Twilight Goes To Hogwarts For The Unimpressive Vampire Academy

The Good: One or two lines, Special effects/fight sequences are fine
The Bad: Lousy characters, Dull plot, Excessive exposition, Nothing at all superlative in the acting.
The Basics: Vampire Academy is hardly an original or interesting concept that makes for a predictably disappointing film.


As much of the geek world prepares for Divergence to hit theaters tomorrow night (you can put Shailene Woodley in every major film based on teen lit this year, but you can’t guarantee an audience will turn out other than the already loyal fans), I decided it was about time to take in the last cinematic failure in the genre: Vampire Academy. Ever since Beautiful Creatures (reviewed here!) underperformed at the box office, films based on teen fantasy literature have proven to be utterly unreliable. The fad, it seems, is over. Vampire Academy lucked out in that it was greenlit when films based on teen fantasy literature were reliable cash cows. Vampire Academy was lucky because the story is so without spark, originality, cleverness or intrigue that it was pretty much destined to be the box office flop it was; outside those who were already fans, there is no obvious appeal to Vampire Academy.

It is worth noting up front that I have not read the book (or any in the series) upon which Vampire Academy is based. Also at the top, I think it’s worth noting that there is something in especially bad taste about Vampire Academy making a snarky reference to The Twilight Saga (reviewed here!) early on; for all its faults, The Twilight Saga made a commercially-viable genre that led to the success of the books in the Vampire Academy series. In other words, Vampire Academy owes a debt to Twilight, so mocking it outright early in the movie seems churlish. To its credit, Vampire Academy is a bit darker than Twilight; to its detriment, Vampire Academy is much more girlish (in the worst implications of such): an absurd amount of dialogue is about boys, melodramatic relationship analysis, and fashion/beauty. While it is understandable that the first film in a series has to establish the universe of the franchise, Vampire Academy has a painful amount of exposition . . . presented in gruesomely obvious ways.

Two years after a car accident and a year after leaving The Academy, Lissa and Rose are on the run from vampires who want Lissa to return to St. Vladimir’s Academy. Caught by Dimitri Belikov, Rose (the half-vampire Dhampir) and Lissa (the princess of the peaceful vampires, the Moroi) return to St. Vladimir’s Academy to find it under attack by the ruthless Strigoi vampires. Rose, the guardian of the royal Lissa, is alarmed that one of her favorite administrator, Ms. Karp, is no longer at the Academy. While her peers wonder how Lissa fed while on the run for the year, Rose continues to see through the eyes of the Princess. Rose is able to rush to Lissa’s side when Lissa discovers a dead animal hanging outside her dorm.

When a message in blood is placed on the wall of her dorm room, Lissa decides to fight and use magic. Rose commits to practicing her combat after the Queen embarrasses Lissa publicly and her time with Dimirti begins to pay off. Lissa begins to use her magic to compel others to do her bidding pretty constantly, which leads to nightmares that Rose shares. It also unlocks in Rose memories of Ms. Karp warning Rose to get Lissa out of St. Vladimir’s. Lissa continues to compel her enemies on the Board at the Academy even as she tries to use her magic to save people and creatures near death (not quite resurrection). Rose works to figure out who is behind the conspiracy to keep Lissa from the throne by working with Christian (Lissa’s ex) and Dimitri to put together the pieces before Lissa goes over to the dark side irreversibly.

Vampire Academy is just bad, plain and simple. Perhaps it is the fact that I’ve been rewatching Veronica Mars (reviewed here!) constantly to prepare for the film version, but Rose comes across as particularly whiny, insubstantial and not at all clever or smart. Moreover, for all the bitching people have about Twilight, those films did not have the obligatory teen girl shopping scene (which Vampire Academy has). The trip to the mall in Vampire Academy, along with all the boy talk and big dance scene dramatically undermine the darkness that precedes and follows the brighter-lit scenes.

Vampire Academy is devoid of spark and character. Zoey Deutch as Rose Hathaway delivers fast, snippy lines that are reminiscent of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (reviewed here!), save that they play without real wit or double entendre. Rose is the mistress of the single entendre and Lissa is vacuous and dull. Vampire Academy’s cast is fleshed out with an array of entirely unmemorable nonentity secondary characters. Mia Rinaldi is a particularly uninteresting, whiny antagonist who has more in common with a Plastic than Victoria (from Twilight). Mia is both monolithic and dull (despite the fact that she would not, supposedly, kill a cat).

