Movie Quick Takes: Belle, Into the Woods, and The Giver

Yikes! I am behind on my reviews! I have several books and movies I would love to share with you. I prefer to give books their own individual blogs, so I will first try to go succinctly, in one post, through the latest movies I've watched.

Belle on DVD
This period piece, a true story, is fascinating and romantic: a great date movie but also an interesting history lesson. It tells the tale of a girl born to a white father and black mother and raised in luxury as a Victorian lady in 18th century England. Of course, the slave trade was in full swing then, and she was accepted by very few into society and unlikely to make a match despite the inheritance left her by her father. She was free and independent but still burdened by the laws and prejudices of the nation. At the same time, her uncle and guardian was under pressure as Lord Chief Justice to make a ruling on the drowning of a shipment of slaves, specifically on whether or not they were insured cargo. The question is, how can you insure something as priceless as life, and if it is insured, is it no more valuable than cargo? Dido Belle finds herself facing a similar question in her personal life. Though not a slave, is she still property, just a woman to be bought by the man who needs her money? Or is she free to have more...to find love?

It's not a story about overturning slavery, but it's one of those that led up to it and one I'd never heard before. Rated PG, it's not a hard look at slavery, like 12 Years a Slave, but a look at the other side and in between, at the good people who fought for what was right and strove to make a real difference bit by bit. Those stories are worth telling, too. The movie is also a reminder of the times that gave us stories like those of Jane Austen's, stories about convention and the rules of society and young ladies striving to make matches and young men inheriting or having to seek out their fortunes by other means, a world very different from our own. Seen in the light of this story, this culture is sometimes amusing and sometimes ridiculous. It's Jane Austen...but not quite. Entertaining but certainly thought-provoking.

Into the Woods in the Theater
The music is memorable enough that I recognized songs from my days of listening to them online, when I worked at a bookstore and had never heard of Into the Woods. This musical was adapted from the stage for the screen and boasts such talents as Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, and Anna Kendrick, just to name a few. The costumes are unique, if a bit edgy. The setting is lush. The music is at times haunting, which is appropriate for a movie about a collection of fairy tale characters crossing tales in the woods, and sometimes it is downright funny. There is a song sung by two prince brothers as they frolic on a waterfall, and it was one of the highlights of this particular viewing experience for me. But the story is depressing and kind of sadistic. The fairy tales we know start as we expect. Cinderella gets to dance with a prince at the ball. Jack brings goodies down the beanstalk. Rapunzel's prince climbs her hair to offer her true love. Red Riding Hood faces the wolf. The story that ties them all together is that of a baker and his wife who are collecting items to break a witch's curse and thereby have a baby.

But the fairy tales end up diverging from happiness in ways the Grimm brothers would applaud. And since I'm not a fan of things grotesque or immoral (The movie is rated only PG, but I found some of the ideas disturbing enough and certain themes mature enough to warrant a higher rating. Planes is rated PG. I don't think I'd take younger than middle school to this myself.), I wasn't as enthralled as the music tried to make me be. The message of the movie ends up being very modern, which is to say, it sounds good on the surface but doesn't have a lick of depth or sense. It's contradictory. It says, "Anything goes." It says, "What happens in the woods stays in the woods." I do realize that some of that absurdity is meant to be there, but I also know that people latch onto meaning in music. And there just isn't any consistent meaning here. I heard mixed reviews about this movie before I went into it and thought I might like it better than what I was hearing. At least, I wanted to see for myself before judging it. And though I don't love witches, that doesn't even bother me as much as immorality and the pretentiousness of one of the ending songs that appears to give meaning to the movie but contradicts everything else the movie seems to be about. I'm rather sad the movie didn't turn out better. I wish it would have ended halfway through with a more positive, less egotistical message.

