The Slutty Adventures of Emma Watson's Character - who may or may not be real - featuring Occasional Commentary by This Guy

Perks of Being a Wallflower was, well, um yeah. Perhaps we should rename this film "The Slutty Adventures of Emma Watson's Character, featuring Occasional Commentary by This Guy".

According to a friend who has read the book, Sam's past gets mentioned but isn't a huge focus of the book. But boy, is it ever a big feature of the film! 

HANG ON JUST A MINUTE! Did I actually get through this entire film with this little niggling feeling, only to realise several weeks later that there was something so very annoying that I forgot to mention? Let's resolve this then (and I'll even put it first). Why is it that this film (and by extension, book) depicts the only way of having fun to get stoned and drunk with randoms? Yay I have new friends, I'm going to get so wasted I won't remember even getting home, let alone talking to these people! Why is it that there's no alternative to the 'get wasted' solution? Because talking to people sober is such an AWFUL thing. This bypasses the fact that Charlie has legitimate mental and physical health issues, and presumes to teach the audience that the best way to fix these things is to get wasted, despite the fact that this might be one of the worst things that he could do.

Also, is it just me or are the times he spends with his friends outside the parties also played out as though they are hallucinatory episodes? The way the camera and the editing jump around in the dance scene, at Rocky Horror; the impossible-to-find-did-we-ever-really-hear-it tunnel song; the bit where Charlie zones out and says what he wishes he could say during truth or dare...these things make it feel as though he's wasted all the time, and that the things he experiences are little more than hallucinations he concocts in order to get him through his hellish high school years. In which case he's even more mentally damaged than the film originally gave him credit for and he should probably get some serious attention.

Also, why does he only ever wear the suit? Does he have NO OTHER CLOTHES now that he has a suit?

Moreover, does nobody else think it's creepy that he's a freshman (year 9, therefore 13) and these girls he dates are seniors (year 13, 18)?? Hey yeah I'm off to uni but I love my boyfriend who's turning 14 this year?!?

Also, maybe it's because the director is a writer and not a director, and writing a book doesn't mean that you can direct a film, but the pace and beats of this film were all over the show. There were some really beautiful bits - the typewriter, the snow angel, the tunnel - but they were offset by a friendship that felt VERY rushed and forced.

EDIT: I think that because the writer is the director, he was too close to the content - I feel like he skipped over bits that would otherwise have been important to the true feel of the characters. Also, I worry that he thought, 'Hey I've got Emma Watson, let's really use her', to the detriment of the story. Sam shouldn't have been the biggest focus of the book, and I felt like I got far more of her character than I ever did of Charlie's./EDIT

I felt like Ezra Miller carried the other two; his performance was convincing and I felt like he had a character, in the whole, well-rounded kind of a way. Logan Lerman was just 'the main character, who occasionally says something, but mostly gets stoned and looks shy', and Emma Watson (bless her hotness) was the slutty one with the almost-but-not-quite American accent.

Also, NOTHING is resolved. Nothing. I don't need my movies to take me by the hand or lead me around by the nose; I'm quite capable of putting the pieces together by myself. That said, this film resolves nothing. All of his friends leave at the end, leaving him alone in a school that he's clearly still afraid of, he has no other friends remaining, he's just gotten himself into a safe state of mind and he's happily in a relationship, but oh wait she's gone somewhere else and now he's back where he started. Hmmm.

I feel like this movie had a lot to live up to, from a book that touched so many people (though thanks to Whitireia's publishing class, I will always remember it as the Book with the Bad Blurb). I feel like it wanted to be so much more, and that a few key lines and great moments (truth or dare, anyone?) were making the script seem way better than it turned out to be. I've watched a few interviews to check, and it seems as though all the actors love each other so much that they want it to be awesome, but...it's just not.

Yes I didn't get the major plot point until about halfway through too, which I liked. I felt like that bit came out very naturally. Rethinking about this and the MAJOR PLOT POINT SPOILERY BIT doesn't actually serve any purpose at all. I can see that it's probably a big thing in the book, but I can't understand its purpose.

I wasn't that fussed bout the way it was shot - I feel like he should have listened to his DoP and his editor more (or perhaps that was the best they could do, who knows). There were some very genuine bits, but I think it tried so hard to be this monumental coming-of-age film, but it couldn't quite figure out how to go about it.
I think the support cast was really good - Charlie's dad, his teacher, even the brief shots of Lynskey (Kiwi mention!), but I feel like Alice and Mary-Elizabeth(?) were very 2 dimensional. Sometimes I even wondered why they were there.

