300 Movies and Counting

300: Rise of an Empire

6.4/10 on IMDb
42% on Rotten Tomatoes
Let me just say: I love Eva Green.

I love her already. Just looking at her I love her. She's perfect.

But WAIT! She's a VILLAINESS?!

I didn't even know it was possible to love her more.

Honestly, she stole the show. The whole time I was just focusing on her. I love her as a cold-hearted villainess; whoever did the casting needs an Oscar.

Okay so back to the movie.

I don't know why it got such bad ratings; I really loved the movie. I mean even if Eva Green wasn't in it the whole concept of it is still amazing. I get that it didn't have as many cool one-liners (à la "This. Is. SPARTA!"), and this may just be my love for ancient history, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the first 300, as well as a separate movie that runs in parallel to those events at the Hot Gates.

It focuses on Themistocles and his attempts to create a united Greece to go up against the Persian army, which is led by Artemisia, a hateful woman with the sole desire of seeing Greece burn.

The majority of the film is set in a battle at sea, so I loved that about it. The visuals and the directing were just amazing. Sure there's a lot of violence and a lot of cover-your-eyes-and-cringe moments, but I guess that's the essence of it. Back in those times, people fought. They didn't just stand there shooting each other, they actually fought with little armour and a lot of very sharp blades. People got beheaded. People had their limbs chopped off. Such was the brutality of Ancient Greece! And that's what makes the film so amazing.

It just doesn't hold back.

Also Lena Headey's voice is so amazing in this. She narrates quite a bit of it and it totally sets the scene. You forget that she's Queen Cersei and you totally buy into this idea of her telling this epic legend as a heroine (and not as some crazy incestual mother with a spoiled king-son).

Sullivan Stapleton, not a very famous actor, is also good as Themistocles, but Gerard Butler in 300 is obviously unbeatable. The powerplay between Themistocles and Artemisia was fantastic, and I loved how little of Xerxes was actually in here (since his throbbingly deep voice and god-like skin are really creepy). The movie was different to the first in that there wasn't much, if any, of that magical stuff that was in the first film. It was quite realistic in that sense, where you just saw people fighting and planning their strategies.

I also really loved the back story they gave Artemisia. I read that in reality, no one really knows the back story of Artemisia or how she made her way to the top of the ladder, befriending Xerxes himself. Not to mention that drawings of her make her seem so lovely, it's even harder to think of what her back story was.

But nonetheless, Eva Green was amazing.

IMDb even states:

"Eva Green was the only actress considered for the role of Artemisia and luckily for the film-makers she agreed to do it as they had no No. 2 choice."

Good spot, guys.

So overall, this film is an absolute MUST SEE! I'm definitely considering buying it on Blu-ray.


Saving Mr Banks

7.6/10 on IMDb
80% on Rotten Tomatoes
I've been pretty hyped up to see this movie; it's about Walt Disney and his efforts to convince Pamela Travers, author of Mary Poppins, to hand over the rights to the novel so he could make a movie out of it. Seems easy enough, but this Pamela Travers is an extremely difficult person, and she's very protective with her story, making it very clear that she doesn't want Walt Disney to turn her story into some weird animation filmed with sparkles and happy endings. It's pretty funny knowing how the actual Mary Poppins film turned out though, since it seems like it became everything Travers hated.

So if you've seen Mary Poppins (and if you haven't I don't know why you're watching this), then it's a pretty funny film. You get all the references and all the songs and you see why Travers resents the idea of it but also how she slowly warms up to them making the film. Some of the lines made me laugh, quite a lot actually, since I read that in real life, Travers hated the film Mary Poppins so much that she was crying in anger during the premiere and she never let Disney touch her stories ever again.

Having said that, I guess I was a bit disappointed with how the film was done. I mean obviously, it was a film about Walt Disney, so Disney would have to produce it, so they would probably want it to seem all happy and stuff. But on the other hand, it really wasn't that great. Disney is known for turning terrible endings into happy endings, and in this case they obviously can't include an author crying because of her regret of letting Disney turn her novel into a whimsical film. It was just a bit upsetting because this was supposed to be based on a true story but they still make it more flowery and heart-warming. Even something like not letting Tom Hanks smoke a cigarette because they didn't want to show a cigarette on a family-friendly movie is just SO DISNEY!

But apart from that, I did like the character development and seeing it slowly unravel to shape Travers' personality now. Honestly, Emma Thompson is a genius; she is so amazing in this role as a snobby, bitchy and very disagreeable woman that it actually makes you uncomfortable listening to her speak! But on the other hand there's Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, who, to be honest, made me feel a bit weird. It just didn't seem right to me that he would be Walt Disney; he seemed so fake (but then again, as I was saying before, Disney fakes a lot of things so maybe this was deliberate? - Although I doubt it).

Another thing was that this film is classified as a drama, but I didn't really feel like I was very impacted by it. It wasn't super touching or anything; I don't think I cried and that's saying something because I cry in everything. I'm not saying I'm completely heartless, because some things from her childhood made me very sad, but it just wasn't as touching as I thought it would be or as the trailer made it out to be. Maybe it was Travers being so annoying that made me not sympathise for anything... But at least it had its funny moments.

So overall, I didn't really find this amazing. It was very hyped up but in the end it just didn't satisfy. I doubt I would ever buy the DVD or watch it any time soon.


Paranoia

5.6/10 on IMDb
5% on Rotten Tomatoes
To end, here's a random movie that my mum picked up from the library. Actually if you look at the cast, it has Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford in it, so you'd think it'd be quite good, but it really wasn't amazing. Even a quick trip to Wikipedia shows that it's classified as a box-office bomb.

Well, to be honest, I knew this before watching it so my expectations were not very high at all. I mainly watched it because I wanted to see Liam Hemsworth act in something other than The Hunger Games.

The film's got an okay storyline; it's about Liam Hemsworth's character being blackmailed into spying on one of his boss' main competitors. Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford act as the two telecom giants that have a very strong rivalry, and eventually Liam Hemsworth's character gets into quite a pickle trying to do this spy work.

As I said, I had low expectations, but this film kind of exceeded these low expectations of mine, so I didn't think it was TERRIBLE. I mean, it definitely was not very clever, but at times it was a bit intense. It definitely was not very thrilling, and I did not really see anyone show signs of paranoia.

I don't suggest watching this, no matter how good and scary Gary Oldman is at being a bad guy.