Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie Review

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

                                                                   

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an American-German action horror fantasy film released in 2013. This movie is co-written and directed by Tommy Wirkola and produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Beau Flynn. The movie was filmed in Germany. The title roles of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters are played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Peter Stormare, Derek Mears, Thomas Mann and Rainer Bock has played other important roles. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters was also released in 3D.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is about a brother and a sister who hunt witches and at one of their mission, they find a huge challenge to kill the leader of the witches, which also brings some truth about the siblings' identity.  

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in  Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Plot:

The plot of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters starts when two siblings, Hansel and Gretel were kids. One night, suddenly, their father takes them to a jungle and leaves them there. While wandering around, they find a house made of candy. They enter that house and find a witch inside. The witch tries to kill them, but they fight the witch and finally kill her. Later on, the brother and sister duo, Hansel and Gretel becomes professional and renowned witch hunters.

One day, in a small town where small kids were going missing, a lady is caught for the allegation of witchcraft and the sheriff is about to execute her. Just then, Hansel and Gretel appears. They are hired by that town’s mayor to solve the problem of witches. Hansel checks her and confirms that she is not a witch. Then, when Hansel and Gretel starts to look for the witches, the sheriff also sends a group of men to the jungle at night for the same reason. All of the members of that group get killed by the grand witch. Hansel and Gretel catches a witch, and by interrogating her, they learn that the witch leader is preparing for a grand ritual, for which, she needs to sacrifice six boys and six girls each born at separate months. Hansel and Gretel also finds a teenage fan of them in the town, who himself also keeps knowledge about witches.

Suddenly, the grand witch, with her team, attacks the town and takes their targeted kid. Hansel and Gretel try to fight them. While fighting, Gretel gets hit and becomes unconscious. Later on, she is brought to safety and gets taken care of by their teenage fan. Hansel follows another witch to the jungle, but also gets hit.

The next morning, the lady they saved earlier, finds Hansel and helps him to get healed. In the meantime, Gretel searches the jungle for her brother and gets caught by the sheriff and his team. They beat her, but she gets saved by a somewhat human-like creature named troll. The troll takes Gretel to a safe place and helps her. When Gretel asks him for the reason why he has helped her, he replies that troll saves witches and then he leaves. Then Hansel and Gretel reunite at their old childhood home. To their wonder, they find the place as a witch’s layer. Then the grand witch comes there and tells them about their past. She tells them the identity of their mother, how their parent died and also reveals that Gretel is a white witch herself. Then they start to fight and again, the grand witch defeats Hansel and Gretel and abducts Gretel for her grand ritual.

Again, when Hansel wakes up, he finds that lady whom they saved. Then she says that she is also a white witch. Next, they gather all their weapons and the lady blesses them. Then, Hansel, that lady and Hansel and Gretel’s teenage fanboy from the town head for the place where the grand ritual was taking place.

The last part of the movie is about their attempt to save Gretel and the kidnapped children and about Hansel and Gretel’s challenge to take revenge on the grand witch.

My review about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters:

First of all, I felt disappointed after watching Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Actually, seeing the trailer and posters and most importantly, considering the casting, I had a very high expectation about this movie. But Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has totally failed to keep up with my expectation. Both of Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton has grown a good reputation for themselves already and I don’t understand why they had to act in this movie.

The weakest part of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is its plot. The plot is too weak and simple to satisfy the movie lovers. While keeping everything as they are, just a more sophisticated plot could make Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters far, far better. And needless to say, it was pretty predictable. Its not that every movie has to have some twist in the plot, but at least it could be better than two siblings who are witch hunters, learns their past and then go on their mission.

And several unnecessary scenes of violence also add up to the negative side of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. The director could do better without them.

But on the good side of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters  the acting and dialogues are good. Same goes for the make-ups. The witches also looked okay, where the troll looked like the “Ogre” from the animation ‘Shrek”. The location also looked good and the weapons looked old styled but fashionable.

This movie features a small scene of nudity. So considering it and the violence, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is not a movie for kids.

The special effects are also good, although they felt insufficient. A little more use of special effects would look good on this movie.

So, overall, although Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has a better than average IMDB rating of 6.1 (while I’m writing this review), I didn’t like this movie. You can consider watching it by considering its casting, but I will not recommend Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters to anyone who is looking for good movie to have some time spent pleasantly.

How much did you like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? Feel free to comment.

