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The Woman in Black 2: The Angel of Death. Meh.

Not at all scary. Could’ve been, but there is no there there.

The film starts a few decades after the original in the midst of the bombing of Britain in the second World War. A bunch of school children are sent to the English countryside to escape the bombs. One of the kids had just lost his family in a bombing a couple of days before departure. His teachers act as chaperones expected to look after this orphan as they arrive at Eel Marsh House.

Before continuing the review, let me say how awkward it would be to send kids to the very town where nothing but children death occur because of the haunting at Eel Marsh House. Could someone consult the townsfolk before having plenty of ghost cannon fodder arrive? No, because the dang town was abandoned! (Hint, hint.)

Anyhow, because the original one had a real Woman in Black as the ghost, so does this installment. Yet, the filmmakers don’t bother to make the atmosphere creepy or even Victorian. They just muster up some scares that you can see a mile away. Woman in black in the window. Check. Woman in black in the mirror. Check. Nothing new. Nothing scary.

I will say that they did bring harm to a few of the children which I was not expecting. I thought there was a taboo against showing children harm themselves?

Anyhow, this one didn’t scare me. The first one creeped me out. The second not at all. I need a good scare. The last couple? Disappointing.

2 of 5 stars.

I like art. I guess. I’ve studied it in high school (and college!). I’ve dabbled in it. I’ve been to some of the most renowned museums in the world. I’m not sure my tastes are worth anything, but I do have two SHAG prints, several fading Ragnar prints, and 3 or 5 more prints/paintings hanging on the walls of my house. I like what I see.

I sort of liked the art in Big Eyes, Tim Burton’s latest film about outsider artist, Margaret Keane. She painted big eyed waifs, but had her credit taken by her husband at the time. It is a very low brow style: slightly crude and not professional, but when you see them, you’ll be enraptured by their big eyes, too.

The movie as I mentioned is about the artist trying to find herself after clashing with her husband who has passed off her work as his. It is a lambasting of Walter Keane, the husband, who comes off as megalomaniacal. He’s played by everyone’s favorite dastard, Christoph Waltz, whose portrayal doesn’t seem far from his own character in your mind. He makes Keane somewhat sleazy and somewhat sympathetic because he thought he was an artist himself, but stole the art from his actual artist, his wife.

Sadly, this movie will slowly fade to obscurity as a curio only to be revived the next time we all go for outsider art. Watch it as biopic. Then get me one of her prints!

3 of 5 stars.

I read interviews of Chris Rock about his film, Top Five, which he wrote and directed, in which he said he loved Woody Allen. You can see it in this film.

Top Five is about a comedian who, in his bid to be taken seriously, has done a movie about the slave uprising in Haiti where lots of white people were killed. The comedian is spending the day doing promotional stops with a New York Times reporter tailing him in order to write a profile/review. The comedian is also engaged to a reality TV star and is about the be married in a televised wedding. In this one day, he tries to find out who he is and what he is about.

Chris Rock is most everyone’s favorite comedian. He’s not really any one’s favorite director. I’m kind of interested in what he’ll be doing for the future. I wonder if he’ll follow in Woody Allen’s footsteps. He may become an interesting director.

My top 5: De La, Tribe, Rakim, Grand Puba, Guru.

3 of 5 stars.

Let us hope that the Tolkien estate will make Jackson’s final installment of The Hobbit the last on he’ll do. What he did to the Hobbit book is a complete sham. A sham almost too great that it has taken the sheen off of what he did with the Lord of the Rings. This trilogy will be on par with George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels. A mistake that tarnished the entire enterprise.

Now that you know how I feel about the trilogy, this particular installment of the Hobbit wasn’t half bad. It was one which Jackson has to craft from whole himself because in the book the battle of five armies was done offscreen. Bilbo was in it for a few paragraphs until he got knocked out before witnessing the arrival of the Eagles. There was no were-worms or trolls with missile launchers on their back. There was no Scottish Dain from the Iron Hills on a boar nor Legolas riding a giant troll. There was no Bard from Laketown fighting it out in the ruins of Dale nor Thranduil and his elk tramping on orcs. In the book, it was just Bilbo looking for help from the skies before a rock crashed into his head knocking him out of the fight. That wouldn’t do for Jackson. He had to make the rest of it up. Without any of this, the Hobbit would have been done in one film.

When the movie opens, we find ourselves in the middle of Smaug’s rampage on Laketown. We dive right into it giving us the feeling of walking into the middle of a movie. This is what happens when you try to stretch it out. Then it seems the battle of five armies starts immediately afterwards. This installment felt shorter than the others. Finally it ends with Bilbo back at Bag End. Back at whom this story was about. Jackson muffs it because he forgot that this is Bilbo’s tale and not a tale of the waning days of the Third Age. If he only left it as the story of Bilbo, Jackson would’ve made a better movie. No need to know of the White Council or the battle with the Necromancer in Mirkwood. And we wouldn’t need those Orcs.

This one, I actually liked though.

3 of 5 stars.

Did you know that Into The Woods is an acclaimed Broadway musical? I didn’t know that going in. I’m sure it’s a fine one, but it didn’t win me over as a film.

Into The Woods is an amalgamation of a few of the Grimm brothers fairy tales: Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and the one about the childless baker. All played an important role, but Rapunzel was cut short. Not sure why, but it seemed if Rapunzel’s story was half hearted. She was in it, then she wasn’t.

I believe that this film wasn’t targeted to me.

3 of 5 stars

Reese Witherspoon plays a bad girl looking to find salvation on a long hike up the Pacific Crest Trail in the autobiographical film, Wild. Witherspoon plays Cheryl Strayed, the author of the book from which the film was adapted. Cheryl was dealing with a lot of stuff: the death of her mother, the crumbling of her marriage because of her infidelity and sex addiction, a heroin habit. Cheryl just lived too much of a life for herself. She set about being selfish and it destroyed her. She hoped a long hike alone would enable her to find her way once more.

The film is an interesting one as it unfolds unconventionally. There were lots of intercutting of her on the hike with her life as it crumbled. There was voice over work that hinted at the Cheryl’s mindset on the tramp through the trail. There was jumps back in time to her childhood with her mom. This whole lot showed more and left the viewer to infer what her motivation was for any of her mischief.

We could know what she did: the sex, the drugs. We could know what was the most psychologically damaging: the loss of her mother. We knew she took it out on her husband. We knew she was disconnecting with the world. The movie shows what, but can’t explain the why. For that we have to look forward to Cheryl’s explanation.

I’m not sure we got it. She was trying to live up to her mom’s idea, but could not. Why did she have to? Why can’t she be a woman all her own? Why would it take a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail to resolve that?

Perhaps, two or three viewings of this movie will resolve these questions. Maybe reading the book as well. But for all that, this film does a fine job in showing the trials and tribulations of a woman at the crossroads in her life.

3 of 5 stars.