First Impressions: "Bad Boys" (1995)

   Yesterday I started another marathon of a particular director's oeuvre. I've made no secret in the past of my seething hatred for Michael Bay, but I haven't yet seen all his movies. I might as well get a complete picture of how terrible he really is.
   Oh, and just a heads-up: I won't be commenting on Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, because I've already seen those. And I'm stopping at The Island, because I don't need to see the Transformers movies again! In fact, Transformers 2 is the only movie that I whole-heartedly refuse to ever see again! I hate it that much!

   Bad Boys, to cut right to the point, is one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life! Since this was Michael Bay's first movie, before everything got super-exaggerated, I thought maybe this might be even somewhat tolerable. But boy was I wrong!
   You would not believe how many times I had to pause the movie for a minute and collect myself during the first half! There was literally something else to annoy me every five minutes! And that was even before the lie that dominates the storyline, where Marcus has to pretend he's Mike! The phone call scene, the fact that Marcus is so bad at lying that anyone with half a brain cell would immediately see right through him, that stupid scene with the photographs… God!
   On top of that, I swear half the dialogue in this movie is yelling, which also drove me nuts! There's one point in particular where Mike is interrogating someone and Marcus is carrying on in the background, where I actually said out loud, "SHUT UP!"
   As is typical of a Michael Bay movie, the performances are all flat as pancakes. Even Will Smith is boring!
   Also, to prove my point how terrible Michael Bay is at action scenes, the last thing I should be during your final massive shootout is bored!
   To sum it up, I've seldom been more annoyed by a movie. It's not funny, the characters are irritating, and it's all just insufferable yelling and chaos.
   My rating: turkey.

First Impressions: "Broken City", "I Give It a Year" + "Mama" (2013)

   Time for this week's trio of Xtra-vision rentals. And I'll just say it straight out: this was a thoroughly mediocre bunch. I wasn't really looking forward to watching any of them, but I wasn't dreading any of them either. And they all pretty much met those neutral expectations. So if this comes across to you as a boring week, it's only because it was. :)

   First up is Broken City.
   The plot follows Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg), a former dirty cop turned private eye, who's hired by the Mayor of New York City (Russell Crowe) to find out who his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is having an affair with. After he seemingly finds the answer, things get even more complicated.
   Honestly, I have very little to say about this movie. It was middle-of-the-road, it was mediocre, and it didn't leave much of an impression on me at all. I'm not entirely sure why, though.
   Maybe it's the familiarity of it all. As the film progresses, it gets increasingly predictable, and the ending packs no surprises at all.
   I do kind of like how Billy turns against the mayor halfway through the movie, but I just didn't care for everything that followed. The mayor's grand scheme just comes off to me as a cliché.
   Also, there are two action sequences in the second half, and they're both incompetently filmed.
   In any case, I simply didn't care what was happening throughout the movie, and I just found the whole thing bland and forgettable.
   My rating: 45%.

   Secondly, I Give It a Year.
   A newlywed couple, played by Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall, are told that if they can make it through the first year of marriage, they'll be set. Nine months down the line, the hardships of marriage are starting to take their toll, and they're both cheating on each other.
   Now, because this is from the co-writer of Borat, I'm surprised I didn't go in expecting to hate it: I had heard it was good. But, during the opening scenes, the Borat similarities definitely showed, and my heart sank. A lot of the humour is derived from being straight-up crass, especially with sex jokes. But, to my surprise, the movie as a whole wasn't painfully unfunny, like I'd expected: for most of it, I was just sitting there indifferent.
   But now let's talk about the film's message. Through most of it, I was thinking the moral was for married couples to embrace each other's imperfections, not hold them against them. But (spoilers here, sorry) the ending completely reverses this by turning it into an admittedly hilarious joke where they're as joyful about the idea of a divorce as they should have been about the marriage. Some might say that this shamefully promotes infidelity, but I don't think that's meant to be taken as a serious moral: it's all just part of the writer's twisted sense of humour.
   But overall, it's not very funny or emotionally satisfying. So again, I'd just sum up this one with, "Meh."
   My rating: 50%.