The Giver on DVD
This movie was so surprising. I'd heard a good opinion of it from someone I respected, but it was out of theaters so fast I didn't have a chance to see it then. I shouldn't have been surprised it would turn out so wonderfully, but since I've read vast amounts of dystopian fiction, some with really unique premises, I just wasn't sure The Giver (PG-13, 97 min.) would translate from book to screen well. I guess I thought it might be too tame, but I was wrong. The world was actually brought to life for me better than when I read the book, somehow. Reading about people living in a world devoid of color is quite a bit different than seeing it. That's one of the things that comes across better in a movie. And maybe it's because I now have children (and didn't when I read the book), I was certainly more affected by the scenes of euthanasia. In The Giver, certain babies and all the old are euthanized, and the people are ignorant of what that means, having lost all emotions. But Jonas is given the opportunity to learn about the world from ages before in order to be an adviser to those who don't have emotions. He alone gets emotions back. And, no surprise, it changes his world. I didn't mind that Jonas in the movie is older than Jonas in the book. It all worked beautifully for me, making the story richer than I had even remembered. Granted, this sort of story is perhaps slower-paced than something like The Maze Runner or Divergent, but I think it's just as well done cinematically and deserves a place among the top runners of the young adult book-to-movie adaptations trend.

Unbroken in Theaters Now

After reading Unbroken this year, I was pretty excited to see the movie. It's just such an incredible story of a man who endured weeks adrift on a raft at sea only to end up being tortured in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. The book goes into so much more detail about the kind of man Louis Zamperini was and how that affected his outlook during his trials than a movie ever could, so whether you see the movie first or not, I highly recommend you also read the book.

As much as I like Angelina Jolie, I admit I was a bit worried about her directing this film. She's fairly new to directing, and she's a woman (*Gasp* Did I just say that?). I don't think I'm being biased to say that women generally have different viewpoints than men. We're wired differently with different interests and concerns, and I wasn't sure how that might translate to the condensed and adapted telling of a survival story. Granted, a woman wrote the biography and did a fantastic job.

When I saw the movie was rated only PG-13, I wondered even more. It's not that I necessarily wanted to see all the torture, but I felt that to be true to the book, the story warranted a stricter rating. After having seen the movie, I am conflicted about the rating it was given. I do feel like the hardships of the POW camp were downplayed (or perhaps it was just that the sheer amount of them described in the book couldn't make it into a 137-minute movie, thereby easing the intensity of the whole ordeal), but I also think the subject matter was intense enough to justify an R rating.

Bottom line, the movie is accurate but just doesn't convey how impressive this story really is. In that way, it is like a PG-13 version of the book. Whether that's due to directing or the medium the story is told in or the time constraints, I don't know. Where I think Angelina Jolie and the actors did a fine job is in bringing out the characters and the emotions of the story. Jack O'Connell is a great Louis Zamperini, and the story hones in on the key aspects of his character that got him through the war.

(SPOILER alert) Before the movie came out, I'd heard that it didn't portray Zamperini's faith enough. And his faith, especially at the end, is kind of what seals the deal on this book for many. It's that last punch that makes a believer like me giddy with emotion. But I think the movie did it just right. It foreshadowed it and then ended where it needed to at the end of his physical trials, leaving a footnote on a black screen to tell you about how his faith enabled him to survive and forgive after the war. I thought it actually made a pretty big impact like that.

If you want a story that's a celebration of life in the midst of some of the worst life has to offer, a true tale of courage and heart with a solid redemptive finale, take it from a fiction reader...fiction has nothing on this.

Hacker

Hacker is the third installment of The Outlaw Chronicles, a young adult series by Ted Dekker. See my reviews of the other two books here and here. Each novel generally focuses on a new person, but in Hacker, we get to see the continuation of one character's story from Eyes Wide Open, the first in the series, while we are also introduced to Nyah, a seventeen-year-old girl who hacks corporations to blackmail them into giving her a job. Basically, she shows them their weaknesses by hacking them and then fixes the problem, all to provide for her mother, mentally impaired in a car accident. But when Nyah messes with the wrong people, she is forced to run to a person who turned his back on her, to Austin who is dying from a brain tumor. Together, they attempt the impossible to find a cure for Austin and Nyah's mother. It's the biggest hack of all, and the clock on each of their lives is ticking.

For whatever reason, this book didn't impact me as deeply as the other books from the series or as much as most Ted Dekker books do. Don't get me wrong, it was still entertaining and meaningful. But the message from each of these books (yes, Dekker always has a message, but his books usually don't feel preachy) is essentially the same with only little variances. And I got the message better in the other books, especially in Water Walker, which is perhaps my favorite of the three, the message being one about identity and who we really are beneath the costume of appearance, intelligence, or whatever else we define ourselves by. Maybe I didn't get into this one because of the hacking terminology. It intrigued me but was a little over my head. Maybe it was character. I didn't identify with Nyah as much as with some characters. Maybe it was the plot which, while it moved fairly well, lacked a certain edge I've come to expect from Dekker's books. Maybe all those were fine, and I just wasn't into it this time. I haven't been doing as much reading here toward the end of the year. My mind is on other things.