If the villains – Mia and Kirova – are bland and hardly menacing, Rose is just ridiculous. While the film’s obligatory (near) sex scene (which results in a PG-13 amount of clothing removal alone) is the result of a love spell, Rose is not particularly strong even when not the victim of magic. As well, Lissa is not at all smart. Tortured by the one person she cannot use her magic compulsion on – because he is blind and compulsion requires line-of-sight to perform – Lissa is compelled to use her magic to heal the film’s true villain. When the scene came up, my thought instantly was, “Why doesn’t Lissa heal the blind guy so she can then compel him to stop torturing him?” It seems like curing blindness would be nothing compared to the person she is expected to heal.

Beyond the minutiae, the big picture of Vampire Academy is that the premise is dull and unoriginal. The story is essentially a struggle for the throne of a secret society/culture and the stakes are hardly big enough to draw in viewers who did not come to the work already indoctrinated. Do we care which whiny girl might become Queen when Tatiana’s term is done? Not really, no. Do we understand how the apparently psychotic Strigoi have survived in the real (brightly lit) world for thousands of years? That’s not made as clear as Lissa’s unlimited spending ability.

On the acting front, Vampire Academy is adequate, but unremarkable. Established performers like Gabriel Byrne and Olga Kurylenko overshadow leads Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, and Danila Kozlovsky (Dimitri). Kozlovsky and Deutch have no real on-screen chemistry and all of young men at St. Vladimir’s are entirely white bread. Deutch manages the fight scenes well, but the rest of the time, her acting seems to mostly be opening her eyes wide in shock or making moon eyes at Koszlovsky. Lucy Fry plays Lyssa like the archetypal teen girl from any vacuous romantic comedy as opposed to a character that has any depth, growth or supernatural intensity.

Ultimately, Vampire Academy is a giggly, goofy film that is utterly unworthy watching; for any audience. While there might be more books in the series, this is a film franchise not worth continuing; there is no incentive to return to the insultingly underwhelming world populated by characters who embody the worst stereotypes of young women and mix it with ridiculous fantasy elements.

For other films based on teen lit, please check out my reviews of:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Harry Potter Saga
The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bone

2/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Unsimple Twists Are Well-Explored In A Simple Twist Of Fate

The Good: Funny, Witty, Intelligent, Well-acted, Cinematography
The Bad: Utterly predictable plot
The Basics: Witty dialog, excellent actors actually acting and a very even pace overwrite the plot, which the intellectually aware viewer may easily predict within five minutes of the film's opening.


Steve Martin is one of "those comedians" who it's almost hard to take seriously. Or he used to be. More and more he's been displaying his other side, the one that is intelligent, dignified and, well, adult. A few years ago, while reading The New Yorker, I was quite delighted to realize that the Steve Martin whose article I was finding brilliantly ironic and sophisticatedly sardonic was THAT Steve Martin, the same one who amused me with less than intelligent humor in Three Amigos when I was too young to know better.

That said A Simple Twist Of Fate is a far better outing than I anticipated. Martin is wonderful as an adult being . . . an adult!

The plot is based upon George Eliot's novel Silas Marner which I've yet to read, so my film review is pretty pure. A miserly man, played by Martin, is robbed of a very valuable gold coin collection. (The robber, by the by, is played by none other than Stephen Baldwin, which is pretty nice). Dejected, he becomes a recluse and spends his days in isolation making furniture.

Following the robbery, a woman drives off into the snowy night. This is completely unrelated to the robbery, so don't think I've lost my finesse for these reviews! Rather abruptly, we're in a car with a rejected drug addict woman and her toddler daughter. She drives off in the cold night until her car runs out of gas. Then, she gets out and walks with her daughter out into the snow. Her daughter, being significantly smarter, walks away when her mom sets her down and she walks into Michael McCann's (Martin's miserly character) cabin. Michael finds her there, finds her mom dead in the snow and contacts the local constabulary, played by . . . Gabriel Byrne.

Okay, here's the big disclaimer about this film; No one, absolutely no one I know, expects the film to be as good as it is. And it's an excellent film.