   And finally, Mama.
   Honestly, I only saved this one till the end because it was the one I'd heard the most talk about, not because I thought it'd be the best of the three or anything. In fact, as it turned out, quite the contrary: this is the only one that I actually didn't like. Now, don't get me wrong: it's not horrible. It's just conspicuously flawed and uninteresting.
   The plot revolves around two little girls who've been living alone in the woods for five years, and share an apparently imaginary mother figure, which soon starts to cause havoc with the couple that takes them in. The main driving force of the movie is to solve the mystery of who this "Mama" is.
   As you can probably guess, my main problem with this supposed horror movie is that it's just not scary. Well, there is one fantastically creepy moment involving one of the girls silhouetted in the shadows of a hallway, but that's it. None of the jump scares made me jump, and it's a little hard to develop atmosphere when you're constantly being distracted by painfully obvious CGI!
   I also hated the girls' aunt, Jean. She's just the typical one-dimensional type of antagonist that I think is a complete waste of screen time.
   I do like how one of the girls gradually turns away from Mama and warms up to the adoptive mother, but it's otherwise not a particularly compelling film – again, especially in terms of horror.
   My rating: 45%.

First Impressions: "GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra" (2009) + "Sideways" (2004)

   Well, now that I've finished my marathon of M Night Shyamalan's filmography (I'm not watching The Last Airbender until I've seen the show), I also felt compelled to watch GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra in preparation for this year's GI Joe: Retaliation, since it seems the latter is a direct sequel. And, because I knew GI Joe was going to be bad (though, not to give anything away, but just like Lady in the Water, I really underestimated it!), the reportedly good movie I picked to offset it was Sideways.

   GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra… is one of the worst action movies I've ever seen in my life! Yes, this was one of the most miserable two hours I've ever had! It's almost as bad as Transformers 2 – and believe me, coming from me, that is very, very bad indeed!
   I should clarify first that I never watched the 80s GI Joe show, and I don't know how well this movie represents the characters from the toy line-up.
   I can say, though, that the performances are all dull and uninspired, and the CGI is awful – some of the worst I've ever seen!
   But I think the biggest problem is that the pacing is too fucking fast! The whole narrative rushes along far too quickly to allow you to take anything in. Even by about the five-minute mark, I was going, "Slow the fuck down!" Every scene feels like the movie's in a hurry to just get it over with.
   The fact that the action scenes are so frequent, and so terribly shot and edited, makes things even more insufferable. Again, it's all cut far too quickly, and the pacing doesn't let anything set itself up properly, so no moment is given the chance to be exciting.
   And the last act is a symphony of woefully predictable clichés.
   In a nutshell, this movie is way too fast-paced for its own good. The inconsiderate pace and absolutely abysmal effects make it a raw showcase of pure frustration.
   My rating: turkey.

   Sideways follows two best friends, Jack and Miles, who are spending the last week before Jack's wedding in California's wine country.
   I always have a tough time reviewing movies like this – comedy dramas that are fairly grounded in reality – because there's not really that much to critique. But in short, I really liked Sideways.
   The movie basically invites you to share Jack and Miles' journey and follow their trials and tribulations, and it's definitely a fun and even enlightening journey.
   Jack and Miles themselves sort of contrast each other: Jack always believes in living life to its fullest, but often acts on impulse without thinking ahead, while Miles is more cynical and reserved, especially since his divorce. I can't psychoanalyse the characters the way Doug Walker did, but I will say this. I don't know what this'll say about me, but I'd say I'm more like Miles (minus the divorce), so I'd need someone like Jack to encourage me to take some chances.
   So much of the movie is very down-to-earth that, whenever there is a funny moment, it's all the funnier because it seems genuinely out of the ordinary. For example, I won't dare reveal the pickle that Jack ends up in towards the end! :D
   To sum up, if you're looking for a movie that takes you on an experience that feels very real, with some bumps in the road but is overall a good time, I say give Sideways a watch.
   My rating: 80%.