Regardless, the series is good, and if you really want to get the full picture, start with Outlaw, which is awesome and kind of sets up the series, though it's also a stand-alone book. I'm looking forward to reading A.D.30 next, also a recently published novel from Ted Dekker but one that I expect to be quite different from anything of his that I've read before. It's the perfect time to read the fictional account of a person who lived through Jesus' days as we head into Christmas. And even after reading Hacker, I'm expecting quite a lot out of this next one.

Movie Quick Takes

Movie-wise, here's what I've been watching lately: lots of post-apocalyptic (I'm also into the CW show The 100), a generous helping of science fiction, and plenty of adventure. Life has been hectic, but I didn't want to let these go by without at least a few words.

Interstellar (In Theaters)
The world is dying, overrun by dust storms. People survive by farming, but crops are still dying out. A group of explorers goes through a mysterious wormhole in space in search of a new planet to call home. A father must choose between his daughter and the survival of humanity. Cool science fiction taken at a slow pace that does not feel labored, and at three hours, it doesn't feel too long either. Explores love's power over even the dimensions of space and time. Great acting! Stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and a host of other A-list names, some appearing only briefly. Definitely one to see in theaters, but hurry before it's gone! PG-13.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (In Theaters)
Katniss must choose whether or not to be used as a weapon against the Capital as she joins the rebellion in District 13. Meanwhile, the Capital's weapon is the boy she loves: Peeta. The movie is well-made and provides an interesting look at propaganda. (We watch a movie about people who create propaganda for TV, and we get to watch them watch their own propaganda and see the fallout of it. And isn't the message of these movies a sort of propaganda in and of itself? Have we got the message, or are we just glorifying everything the story is supposed to be against?) It's true to the book, which means it's also very depressing. The politics are interesting, but the movie just doesn't have the action appeal of the other two. Jennifer Lawrence and her co-actors are great, as always. I could watch Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks in their roles forever. I was slightly distracted by any scenes containing Philip Seymour Hoffman, remembering how he died before filming ended and wondering which parts were affected by that. PG-13. Two hours.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (Now on DVD)
In the future, the X-Men have nearly been exterminated by unstoppable robot creatures created using mutant biology. The only way to stop them is to ensure they are never created in the first place. So, Wolverine is sent to the past to Professor X and Magneto's younger days in order to stop loose cannon Mystique from making a costly mistake. Fun romp. Great characters. Needed more Quicksilver. Enjoyed it very much, but a month or two later, I don't have lasting impressions. PG-13. Just over two hours.

Snowpiercer (On DVD)
The world is frozen over, and the only people alive ride a 1000-car (supposedly 1001, at least in the graphic novel, but in the movie, it looks much smaller) train that never stops and completes one circle of the globe every year. A group living in the slums at the back of the train tries to force its way to the front. This two-hour movie is rated R and is dark, disturbing, and graphically violent (but no sex). Its bleak ending has the barest sliver of hope. I wouldn't watch it again, but I found it intriguing. What would a world like that do to a person's psyche? Everyone is just a little touched by insanity. Chris Evans (known for his role as Captain America) stars as a much dirtier, darker, grittier kind of hero.

The Jewel

It's been a couple weeks since I read The Jewel, a young adult novel by Amy Ewing (busy month for us!), so this review will mostly be overall impressions. What attracted me to the novel in the first place was a pretty cover and a fascinating premise: teenage girls sold to rich women as surrogates to birth their babies for them. In addition, these girls have magic powers (the why of this is never quite explained...maybe a topic to be covered in future books of the series?) that allow them to manipulate the color, shape, gender, and growth of the babies. All this takes place in a world separated into tiers of wealth, with the rich at the center of the city, a ring of merchants after that, an industrial ring, a farming ring, and finally a ring for the poorest of the poor, from which the magic surrogate girls come. It's a pretty nice set-up for a dystopian world.

