The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Film Review by Imogene

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Directed: Stephan Chbosky

Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma, Watson, Paul Rudd, Johnny Simmons, Ezra Miller, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh, Nina Dobrev

Genre: Drama, Romance

Stars: 5/5

(Contains Spoilers)

I have to say for this actual film, I was never particularly bothered about seeing it upon its release, but after hearing it’s “film of the year” for 2012 and was highly rated by many sites and reviews – I decided to add it to my LoveFilm list. When it came through the post I was eager to watch it, to simply understand the hype for it. I have to say I was not at all disappointed. From the moment it started, till it finished, I was hooked!

The film starts with showing us Charlie (Logan Lerman) at a desk in his room on the eve of attending high school. He’s writing a letter to an unknown pen pal sharing his worries for the days and term ahead. Feeling like he’s not going to make friends, he just attends lessons and keeps his head down for the best part. He befriends his teacher Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd) who picks up on his great abilities on English Language and starts giving him added assignments.

Charlie attends a school football game alone one evening and sits near the flamboyant Patrick (Ezra Miller). As they start to enjoy the game Sam (Emma Watson) joins with them and at that moment Charlie is hit by Sam’s beauty. He becomes acquainted to the pair and heads home in high spirits, only to arrive home to witness his sister Candance being attacked by her boyfriend. Charlie is nerved by this as his Aunt got abused by her partners before she died so he goes to help her only for her to swear him to secrecy from their parents.

At a homecoming party Charlie is stood alone around the edge of the hall, seeing his sister with her boyfriend he goes joins Patrick and Sam. After the homecoming he goes with them to a house party, there he meets Mary Elizabeth, Alice and Bob. He also gets to meet Sam’s boyfriend Craig and is instantly jealous. Bob encourages Charlie to eat a pot brownie (which he had no idea was one) and as he gets high all the party members are amused by the stuff he says. Sam saves his from total embarrassment as he says he want a strawberry milkshake and takes him to the kitchen where he compliments her on her eyes and then tells her about the death of his best friend. He then leaves the kitchen to go upstairs to the toilet and accidentally walks in on Patrick with Brad (Johnny Simmons) kissing. Patrick is panicked as Brad doesn’t want their relationship to get out (as his father doesn’t approve) and makes him promise he’ll never repeat what he saw. He agrees not to say anything. Sam meanwhile is left shocked and goes speaks to Patrick saying she doesn’t think he has any friends – they both welcome him with open arms into the group.

 

(Sam through the Tunnel)

Whilst they both drive Charlie home, an unknown song comes up on the radio and tells Patrick to drive through the tunnel, where she gets in the back of the pick up truck and waves her arms around. Charlie again is completely stunned by her natural beauty.

Sam doesn’t do too well in tests so in the coming months up to Christmas, Charlie says he would help her revise. At Christmas all the friends participate in a “Secret Santa” gift exchange. On the last night of the exchange Sam takes Charlie up to her room to show him, her gift – A typewriter. Charlie is wowed by this present. They start talking about first kisses and she shared that her first kiss was by her father’s boss who molested her in her younger years. He tells Sam that he’s never kissed anyone before and she says she want his first kiss to be by someone who loves him and the pair end up kissing.

On Charlie’s birthday he has flashbacks of his Aunt Helen who died in a car accident that same night after getting him a present. At a new years party he takes a LSD and has many flashbacks of the things that happened surrounding Aunt Helen's death and their relationship together, he gets found passed out by the police.

After being dismissed he attended a party with the gang and had Mary Elizabeth as a partner to the dance, they end up going back to her house and making out – she then announces he’s her boyfriend now. Charlie doesn’t really like her like that and ends up going along with it because he doesn’t know how to break up with M-E without hurting her feelings, but has no interest in her neediness. Whilst at a party with the gang they play truth or dare, Patrick on Charlies turn dares him to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and everyone assumes he’d go for Mary Elizabeth but he jumps out at Sam. The pair is angry with what he did and Patrick tells him to give it time before approaching the group again.

