Monday 3 February 2014

Weekly review: How to get through watching Winter's Bone without falling asleep.

Heeeey peeps!

Monday is here which means another weekend has gone. After my Friday post on Jennifer Lawrence, I thought it would be a really good idea to watch Winter's Bone on Netflix because it was about time I saw Jennifer in something non Hunger Games related...

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...Hmmmm. Let's just put it this way, over the period of my life I have seen an immensely unhealthy amount of movies. I mean, seriously, if the hours spent watching movies were added together, I'd probably be on several years worth by now... I like my fiction, as you may have guessed.

Of all these many, many movies that I have watched, 9.99999 times out of 10, I will sit through it until the end. Even if I hate every moment of it, I tend to give the film-makers the benefit of the doubt and resign myself to the fact that I can't make an informed decision about the movie without seeing it all the way through... as such, I have watched a lot of crap over the years. When friends have begged me to leave the cinema because they are sure they will have some form of stroke if forced to watch any more, I have always said, "No... we are here to watch the film, and even if we have lost about 1,000 brain cells from exposure to its contents, we will sit here like good little viewers and watch this thing through." This has left me unpopular at times, but I don't have many morals, so the ones I have, I will damn well stick by.

That being said, there have been two movies in my past (yes, that's right, only two) where I have stopped it part way through because I just couldn't watch any more. They are, surprisingly, both Will Ferrell movies, which confuses me as I'm pretty certain I like Will Ferrell, but let's face it, he can be pretty hit and miss with what he makes. The two movies I have turned off halfway through have been Talladega Nights and Land of the Lost. I just couldn't bring myself to finish either movie. I think it helped that I was watching them both on DVD form, as if I had gone to the cinema, I would possibly have risked a brain aneurysm by finishing them both as I was out and so my film watching was in a more official capacity than just sitting on my arse at home. However, I am proud of my ability to waste my life on pointless and really poor movies, instead of doing something worthwhile, but on Saturday, I had to up my "I just can't watch this movie" list to 3.

Sorry Jennifer, but Winter's Bone had to be the most boring and mundane movie I have ever seen. If I had to see you knock on one more door and ask the question "have you seen my dad?" I swear I would have ripped my skin off, just for the chance of being part of something a little bit more exciting. I tried guys. I really did. But the movie was just soooo slow. And nothing really seemed to be happening, and my brain was dangerously close to leaking out of my ears due to this.

It's not like I'm an action movie junkie or anything. I can enjoy a movie with minimal action within really well. I watched Conversations with Other Women on Netflix the weekend before last, which basically just consisted of two people talking to each other in a hotel room for the entire movie, and I loved it. It was amazeballs. That was because the writing was good and I was invested in the two people on screen.

I think it's safe to say that the writing for Winter's Bone was minimal to say the least. I'm reluctant for this to be called a review, as I have broken my cardinal rule when reviewing something, in that I lasted only halfway through so of course cannot possibly be qualified to review the film in full. But what I did see? Basically, it consisted of Jennifer Lawrence walking around her farm, being told by policemen that she's going to lose it because her dad didn't arrive for court, and having a bunch of people who were possibly related to her (although to be honest, I got a little confused after a while) that they didn't know where her dad was and that if she asked again, they would hit her and rough her up. To which, Jennifer would then say different variations of the same speech about being a 17 year old looking after a crazy mum and two younger siblings and that she was tougher than she looked, and so on and so forth. Then she did get roughed up a little bit and someone who I had been sure was actually a guy to had threatened to rough her up earlier, then turned up and said he would hurt anyone who tried to hurt her and took her away. And then something happened with a best friend who was married and had a kid at 17 who let her borrow a car so that Jennifer could go and take her "Where's my dad? / I'm really tough for a 17 year old" speech on the road, and she kept on being told that her dad had died in all these different ways, which all turned out to be false, and then my brain collapsed into a heap and I couldn't function for about half an hour.

Yeah... not one I'd really recommend to anyone... ever. It left me so dumbed down, I had to organise a spontaneous evening out with Rachael-The-Bully, in order to remind myself what normal people sounded like and that the world was capable of consisting of stimulating conversation... although looking back at the conversations that were actually had that night, I'm not too sure it's the best advert for normalcy or anything that, if written into movie form, would actually create a decent film... one thing I can say though, is that no matter how crap our conversations might have been... even if we had just sat in that pub and said sod all to each other for three solid hours, it would have made a better film than Winter's Bone...

Sorry Jennifer. But if we're going to be best friends, I know that you would appreciate my honesty. At least I know you can skin a squirrel now. So that's mildly something...

So, how do you get through Winter's Bone without falling asleep? You don't. You turn that shizzle off and take a nap to reboot your brain.

Peace out my lovelies

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