Reviews backlog

[alobear]

Crusade by David Weber and Steve White - very much the kind of book I now associate with Weber since reading his Safehold series.  Grand scale conflict between multiple factions, made personal by having sections from the POV of individuals at all levels and on all sides of the conflict.  Whilst it was mostly from the POV of the humans, the Thebans' motivations were made clear and the grey areas of the conflict on both sides were murky enough that nobody was clearly a "bad guy".  I like this in Weber's book - it's much more interesting to be invested in characters on all sides, as the outcome is that much more suspenseful, and it make the whole thing much more realistic.


Cold Comfort Farm - a rental DVD from a couple of weeks ago, which was somewhat odd but quite enjoyable.  The characters were just on the right side of weird for me - Ian McKellan's fire and brimstone preacher was a stand-out, and the character of Flora made for an enjoyable companion through the madness as she attempted to sort out all the problems on the farm and ensure that everyone ended up where they wanted to be.  I may invest in a copy of the book at some point, to see what the differences are.



The Readjustment Bureau - you can't go wrong with a film about magic hats!  Though, whilst the hats were very cool, I have to say they weren't very practical.  As one of the case officers demonstrated, they are rather easy to lose on a windy day, which rather puts the kibosh on making sure the plan continues as it should.  I can imagine there must be a very large department within the bureau to deal with all the paperwork associated with misplaced hats...  Anyway, as long as you can switch off your logic circuits and avoid sitting through the whole thing thinking "But why..." every five minutes, this film is highly recommended.  It has a great cast (really nice to see John Slattery in something other then Mad Men, in which he plays my favourite character), and exciting premise, and the chemistry between the protagonists is convincing enough to believe that they would risk all for love.  Plus, there are magic hats!


I Am Number Four - much like lareinemisere, I really rather enjoyed this.  It's not exactly original stuff, but it was well done for what it was.  The arrival of Number Six improved matters greatly, and I would certainly go to see a sequel, in which she would presumably feature much more than in this one.  The romance side was a bit too Twilight for my tastes (the aliens only fall in love once, and then it's forever - yeuch!), and I found the bad guys a bit too over the top (they usually are in these kind of young adult films), but I really liked the mentor/protector character, and the dog was extremely cool.  My major issue with the film was Alex Pettyfer - don't get me wrong, he did a reasonable job as the teenage alien du jour - but I had expectations of him that were thwarted.  At sixteen, in Stormbreaker, he was one of the most beautiful teenagers I'd ever seen and I was really looking foward to him reaching an age where it wouldn't be wrong for me to lust after him.  Unfortunately, I no longer find him remotely attractive - he's filled out a bit too much, and as 20 playing 17, I didn't find him convincing at all - he looks about 30 to me!  Ah well, I'll just have to keep watching my Stormbreaker DVD in secret...


Lovely and Amazing - this was another rental DVD, ordered because the Empire review intrigued me - Empire's verdict was: "Who’d have thought spending 90 minutes with a bunch of neurotic women could be such fun? An intelligent, unassuming drama that’s never less than enjoyable."  I actually mostly found it quite depressing, since it followed the activities of four female characters, all of whom had severe self-esteem issues and fed off each other's insecurities in a quite painful vicious circle.  There was no sense of hope in the conclusion, either, as none of them resolved their issues and they ended up all retreating back to the same house, where it seemed they would live together in misery for evermore.