(SPOILERS follow.) The thing is, some of the subject matter is a bit...adult. Teenage pregnancy is still kind of frowned upon in modern USA (though maybe less now than it used to be). Though it's been a part of other cultures for millennia, it's not something our kids are really prepared for. Violet, the main character, does manage to avoid pregnancy in this book despite her enslavement, but she does undergo doctor's appointments and tests that my younger, teenage self might have found a little freaky to read about. Fortunately, nothing is overly graphic, so I'd still consider it teen-appropriate material.

I was more bothered, really, by the other morally degraded content of the book. Girls are not the only ones forced into certain lives. Teenage boys can sell themselves as companions who entertain rich females in every way except the actual sexual act. But since the mothers buy these boys to entertain their daughters, some of the mothers are a bit proprietary toward the companions and use them to meet their own sexual needs (again, not graphic; this is only spoken about and not depicted at all).

In The Jewel, Violet falls in love with Ash, who is one of these companions. Both of them find themselves slaves in the same household and reach out to each other. At least that's the way the book tries to sell it. I had a hard time buying Ash's "slavery" since he basically chooses to lead this kind of life. While the surrogates have no choice and little freedom in their new lives, the companions are paid and are even considered acceptable company in the upper echelons of this world. I had a hard time respecting Ash as the love interest (I had someone else in mind, actually) and rooting for the romance. I never like it when the teenage love interests of a book have sex, but when a character is basically a male prostitute, whatever the book is trying to say about the wrongness of that gets a little muddled when he has no problem having sex with a girl he gets to choose. I get the difference there, but I'd rather see more realistic repercussions to an enforced lifestyle of prostitution. I didn't want the sex to be there at all, but if it had to be, difficulty being vulnerable with Violet, difficulty giving her more than he might give a paying partner, would have been more realistic. I just didn't buy it.

One other minor moment in the book bothered me because it was cheap conflict. Violet is a slave, and she knows that Ash is essentially one, too. After they have an intimate moment together, she sees him with the girl he's been paid to be a companion to and she gets mad. It just annoyed me. She knows what he does, knows he doesn't have a choice (according to the book, at least). Her anger comes off as petty in this situation. If he doesn't have a choice, she doesn't really have a right to be mad at him. If anything, she should understand him and forgive him because they are both being forced to do things they don't want to do.

Without the companion parts, I would have liked this book more. It was different and intriguing. It offers a lot of interesting moral discussion without being too over-the-top. (For instance, the girls are impregnated in a lab by doctors and not by having to sleep with their owners' husbands or anything too heinous like that.) So, I give it three out of five stars.

The One (A Selection novel, #3)

After reading and reviewing The Selection and The Elite, by Kiera Cass, I just have a few thoughts to add about The One, which ends this trilogy. I admit, I enjoyed the series...more than I thought I would. It's odd because I'm not really into pageantry and I've never watched The Bachelor. I do, however, enjoy an occasional reality TV show (more along the lines of Survivor), and I do love to read dystopian young adult fiction. This series combines both, but to read more about that, start with my reviews above. (I was rather negative on The Selection, but as I read the other books, I was proven wrong about a few things, including the heroine's name.) Obviously, this review may SPOIL the earlier books of the series, so if interested, don't read on here.

In this third book, the Selection comes to a close. One girl, just a commoner, is chosen to be the prince's wife. It's almost like a fairy tale, except this one comes with the politics of a world dying for a change in leadership. You would think--I would think--it would be mostly fluff, but it doesn't come across that way.

(This paragraph definitely contains SPOILERS.) But I didn't give it five stars. As usual, I come to the end of a series and find something lacking. Actually, this time, I am pleased with the end. Some might find it too neat and happy, despite a few deaths, but I like the overall turnout. No, the end is not the problem, but getting there is a little bumpy. Throughout the three books, the main character, America, has been hiding a lingering love interest from the prince. At the end of the second book, she makes her decision between the two men in her life, but in the third book, the effects of hiding one from the other linger. The conflict comes to a head when the truth is revealed near the end in a close that feels both a bit rushed (multiple people die quickly and without much fallout) and a bit tacked together for the sake of added drama and angst. I would have preferred a more mature approach to the revelation at the end, both characters realizing the irony of the situation (the prince was allowed to date 35 girls at once, but America would have been in serious trouble if her one other love interest was discovered).

Other than that, I was mostly pleased with the book and, aside from the annoying love triangle, the series as a whole. Three stars.