First Impressions: "The Happening" (2008)

   Some people label this as a "so bad it's good" movie, but I had a feeling I wouldn't be laughing that much at it. And I was right. But neither did it have me tearing at my hair, like Lady in the Water did. At the end, it just left me wondering, "What the hell did I just see?"
   The plot is that a strange epidemic is causing mass suicide, which turns out to be the plants releasing an airborne toxin. Supposedly, it's because the plants see the growing human population as a threat and it's their only way to defend themselves. I know it's supposed to be an environmental message, but it just comes off as stupid.
   The characters are stupid too – sometimes insufferably so. For example, there's a scene where a large group of people learn that the attacks are occurring in populated areas, but then they decide they'd be better off staying in big groups. Did you not just hear yourselves, you morons?!
   I did laugh a few times, though. Like why does Alma feel that she cheated on Elliot just because she had dessert (yes, dessert!) with another man? And Mark Wahlberg, at one point, delivers one of the most outrageously awful pieces of acting I've ever seen.
   Overall, I think the Rotten Tomatoes consensus says it best: it's just an incoherent and unconvincing mess. You just sit there watching it, going, "…What the fuck is this?"
   My rating: 25%.

First Impressions: "Lady in the Water" (2006)

   Right before this movie started, I said to myself, "Let's get this over with." I knew it was going to be bad… but I didn't think this bad! This was damn near intolerable!
   The plot is that Cleveland, an apartment complex handyman, finds a mysterious woman (named Story) in the pool, discovers that she's an entity from an old bedtime story, and has to use clues from the tale to help her get home.
   First of all, the dialogue in this movie is hideously bad, especially from Story herself!
   But it was Cleveland's asking around for information that constantly aggravated me. He's making himself sound insane, but no one ever questions him! And it's just ludicrous how the group of people he assembles just goes along with it, no questions asked! I swear, I was facepalming for more than half the movie!
   Also, this movie is basically Shyamalan giving a big "fuck you" to critics. The character Shyamalan himself plays is a deeply inspirational writer. And there's a critic character who's described as arrogant and has no right to determine people's positions.
   Overall, "awkward" is the best word to describe this movie. It's just really, really awkward.
   My rating: 15%.

First Impressions: "The Village" (2004)

   The residents of a small rural village live in harmony, except for fear of the mysterious creatures in the woods beyond the village. Now the villagers believe that the alliance between them and the monsters has been broken.
   Most people agree that this is where Shyamalan definitely went downhill. I may not have liked Signs, but at least it had potential to be a good movie. The Village, however, just flat-out fails.
   First of all, the acting is just as wooden as Signs – except for Adrien Brody, who easily upstages everyone else. And I guess Shyamalan was trying to make the dialogue sound old-fashioned, but that's all it sounds like: an imitation of that dialect.
   But perhaps my main problem with the movie is that it's slow! Painfully so! It feels ironed out to its hundred-minute length!
   The opening scenes raise plenty of questions about where things are going to go, but the movie takes a long time to establish what its real focus is.
   It's towards the end, however, that the movie hits rock bottom. The last half-hour is a constant barrage of weak twist after weak twist.
   It's dull, boring, unfocused and just all-around tedious.
   My rating: 35%.

First Impressions: "Signs" (2002)

   I know a lot of people like this movie, but at the same time, many other people have already pointed out how flawed it is, so I don't feel I have anything significant to add.
   I understand what the movie was going for: an alien invasion scenario that focuses entirely on an ordinary rural family and how the crisis unfolds from their perspective. In this regard, the movie could have worked. Other movies, like Night of the Living Dead, have used that idea of a limited focus to great effect. But here, it's all ruined by terrible acting and some really stupid writing – too many examples to get into.
   Yes, the acting is a major problem with this movie. No one ever shows any emotion whatsoever, which completely kills any tension. I know Shyamalan usually goes for a downbeat tone, but for a movie like this, you really need something more realistic.
   To sum it up, this is basically Wasted Potential: The Movie. It has its moments, and could easily have been an engrossing and bone-chilling horror film, if only the story had been thought out a little better and the acting had actually been competent.
   My rating: 45%.

First Impressions: "Unbreakable" (2000)

   After Earth has been getting such bad press that I'll have to check it out at some point, just to see if it'll make my worst movies list for this year. :) In the meantime, I'm having myself a little marathon of M Night Shyamalan's other movies.
   Until now, the only one I've seen is The Sixth Sense – which I still think is a very good movie even if you know the twist ending.
   With that said, Unbreakable…

   The plot is basically that David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is the only survivor of a horrific train crash – completely unharmed. Then he's approached by Elijah Prince (Samuel L Jackson), who believes that, because David has never been injured in his life, he's a real-life embodiment of a comic book superhero.
   Elijah's theory seems absurd at first, but gradually starts to make sense as the movie progresses. I especially like how, as a security guard, David has an instinct for wrongdoing, which Elijah sees as a human trait that's the basis for super powers. It gets to the point where he can tell if someone's got a skeleton in their closet just by touching them. :)
   But sadly, this is one of those movies that seems to end too soon. The climax doesn't give you any indication that you're nearing the end of the movie; it feels like you're only at the end of the second act. (I had the same problem with Rambo 4 and Hostel: Part II.)
   But on the whole, my first impression of Unbreakable is that it's pretty good. It's a well-written and thoughtful take on heroes combined with life imitating art.
   My rating: 75%.

