Reviews

I was really anxious to go watch this movie, but I came out of it wondering why I had spent all the money going into a movie that didn't convey half the fright of the book.

The book is epic, the movie fails bluntly. Sure, there are great scenes around, the zombie mountains are fearsome, but it's like they picked the book up and used 1% of it, centering around Pitt's character and that pathetic relationship with his stupid wife.

I'm sure soldiers these days get to call home and chat while trying to survive, but having a wife call you, not really knowing if that call might kill you or not... sorry, I would ditch the idiot as soon as I got home. Of course we could forgive such a thing, but the movie was full of plot holes and felt like they took the less important parts of the book and pasted it there: movie goers need dumbed down crap, eh? Half the movie is about this couple, and the other half is plain silly.

I just don't get where all the money was spent. I mean, sure, I can believe a C-130 taking-off from a carrier. It's been done. It's a stretch, but has been done. Besides it's a zombie movie, but that C-130 turns to an Antonov 12 from scene to scene. Plus, you hardly notice there's a world war, since other than a few scenes with ample outsides, 2/3 of the movie are within doors, the kind of stuff you could make with 1% the same budget.

Was Brad Pitt sucking up all the budget or something? This movie feels like nobody read the book, and got turned into a very lame PG-13 in-your-face action flick relying too much on Brad Pitt and not a lot on anything else.

Read the book, it's way more interesting.

I've been waiting for months for a chance to see this movie, and when you wait for something this much, you run the risk of being let down.

That's certainly not the case of Rebecca Hall's "The Awakening".

I didn't go into this expecting a horror movie and I advise you to do the same, since this is for the most part a movie about personal ghosts and hidden secrets.

Regardless of that, "The Awakening" does deliver in terms of frights, as it contains a lot of moments of high tension and surprise. It's one of those movies where you're not exactly shocked but kept on your toes to the point where you're afraid of what's hidden behind the next closed door.

And "The Awakening" achieves this with some tricks and deceptions, but a pleasant lack of clichés. Some of its elements are indeed quite interesting in a "reality within a reality" kind of way you'll understand once you see it.

But what I like about the movie the most is that it just doesn't resort to the usual rainy night and thunderstorm to increase the fright level. No. Amazingly for a movie of this type, "The Awakening" features beautiful scenarios and splendid photography and sound editing. In other words, it has class, and taking into account all the beautiful landscapes, all the more cruel it becomes that such strange events are going on. To the viewer, I suppose this means you'll find yourself spooked in situations where you wouldn't expect anything bad to happen in a regular movie.

So, I would say that if you want a thriller that surprises you and offers the kind of filming you'd expect from a high level drama or historical novel, you really should check this movie out and enjoy it. This one will make you think and wonder. You won't get that often in movies these days.

The Marquis de Sade lived and committed his exploits at a time before imprisonment was a way to "re-educate" criminals. Those who committed crimes were more often than not executed in the public square and by the time the Revolution changed history, Parisians would enjoy their time making tricot and breastfeeding babies in front of the guillotine as head after head got chopped off, with the same kind of pleasure we go to a soccer stadium today.

No television nor radio and hardly any newspaper would be around to expose crimes of pedophilia in the church but we know well they have always been there, well hidden under a polished layer of civilization, well before anyone ever felt the Church should apologize for its acts. Crime, war, perversion were rampant as would be later in the XIX century such cruel things as baby farming. Ironic it is then, that of all the abusers, depraved men and women with power, who committed deeds we today would never accept as civilized but that due to the social arrangements of the day were largely forgiven at the time, Sade was the one to be imprisoned.

The one crucial difference between Sade and his jailers was but one: hypocrisy. He didn't really invent perversion, sexual torture, depravity disguised as a goal. He was not even the first man to practice them all, for we must only ask how many, working under the guise of "God's work", did indeed take less than chaste pleasure when a stripped "witch" was examined, tortured or burnt, or when whole populations of Jews were murdered and rapped. Yet Sade was perhaps the first person to admit to doing what so many did under the mask of "duty" or "righteous" and his single greatest talent was not that he wrote so well or had such a brilliant imagination, but that he knew how much to dig until he reached the core of a person's most intimate temptations.