That said, very much liked the truth or dare scene, even if the end of it did shy away from character development. 
I think the support cast was really good - Charlie's dad, his teacher, even the brief shots of Lynskey (Kiwi mention!), but I feel like Alice and Mary-Elizabeth(?) were very 2 dimensional. Sometimes I even wondered why they were there.

Skyfall: Because women don't need to actually do anything

I said I would write a review of Skyfall, so I shall. Firstly, thanks to Elly Morris for taking me in for freesies. I did enjoy the movie, though there are things that bother me about it.

Good: 
It ticks all the Bond boxes. I know that it was the 50th anniversary of Bond recently, and this film definitely tips its hat to Bond fans everywhere. There are references to previous Q gadgets like the exploding pen, Bond uses a Walther PPK with DNA responding grip like DAlton did in a previous film, there's the Bond car (Aston Martin DB5 - don't worry, I looked it up) which turns up for the last getaway, there's a massive Final Battle duel where Bond is left without a gun and must McGuyver his way to success etc etc.  


It was directed by Sam Mendes. This is the same chap who did Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and American Beauty, so when I say this film is pretty, I mean, PRETTY. This is a director who knows about cinematography and lighting, in more ways than the typical Hollywood director. There's a gritty fight in a room full of glass walls and doors, with both Bond and enemy silhoutted against neon signage and a neon jellyfish animation that moves across the background. The scenery is beautiful; the fight brutal and quick. 
Javier Bardem is brilliant. He makes such a good bad guy because he's not the typical I-hate-everything-and-am-grumpy-all-of-the-time antagonist. He's happy, he's light-hearted, but he burns inside and wants everyone else to burn as well. 
Bad:
Failed the Bechdel test pretty bloody quickly. Also, casual overtones of racism and sexism, anyone? Like the audience is supposed to think, "oh, it's okay, because it's a Bond film". Let me be clear: racism and sexism = never okay. And yet...we have Skyfall.
Bond girls: does anybody remember the rather terrible Xmen: Wolverine? And how all the characters in that film essentially existed to tell Hugh Jackman how to get from point A to point B? Well, that's what the women are like in this film (save M, but probably only coz she's old), except with sex. The sex in this is so casual, it's weird. Like if you were walking to work and you met a friend you saw on the street, so you stop and have a quick chat to them and then you keep walking to your original destination.
That's what the sex is like!
     "Hey, we're both in the same room, and you're a man, and I'm a woman, let's do this thing . . . okay I'm going back to plot now." I kid you not.
     "Hey field agent who shot me, howsit? I'm not dead after all." "Hey that's nice, sorry bout the whole shooting you thing" *an hour of movie passes* "hey field agent, when did you get to China?" "Just now, specifically to shave you."
     "Hey field agent, you know what's erotic? Shaving."
Whaaaaat? And then she's just gone (after a visit to a gambling den, those gambling Chinese).
And at the end of the film, Bond actually asks her what her name is! You've been on two, maybe three missions with this woman and you never knew her name? How much time did  you spend together? How many times do you introduce yourself?
Actually, some of the characters did exist simply to get Bond from point A to point B. "We need you over there now. Here's a passport." "Where am I going?" "To kill that guy that we introduced to the plot specifically so you'd have a reason to go over to China." Even Judi Dench, who should in theory be the best actor in this film, does nothing but whinge at Bond. I demand a strong female character!
As much as I love Javier Bardem, I must point out that the whole twisted, tortured camp guy trope gets old quickly. It's like watching a Disney movie. Like he's Jafar, but blonde and with a hatred of sticky toffees.


Also, it did the Return of the King thing, where you think it's going to end, or you think that this will be the last shoot-up - BUT WAIT - there's more! I had to go to the bathroom quite close to what I thought was the end of the film, and I was thinking, I'll just get my flatmate to tell me how he died, but I came back and he was STILL alive.

Bonus points for spotting some of the more obvious continuity errors. There were some cheesy uses of the Bond theme, as though we needed an aural cue to realise that he was doing something badass and impossible for anyone that isn't Bond. Also, I spent half the movie wondering where I knew Q from, and after IMDB-ing him, I'm still not sure.

Gods, don't see this. Because what it does well, well, it doesn't do much well. Also, if you want to beat substance addiction, just go to China. Unless you have a gambling addiction, in which case, well.