Michael gets custody of the toddler, names her, of all things, Mathilda and what follows is the next ten years of their life together. Michael is largely successful as a parent, being involved and actually inspiring his daughter. It is in this period that the film defies our low expectations for it. Martin here acts, and he does it well, and the various aged girls playing Mathilda, they act. Martin seems to be paired up with the Dream Child Actresses as each one is a gem, distinctively creating Mathilda at her various ages.

All the while, seeds are planted with Gabriel Byrne's political character and the latter half of the film is spent as a legal debate over who ought to have custody of Mathilda.

The film is surprisingly engaging, surprisingly intelligent and well plotted, if a bit predictable. The characters are well fleshed out and the relationships that develop are quite extraordinary.

It seems like there ought to be more analysis than that, but the truth is, there doesn't. What the film is truly about is the nature of parenthood. In the first half of the film, we see that defined through the actions of Michael and Mathilda. In the second half of the movie, we see that challenged and going into the court case would ruin the end of the film for you.

The simple, yet thorough, analysis of the movie is that A Simple Twist Of Fate is a nice bit of filmmaking which takes the time to define parenting, then spends the remainder defending that view. How refreshing!

I, personally, am loathe to do ruin the end of a film; especially for a film that so pleasantly surprised me. Give it a chance; it will do the same for anyone who likes a good family story.

For other family-oriented films, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Spitfire Grill
Babies
Baby Mama

8/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Last Of My Top Ten Films, Reviewed! The Usual Suspects!

The Good: Character, Acting, Storytelling, Plot, EVERYTHING!
The Bad: None, this is a perfect film.
The Basics: Clever, dark and perfectly assembled, The Usual Suspects pits a gang of criminals against other criminals and the law when no one will let their past crimes lay.


There's nothing to sigh about with The Usual Suspects presented on DVD in a nice Special Edition with commentary tracks and a couple of deleted scenes. Underrated in the theaters, The Usual Suspects arguably launched the film career of actor Kevin Spacey and put him front and center on Hollywood's map (he had done films before this one, but did not get the recognition that his role here brought him). As well, it gave Bryan Singer the directoral success he needed to go onto bigger projects (like X-Men reviewed here!).

One night on a pier in Los Angeles, a man is killed and a boat is blown up and the initial assumption is that the carnage is drug-related. The only people alive from the adventure are a crippled man named Verbal Kint and a half-charred man who is fished out of the harbor, almost dead. As the charred victim demands immunity and professes he has something to put on the table, Kint is brought before US Customs interrogator Dave Kujan. Kujan is obsessed with Dean Keaton, a criminal who has always escaped prosecution for his crimes.

So, Verbal tells him the story of how he, Keaton and three other criminals came to be near the boat that fateful night . . .

The Usual Suspects is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. The story that Verbal tells is an intriguing one and as he lays out a plot featuring criminals who are continually harassed by law enforcement, he paints a picture that puts the viewer on the side of a pack of ruthless criminals. Verbal is sympathetic because he does not appear to fit in with the psychopathic McManus, the dark and sarcastic Hockney, the slick Fenster or the apparently-reformed Keaton. And as the viewer watched Keaton take a beating in New York City when a truck of weapons gets robbed, the viewer is instantly empathetic.

It takes a lot to get an audience to empathize with characters who casually sink bullets into the skulls of their adversaries, but writer Christopher McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer succeed because of how they do it. The narrative flow of Verbal telling how the police simply rounded up five felons for a line-up and how those criminals understood their debt to society would never be paid makes the alliance they form seem not only sensible, but just.

And things do not go smoothly for the quintet, which adds a layer of realism to the whole venture that brings the viewer deeper in. The personalities of the characters clash. Keaton is cold, rational and essentially a businessman, while McManus is a fiery-eyed killer who seems to take joy in the prospect of simply eliminating his obstacles. And Kint plays the story surprisingly close to the vest, especially as the stakes in the story get escalated to how the group ended up on the pier where the movie begins.

What makes The Usual Suspects perfect outside it's narrative execution of an excellent idea with distinct and believable characters, is the acting. There is not a single bad performance in The Usual Suspects. Every frame, the entire 106 minutes, the acting is solid and right on. Supporting actors like Dan Hedaya (Sgt. Rabin), Suzy Amis (Edie Finneran), Giancarlo Esposito (Jack Baer), Benicio Del Toro (Fenster), and the brilliantly cool Pete Postlethwaite (Kobayashi) add strong support to a cast that is solid and does not need more heft.

