INTO THE WOODS

This is a Broadway musical adapted into a movie, so there were lots of singing and dancing other than the rather exaggerated acting.

This collection of fairy tales brought together a number of characters and told some of the familiar stories that all happened in the enchanted woods in a different way from what we know of.

Meryl Streep played the Witch for the first time in her movie career, James Corden and Emily Blunt were the Baker and his wife, Anna Kendrick was Cinderella, Chris Pine was Prince Charming, Johnny Depp was the Wolf, Lilla Crawford was Little Red Riding Hood and Daniel Huttlestone was Jack and MacKenzie Mauzy was Rapunzel.

Personally, I didn't enjoy this movie at all and found all the singing grating and non-catchy or -memorable although some of the humour was entertaining.  

Meryl Streep as the Witch

the Baker and his wife, who had a brief dalliance with Prince Charming

the Cinderella who professed to enjoy house cleaning

the Prince who was raised to be Charming not sincere

the same old Wolf

the Little Red Riding Hood

Jack and his beanstalks

Rapunzel

TRANSCENDENCE

This is one of the rare movies starring Johnny Depp with his original looks without any dramatic makeup. I almost forgot how talented he could be and how he actually look like. The other actors include Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Cillian Murphy, Paul Bettany and Kate Mara.

A brilliant researcher in Artificial Intelligence Dr Will Caster was shot and poisoned by a radioactive laced bullet fired by AI-protesters. His wife Evelyn tried to save what was left of his consciousness by uploading it onto an AI program he was working on, despite objections from Max, their friend and fellow researcher, who feared the perils of an artificial intelligence borne out of a human consciousness. Evelyn managed to resurrect Will's consciousness onto the processors which housed the program, and it craved for more knowledge from the internet. After successfully connecting Will to the internet, she escaped with the now liberated Will, who existed everywhere in the digital form, and set up a nano-technology facility in a suburban area which soon grew and expanded into a mega-power plant.

With the nano-technology, the equipment within the plant appeared to restore life to all living things such as dying plants and to heal the aged, sick etc and made them more powerful, but in actual fact, Will's consciousness took over their bodies, controlled them to do his bidding and tried to build an AI army in an attempt to save the world. By then, the AI resistant force and the FBI etc banded together to send a special force team to take down Will, Evelyn and the plant.

Frankly, this is not the first time I have seen such nano-technology, which actually appeared in the G.I. Joe movies previously. Whether the nano-technology is a saviour or destroyer of mankind was open to interpretation at the end of the movie.

Dr Will, Evelyn and Max

Joseph, FBI agent Donald and Evelyn viewing Will's consciousness on screen

Bree, who started the resistant forces

DARK SHADOWS

I have nothing against him but I am officially sick of Johnny Depp's antics. Whilst he breathed life and comedic acting to some of the characters he played, I just find the recent roles and his acting so lame and non-funny anymore.


This unusual movie is about vampires and witches but it is not the typical type of movies on this genre. I am unimpressed, so I am not even going to attempt to write anything meaningful about it other than it has a huge cast comprising Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Boham Carter, Johnny Lee Miller, Eva Green, Chloe Grace Moretz.


Michelle Pfeiffer was quite funny though and after the movie "Let the Right One In", this is the second movie I watched that stars Chloe Grace Moretz and I still find her refreshingly interesting.