For those who are interested:

IMDB link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters IMDB

Wikipedia Link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Wiki

 To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, you can find the best deal on in here: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie

The Amazing Spider Man Movie Review

The Amazing Spider Man 
                                                                      

The Amazing Spider-Man is an American superhero film (like Captain America: The Winter Soldier) released in 2012. As we all know, this movie is based on the famous Marvel Comics character “Spider-Man”.  The Amazing Spider Man is the fourth movie of this Spider -Man series, but after the third, this one starts again from the very beginning of the original story, thus serving as a reboot. This movie is written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, directed by Marc Webb and starred by Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. This movie is released also in 3D.  

In The Amazing Spider-Man, we see how Peter Parker becomes the Spider Man, his struggles before and after his transformation and how he faces the villain, Lizard Man.

A scene from the movie The Amazing Spider Man

Plot:

The plot of The Amazing Spider-Man starts when Peter Parker was a kid. One night, in a hurry, Peter’s father takes Peter to Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s house and leaves him there taking Peter’s mother with him. They never returned. Their fate was not shown at that time of the movie.

Peter grew up to a teenager. In his school, he was regularly bullied by some other teens. He always carried a camera with him as he was fond of photography. But one day, some bullies beat him and break his camera when he refuses to take photos of those boys bullying another student. This incident also helps him to earn respect from beautiful Gwen.

One day Peter accidentally discovers his father’s secret documents. From his uncle Ben, he learns that his father was working with Dr. Curt Connors of Oscorp and then we see how his parents died. To learn more, Peter goes to Oscorp and enters there taking the identity of an intern. Then he sees Gwen from his school is taking the interns to a tour in Oscorp and he mixes with that team. Soon, with his brilliance, he gets noticed by Dr. Curt Connors, who, at that time, is working on cross species genetic exchange to cure the human from different disease. Dr. Connors' target is to cure the head of Oscorp and also to get his arm back.

Peter gets detached from the intern group and sneaks into a special lab, where he gets bitten by some exceptional type of spiders. His suspicious activities get caught by Gwen and she throws him away from the group. While returning home, he starts to feel his extraordinary abilities.

Soon Peter learns to control and use his new abilities and teaches the bullies at his school a lesson. Peter also meets Dr. Connors in his house and gives him some clue (which he has found from his father’s research) to complete his unfinished research. Peter gives Dr. Connors his identity and starts to help him with his research, which finally brings the success to regenerate an arm of a mouse. But after returning, Peter gets scolded by his uncle Ben for forgetting his responsibility. Angrily, Peter leaves the house and his uncle follows to search for him. In a store, he meets a thief who helps him, but accidentally kills uncle Ben. Peter finds the body of his uncle. Peter also realizes that it was him, who saw the thief stealing and had let him go. Later on, police gave him some clues about that thief.

Peter starts to beat up criminals to find that thief. From a painting on a gym’s wall, he gets inspired to make a costume. He makes that costume and also creates some kind of machine to shoot web from his wrist.

In the meantime, Dr. Connors’ boss pressures him to apply his newly found serum on human. When Dr. Connors rejects, his boss threatens him that he will shut down the whole project and also says, Peter’s father also didn’t agree to test his medicine on human. Out of desperation, Dr. Connors applies the serum on himself and turns into a big human-lizard.

Peter goes to Gwen’s house to attend her invitation and finds that, Gwen’s father is the police chief, who is looking for spider-man. They both had a little argument on the dinner table. After the dinner, Peter reveals his identity (as spider-man) to Gwen and they kiss. Then he hears police siren and Gwen’s dad rushes to a bridge where the lizard-man attacks. Peter also rushes there and saves some people.

On the next few days, Peter does some research and finds a possible hiding place of the lizard-man in the sewer. He then fights the lizard, but loses and escapes from there. Peter tells the police chief about the identity of the lizard-man, but he doesn’t trust him completely. The lizard man (Dr. Connors) learns Spider-Man’s identity from his camera and attacks his school to stop him, but Spider-Man again saves the students.  Later, he finds the plan of the lizard-man, that is, to use a special machine of Oscorp to convert all the people of the city to a stronger version of human, i.e., lizard-man.

The next part of the movie is about the plan of the lizard-man and the attempts of the spider-man to stop him.

