Day 97: Moonrise Kingdom

Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) are young kids in love who just want to be together. They decide the only way that can happen is if they run away together. But naturally the adults involved are worried and they make up a search party to find them, which is populated by khaki scouts, a lonely police officer, an unhappy married couple, and Social Services. Runaway children would be bad enough but there’s a storm coming that makes it all a tad more dangerous.

The acting in Wes Anderson films always takes me a little while to get used to but once I do, I end up enjoying it. The film isn’t too flashy, it’s just a simple story of love and friendship. With a twist of scouts and a secluded town to make it a bit more interesting.

“I love you but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

7/10

Day 96: Beetlejuice

When sickeningly adorable couple, Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis), die they come back as ghosts who are stuck forever in their house. That would be fine but newcomers have arrived and they want to change the place up. It’s up to Adam and Barbara to try and scare them away but when they make friends with the daughter of the new people, it makes matters a little more complicated.

With all the other dead people we see it clearly shows how they died (suicide, cut in half, etc.) but Adam and Barbara just look normal. They drowned, so surely their ghostly forms would be all bloated from the water? I realise having them be bloated throughout the whole film would probably be rubbish but you can’t have everyone else depicted in the way they died and just ignore it completely with them. I think this is my only problem with the film?

Fun fact: in any film if there’s something about the number of times you have to say/do something for a scary character to appear, I will actively stop myself from saying/doing the things. Part of me thinks it’s silly because it’s fiction. The other part of me thinks that there’s no sense in risking it, y’know?

7/10

Day 95: The Island

Ok, so the picture isn’t technically from the film but there were just too many pictures of Ewan McGregor and not enough of Scarlett Johansson to choose from. My rules.

Curiosity leads to a hell of a lot of explosions. When Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) has some questions about the facility where he lives, it leads him to discover that he and the other residents of the facility are clones who are being harvested for their organs. Pretty grim but he rallies like a champ and teams up with Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) to escape and make people aware of what is going on.

There is so much running in this film. I mean, I was exhausted just watching them. And explosions all over the shop, but it is a Michael Bay film so that is expected. Some of the fighting scenes I could believe in, y’know, they might’ve happened. But then there’s the bit when Lincoln and Jordan are on the side of the building 70 floors up and they fall off and survive. Wouldn’t have happened. I know it’s a film about cloned people yaddayadda, but you’ve got to keep parts of it believable. Loved the fighting though. Pretty much all of my notes centre around how much of a badass Scarlett is. I’m not even sure what the notes refer to since all I wrote was “Oh my, such a badass” (and other variations along that line) but I’m sure the scenes were great.

I’m not really sure what would happen at the end. All the other clones escape the facility and it’s all pretty dramatic with them running about. But what happens next? Do they just chill with their originals? When the doctor was explaining, he said something about them being like children, so what would they do in the world? Although saying that, he did also say that they removed the sex instinct and that clearly didn’t work considering Lincoln and Jordan violate the proximity rules, if you know what I mean. I don’t know, would quite like to know what they did after they escaped. Probably had lots of sex.

6/10 

Day 94: Despicable Me

Gru (Steve Carell) is losing his status as the greatest villain to new kid, Vector (Jason Segel). To try and regain his power he plans to shrink the moon and steal it but in order to do that he has to use some cookie-selling orphans. Initially he is reluctant to get close to the girls but they melt his heart and he ends up caring for them a great deal.

I quite like this film even though it’s entirely predictable that he’ll end up loving the girls. It’s funny and sweet, what’s not to like?

7/10

Day 93: Grosse Pointe Blank

A professional assassin goes back to his home town and tries to rekindle the relationship with his high school girlfriend.

Martin (John Cusack) ditched Debi (Minnie Driver) on prom night and then took off for 10 years with no word. He then waltzed back in to her life and tried to start up the relationship as if he hadn’t just run off for a decade. And she seems remarkably alright about the whole thing. Then she stumbles across him just having killed someone and has a little freak out. That doesn’t last too long though and she accepts that that’s just what he does. Their relationship seemed a little bit too far-fetched for me, I just don’t believe she’d have taken him back so easily and then when she saw that he killed someone that didn’t seem to bother her all that much. I understand they were in love 10 years before but he ran out on her and she thought all that time that she’d done something to make him take off. It all just seemed a bit too easy and quick.

I’ve always thought I could be an assassin. Not because I have any thoughts about killing people, I just think that if the money was right and the target was a bastard then I’d not have a problem with it.

8/10

Day 92: Breakfast At Tiffany's

Immediately upon moving into his new apartment, Paul (George Peppard) meets Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) and is instantly taken with her. He spends time with her and seems to understand who she is, eventually loving her for it. Although I’m sure he probably loved her right away, really.

Holly seems a bit fascinating, I’m not at all surprised that Paul loves her. I think it’s great that she does what she wants when she wants to do it. Obviously it’s hard for her and she doesn’t let anyone get close to her but I think that’s good, in a way. It means that eventually when she does let someone in then they’ll be the best because she won’t just let it be any old person. And that’s what happened here. Paul doesn’t seem like a rat or a super-rat, like all the other men she comes across. He genuinely cares for her and wants the best for her. Definitely pleased they got together at the end. In the rain! How wonderful.

For some reason I wasn’t expecting to like this film (I seem to say that a lot) but it was great. As terrible as it may sound, I’ve never actually seen a film with Audrey Hepburn in it before but she was wonderful.

9/10

Day 91: FernGully: The Last Rainforest

Humans are bastards who want to destroy the trees that the fairies live in. But thankfully one human gets shrunk down and realises that trees are actually pretty great and we might want to keep them around. Also, there’s a bat.

I’m not sure how I’ve never seen this film before, everyone is always going on about it. I think maybe I’ve seen it because I definitely remembered seeing the monster machine before but clearly as a child the rest of the film was lost on me. Definitely glad I watched it though, I enjoyed it. Might not watch it again though, once seems like enough.

7/10