In doing that, he insulted those to whom the shoe fitted, scared those who discovered new worlds of perversion, excited yet others and all the while exposed a reality that was always there under the surface. This is what the movie so masterfully portrays, as some, embedded with the sense of duty will go to lengths of perversion that Sade never did, others will constantly fight between their education and their desires, while others will embrace carnal pleasure willingly and yet others will forever be two-faced demons.

"Quills" is a brilliant portrayal of the many ways in which his own time touched Sade and of the many ways in which he in turn affected those who read his writings to find either pleasure or their own ghosts. Every single aspect of how many interpretations Sade's writings can be subjected to is well present here, thanks to a very interesting script and excellent acting by a cast that could hardly disappoint, Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix placed in a position where they had a lot of emotions and conflicts to act out and they do in a very intense and even enticing manner. Kate Winslet, in a less turbulent role (at least superficially) also delivers her part well as both a muse, an innocent temptress and a victim. All this certainly due to a very cunning camera work by Kaufmann who uses perspectives and close-ups well to create intensity and curiosity.

This movie is rich and pretty much has it all: love, tragedy, crime, sex (as part of the story instead of as eye candy), comedy, coupled with an ending as ironic as it can get. All in all it will impress you, haunt you and certainly make you really think.

I decided to watch this movie with my girlfriend as we are both animation fans, but in the end I almost fell asleep as midway in the movie my interest in it had faded to nought.

In terms of animation, Donkey Xote is not bad, but that's pretty much the only thing it's got going for it. Characters lack a certain charisma and that's painfully obvious when the collage to Shrek is more notorious, namely with Rucio. This donkey could well be, well, Donkey's twin and I wonder how many kids will get fooled and then disappointed since Rucio pales in comparison.

The story itself is weak, feels rushed with some plot devices ending in seconds, others with a purpose that doesn't seem to exist. Everything also feels dumbed down, with only a few moments where the jokes don't feel cliché and hugely predictable. The characters are thrown at you with little in the way of introduction, their rich background quite absent, and I feel you really don't get many chances to end up relating to most of them.

Sure this movie will be passable for kids, but the beauty of movies like Shrek is that the plots were deep enough with some more adult jokes thrown in to appeal to older audiences. That is something I found this movie quite lacking. Another thing is that Donkey Xote also missed a great opportunity to give children a taste of one of humanity's most brilliant literary works, replacing it with something rather flat.

Now, I'm the kind of horror fan who gets jumpy during a movie and then lets go, but Rec. truly had a lasting impact on me.

I had a couple of jumps while watching movies such as 1408, Wolf Creek, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, 28 weeks…, 30 Days of Night, The Mist, pretty much every zombie movie and Oriental horror flicks, but hardly any of these really had stuck with me long after seeing them.

Rec. is not blood and guts all over the place. Instead it builds atmosphere and goes to your brain more than your eyes, with cuts and fast-forwards that make you anticipate what may go wrong next. Action is frantic, with running and shouting all over the place (too much shouting) but complemented with a very effective feeling of claustrophobia as you really have nowhere to go and the darkness reduces your field of vision to very little (old and effective trick). As the movie goes on, you may convince yourself there's really no way to escape and – as did I – you'll find yourself begging the movie to end fast to put an end to people's misery. I didn't feel this feeling of impending doom or hopelessness with any of the aforementioned movies.

The zombies/infected were not always convincing, but they were grotesque in some details of their presentation, more than their aspect, and how they were dealt with in the absence of fancy machine guns and heroic martial arts. Then there's a twist that will at least make the origin of all the trouble, something you can objectively look at. That's an element that the movie adaptation of "I Am Legend" lacked: zombies were pointless, indistinguishable, no character, no history. Here, since you are in a controlled, tight environment, not in a widespread zombie/virus/vampiric pandemic, and even though most characters don't live that long, the horror is more personal. These are common folks, like those you see every day.

If you really need carnage all the way, you may dislike Rec.. But if horror for you is atmosphere, tension, suspense, rather than witless mayhem, Rec. will almost certainly play with your inner fears and reflexes, sticking to your mind even when you want to forget it.