 

(Charlie kisses Sam in the Dare)

Being back to being alone again, Charlie starts to isolate himself and the memories of Aunt Helen worsen. After meeting with Bob, Charlie finds out that Brads father found out about Brad and Patrick's relationship. He tries to talk to Patrick only for him to tell him to leave him alone for the moment. Brad is seen with a massive bruise on his face and tells people a wrong tale as to why he got the mark. Patrick walks by Brads table at lunch and he calls him a faggot – then the pair end up fighting on the cafeteria floor. Charlie intervenes and tells them to back off his friends.

Patrick is heartbroken that he and Brad had to end their relationship and ends up getting closer to Charlie. After they've been spending a lot of time together Patrick one night tries to kiss Charlie. With no reaction Patrick bursts into tears and apologises. Sam ends her relationship with Craig as she finds out he cheated on her 3 times.

Sam gets through to Graduation and is off to Penn State. After her leaving party, Charlie helps Sam pack her items up. Wondering why he never asked her out as she’s liked him, and talked of Craig and the relationship there she asked why does she always fall for people that aren’t good for her and Charlie replies “We accept the love we think we deserve”, after some more confessions the pair end up kissing and is stopped when she rubs the inner thigh, but resumes after he mentioned that it wasn’t anything that made him stop.

The next day he watches Sam leave for college and is feeling upset. Going home he receives more flashbacks of his repressed memories of Aunt Helen who used to abuse him as a young boy and ends up calling Cadence saying it was his fault she’s dead. Getting the police to the house so that Charlie couldn’t harm himself, before he could they got to him and he blacked out.

We then see him in a hospital confused as to why he’s there. The Doctor tells his parents of the damage that his Aunt did and that the reasons for his breakdowns were because of repressed memories. On being discharged Sam and Patrick meet with Charlie and go to a restaurant. On leaving Sam says she found out the name of the song that was playing when they first went through the tunnel together. Charlie gets in the back of the truck this time and screams on his way out of the tunnel.

I adored this film and like I said at the start I was hooked from the moment I turned it on to the moment the credits rolled. I’m glad it was a long film as I don’t think I would’ve been satisfied with it only being an hour long. The plot had plenty of room to develop and it did develop in an even pace which was perfect for this genre. There were no moments that I felt it was rushed – I got everything I wanted from the storyline.

I really liked Charlie’s character and loved the way he was portrayed as shy and nervous, it brought real depth to the film and the character. It also was lovely to see him grow more confident throughout the film. It was his story and it was well documented – I want to read the book now.

The whole crew was fantastic, it was especially nice to see not all well recognised cast members as it allowed there to be interest in how the character shall be played. I have to say it’s now one of my favourite films and shall enjoy watching once again someday!

I have given it a 5/5 because I felt it was very mysterious and gripping film, it was very interesting all round, there was never a moment where I felt like I was loosing interest or wondering what was going on – fabulous film!

The Host - A Non-Subtitled Review by Imogene

 The Host

Directed: Andrew Niccol

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Chandler Canterbury, Rachel Roberts, Diane Krugar

Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance

Stars: 2.5/5

 (Possible Spoilers)

My Non-Subtitled Version

My sister contacted me and said she wanted to go and see ‘The Host’. I did, but this version was going to be non-subtitled, and I was dubious of whether to actually go, but she offered to pay, so it swayed my thoughts. Now I know I vowed pretty much to never go to another non-subtitled film, but I knew in a few weeks time I would be going to see it again with subtitled. So in the end I decided I would do a 2-part movie review, one with and one without, and as an experiment, how much I understood with and without. So here goes..

I tried to read this story soon after the Twilight saga, and I found it incredibly difficult to follow, so soon I left it, even though it was written by the same author as Twilight. I imagined it would just as easy reading, but struggled to get into the plot – It felt like it took forever to get no-where! So it wasn’t until I saw the Trailer for the film that I took an interest in it again and possibly if I went back to the book now I may enjoy it more so.