My Review about The Amazing Spider-Man:

First of all, I liked The Amazing Spider-Man. Although I didn’t find it mind-blowing or extra-ordinary amazing, but I still liked it.

The plot of The Amazing Spider-Man is simple and pretty predictable. Almost all of us know the story of Spider-Man, like what happened to his uncle, how he got transformed etc, and this movie gives no surprise. The ending is also very predictable.

The dialogues are okay, not bad or nothing special. I didn’t like the acting of Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man. I mean, his acting was not bad at all, but to me, he seemed too smart to be a kid who is regularly being bullied by his classmates. Here I missed Tobey Maguire, who’s innocent (and sometimes, confused) face and beautiful acting matched perfectly with the character he was playing in Spider-Man (part 1). The acting of all other characters of The Amazing Spider-Man were also good, but again I missed beautiful Kirsten Dunst. I’m not complaining about the artists here, I just missed the old ones.

The make-ups are good, except for the lizard-man. To me, it looked funny, not the image of a scary villain. Here in The Amazing Spider-Man the villain is not evil, his intentions were not bad, but harmful and wrong. He himself is a tragic hero.

The special effects are very good in The Amazing Spider-Man. Specially, the continuous shot in the action scene in the school where the Spider-Man was running over the lizard all around it trying to put it in nets looked awesome. All other flying and action scenes also looked beautiful.

At the last parts of the The Amazing Spider-Man, I was really hoping to see some more lizards after the lizard -man used gas on some police, but there was nothing like that. I think it could be a good addition to the movie.

To all Spider-Man fans, The Amazing Spider-Man should come as a big relief after the last part (part 3) of the previous Spider-Man series, the series which started with an amazing movie but kept getting worse at each sequel.

If you think after watching pervious three movies, there is nothing new to watch in The Amazing Spider-Man, you’ll make a wrong guess. There are a lot of differences in this movie with the previous one. For example, The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man doesn’t enjoy public fame like the previous one, here he doesn’t have a photo-journalism career, here webs doesn’t come out of his hands, he makes an electronics device for that and here he hunts criminals for his personal vendetta, not to help people. In this movie, most of the Spider-Man’s moves are also different.

In my judgment, between Spider-Man (part one) and The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ll keep Spider-Man (part 1) on top. But The Amazing Spider-Man has a great potential and I’m looking forward to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Whatever, The Amazing Spider-Man is still a nice movie. An IMDB rating of 7.1 supports it. By watching this movie, I felt my time nicely spent. If you are a Spider-Man fan or a superhero movie fan, I’d recommend The Amazing Spider-Man to you.

How do you feel about this movie? Feel free to write in the comments.

For those who are interested:

IMDB Link: The Amazing Spider-Man IMDB

Wikipedia Link: The Amazing Spider-Man Wiki

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, you can find the best deal on it here:  The Amazing Spider-Man Movie

The Flowers of War Movie Review

The Flowers of War

                                                                  

The Flowers of War is a historical drama war film released in 2011. This movie is directed by Zhang Yimou and its plot is based on the novel “13 Flowers of Nanjing” by Chinese-American author Geling Yan. The major roles of The Flowers of War are played by Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Zhang Xinyi, Tong Dawei, Atsuro Watabe, Shigeo Kobayashi and Cao Kefan. The plot of this movie is set on Nanking, China during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937.

The Flowers of War tells the story of survival of an American man, a group of schoolgirls and a group of prostitutes who are living together in a church. This is a beautiful story of how crisis brings people together and how humanity comes out of people when they are surrounded by brutality.  

Christian Bale and Ni Ni in a scene of The Flowers of War

Plot:

The Flowers of War starts with a war scene where a group of Chinese soldiers ambush a group of invading Japanese army who were chasing a group of schoolgirls. Although the Japanese army faces large damage at the beginning, but soon they bring strong reinforcements and crash the Chinese resistance, leaving only two survivors of the Chinese army. But in the meantime, the group of schoolgirls manage to reach a church where they were supposed to come for shelter. While going there, they meet an American mortician named John Miller who is also heading for the same church to bury the priest.  

After reaching there, John meets the caretaker of that church (a small boy) but can’t find the body of the priest. He still demands money as he has come all the way for his job. He doesn’t care much about helping others in a situation like this, instead he tries to get comfortable in living in that church as the priest. Soon a group of prostitutes come to that church seeking for shelter, claiming that the church’s another caretaker has taken bribe from them to give them shelter here. As soon as they arrive, they start to flirt with John. Later, they hide in the cellar of the church.