First Impressions: "A Good Day to Die Hard" (2013), "Gangster Squad" (2013) + "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012)

   Well, it's that time of year again. :) The time when I start renting three new releases a week from Xtra-vision to catch up on whatever I missed in the cinema during the first few months of the year.

   The first of this week's trio is A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth instalment in the franchise. I actually went back and watched the first four again in preparation for this one. :) So I'm left in absolutely no doubt that to say this is by far the worst of the series is a massive understatement!
   As the series progressed, it increasingly lost sight of the vulnerability that made the character of John McClane so appealing to begin with. By this point, he doesn't seem to care about anything anymore.
   But that's not the only reason this doesn't feel at all like a Die Hard movie. The film itself is every bland, generic action movie you've ever seen before. It really does seem like the name Die Hard was slapped on it just to make more money.
   The story is so poorly set up that, even by the time it got to the first car chase, I had no idea what was going on. So, even though it had some admittedly cool stunts, the action wasn't the least bit exciting, because I didn't know who these people were or what was at stake. Doesn't help any that the action is shot and edited about as clumsily as you can get – again, like so many other action movies these days!
   Still, at least this movie isn't pussified, unlike the fourth one. :) Neither the language nor the violence is tamed down.
   To sum it up, my main problem with this movie is not just the fact that its narrative is confused (and confusing), but by God is it boring! The original Die Hard really is one of the most perfect action movies ever made, so to see its sequels degenerate to this point is pretty disheartening.
   My rating: 25%.

   Gangster Squad is loosely based on a true story, about a band of Los Angeles police officers who go undercover as renegade gangsters to take down mob boss Mickey Cohen.
   Since the movie claimed at the start that it was inspired by a true story, I was expecting something somewhat serious. What I got instead was a ridiculously over-the-top blast of camp. Right from the opening scenes, the movie made it clear what tone it was going for – the violence was deliriously outrageous – and my expectations plummeted through the floor. It's a movie that basically embraces and glorifies cops chasing gangsters in a pulp fiction kind of way.
   The characters are underdeveloped and, sadly, underperformed. Jerry and Grace's relationship falls especially flat.
   And again, the action scenes are poorly edited; in the first couple, I could never tell where anyone was in proximity to each other.
   I would have preferred if the movie had gone for a more serious tone, tried to properly represent the true story. But as it stands, it's ludicrous, thoroughly predictable and unimpressive.
   My rating: 40%.

   And Silver Linings Playbook rounded out the trio because there aren't yet any rentals from this year that I thought would be good enough to offset Die Hard 5 and Gangster Squad. And it turns out I made a very good choice indeed! :D I loved it!
   I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking mental illness is a very delicate subject, but I don't think any movie should be interpreted as a parable. I think of this more as a character study of two people helping each other to stand on their own two feet again. (I have heard from Film Brain, though – whom you can usually trust considering how meticulously he researches these things – that it's a pretty realistic depiction of mental illness.)
   It's also astonishingly well acted across the board – including, surprisingly, Chris Tucker! :)
   I was thoroughly enjoying the movie… up until near the end, when the DVD started skipping to the point where I couldn't watch any more! :( Imagine my frustration! You know, that really pisses me off! Why can't people take good care of DVDs they rent? They're supposed to be public property! Letting a disc get scratched up is downright insensitive to anyone else who wants to rent it! So my final comment is a resounding "fuck you" to whomever let the DVD end up in that state!
   But even though I haven't yet seen the ending, I think I can quite safely say that, had I caught this during 2012 itself, it would definitely have been on my favourite movies of the year list – top three easily.
   My rating: 90%.

