THE PERKS OF BEING A GREAT ADAPTATION

MOVIE REVIEW:

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

By: G.P. Manalo

Starring:

Logan Lerman

Ezra Miller

Emma Watson

Perks of Being a Wallflower is based on a book with the same name By Stephen Chbosky. It’s about this socially awkward yet damaged kid named, Charlie. He writes these letters to what he call a “friend” and the letters were pretty much written like a diary of his. He enters his high school life being welcomed by a group of seniors who took him under their wing, Sam and her step brother Patrick (and their friends Bob, Mary-Elizabeth and Alice). Throughout the movie it revolves around a year of Charlie being introduced to new things with the help of that certain group of people.

Going into this movie I don’t know what to expect. Before you ask me If I read the book, I’m going to say it… Yes I have read the book before going into this movie. It was recommended by a friend of mine, I read it for a good 5-7 Hours (total), It was a very easy read. I got curious about it because I’ve been hearing a lot about this book being a “Controversy” (which a lot of people made a big deal about).  I read the book twice already and there were tons of dark elements here and there (that again, people made a big deal about) that revolve around what real-life everyday people encounter such as drugs, bullying, family-problems, addictions, relationships, High School, Depression, and more (and when i say more, I mean more stuff). Surprisingly all of those things were crammed together in one book. And I really hate the fact that those were in your face too much as I read in the book it was one of the biggest flaws of the book. It was just too much for me. I didn’t like it as much as she (the one who recommended it to me) did. And now we have this movie and surprisingly I liked it better than the book. 

Here, they corrected all the flaws the book had (to me). The book spends its time emphasizing on so many of these “controversial” things way too much, In fact all these things keep happening and you thought to yourself “Isn’t this a little bit too much”, It never really stayed to the meat of the story and most of the events that they keep giving emphasis on doesn't really help the book progress to real meat of the story. Like I said I liked the book but not as much as 90% of the world. It’s a good read, just not the greatest as everyone else says it is.  Bt it was still very surprising that it’s the same guy who wrote the book that directed, written and produced this movie.  From the trailer it looks like they did tone it down a little bit, but seeing the entirety of this movie it Is toned down, they took out some elements and I’m glad they’re not really “in your face”.

The performances were really great in this movie. When I first heard of the cast, Logan Lerman’s face was in the poster and I just couldn’t stand him since he was in Percy Jackson and Last Year’s Three Musketeers. But in this movie he showed you that he can actually act, I keep using the word Surprised (and surprisingly) but it is what this movie is a “Big Surprise”.  Going back to the cast Yes, Logan Lerman was actually good in this movie. But the one who stood out to me was Ezra Miller as Patrick, and he was definitely the show stealer of this movie. Along with Lerman, I thought his performance was very believable and at some point compelling as well, Lerman and Miller portrayed their characters very well (or maybe even better perhaps). But last but not the least Emma Watson being the exact opposite of Hermione which is a slutty, foul-mouth, rule breaker, Kinda-Smart and sporting an American Accent girl. With two of these actors around her I thought she didn’t stand out as well as I was hoping to be. She was just good not as great, not necessarily saying that she was bad, she’s just not as good as I was hoping her to be. Maybe I put her in this pedestal way too high.  The others they are great as well maybe not as great as Lerman and Miller but rather good.

In the end, Perks of Being a Wallflower is an example that the movie can be better than the source material and Director, Stephen Chbosky, Learned from his mistakes from the book and made an even better version in this movie. The Entire cast did a brilliant job in portraying their characters, it made me (and the audience) feel like i was there with them enjoying their youth (And Paul Rudd being the best English teacher I ever had). There were some small problems editing-wise (Maybe not as awkward as Asiong Salonga or Taken 2). It’s not groundbreaking, but it is a good coming of age film and its only purpose is to tell a story and to entertain us at the same time, It is entertaining, It is mind-boggling at some point. I'm still glad they told the story very well and it stayed very true to the book at the same time. Fans of the book will love this movie (and might even find this movie better than the book as well) and i would highly recommend the non-readers to check this movie out as well(and the book too).

