Erin O'Riordan's Movie Review of 'Beautiful Creatures'

I'm getting really embarrassed by how many movies I've seen lately based on books I did not read. I didn't read Cloud Atlas, Warm Bodies, The Silver Linings Playbook or Beautiful Creatures, but now I've seen all those movies. The next thing in my Netflix queue is the version of Mansfield Park with Jonny Lee Miller, and it's one of the Jane Austen novels that I haven't read. (Which is most of them. I've only read Pride and Prejudice thus far, unless you count Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.)

I do read, I swear. I just can't read everything.

To be honest, when I went to watch Beautiful Creatures, I hoped for a sort of gender-reversed Twilight, with the young woman (Lena) being the powerful supernatural being and the young man (Ethan) being the weak, helplessly enamored mortal. There was some of that in this movie.

It's a dark, sad, beautiful movie with an intelligent, delightfully sass-mouthed heroine and a hero whose pastimes include reading books that have been banned from his small Southern town's library. They can't be together because her supernatural powers are dangerous and she's afraid she might kill him. Beautiful Creatures isn't a Twilight knock-off, though.

Lena is a witch, but she prefers to be called a caster. When she arrives at the single high school in Ethan's town, her classmates accuse her of being a devil worshiper. One of them starts a loud prayer in the middle of their public school classroom, and the windows shatter - for which everyone immediately blames Lena. She's in danger of being kicked out of school.

The actors playing Ethan and Lena are fairly unknown, although the actress's mother is the famed director Jane Campion. Beautiful Viola Davis plays the woman who acts as a foster mother to Ethan since his bio mom died. Jeremy Irons plays Lena's foster parent, her uncle Macon. Macon is a dark caster, but he chooses to be "light" for Lena's sake. Male casters have a choice; female casters are Claimed for either the light or the dark on their sixteenth birthdays. Lena's 16th birthday is rapidly approaching.

Lena's bio mom, Serafine, is played by Emma Thompson. Serafine is supposed to be the most powerful dark caster, and she's convinced Lena will be Claimed by the dark. It seems all the women in their family have been claimed by the dark since an ancestor used forbidden magic to bring her lover, killed in the Civil War, back from the dead. Thus, the family is cursed.

If we've told you once, we've told you a million times, kids: do not use magic to bring a loved one back from the dead. Douglas Clegg told you so in Isis, and J.K. Rowling did again in the three brothers' tale within Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What has been claimed by death is meant to stay dead, because that is way nature works. When our loved ones die, we wish them safe passage to the other world, commend them into the arms of the Goddess and, most importantly, do NOT try to bring them back. Lesson learned, kiddos?

Emma Thompson could tell you that; she was, after all, Sybill Trelawney in the Harry Potter movies. She was also in Sense and Sensibility, in the lovely version with  Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, and Severus Snape -er, Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. Furthermore, she was Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing before Amy Acker took over the role. This all makes her sound very British, but Emma Thompson has some surprising American accent skills.

Jeremy Irons is very good in this, as the loving but imposing Uncle Macon. My favorite Jeremy Irons movie is still The Man in the Iron Mask (loosely based on a Dumas classic I have not read), and in my all-time favorite episode of The Simpsons, "Lisa's Rival," Lisa is challenged to form an anagram of "Jeremy Irons" that describes the actor. (It's much harder than it seems. The best option Wordsmith.org comes up with is, "Jeer, sir? My, no.") Lisa's best guess is "Jeremy's iron."

Uncle Macon thinks of a way to undo the curse, but only at the cost of a great sacrifice. For this reason, although she loves Ethan dearly, Lena is unwilling to be with him anymore. She makes him forget the two of them had ever met. It's heartbreaking stuff. (Yeah, it's a little bit like when Edward abandoned Bella in New Moon.)

The ending only served to make me want more. I liked this a lot, more than I liked Warm Bodies or Silver Linings Playbook. May I have the sequel now, please?

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Guest Post: Book To Film ~ When They Get It Right!!

Having always been an avid reader and very much a massive movie fan, the concept of turning some of my favourite books to movies has been a somewhat tricky subject. How many times have we sat with our friends, neighbours or family and debated the subject of “Yeah it was good, But did you read the book”? Often it can prove to be a swift kick to the nether regions when you watch the absolute nonsense that passes for an adaptation. Then other times they go way too far and make about 9 films that, to be fair, even the trailers looked boring as hell *cough* The Lord Of The Rings *cough*. Don’t get me wrong, they were decent enough films but my god boooooring. I think Peter Jackson was just way too anal when it came to getting that right.

Every now and then however, you get a movie adaptation that just embodies everything the writer strived to convey and the movie encapsulates the complete spirit of the words. Today I would like to talk about one such example that, in my eyes, does the book justice. The book that sprang immediately to mind would have to be Fight Club from Chuck Palahniuk. This man is a great writer and I seriously love his stuff; it is dark, dirty and holds a mirror up to society. He shows us in no uncertain terms who we are right now and where we are headed. Fight Club is no exception.