Outlander (the book)

I got interested in Outlander through the advertisements in Entertainment Weekly. I'm always interested in TV shows that are a little (or a lot) out of the ordinary. First, the pictures attracted me, and then I watched the free first episode on the Starz website. I was a little worried about the amount of sexual content the show would have, being on Starz, and my worry was warranted. When I finished the first episode, I had mixed feelings. I was undeniably curious about where the story was going, but I was put off a little by the sexual gratuity. I would have continued to watch more of the show anyway if I could have, but I don't have access to Starz on TV. So, the show was done for me, at least until DVD. But fortunately for me, it was based on a book, and I figured that was a better way to satisfy my curiosity anyway.

The attraction of the story lies in this: Claire is a war nurse from 1945 who, while trying to reconnect with her husband on a trip to Scotland, finds herself transported through time to 1743. There, she becomes captive to a Scottish clan and is eventually forced to marry. It's certainly an interesting premise. But that's not all the story has going for it. Once I started to read, I was fascinated by the land and people that the author, Diana Gabaldon, describes so well. There's a wealth of detail in this book.

There's also an intriguing moral question. If a person is married, and happily so (though that doesn't affect the morality of the question), but finds herself two hundred years in the past with no knowledge of whether or not she will ever get back, is it right to get married again and essentially be married to two men at once, though in two different times? I'm not sure the book gives a satisfactory answer, though it is certainly addressed.

(SPOILERS ahead.) The shock value of this situation is not singular in this story. And I have mixed feelings about this, too. Gabaldon seems to rely on providing as much shock value as she can throughout the book. While this pulls the reader further into the story, I think it also hinders her story in two ways. First, the story seems a little less likely. (I mean, it was never that likely to begin with, but all the details do create a fairly believable world.) Second, the shock value often goes hand-in-hand with moral depravity. For instance, Claire encounters a predecessor of her 1945 husband in 1743. He looks nearly identical to her husband but ends up being the villain of the story. He attacks Claire, creating a link between her first husband's face and violence. He's a sexual sadist and gets pleasure particularly out of violating men, both body and spirit. All that seems a little over-the-top. Speaking of sadism, the one scene that almost stopped my reading was toward the middle of the book when Claire's new husband (1743) whips her with a belt. It's to punish her for nearly getting him and his men killed, but he gets some pleasure out of it, too. The book does a remarkable job of explaining the situation and relating the fallout of it (I did keep reading, after all), but it made me so mad. I won't spoil every instance of shock value for you, but these should give you an idea.

And unfortunately, on top of a lot of shock value, Gabaldon is at least as graphic as the one episode I saw of the TV show, though the TV show added details that weren't in the book. Now, I've never read Fifty Shades of Grey and don't plan to, and I'm not really comparing the two books, but I doubt Fifty Shades could be much more graphic. There are pages and pages of details about Claire and her 1743 husband's sexual explorations. Later in the book, there are details about the villain's homosexual sadism. Not much is left to the imagination. As far as the sex scenes involving Claire go, I was at least happy that she was married. Morally, that is acceptable. But is it morally acceptable for a person to read all that explicit sexual content? Perhaps there are people out there who can read it with impunity. Their consciences are whole, and they are unaffected by what they read. I admit, I can't. And I think a lot of people who do read that stuff shouldn't. I think it hurts us, raises expectations that can't be met, causes us to long for a fantasy that isn't real. It's not harmless. Our culture says it's harmless, and we've become much more sexually "free," or so we believe. We give our hearts and souls away for nothing. We are free...to lose everything. And through books like these, we numb our consciences until we believe the lie.

Soap. Box. Sorry. But it needed to be said.

Outlander begins an eight-book (eight major books so far, but there are also extra related books) series. The first book was published in 1991, and the latest book was published this year. So, there's quite a lot of content. But as interesting as some of the details about Scotland and the livelihood of people from the 18th century are, I think I am already done with this series. Perhaps it's just that these are very long books, and it took me awhile to get through Outlander, and I'm ready for something else right now. But also, I think I need to be careful about searing my conscience with images that are meant to shock and entice. From what I know of the latest book, I don't think that aspect of Gabaldon's books goes away. I do know the series continues on years into Claire's future (in the past), and I'm sure there's a lot of great stuff in there. But for now, it's not for me.

I give it three out of five stars.