Part of the reason the ensemble succeeds is because of the sarcasm that Kevin Pollak brings to Todd Hockney. Long before Pollack was doing schtick in prosthetics in The Whole Ten Yards (reviewed here!), he was dangerous and mean as Hockney in The Usual Suspects. Having seen a lot of his standup routines, this is an acting stretch for the comic and he does it quite well. Similarly, Stephen Baldwin provides nothing but cold menace as McManus. Broody and dangerous, Baldwin emotes a quiet seething that is expertly portrayed to make his character seem completely on edge the whole movie.

Chazz Palminteri is wonderful as interrogator Dave Kujan. Kujan has to be calculating, educated and keep calm and Palminteri evokes the confidence in the character that is befitting his role. Quite simply, he makes the viewer believe without question that he is a Customs agent and an expert interrogator. Similarly, Gabriel Byrne does wonderfully as Dean Keaton, making the viewer believe that he is reformed. Byrne screws his face up perfectly to present the character as conflicted and makes the transition from criminal to businessman a smooth, believable one.

But it's Kevin Spacey who earns his pay and position and awards for his place as Verbal Kint. Spacey limps through the movie selling the viewer on his character's ailment so that the viewer never questions it. That's the power of great acting. And much of Spacey's role it to be engaging while simply sitting in front of the camera telling a story. And he succeeds. Completely.

This is the essential crime movie which makes the criminals the heroes when they are put in a situation where their past wrongs continually come back to haunt them. It is a must see for anyone who loves great drama. But be prepared to want to see it again. A lot.

For other crime dramas, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Departed
The Godfather
The Untouchables

10/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my specialized Movie Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best film to worst!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Coen Brothers Take Us To Miller’s Crossing, A Mildly Nostalgic Trip

The Good: Excellent acting, Interesting characters, Cinematography, decent DVD extras
The Bad: Convoluted plot that does not go very far, Slow and drawn out
The Basics: When Tom, a counselor to a lead gangster, finds himself on the outs with his employer, his bookie and his woman, the viewer is treated to a beautiful looking film.


Lately, I've been seeing some works I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Perhaps the most anticipated work that I've finally sat down to is Miller’s Crossing. This 1990 cinematic outing by the Coen Brothers (possibly best known still for Fargo) was largely neglected by the major awards and seems to have become something of a cult classic. I remember seeing a real compelling preview for it years ago (not the trailer that is on the DVD, which is one of those terrible trailers which virtually shows the entire movie) and I'd been looking forward to seeing it ever since.

Tom Reagan, Prohibition-era gangster advisor, finds himself in a world of trouble when the boss he counsels, Leo, offends a rising gangster named Johnny Caspar simply by not taking his desire to kill a bookie seriously. Caspar fixes fights and places bets with Bernie Bernbaum, who then sells the information on who Caspar is betting on to others, who flood money into the pool and effectively alter the odds so there will be no payout. Caspar wants to kill Bernie, who is under Leo's protection and Leo blows him off.

Sadly, Leo neglects Tom's counsel in large part because he is in love with Bernie's sister, Verna. Tom is involved with Verna as well and this sets off a string of problems for Tom that are compounded by his gambing debts. Rejected by Leo, he finds himself approaching Caspar, evading Bernie, and in a weird relationship with Verna. When Caspar's lieutenant, the Dane, suspects Tom might be double-crossing Caspar, Tom must figure out how to save his own life, which involves setting all his enemies against each other.

Miller’s Crossing is a beautifully shot film that reminds the viewer of just how important cinematography can be to establishing mood and setting. One of the few DVD bonuses on this disc is a conversation with Barry Sonnenfeld, who discusses his shooting philosophies and ideas for how Miller’s Crossing was framed and created. It's worthwhile, educational and highlights how much thought went into the look and feel of this gangster film.

