I'm Mary Poppins y'all!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

8.3/10 on IMDb
87% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
Watch it in cinemas;
I'm buying the DVD;
Low-energy entertainment

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the first Guardians movie;
Want a fun and banter-filled movie;
Want to watch a beautifully colourful superhero movie

Our favourite jackasses are back to save the universe again, finding out more about Peter Quill's father along the way.

I remember when I first saw the trailer to Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and I just thought it would be the stupidest, most try-hard movie ever. Then I watched the film and was pleasantly surprised, but still didn't love it. I've since seen it maybe another one or two times and I have ended up loving it a whole lot more.

So I went in to Volume 2 with really high expectations, and it did not disappoint.

The first thing that we obviously need to discuss is the soundtrack. Could the soundtrack live up to Awesome Mix Vol. 1? While I don't think any of the songs are the new Hooked on a Feeling, I thought that Awesome Mix Vol. 2 was great! Anyone who knows me knows how much I love me my karaoke, and it honestly took so much self-restraint not to sing along in the theatre.

The film is also, I think, funnier than the first one. I don't know if this is just because of the other cinema-goers laughing a lot (the guy in front of me looked like he was having a seizure every time he laughed at a one liner), because I don't think I watched the first Guardians in cinemas and so I didn't have that added effect of others laughing around me to make me laugh.

But regardless, I found it hilarious. The actors in this movie have such great comedic timing and facial expressions, I can't imagine anyone else playing these whacky characters.

It was also surprising that Drax was the source of a lot of the humour in this film, with Peter taking on a more serious role in his quest to understand his father.

Baby Groot was so adorable in this but dayum they really capitalised on how much we liked the baby Groot scene at the end of the first Guardians! He was really funny, but I'm glad he doesn't really stay a baby for too long. By the end of the film I was getting worried that we would keep seeing him in future movies and Marvel would follow the dreaded epidemic that is the Minions.

Baby Groot and other scenes made it feel like they were milking out certain jokes for way too long, trying to just exhaust all the potential that a joke had.

This made the film seem really really long, and it was! Its runtime is 2 hours and 18 minutes long, yet it felt even longer, not just because they dragged out jokes, but they also dragged out a lot of scenes (for example the opening credits scene, getting Baby Groot to find the prototype, etc.), and they had a lot of plot elements that they were cramming in together.

This made the pacing feel kind of weird, because they had a lot of unnecessarily long scenes that didn't add much to the plot, however since even the slow scenes were funny and/or badass, it wasn't too bad. The film did feel a bit choppy, and sometimes the scene transitions were a bit awkward and roughly edited. The first film is a tighter film in terms of plot and editing but as I said I still did really enjoy this one.

In terms of the characters, we have a lot of additions to the team. Old characters like Yondu and Nebula have a bit more of a focus so we can see their background a bit, and I loved this because I was really interested in the relationship between Gamora and Nebula from the first movie.

Yondu's story was... decent I guess. At first I didn't like the added focus on him, but by the end his character arc is pretty interesting. I'm surprised at how well they integrated his character though, and it was still very touching. I also love his arrow-whistling, and it gets even more epic here.

I also started getting really sick of seeing the Sovereign people keep popping up, but they did allow for a really cool quantum asteroid belt scene so I'll give them a pass.

And finally, stuff got really weird with the Peter's dad plot, though. I won't talk about spoilers but it just got really weird and a bit too spiritual, and in the end it was just so bizarre and insane. It was disappointing because I think we were all very curious to find out more about Peter's heritage, and it just didn't seem to fit in with the tone of the rest of the film.


But overall I loved this movie. It's not as good as the first one, but it was colourful, vibrant, retro, and hilarious. The story line was a bit weak, but the characters and the lore made up for it. I love space movies because there is an endless world of imagination and possibilities out there, and this film definitely made use of that. The songs here are great, and it's just a feel good movie that makes you leave the theatre with a huge smile on your face.


A few side notes:

I got some serious other-movie-vibes from this (e.g. the Star Wars' asteroid scenes; some of the end fight scenes reminded me of when Harry grabbed Voldemort and they fought while apparating through Hogwarts; and I heard what sounded like a bit of the Mad Max soundtrack in the opening scene, and one scene with Gamora even looked like it had Mad Max's colour schemes)

I'm so sad I can't whistle because that means if one day I find Yondu's arrow, I wouldn't even be able to control it.

Kurt Russell and Jeff Bridges are the same person now. Seriously.

Angsty Groot!

Gothic Michelle Yeoh... not a fan.

Loved all the dialogue between Drax and Mantis

I miss my f***ing dog. Goodnight.