Visually I found the film really interesting, (especially the eyes!) The film was one of them films where if you didn’t hear the speaking, then you’d miss out on the important stuff like how they explain how the planet now works and what the hosts’ reason for being about, but I missed all of this and I found it frustrating. I think I would’ve coped better if there wasn’t so much background music whilst they explain things. For a Deaf person, this film really wasn’t the best, even at the best times! There were a lot of scenes in the dark and underground which caused lots of shadows that covered people’s faces as they spoke, and there were echo’s as they walked around the cave. So it wasn’t filmed for the Deaf in mind, I have to say!

But even I found in the daylight, the camera didn’t focus on any of the faces for very long. This was really annoying, especially when there was one person standing in front of the other speaking and they were in focus on the person in front, so it wasn’t easy to lipread!

However, I did learn some things, and I did understand the voice of Melanie inside wanderer, which I thought was surprising, but I don’t know if that was due to volume?

I have to say I found the storyline very interesting even though I probably missed a lot of the facts, but it was a film I could get the gist, just by looking at it and by the way they acted and look – And I relied on this loads!

So this is what I thought the plot was about:

There was this girl called Melanie who had a brother called Jamie who were humans hiding away from the hosts with this group. The hosts were about peace and honesty, and no host could lie about what they were doing, or anything, they trusted with everything. One night the group go to this building where the Hosts are trying to find them, to turn them into one of themselves. Melanie left her brother and promised she’d come back, only to get chased by the Hosts and later in the film we find out that the group kill themselves rather than be turned into a Host. (To stop the Hosts extracting their thoughts and memories on finding the other humans!) She jumped out of a storey window, only to survive the fall and they turn her into a Host.
She then wakes up, then walks to the bathroom and you hear Melanie screaming and shouting from Wanderer’s head, and that Wanderer can talk back to her. (This makes things interesting!) They have a very complicated relationship between each other in the beginning, as they clashed to control the body and mind. There is a lot of flashbacks if Melanie’s memories of her and her boyfriend Jared (I think this was his name?) Wanderer was interrogated by another Host for Melanie’s thoughts on where the other humans she was with are. (I later learned in the film that she tricked Wanderer, by showing her not the true version of the places, to save herself and the others) Melanie manages to get Wanderer on side to try and find her brother and do her promise of going back to him. They manage to escape and get a car to go back to the group, she tricked her multiple times to cover the tracks of where she was going. They crashed the car and she had to walk through the desert to get there, she collapses and her ‘Uncle’ finds her and gives her water, but they don’t believe it’s her as she is in a Host body now. (They knew she was a Host as she had a ring of blue in her eyes)

There was a large part of the film where they weren’t sure whether Melanie was still inside Wanderer, but they start to believe to think that she is, and slowly they begin to trust her. Not after several attempts from a few people to try and kill her. This part of the film was a good way to get to know both, Melanie and Wanderer. We learnt that they both have a very caring side, and are both genuine souls – however Melanie was stronger willed! It was strange for them both to be leading this life together, yet separately. They become friends. There becomes a love triangle (Stephenie Meyers likes her love triangles, doesn’t she?!) but this is where I get confused as to who is exactly in the love triangle. As I thought Wanderer falls for her protector, but I’ve read that it’s Jared – So this is something I want to work out when I watch it subtitled!

Wanderer starts understanding the way of the human race and finds sympathy for Melanie’s group. She helps protect them from the Hosts, and makes a bond with them.

Wanderer finds that they have done experiments on extracting the soul of the Host out of the human bodies and she finds some dead – this leads to her being scared for her own life as they promised they wouldn’t hurt her. She makes a decision that Melanie needs to have her life back, so they do the operation on her (she expects to die) only for her to wake up in another body, of another who is dead.

The film was really emotional at times, although when my sister was red faced and crying, I wasn’t – so this definitely makes me realised that I missed out on the sad stuff! So I can’t wait to see it properly with subtitles and be able to understand it fully.

Please don’t take my wording on the plot as I’m probably very wrong in a lot of areas but it’s a deaf girl’s view on the film – and I hope it shows you exactly how difficult it is to miss out on vital parts to the storyline.

I did enjoy watching the film, but there’s only so much enjoyment you can get out of not understanding the film – It probably would’ve been much more successful if I had read the book then I’d know what was happening..