First Impressions: "Daybreakers" (2010)

   In a future where vampires have almost completely replaced humans, vampire scientists are trying to find an effective blood substitute before humans are completely wiped out and the vampire population starves.
   Daybreakers, quite simply, is one of the most inspired vampire stories I've ever come across! The vampire-dominated world it sets up is just fascinating to watch, with too many clever ideas to count. The cars equipped for daytime driving, the "subsiders" (vampires who've deformed from lack of human blood) – the list goes on.
   It's also every bit as violent as you'd want a vampire movie to be. It doesn't go off the wall or anything, but whenever violence is called for, the screen is positively splattered with bloody, gory goodness. :) Especially, the final climax is straight-up awesome!
   By the way, the main protagonist's name is Edward! Yeah. :)
   But the big problem with this movie – sad to say – the acting's not very good. All the performances are a little too subdued, so even the big dramatic moments (like the relationship between Sam Neill and his daughter) fall a little flat.
   Also, whenever CGI is used, it sticks out like a sore thumb because it looks awful.
   But on the whole, the setup and story are so wonderful that I'm willing to let the poor acting and bad CGI pass. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to catch a breath of fresh air by watching a real, kick-ass vampire movie.
   My rating: 80%.

First Impressions: "Star Trek Into Darkness" (2013)

   Okay, I know I'm late to the game on this one, but I just got back from seeing Star Trek Into Darkness. :) And in short, I liked it a lot; I enjoyed it even more than the first JJ Abrams Trek.
   First of all, this one demonstrates more of the true essence of Trek: exploration and diplomacy. The opening scene, for example, and the problems that spring from retrieving Harrison (Khan) from Klingon territory.
   It also stays true to the characters, and their personalities are so strong that their interactions occasionally made me laugh out loud. :) I especially like how, when Kirk is forced to cooperate with Khan, he still has a plan in case Khan double-crosses him.
   Benedict Cumberbatch makes for an amazing villain: manipulative, menacing and ruthless. Though am I the only one who thinks his performance gets a bit over the top at moments? And yes, IMDb flat-out spoils the surprise: it's Khan!
   My favourite scene in the whole movie is, during the meeting of the Starfleet commanders, the moment Kirk realises they've walked right into a trap.
   But the major problem with this movie is the ending. As many people have already pointed out, it blatantly retreads a classic moment from Trek lore, and at some points it just gets plain ridiculous.
   Still, on the whole, it's a very enjoyable movie: cerebral as well as superficially exciting. I wouldn't say either of the JJ Abrams Star Trek films are five-star movies – they're not perfect films – but they're certainly very solid summer blockbusters.
   My rating: 75%.

First Impressions: "8 Mile" (2002)

   I was under the impression that 8 Mile was a fictionalised account of Eminem's rise to fame. But it felt very cinematic and predictable as I was watching it, particularly the low point at the end of the second act – and, sure enough, it says in the credits that it's purely a work of fiction. It does seem it was inspired in part by Eminem's own life, though; it makes me wonder just how much.
   As a movie, it's okay. In essence, it's just your basic inspirational tale of self-confidence. Its effect depends on how much you like the characters and the urban setting. I myself was never all that invested in it, but I didn't mind it, and there were a few moments I did enjoy. For example, Jimmy and Future making up their own lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama and beaming broadly all the while. All the freestyle rapping scenes gave me a whole new respect for anyone who actually can do that! :) And the intent of the climactic rap-off battle is summed up in the moment where Jimmy and Papa Doc are glaring at each other nose-to-nose, almost like Rocky and Clubber Lang! :)
   My only real complaint is the villains: the Leaders of the Free World gang. They're just the same old cardboard-cutout bullies that I find so boring.
   To sum it up, I don't really feel too strongly about it either way; it was okay. I can understand its appeal, but personally I wasn't totally impressed.
   My rating: 60%.

First Impressions: "Dude, Where's My Car?" (2000)