Life (2017)

7.0/10 on IMDb
68% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Signed, sealed and recommended by Chloe;
Watch it in cinemas

Watch it if you: Want to see a pretty exciting movie about being trapped with a terrifying alien in space;
i.e. Want to see something quite similar to Alien;
A NASA crew are sent to retrieve and analyse a sample of Martian soil. When they discover that the sample harbours some microscopic life, the entire planet rejoices. Yet, they soon discover that otherwordly life may be the very thing to bring death to mankind.

Watching the trailer, I was expecting a very by-the-numbers rehash of Alien, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by this.

Don't get me wrong, it is heavily inspired by Alien, but hey, we all loved Alien, right? So this was actually very entertaining.

It's also not as unoriginal as I thought it would be. With every Alien movie, we know what to expect: Astronauts come into contact with Alien. Alien bursts out of astronaut. Alien grows bigger. Alien goes on a killing spree. Everyone dies except the main female lead and maybe the robot on board. Cue the end credits.

While this is what you see and expect from all Alien movies, with Life, we don't know what this alien is like. We don't know how it will grow to look. We don't know what it's capable of, how it will kill people, and whether it will leave any people left to survive. And even if we do know that one person were to survive, we don't even know who the main character really is until towards the end. Of course, if you look at the posters and cast for this film, there are three contenders, but who, if any, will survive? This was cool because we got semi-equal amounts of focus on each character, and you actually feel for them when they die (rather than in Alien where their death happens off screen or you just don't care too much about them).

So I think it's refreshing in a way to have a movie like this where we expect to get elements of Alien, but we still don't know exactly what to expect.

It was nice to see they took a slightly different approach to certain things when comparing it to Alien.

Firstly, having a different type of alien concept thought up, will always be refreshing. The idea of how this alien moved around and even grew was cool. They had an interesting notion put forth about how all of the alien's cells were exactly the same, and did every single function. Which meant that every cell served the purpose of an eye, or a brain, or a heart. That was really intriguing, but unfortunately that all went out the window when they decided to give the Alien a face. It didn't need one, because every cell did everything, so that felt a bit stupid.

Also, there was a rumour going around that Life was a prequel to Venom, coming out in 2018 and also by Sony. Let me just say, it's totally not. And also, why would they make a prequel without even linking it back to the Spiderman series? That would be so stupid!

Secondly, this felt more grounded in reality than Alien; the alien came from Mars, we sent people to study the sample, humans the world over Skyped in to ask the astronauts questions, and the public even named the alien (surprisingly not Alieny McAlienface).

It's still a sci-fi movie, but it's not some crazy thing that could only happen in deep space hundreds or thousands of years later, like it all does in Alien. The stuff that happens seems like it actually could happen right now given our limited knowledge of extraterrestrial life, as well as the bureaucratic nature of space missions.

One different thing that I loved about this film were the death scenes. They were horrific and I liked how they each died in different sort of ways; it made each death quite surprising. The R-rating on this (in America, at least) is not just for the language, but for the violence as well.

The acting isn't all that phenomenal, but it's not a drama so I can't really fault the actors. They did well with what they had to work with. Glad to see Rebecca Ferguson again. Ryan Reynolds always a pleasure. Jake Gyllenhaal's character was a bit weird in this film though - not sure if I can back their decisions to make him have that sort of characterisation. It was, odd.

The visuals were great, although the opening scene is a bit messy and kind of all over the place when they were trying to make it a really epic long-sequence shot. The score at times seemed all over the place, and there were a few plot elements that were questionable.

But in the end it's still exciting, different, and hard to expect what will happen next. It has beautifully violent and gory death scenes, and is an enjoyable watch for fans of the alien in space sci-fi thriller genre, and even if you weren't, I think it would still be a decent watch.

Click for a few SPOILER notes:

- Ryan Reynolds dying early on was such a shocker! And his death was so gruesome, my mum couldn't watch it
- The alien slowly eating the scientist's legs was also a bit of a shocker, but I was wondering why they kept focusing on his legs so much (and with sinister music playing)
- I did NOT see that ending coming, although my mum did call it. I thought it'd follow the Alien trope and have a typical female-lead survivor
- Maybe when the alien arrives on Earth, it suddenly becomes more like Venom, lol.
- What would the worst way to die be:
--> having your internal organs being eaten and blended up into mush,
--> drowning in your space suit's coolant,
--> however Sho died (I can't remember),
--> having your legs being eaten by the alien (although I guess he couldn't feel it),
--> flying off into outer space knowing the rest of Earth is doomed,
--> or landing on Earth with the alien about to strangle you knowing that the entire planet is doomed now?
I still have to go with Ryan Reynold's character's death.

