Beautiful Creatures

When newcomer Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) arrives in the small town of Gatlin, she quickly captures the attention of Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), who only wants to escape what he views as a boring and dead-end town. He quickly gets more than he bargained for, as Lena possesses strange powers that have long kept her at a distance from others in her life. Lena and Ethan are drawn together, but their budding romance is threatened by the dangers posed by Lena's being a Caster and her family's Dark powers, for upon her sixteenth birthday Lena must undergo the Claiming, a process that will decide her fate forever: Light or Dark. Also starring Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Viola Davis and Emmy Rossum. Okay, so lets pretend Twilight never existed, just for a second because for some ridiculous reason people are comparing it to the wonderfully gothic Beautiful creatures. Not only can the actors actually do their job and act but the relationship is an innocent and frightening one that actually is light hearted and can make fun of itself unlike the awkward relationship that is Bella and Edwards. Don't get me wrong I went all fan girl for Twilight just like the rest of the world but when I came up for air from the misty vampire craze I saw that it wasn't actually as good as I wanted it to be and now when I look back at it the realtionship between its star crossed lovers actually makes me cringe. So, moving on to the film at hand. I'm a big fan of the books, they're beautifully done and so well written that I've recommended them to everyone I know and a few I don't. The unbelievable cast were everything I wanted them to be and now I can't imagine anyone else playing these characters, Thompsons portrayal of Mrs Lincoln/Sarrafine was amazing while Mrs. Lincoln was an awful God-fearing Southern disaster that most women would like to bitch slap, Sarrafine was deliciously evil and despite this one of my favourite characters for how she embraced it. Emmy Rossum is without a doubt one of my favourite actresses and how she played Ridley Duchannes can only be described as perfection, I've always loved Ridley because she knows who she is and isn't ashamed, kind of like Sarrafine in that way. Rossum makes Ridley more human than seen in the book and I think by doing this she creates a character that the audience can understand and lets be honest, a beautiful girl with powers riding around town in a red convertible is someone we're gonna like or at least enjoy. Overall, the acting was amazing, however what let this film down was the script and the editing - which a lot of YA adaptions are suffering from at the moment- everything is extremely rushed trying to cram in as much as possible, which is a shame because the world of Beautiful Creatures is one that is perfect for screen. To wrap this up, great acting from all but this film was magically disappointing, 2 1/2 stars.

Warm Bodies

The film focuses on the development of the relationship between Julie (Teresa Palmer), a young woman, and "R" (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie, and how their eventual romance developed throughout. The film is rare for its human characteristics in zombie characters. It is also unusual in such stories because it is told from the point of view of a zombie. Also starring Dave Franco, John Malkovich and Rob Corddry. I read the book of this last year and absolutely adored it, it was funny and quirky, smart and fresh and the characters are well developed and likable. I can say the exact same thing for the film and I might even go as far to say that the film was better. When I heard Warm Bodies was being made into a movie I was excited and itching to see it but I still believed that it was not going to beat the book because they never do. However I was so happy when I came out of the cinema knowing that for once the film industry knows what they're doing with an adaption! I loved Hoult and Palmer as the two leads, they had great chemistry considering this is a zombie-human romance. When hearing the plot for Warm Bodies, I think everyone assumes that its ridiculous and to be honest, it is, but in the best kind of way. The world created is horrificly realistic and you don't have a hard time believing that the zombie apocolypse is a possibility but despite the brain eating, slowly decomposing zombies in this, at its core Warm Bodies is a romance that is truly funny. Men and women will both enjoy this, its oddly romantic, dryly funny and provides just enough scares. 5 out of 5.