I give this film 2.5/5 stars as I couldn’t follow the storyline very well and also the voices wasn’t clear nor in focus – I understand that normal hearing people wouldn’t have a problem with this, and it appears there wasn’t, but for me it made the viewing not a very good experience. But, it had a decent story line and some decent eye candy, so it had some good points ;)

Madagascar 3: Eleanor's non-subtitled review.

Title: Madagascar 3: Europes Most Wanted
Directed: Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon
Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Frances MdDomand, Bryan Cranston, Martin Short
Genre: Animation, PG

 OK so I will start with confessing that I had to go and see this without subtitles. My job
involves taking service users to where they want to go, and this particular service user wanted to see Madagascar 3. Previously I have taken service users to the cinema lots of times without subtitles and immediately regretted it. The last time I took a service user (before this time obviously!!) I made a mental note to stop taking anyone to non-subtitled films; I had been with a fidgety service user to see the awful, dragged out, worlds most non-deaf aware film ever called ‘The Lorax’. I’m sure the film was great if you had understood a word of what was said, but it was an animation so I could not lip-read, the Lorax was constantly in shadows with a young boy who had clearly not hit puberty and had the most inaudible voice for my hearing to detect. I can still remember how I felt during that film and it felt like it went on for hours, trying so hard not to fall asleep (which the fidgety service user definitely helped with).

 Anyway, this review will probably not be like my future reviews. This review, I would like to tell you what I understood of the film (so please, if you haven’t watched the film and intend to watch it DO NOT read any further! – SPOILERS!!).  

 OK so here we go.

1.    The crew (Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo and Melman the Giraffe and yes I googled that, didn’t know what they were called apart from Melman as I always think of him as Ross from Friends.) are all in Madagascar and the penguins leave for an adventure. Alex (the lion) thinks he hears them say they’re never coming back and has a dream that they are all old and still in Madagascar – not sure why that was relevant?

2.    I can’t remember how they get out of Madagascar and at this point am really confused because I thought they wanted to be in Madagascar and were loving it there.

3.    An evil woman pops into the story who treasures stuffed animals and really wants the lions head for her collection.

4.    The crew find a circus on a train and want to help them or work with them or something, the circus say no and then yes? And the crew get onboard the train.

5.    Monkeys get the deed for the circus (not sure why this is important either) and we learn why the circus failed previously – due to the Tiger trying to run through a small ring on fire and failing? Alex (the lion) helps get his confidence back and Tiger is able to do the act once again.

6.    The circus crew find a paper article about the animals missing from the zoo and are upset with the original crew because of some reason that I didn’t understand/hear – I thought that the crew were trying to get with the circus and enjoyed being with them?

7.    Evil woman still after the animals but the animals are tranquillised in front of the zoo (that the crew were originally trying to get too?) and the zoo keeper thinks that the evil woman is giving them back and gives her the reward (money).

8.    Evil woman rips up the cheque, she doesn’t want money, she wants the lion and attempts to shoot Alex but he is saved by the circus.

9.    I assume that the crew are happy to stay with the circus? And Marty starts to sing ‘I like to move it, move it’.

OK so that’s my understanding of the film. Because it was animated and largely relies on the animation side of things I was able to get a lot without dialogue. But there are so many things that I didn’t understand that could be solved with knowing the dialogue. It can be so frustrating only being able to laugh at the things I can visually see and missing the dialogue humour.

Although I didn’t enjoy not having subtitles I have always liked Madagascar films and my favourite part was the relationship between the circus bear and King Julien who falls instantly in love. It demonstrated that love is everywhere and it doesn’t matter how different two people are, what they look like, how old they are, if there’s a connection its right.

I also enjoyed the storyline about the Tiger, he got overconfident with the ring trick and when he failed he became grumpy and closed-minded. He lost hope, so the others around him (the circus) lost hope too. But with a bit of help he was able to do it again and become a brilliant act once more.

I feel unable to rate this film because I did not get all aspects of it and do not think it fair of me to judge it on what I have understood. I would say that it’s a brilliant film, the graphics were amazing (I watched it on 2D) and that my service user enjoyed it very much (although they were under the age of 8).

For those of you who are not deaf this will hopefully give you an insight to our world.