MY RATING:

EPIC WIN! - 5/5

BULLSHIT

 Resident Evil: Retribution

Starring:

Milla Jovovich 

BingBing Li

Sienna Guillory

In RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION,  It picks up after the scene when the Umbrella Corps took over the boat Alice and her group of people where in. She meanwhile got captured while the rest got eliminated in the process. Now she has to travel 5 sectors of the facility in order to escape and set things right.

To be perfectly honest I was never a big fan of these movies. I've always thought that they are bad movies and a waste of time. As much as I want to like it, I just really can't. To be honest I've been optimistic going in  from the past 2 films, I kinda liked the third movie but the 4th one was just horrible but this one is even horrible than the last film.

for the past decade Video Game Adaptations are a really bad taste in the mouth both to critics and fans of the videogames, Movie-goers are two-sided about these kind of movies (Hopefully Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid and Mass Effect are gonna be good). I'll try not comparing the movies to the games, since this movie is barely even based on the games. In adaptation movies either if they’re based on a book or a video game I tend to look away from the source material and judge the movie for what it is and this movie (for what it is) is garbage. Why? To start it off we have the plot. The way they tell the story, they try to tell it like a literal video game movie. Not even the modern day video game storytelling, I mean old-school video game storytelling which is having no plot at all. They literally have all these 5 zones of the capitals of the world (and the suburbs of Raccoon City) accompanied by scene after scene of plot holes, coincidences and conveniences.

To top it all off it is badly written, There were lines in this movie and they either make me cringe or laugh when it’s supposed to be serious. To be honest adapting video games aren’t really a good idea, Things work in that world that don’t on the big screen. Elements such as lengthy storytelling and unoriginality because what is the point of adapting something that I can play and accept things since they worked better in their world? The Resident Evil Game franchise never really had that movie feel to it from the start. Sure the previous games from let’s say 4-5 are kinda like that Action/Sci-Fi movie. But adapting the later games like 2-5 are difficult especially when they have all these characters around the globe having their own stories to tell, I don’t really know how will work out? but it does sound like the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Scenario. I liked the fact that Videogame movies try to stay away from adapting the plot of the videogame and giving it something “new” but the only part they fail at is execution.

So going in the action has to be good right? No, but the effects are good I can give them that. I enjoyed some action scenes but the majority of them were badly shot and hurts my eyes in 3D. And majority of the action in this movie is action scene after action of slow motion and it goes from enjoyable to boring to even watch, But someone in the crew (I’m looking at you Paul W.S. Anderson) thought it’s a good idea to rip off various (and successful) movies such as Matrix and Aliens. If i would say this one thing there was this little girl and theres this big ass licker monster chasing them down, he eats and takes out anything he sees in its path but he sees this little girl and it took it and ends up preserving it in this preservation egg from Aliens, I shit you not that happened in the movie and that particular scene came out of nowhere and it was pointless. In fact having all these characters from the game (even the boss zombies) all feel crammed in just to say “By the way, you’re watching a Resident Evil Movie”. The acting... Do i really have to go into detail about the acting in this movie? If i would sum each and everyone of these people it would be the fact that they either look like porn stars wearing the exact same costumes their videogame characters wear or cosplayers who wears these expensive looking costumes without necessarily caring who they even are, then again Milla Jovovich does look like she’s wearing an S&M costume anyways (Surprisingly they joked about that in the film). They are all bad in fact, HORRIBLE actors in this movie (another way to sum it up). I can see some them try but script wouldn’t even let them.

In the end, this movie continues to prove that we can’t have faith on the franchise especially when it’s in the hands of a horrible director named, Paul W.S. Anderson. This movie is definitely horrible. I wouldn’t recommend seeing this movie, Wait for this on Blu-Ray and when I mean Blu-Ray i mean the DVD those vendors give you that has the word blu-ray on the cover of a badly photoshopped dvd cover. If you’re a Resident Evil fan you might like it (I actually met a few fans of the games who liked this movie, but hated some parts of it) but if you don’t like the movies and you’re optimistic like me and thought this will be a good movie, don’t even bother. You might enjoy snippets of action scenes here and there but it’s not saying much. This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year and probably of all time (but then again I’ve seen worse than this like Ghost Rider 2 and Piranha 3DD).

MY RATING:

0/5 – 

EPIC FAIL!