Tag: Review

La La Land-an honest review

Posted on by Han_A

la-la-land

This film swept the floor at the Critic’s Choice Movie Awards, Golden Globes AND the Academy Awards (Oscars). Naturally, I therefore had high expectations. For those yet to see it, I’ve decided to do an honest breakdown of what I thought.

La La Land stars Ryan Gosling (Sebastian) and Emma Stone (Mia), who have in the past starred together in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid Love. The banter between these two characters made me smile throughout. Although, I’ve only really seen Gosling play reserved characters, Stone seemed in her zone with her character Mia who is goofy, passionate and dreamy. The scene where she is dancing to the music Gosling’s jazz ensemble is playing, was a great highlight.

Of course, this is a musical so it wouldn’t make sense for me to review it w/o mentioning how I felt about the vocals and soundtrack. Emma and Ryan don’t have the most exceptional voices in the world but I felt this made it sincere and translated the emotion much better. For soundtracks buffs I would recommend ‘City of Stars’ by Gosling and Stone and ‘The Fools who dream’ by Stone.

Throughout the film bright vivid colours flood the senses, mixed with nice American scenery. This gives a fantasy element to it all- a feeling sealed by the repeated scene of the two main characters dancing along a star studded background. This is certainly a film built for aesthetics and that ‘feel good’ factor- there (to me) isn’t any hidden or embedded meaning we should be looking for. I state this specifically because before watching the film I did read a review talking about the White erasure of Jazz’s black history. Watching it now, I disagree simply because I take La La Land to be a surface level film. It wasn’t trying to enact history and therefore does not need to carry the burden of historical accuracy.

Personally, I saw the film as a fight between reality and dreams, with Mia and Sebastian’s relationship on the border of the two. Mia tries throughout the film to reconcile her dreams with reality in terms of her relationship with Sebastian and her theatrical dreams. In contrast, Sebastian puts his dreams on hold when reality calls.

Overall, this film certainly makes an enjoyable watch; I would say 4.8/5. My only criticism would be that there could have been a clearer direction for the film in terms of plot. I can’t even say the plot’s quality is sacrificed for character development because I didn’t see huge character transformation (of even Mia or Seb) within the film. I mean, yes, their circumstances definitely do change by the end but whether they themselves do is not really known. Nevertheless, despite the deliberate uncertainty at the end you can leave the cinema feeling satisfied; which is all that matters in the end, right?

*Picture from: http://www.empirecinemas.co.uk/synopsis/la_la_land/f5293 *

Book Review: ‘With Malice’ by Eileen Cook

Posted on by Han_A

The blurb describes this book as a ‘chilling psychological thriller’ and to be honest, that was enough for me to grab it off the shelf. I’m assuming the title ‘With Malice’ is almost an antithesis of the term ‘With Love’. Although it could refer to the legal concept of malicious intent too; both of which would be very relevant to the novel’s plot.with-malice-book-cover

The narrator and protagonist is Jill Charron an 18-year old student who describes herself as being quite shy but very intelligent and academic-focused. Upon first impressions she is pretty likable and honest. I personally, find her relatable too since she is very academic and intellectually curious. An example of her honesty shining through is when Jill moves in to a treatment centre and assumes her room mate Anna Lopez goes to a school with metal detectors. Thus, indicating to the reader these assumptions are likely due to Anna’s implied Hispanic background.

Cook puts us in an interesting position where we follow Jill’s train of thought as she gradually pieces together details of the accident that caused her injuries. In each chapter along with Jill’s narrative we gain access to police interview transcripts, applications etc.  This is clever, allowing the reader to play detective but also avoiding the issue of the reader being forced to trust an ‘unreliable narrator’ by giving us a second source of information to compare to Jill’s version events. In  addition to this, each chapter ends with something important Jill learns within the chapter; and as cliche as it sounds, it really does make you want to read on!

Nevertheless, despite these positive points, I found that by the time I had nearly reached the end of the book Jill STILL hadn’t remembered much about the accident. I understand the author was maybe trying to be realistic since I’m sure it takes ages for patients in real-life to recover from amnesia. However, this is a book and we don’t have ages. Even the way the recollection of events (when it finally happened) was done was quite annoying because after waiting for so long we don’t even know for sure if its a true memory, a dream or a ‘fake memory’. Suspense is good but by the end of this book I didn’t really feel like it was effective, I was just annoyed and wanted answers. This alone dropped my rating from a 5 to a 3.5/5.

 

Review: The Suicide @ The National Theatre

Posted on by Han_A

Hey guys!

So on Saturday, I went to watch a play currently showing at The National Theatre called ‘The Suicide’. I’ve decided to share some of my thoughts on its content and execution.

Without giving too much away, the play deals with Sam Desai- who after losing his benefits and consequently facing relationship difficulties becomes suicidal. Throughout the play, various characters are introduced who encourage him to go forward with the suicide –  each having their own agenda. The play wasn’t afraid to throw humour at such a dark theme which in turn made the audience feel more comfortable.

The play does (perhaps indirectly) raise some interesting points. Firstly there’s the opportunism that seems to come with death. Most people around Sam saw a beneficial opportunity in the event of his death. A good real-life example of such opportunism would be of Nicole Brown Simpson’s death in which the famous OJ trial stemmed from. Her supposed ‘friend’, Faye Resnick, went on to write a tell-all book about Nicole less than a year after her death. In fact, several of the parties involved with the trial had related book deals. It seems like the dead are never truly dead- they are continuously exploited by the living for self-beneficial reasons. With each death whether it be of a celebrity or a sensationalised murder comes the numerous press, tell-all documentaries, and book deals. And let’s not forget the crappy Lifetime movie. It really never stops!

In a scene after the opening of the play, Sam is about to jump from a rooftop and some teenagers on the estate eagerly spur him on from below. There have been many real life incidents like this where people about to jump off bridges and have actually been cheered on or heckled by people below. This weird commercialisation of death (if you like) is highlighted in the eccentric character of the documentary filmmaker who is keen on filming Sam’s last days (including the suicide.) He fails to realise (as the media does on many occasions) that this is a real life he’s filming. Instead, it’s just fodder he hopes to feed to the world for recognition and to ultimately establish name.

Final Verdict: 3/5. I found it very amusing and it covered very relevant themes. However, the ending wasn’t completely cathartic and as satisfying as I expected it to be.

The play is running until June 25, 2016 at The National Theatre in Southbank, South London.