his core public (children) and making the story as straight forward as possible, hoping they would learn something incidentally along the way. The movie takes the viewer more seriously, and hopes they will understand the normal struggles the oldest Pevensies are going through. This not only makes those two Pevensies more interesting, it also makes the viewer long for Aslan’s coming to set things right. Which, in turn, makes Aslan a less annoying character for me.

Poor, poor Edmund

So Susan and Peter became more interesting. That’s good: the only interesting Pevensie in the book obviously was Lucy, seeing how she was always right all along. This leaves us with Edmund, who seems to be the shadow side of the bargain: while the script develops Susan and Peter, it leaves dear little Edmund standing in the cold. This is a point where the book shone: we could see Edmund making up with Lucy for the grief he caused her back in the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. In the movie, this was one sentence – after which Edmund was reduced to comic relief and the necessary two-three sentences for continuity’s sake. What a shame.

In a way, this is perfectly reasonable on behalf of the scriptwriters: Susan and Peter’s big role in the Narnian Chronicles is over, while Lucy and Edmund will be seen again in a later story. In a way, I also had the same feeling about Caspian: there’s a lot more to be told about his psychology. Maybe they’ll leave this for the next movie as well?

135 Minutes

All this psychologizing makes this movie so much better. It also makes it perfectly reasonable that the movie is 135 minutes long. Before the movie started, I wondered how hard it could be to turn a 100 page novel into a 90 minute feature. You wouldn’t even have to cut that much – just dust out the fluff and you have yourself a movie script. What I hadn’t expected, however, was for them to add things like I mentioned before. Obviously the (poorly written) battle scenes would have to be at least fifteen minutes each and contain extra elements, but adding character development to a movie where there was practically none? That was a bold move. A bold move which succeeded and only once broke the Narnian continuity (Seriously – Caspian and Susan?! I see where you’re taking this, but STILL.). A bold move which made the movie a bit longer than it should have (at certain times I was hoping for it to get on with it quickly) but better than my idea of having a shorter feature with no additions.

In all…

Is Prince Caspian better than the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe? In my opinion, it is. Granted, Prince Caspian is less magical – but if you hold that against the movie, you’re not giving the stories themselves a fair treatment. Prince Caspian – the book – is a darker story, a harder story, a story with less magic but more punch. That’s also the way this movie is. On the other hand, it’s so much more interesting than they made the first movie. There is so much more stuffing in this turkey, making it taste so much better!

Oh, and there’s no rocks that looked like styrofoam. Seriously, for those praising the production values of the first movie, you really oughta watch it again. It is a good movie, but I can never unsee those rough edges. Ever!

Favourite Quote:
Lucy: I wish you would all stop trying to sound like grown-ups! I didn’t think I saw him, I did see him.
Trumpkin: I… *am* a grown-up.