And the result is a beautiful-looking film. Miller’s Crossing is inarguably a wonderful looking movie. Few films leap right to mind as being assembled so well that what the film looks like tells so much of the story. Indeed, I would be tempted to spend an evening simply watching the film without sound just to soak in the color contrasts, the murky forest that stands starkly against the sharp, beautifully appointed - almost opulent - rooms of Leo's various palaces. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen and Director of Photography Sonnenfeld have a wonderful sense of style that is virtually lost in films outside the art house's now.

Sadly, while the look of the film is wonderful, the feel is anything but. Almost homogeneously slow with characters belaboring the complexities of the plot which is universally based on the concept of which character is betraying the others based on their relationships. So, for example, the Dane has a prominent place in the movie as Caspar's lieutenant, who is having a homosexual relationship with Mink, who is involved with both the Dane and Bernie. Tom manipulates the Dane's love of Mink with Caspar to sew seeds of distrust between the boss and his closest advisor. The webs that are woven between the various characters are all similarly complex and much of the time on screen for the characters is simply spent defining who is relating to who or how someone is tugging at a character based on those relationships.

Miller’s Crossing is a big film about relationships. The problem with it is that almost all of the dialogue belabors that, it is spent defining and explaining the relationships rather than illustrating most of the relationships. So, there is a vast amount of time of the movie spent with characters talking about other characters and musing on how they related. The result is a movie that feels like watching a house of cards being assembled where the person building the structure is belaboring what card is being placed now and what cards it is atop and proximate to.

Fortunately, it looks so good. But also, the characters are interesting. Despite a plot that is dependent on all sorts of character exposition in order to be even remotely sensible, Miller’s Crossing is populated by interesting characters. In one of the other extras, clips of television interviews (sadly, there is no commentary on this version), Marcia Gay Harden - who plays Verna - speaks about her joy at playing a very different female character. She is in a period piece, but playing a strong female character who is not the hooker-with-a-heart of gold, but rather a very independent, strong woman who is running her own game.

And Tom Reagan makes for a wonderful protagonist. Tom is an anti-hero, a gangster who is in deep debt from gambling who will not allow his boss to simply make good on his debts for him, despite the peril it puts him in. Indeed, Tom's big problem is his integrity on some level; he gives Leo good advice, which Leo simply ignores, and he is honest with Leo about his relationship with Verna, which puts him on the outs with his boss and plunges his life into real peril.

The peripherals and supporting characters are all easy to watch and enjoy. Indeed, Mink appears on screen only once and is stunningly memorable for his brief appearance. Bernie Bernbaum is deliciously manipulative and at moments utterly pitiable. Leo and Caspar both have the bearings of genuine leaders and the Dane is a surprisingly strong supporting player on a very full tapestry.

The joy of Miller’s Crossing has to be the acting. All of the performers in this film bring their "a game" to the movie. Gabriel Byrne is Tom and he plays the role unlike anything I've ever seen him in, though he does have a coldness to him that he played in subsequent roles. J.E. Freeman is brilliantly pokerfaced as Eddie Dane. Indeed, one of the coolest moments of the entire cinematic experience involved the Dane's using Verna as a human shield while taking out two bodyguards. Freeman uses his body fluidly and brilliantly in such a way that seems effortless and stylistically wonderful, yet utterly real and a part of the world created for this movie.

Marcia Gay Harden, who I loved in The Spitfire Grill (reviewed here!), once again illustrates her complete range of talent by providing a performance that is strong and opposite almost every other film I've seen her in. Here she is a major player and she holds her own in a very manly movie. She and Byrne have great on-screen chemistry which sells their relationship perfectly.

The one to watch, though, is Jon Polito. I was familiar with Polito before this film solely from an episode of Millennium called "Omerta" from its third season (reviewed here!), where he played a quirky reformed gangster. The role was wonderful and weird and when Polito opened Miller’s Crossing, he was instantly recognized by me. Usually, I judge an actor and their performance on how different it is from their established cannon of works. Polito wonderfully and expertly plays essentially the same character I had seen before in Millennium in a very different context. He manages to balance humor and efficiency wonderfully and despite the similarities in characters and performances, Polito steals every scene he is in.

