Star-Crossed Teenagers

Beautiful Creatures is a love story between two teenagers Ethan Wate (Aldren Ehrenreich) and Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) in Gatlin,SC.  Lena is a 15-year old witch who is destined to turn dark side on her 16th birthday and her family hopes to find a way for her not to.  Ethan falls in love with her and slowly finds out her secret and realizes that he has been dreaming about Lena for a long time.  There are some nice cinematography  throughout the movie, however the story is a bit slow at times and can put one to sleep.  The southern accent was so exaggerated at times that it was nerve wracking and I lived in South Carolina for a time.  This movie has been compared to the Twilight Saga and although I have read the books and have seen all the movies and agree that the writing in that series wasn't that great, it did give you more to keep you going with then this movie.  But that is this reviewers opinion.  The supporting casts, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis and Emma Thompson who are tremendous actors couldn't do anything to put fire to this story and you can see how they committed themselves to this movie.  This movie is worth seeing the costumes and some of the graphics but little else.

An Unexpected Hero

Peter Jackson's The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey was surprisingly entertaining for me especially since I never saw any of the Lord of the Ring movies.  I also liked that the story was explained for novices like me and I was able to follow along and look forward to watching the trilogy movies.  The story starts off with Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit, sixty years in the future writing his story about his unexpected adventure with Gandolf the Wizard and thirteen dwarves who are trying to reclaim their lost dwarf kingdom of Eredor.  It was overtaken by Smaug the dragon many years ago.  The new dwarf king, Thorin, who has unresolved issues with the elves for deserting his people many years ago and a strong desire to regain the dwarves home, leads this group through Middle Earth where they run into many dangers along the way.  One of my favorite scenes is with the goblins.  The visual effects of that scene was fantastic and of course the cinematography was great throughout the movie.  With so many shots done aerially and the movement of the camera, looking at some of the scenes was a bit dizzying and some scenes can make you feel a bit uneasy.  The beginning is long but that's Peter Jackson's signature.  However, once you get pass that, it is a fun movie. The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey is definitely worth it's weight in gold literally.