Now, the two survivors of the Chinese army from the previous fight come to that church. One of them is severely wounded. The other one carries him and leaves him at the prostitutes’ care. He then leaves the church and takes position in a nearby collapsed building. Inside the church, the schoolgirls and the prostitutes don’t get along much, but somehow manages to live. John is attracted to the leader of the prostitutes and tries to interest her in him. She offers John that she, with her team, will satisfy John if he can take them to the nearby safe camp.

But time doesn’t pass peacefully, a group of Japanese army attacks the church and after searching, finds the group of hiding schoolgirls. But a girl shows a noble gesture by not getting into the cellar when she was being chased, thus helping the prostitutes stay hidden in the cellar.  Some members of the army get brutal and try to rape the girls. John tries to stop them and fails. Then the lone survivor of that Chinese army shoots some of the Japanese army which gives away his hiding position. The Japanese soldiers leave the girls and go looking for him. He alone kills a good number of Japanese soldiers and finally gets killed.

Then a Japanese high ranked officer comes to the church with his team. The schoolgirls sing for him. Seeing everything, the officer gives them his words for their safety and also appoints some soldiers around the church for the safety of everyone living there. With the officer, there is a Chinese man who’s daughter is there among the schoolgirls. He is helping the Japanese only to find safety for his family. At a chance which came later on, John asks him for some parts for the damaged truck of the church, so that he could take everyone to safe camp. He says he’ll try his best to help.

One day, John finds two of the prostitutes missing. They went to their previous home, one to bring her earrings and another to bring strings for her musical instruments with which, she wants to play to the wounded soldier.  John rushes to search for them with the caretaker of the church knowing they will not survive for long in this warzone. He finally finds them, one killed and another brutally raped before being killed. John then comes back to the church.

Few days later, the Japanese officer visits the church again and gives John a written order that the schoolgirls and a prostitute (who has accidentally got in the schoolgirls’ team) will have to sing at a victory celebration of the Japanese army. Fearing the worst, John doesn’t agree to send the girls. But the officer warns him that it is an order from higher officers and they may use force to carry on this order.

Everybody at the church can guess what is there in the girls’ fate. At the party, they will be brutally raped and even may get killed. Nobody wants the girls to go to that party. But John has no ways to say no. So, to avoid this horrific fate, later on that night, all the schoolgirls together try to commit suicide by jumping off the bell tower of the church. John and the prostitutes try to stop them and then the leader of the prostitutes says that they will go to that party instead of the girls.

The last part of this movie is about their attempt to save the schoolgirls and the fate of John, the caretaker, the schoolgirls and the prostitutes. Can they deceive the eyes of the Japanese army? Can they be saved? You have to watch the movie to know the answers.

My review about The Flowers of War:

First of all, I felt that The Flowers of War is a beautiful piece of work.

The plot was beautiful and touchy. Like other great war movies, The Flowers of War will make you hate a war and will make you worried about the innocent lives of a warzone. This movie has showed what a dreadful fate waits for some people who are not involved with the war in any way. The Flowers of War also shows some extraordinary examples of some good people in wartime. The direction and screenplay of this movie seemed excellent. 

The acting and dialogues are good in The Flowers of War. There is no question about the acting of Christian Bale and he has done a perfect job. The acting of all other characters, specially the schoolgirls’ and the prostitutes’ seemed fluent and natural. The dialogs were also good according to the movie’s plot. Same goes for makeup. The plot of The Flowers of War needed some glamour for the prostitutes (specially their leader) even in these situations and the director has matched them pretty well.

There are some war scenes in The Flowers of War which fitted with the movie’s subject nicely and seemed realistic. These scenes includes some killings, dead bodies and some rape scenes which were needed to express the shocking violence of a war and the director has shown them nicely without going too extreme. There is no direct nudity in The Flowers of War.

The special effects and music of The Flowers of War are also goods. I couldn’t catch any flaws in any scene or in the plot.

So, finally, I really liked The Flowers of War. To the fans of war movies, I’ll recommend this movie as a must see. If you are a fan of all other kinds of movies, for you also, The Flowers of War is a must see. 

For those who are interested: 

IMDB Link : The Flowers of War IMDB

Wikipedia link : The Flowers of War Wiki

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, get the best deal here:  The Flowers of War Movie