It's just enough to recommend this film. As someone who has watched hundreds of movies in the last year, it's hard to find something I still find new and intriguing and I suspect if I had less experience with films, I would have enjoyed Miller’s Crossing a lot more. It's an enjoyable film, but it belabors itself because it is complicated, but not long, though it feels long in parts. It is beautifully shot, with a wonderful score and interesting characters. The performances are great, but most of the work was done in the casting; this movie has a truly great ensemble and is likely to delight those who are tired of giant a-list heavy films. This is a rather manly film, but it is not brainless guy fare and may be accessible to women who like a good gangster film that is a bit quirkier than the average drama.

But it's not for the faint of heart; this is a bloody movie obsessed with relationships and how messy they can be. I'm glad I watched it, finally, even if I did find myself wishing for more.

For other movies with gangsters, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Godfather
The Whole Ten Yards
The Untouchables

6.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Scully Goes It Alone On Corporate NYPD Blue: Smilla's Sense Of Snow

The Good: Julia Ormand's acting, Plot development, Good pacing, Smilla
The Bad: Gabriel Byrne's character, Underdeveloped potential
The Basics: Smilla's Sense Of Snow is a surprisingly good film wherein a lone woman seeks to discover the roots of a murder and exposes instead a Corporate Evil.


I'll confess; every time I've seen the cover for Smilla's Sense Of Snow at the library, I've refused to pick it up. It simply didn't look good. I judged a video by its cover and assumed it was some drippy drama about some woman and her love for a man. If you look at the cover of the video, it's easy to make that assumption, but it's completely wrong. Smilla's Sense Of Snow is a long-feeling film that tracks the Greenlandic Smilla on the case of a dead boy in her apartment building. Convinced he met with foul play, the micro hydrologist starts an investigation a la NYPD Blue only to discover it's actually an episode of the X-Files (reviewed here!). It's a very specific X-File, too, but I'm not going to mention the title of the episode lest it ruin the experience for others who wish to be pleasantly surprised by this film.

So, in Denmark, there's a building that has several immigrants from Greenland. Smilla is one of those immigrants, a six year old boy and his mother are others. Smilla returns home from work one day to discover her young friend has jumped off the roof of their building and died. Convinced by the tracks in the snow that it was not an accident, Smilla begins investigating, harassing the local district attorney and police to keep the investigation opened. Aiding her is a stranger from her building whose allegiances are uncertain and his emotional connection to Smilla even more unstable. As well, Smilla is aided by her father, an apparently important and influential man with many connections. The case leads Smilla and her strange companion to Greenland Mining and a series of accidents that have occurred with several expeditions and it becomes clear (though no one says the words) that there's a massive conspiracy afoot.

What doesn't work is Gabriel Byrne. Love him in pretty much everything I've seen him in except this. His character was too inconsistent and while Smilla's headstrong behavior lends itself to abrupt turns, his did not and yet the character (and possibly the actor) were often inconsistent and difficult to watch. I think perhaps he was cast in the role simply because he's one of the few actors able to work around the name "Smilla" frequently. As well, there are underdeveloped premises. For instance Smilla and the stranger (who I looked up and according to the IMDB is "The Mechanic")'s relationship. It seems there's something going on between them before the film begins and we're never clued into it. There are several other points where it seems like the film could have made explicit or taken a few moments more to develop and round out the scenes. It seems like some of the scenes are too roughly cut.

On the other hand, Julia Ormond is fabulous as the rogue Smilla. She's self-reliant, deliberate, and determined. Ormond adds a steely face and unbreaking posture to the role. This is one of the rare instances where the actor and character intermingle in such a way as to make it difficult to tell what is the actor, what is the character. In a good way.

The supporting actors are impressive. Robert Loggia plays Smilla's father with a dignity and mystery that is instantly captivating.

The plot development is wonderful. As the case goes from the extremes of simple rationality to the somewhat fantastic, there's consistency in character that makes the plot seem so credible. The film is slow, but it's consistent. That is, there are no pacing issues; the film maintains an appropriate pace, methodical describes it best. It builds in such a way that it works and it feels natural. Given the developments, the pace at which the plot progresses excuses the utter lack of surprise the characters possess (or rather don't) when the extraordinary factors enter.

Smilla's Sense Of Snow is not a science fiction, it's true drama. It's realism in the most realist vein; sometimes the most extraordinary things do happen. This is, essentially, a murder mystery and it comes together wonderfully.

For other dramas that push the envelope, please visit my reviews of:
Inception
The Adjustment Bureau
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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