   To cut right to the point, this movie sucks! Big time!
   I've heard people say that The Hangover is basically a remake of Dude, Where's My Car? Well, they're right: it's more or less the same formula. Two guys wake up, can't remember a thing about the previous night, and discover increasingly just how much they got up to. But the characters' goal here is paper-thin, and none of their actions are in any way fun.
   As you can probably guess, I really don't like these characters. They're obviously trying to cash in on the 90s stoner craze, but they fall completely flat. Doesn't help any that the acting across the board is God-awful!
   On top of that, the movie just isn't funny. It's not painfully unfunny, though; I was mostly just sitting there indifferent. Except for several times when the movie keeps extending the same joke to the point where it gets torturously repetitive. Even more maddening is that those extended jokes are the only reason the movie barely passes the eighty-minute mark!
   For most of the movie, I wasn't really mad at it: just bored. Until the last twenty minutes, that is, when the movie plummets off a fucking cliff! Without actually giving away the ending, let's just say shit flies off the deep end so drastically that it just makes you slap your forehead – hard! It's a jaw-droppingly stupid climax!
   There's really nothing else worth mentioning with this movie. It just sucks. It's just two really unlikable people doing really uninteresting things, and there isn't a single gag that works.
   My rating: 30%.

First Impressions: "Dirty Dancing" (1987)

   The Spoony One once said that Dirty Dancing is one so-called "chick flick" that guys can actually enjoy as well. And he's right. :) Yes, to cut right to the point, I liked it.
   I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we follow Jennifer Grey's character, "Baby", right from the start, which puts everyone watching the movie into the mindset of a teenage girl; we can understand her thought process. It certainly helps that the guy she falls for actually is talented! :) Twilight should have learned from this movie! The romance here has a much more substantive foundation.
   The dance sequences themselves are a lot of fun to watch, and sometimes irresistibly sensual; they could almost tell the whole love story in themselves.
   The film's only real detractor is the villains. Good God are they boring! It's just the clichéd oppressive higher-ups, and they're all stick-in-the-muds who simply won't listen.
   Honestly, I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts to properly describe this movie. All I can say is that I did get wrapped up in it – again, because the two leads do share a genuine connection. The opening was pretty confusing, not really establishing the characters and the resort well enough, but the central relationship doesn't put one foot wrong. And you couldn't have asked for a better ending! :)
   My rating: I'm torn between 65% and 70%.

First Impressions: "A Cinderella Story" (2004)

   Okay, A Cinderella Story. I only watched this for the sake of completing the Movie Compatibility Test on Flixster, since I don't like to use the "not interested" rating: I'll give any movie a chance. And this is one of the movies on that test that I was looking the least forward to seeing (okay, not the least, but we'll get to that later).
   Now, I'm not one to diss girls' movies just because I'm not their target audience; I try to keep an open mind. But this one… it's terrible, plain and simple!
   I understand that it's basically just telling the straight-up Cinderella fairytale but in the modern day. But superimposing a modern-day setting just draws more attention to how one-dimensional fairytales are. It doesn't work.
   I can't stand the stepmother or the male lead's jealous ex-girlfriend because, again, they're just one-dimensional bitches with no character other than to simply be antagonists. Especially, with the stunts they pull at the end of the second act, I just wanted to punch them square in the face – but not for the reasons the story wanted. It's because they're such base, cardboard-cutout bullies that I just wanted them to get a clue! I just wanted to get their comeuppance over with and move on.
   The only thing I liked was the character of Rhonda. Again, she's just meant to be a stereotypical supportive offset to the cruel real family, but at least her screen time isn't a chore to sit through!
   Bottom line: just stick to the fairytale itself, not this pig drivel!
   My rating: turkey.

First Impressions: "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)

   Today's classic that I've finally got round to seeing is Doctor Zhivago.
   It's a romantic epic in the same vein as Gone with the Wind: it's seemingly less about the romance and more about how the characters survive in a harsh war-torn world. In this regard, it works very well. I especially love the sequence where Yuri escapes from the partisans: you feel the same sense of relief he does when he sees Lara's house again after so long.
   The one downside to the film, though – and it is a big one – is that it doesn't explain its historical backdrop very well for uneducated slobs like me. With Gone with the Wind, you don't need to know the history beforehand to understand the context of the film. But here, I just didn't understand the purpose of the war, who was on which side and what they were fighting for. And since so much of the story revolves around that, the film as a whole really lost me.
   One thing I have to say: I was very much surprised when I realised the Christmas Eve party scene was over an hour into the film! :) "We're an hour in," I was thinking, "and very little has happened." I had no idea; I thought I was only about half an hour in. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
   Overall, because the film doesn't have a three-act structure, it all depends on whether or not you like the characters enough to share in their meandering adventures. I personally liked them okay, but it would help if I understood exactly what their peril was.
   So my conclusion is: it's a good movie, but it's not a great movie.
   My rating: 70%.