Tale as old as time

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

7.8/10 on IMDb
71% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Low-energy entertainment;
Watch it in the cinemas (maybe, for the costumes and such)

Watch it if you: Love the original;
Don't mind autotuned Emma Watson;
Want to see beautiful costumes and set pieces;
Just want a fun and enjoyable movie without needing to overthink anything
Beauty and the Beast is the live retelling of the classic Disney animation that we all know and love, starring our favourite Stockholm Syndrome victim.

I remember when Emma Watson was first cast as Belle, the beautiful bookaholic that falls in love with the tormented and cursed Beast. Yes! everyone cried, she's PERFECT! I, too, was one of these, and I was very keen to see the stunning Emma Watson play the Disney princess whose name literally means beauty.

Recently, though, I've been seeing the trailers and the posters for this film, and I just couldn't get hyped about it. Emma Watson looked... bland. She looked awkward in the yellow dress, which didn't look that fabulous, and in some posters, she even looked like she had a huge hunchback! Look at this poster if you don't believe me. This isn't The Hunchback of Notre Dame! I cried out in protestation.

So, I went in to the movie with pretty low expectations. I just couldn't be blown away by Emma Watson, the CGI looked a bit off, and Ewan McGregor's French accent was just really... bizarre.

Having all these low expectations, the film ended up... alright.

Like it's a pretty decent film and was actually quite good compared to what I thought it would be, but there is no beating the original animation. It's nowhere near it.

Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable, and it's fun, and I had a pleasant time (apart from a few things but more about that later).

And the costuming and the set pieces were great, but the movie doesn't offer much else apart from that.

I may be a bit biased though because near the beginning, the film starts off with one of the best songs ever (although I have a tendency to say that about pretty much all of the Disney songs that exist): Belle (Little Town). This is such an excellent song in the original, and yet here we are straight away introduced with Emma Watson singing. Except, it's autotuned.

And I think that just killed the rest of the movie for me, because every song she sang just sounded terrible. When she sings notes within her speaking range, she sounds decent. But when she goes a little bit higher than that, it starts to sound so weird.

And it's a shame because every other actor in this can sing. No one needs autotune here. And you can just see how hard they would have worked for that role, and how if they couldn't hit a particular note they wouldn't be autotuned, they would just be recast.

But Emma Watson, with her good looks and popularity, gets a role that 1. She doesn't look that great in, as I established already, and 2. she can't sing properly in. And she gets top-billed.

And remember how she turned down La La Land for this? Can you imagine if she was autotuned in La La Land?! Like I'm pretty sure Damien Chazelle wouldn't do that but still, thank heavens she didn't do La La Land.

As for the other songs, like Be Our Guest and Beauty and the Beast... they seemed a bit slower than the original ones, and sometimes they felt a bit anticlimactic. Be Our Guest looked amazing with all the dishes and food flying around though. That was very cool to see come alive. I don't know what it was with Beauty and the Beast but it wasn't impressive to me. Maybe Audra McDonald should have sung it instead of Emma Thompson (although we do need the grandmotherly British accent). But they are great songs so they still get a pass.

They had a few original songs thrown in there, and I quite liked them. The one that Beast sings is fantastic. One of them didn't have as much autotuning for Emma Watson, so I did quite like it.

And now that my clear bias for the rest of the film is out there, I'll try and be a bit more objective.

The actual directing of the film felt a bit flat and dull. The film is a bit long, running at 2 hours and 20 minutes, although some of the bits that they add in are actually quite decent. Although they do add in a few details that improve on the shortcomings of the original animation, and help to explain a few more things.

For example, why did the hag curse a little boy? Of course a little boy would be an arrogant prick!

And, how come no one remembered the prince in his castle?

Why does everyone love Gaston that much? Are they being paid to compliment him?

And, most importantly, Wait, isn't this Stockholm Syndrome?

All these thankfully get addressed or changed in the film.

And yeh, you might make your arguments against Stockholm Syndrome in the original animated movie, but it doesn't matter here because they actually get rid of it in this film! They've helped develop the character of Beast, and it makes sense that they would fall in love here.

But apart from that, the actual dialogue of the film sometimes felt a bit flat. There were quite a few good laughs here and there, but a lot of it seemed really odd.

As I said, the huge plus is the costuming and the set pieces, but then next to that you still have some weird CGI that isn't convincing, and then subpar songs and autotuning. Emma Watson looked great as peasant Belle but when she was wearing the yellow dress it just didn't look as beautiful as she could be. Overall the film was decent; it was enjoyable and fun. But it could have been so much more. In fact, it already is so much more, in animated form.

A few side notes:

Luke Evans is the perfect Gaston.

Malaysia and Russia got all their panties in a twist for that? Gay Lefou wasn't even that obvious until sort of a bit near the end

Turn back into a clock! Turn back into a clock!

Beast pelting Belle with that massive snowball was hilarious