“If our Fathers are our models for God and our Fathers have bailed then what does that tell us about God” – Tyler Durden

The book tells us the story of Jack or The Narrator. Jack seems to have lost his way and is feeling like he is simply existing; never really awake and never really asleep. He travels from state to state, never really taking a moment and hoping that there will be a mid air collision just to end the numbness of it all plus “Life insurance pays triple if you die in a plane crash.” Until he meets Tyler Durden. 

Tyler is everything that our humble Narrator is not; cool, cocky, confident and above all else…. FREE. Through him Jack learns how to let go. The two men quickly bond and inadvertently start a car park Fight Club: a group session for men if you will. Here you can forget everything you were supposed to be and become everything you want to be.… A MAN. The basement where they stage their “group therapy sessions” soon re-locates to a house and there the Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem. The intention being to show the world that no longer will they sit back and eat the crap forced upon them. 

Palahniuk has stated that this story is for the lonely soul, showing that as a society in 1996 we had become scared of confrontation of any kind. We had become victim to the perfection we as humans strived for. As far as I’m concerned this is truer today than back then.

"We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman [The Narrator] is created."

^—               David Fincher^[3]

In 1999 visionary director David Fincher was man enough to take this book and adapt it to the screen and my Christ what a job the man did! The movie had that same dark and gritty feel to it and served the book incredibly well. He changed only a couple of key scenes from the book and managed to say everything Palahniuk intended with his book. Edward Norton took on the role of The Narrator. Doing so he delivered one hell of a voice over throughout the movie, telling us his tale and his acting was superb as Ed Norton always is. Brad Pitt put in, what I consider to be, the best role he has ever played as Tyler Durden; this guy was cooler than cool. He is one of my all time favourite movie characters, from start to finish and Pitt is excellent. Both of these men play their respective roles so well that when you come to the almost unbelievable twist in the third act you genuinely buy it as realistic.

Combining both of these actors and Fincher at the helm made this one of my all time top 10 movies and it is perfectly accompanied by one hell of a book. Commercially this movie was considered a flop. Maybe due to the harsh criticism that the movie was nothing more than a “violent portrayal of man’s urge to destroy things.” In my opinion this is completely wrong however; there is so much more to Fight Club than that. Critically it put these three men on the map. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for one of Palahniuk’s other books, Choke, when it was adapted into a Sam Rockwell movie.

This is just one example of many movies that totally got it right but for me. It is the one movie that, upon getting it right, really hit a note inside me and almost every male. It shone a light on what we, as a society, had become: an angry generation. Case and point: the London Riots of 2011. As I said, “still completely relevant.”

Other Chuck Palahniuk books I would recommend are Survivor, Choke and Lullaby. As for Fincher, you have to check out Panic Room, Se7en and The Game.

I am currently reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a movie I refuse to watch until I have finished the book.  My god it’s one of the most intense reading experiences I have ever had. Gripping like you wouldn’t believe!

- Haldon365


I suppose I little about me…. What is there to say, I am a work to pay the bills by day and as of late outside my work I am working hard at becoming a Mark Kermode type (with more integrity). My site is still in its baby stages but the three of us just love doing what we doing. Feel free to stop by and see what we are about. 

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For the Fanboys From A Fanboy


Haldon365's Walking Dead/Game of Thrones post

Haldon365's Silver Linings Playbook post

Haldon 365's Zathura review

The Host movie review by CHUNK at 365flicks.com

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What I'm Reading and Watching ~ Mini Update

Construction-related phone company issues in my neighborhood have temporarily taken down my wifi, but while I'm able to connect I thought I'd check in with a short post about what I'm reading and a movie I saw over the weekend.

At book spot #1 (the comfy spot on the couch), I just finished:

Review here. 

Taking its place on the couch will be:

That's my fun paranormal romance. (I hope it's fun. It should be - I've never read a bad Kate Douglas.) In reading spot #2, I have my Serious Literature:

I'm about 100 pages into the sequel to Shanghai Girls, a book that my grandmother, mother and I all read. When I finish it, I plan to read the last book I purchased at Barnes and Noble, which was Divergent by Veronica Roth. (Emma at Bubblymuppet recently read Divergent. And so did A Country Girl's World.)

For review, I'm reading this e-book on my laptop:

This is a new(ish - it took me about a year to get around to reading it) series from the author of Ivan and Marya. When I finish that, I'll read Miss Underworld by Racquel Kechagias, an Australian author, for review. 

The movie I saw on Saturday was Silver Linings Playbook. I liked it. I liked Tiffani; when she said, "There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself," I knew she was a character I could identify with. The whole things was very well-acted, and Jennifer Lawrence is especially talented. It's nice to see her in roles other than Katniss Everdeen (although of course I love Katniss). 

But I am getting a little embarrassed at the number of book-based movies I'm seeing without having read the book first. I think I would like this as a book, though. I might read it some day. I read The Prestige after seeing the movie, and if anything I was glad I'd seen the movie first. 

I don't think I'm going to read the Castor Chronicles series, but I do plan to see the Beautiful Creatures movie in the near future.