Film Addict's March Film Choice

So now we're in the middle of Lent and while I don't observe it because I am religious in any way, I think I'm more spiritual, I find it impressive when people actually fully observe Lent properly.  This is why I chose Chocolat as my film of the month - a film about a repressed village going through Lent.

Chocolat is the 2000 drama film directed by Lasse Hallström, adapted from Joanne Harris's book of the same name.  Chocolat was nominated for a number of awards including five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  The cast include Juliette Binoche (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Caché), Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), Judi Dench (Skyfall, Philomena), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark), and Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Ninth Gate).  Binoche and Dench won an award each for their performances which I fully agree with as they are both fantastic in this film.

Rating: 8

Recommended To: Those looking for a happy film

Favourite Characters: Josephine - better character development; Armande - love her

Favourite Part: Josephine: Who says I can't use a skillet?

Good Points: Most of the characters grew; didn't undermine religion; sets were great

Bad Points: Romance seemed forced; Armande and Caroline's relationship could have been explored more

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

After months and months of waiting, the film I've been waiting for has finally come.  Yes, the star-spangled man with a plan himself, Captain America.  I love Captain America and love Chris Evans so it's a big win in my book; I love Captain America so much that I wrote an essay on him for one of my university modules last year which I thoroughly enjoyed writing as it was a perfect excuse to watch both Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers and read random Captain America comic books.  Anthony and Joe Russo take over the Marvel Cinematic Universe helm and directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier and stars Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, The Island), Sebastian Stan (Black Swan, Once Upon a Time), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, Safe Haven), and Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, The Incredibles) who reprise their previous roles from previous films as well as newbies Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker, What's Your Number?), Emily VanCamp (Revenge, Brothers & Sisters), and Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting).  As it is Mother's Day this weekend but I am working on Sunday, I asked my mum to join me at the cinema as a treat because we don't go out to the cinema often, just me and her I mean and she shares my love of superhero films.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the sequel to the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger from Joe Johnston and is a sequel to Joss Whedon's 2012 film The Avengers that focusses on Captain America and his progress in the modern world; this is the ninth instalment to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is an adaptation of The Winter Soldier storyline from the Captain America comic books.  Captain America: The First Avenger is the film adaptation of the comic book hero Captain America who was created by Joe Simon and Jack "The King" Kirby during the 1940s, created for patriotic reasons during World War II; the film follows Steve Rogers (Evans) as he tries to become a soldier for America while his best friend since childhood, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (Stan) is shipped off.  Steve is a sickly young man who is deemed unfit to become a soldier until he is chosen to be a part of a "Super-Soldier" experiment run by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci, The Hunger Games series) and Col. Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black) with the assistance of Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, The Duchess) and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper, The History Boys).  Just as Steve is transformed into a super-soldier, Erskine is killed and the rest of the serum is destroyed by Hydra.  After being hired by a senator to tour the nation as "Captain America" to promote war bonds, he becomes to feel like he is performing monkey but when in Italy performing for a group of soldiers, Steve learns that he is performing for what remains of Bucky's unit and Bucky is MIA so he takes it upon himself to rescue Bucky and the other soldiers.  When he returns with the missing soldiers, Phillips decides to allow Steve to lead a group of men, dubbed the Howling Commandos, to attack other known Hydra bases with Steve taking up the name Captain America officially.  Unfortunately, one of the missions goes wrong when Bucky is seemingly killed when he falls from a train much to Steve's despair.  This drives Steve to avenge his friend's death and ensure the safety of United States of America who are about to be attacked by the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, Matrix series) who has control of the Tesseract and has harnessed its' power to create weapons of mass destruction.  Following his fight with the Red Skull who is killed by the Tesseract in the end, Steve realises the only way to stop the Red Skull's plan is to crash his plane into the Arctic as his weapons are too powerful.  Following the crash, Stark searches for Steve with a crew but only finds the Tesseract so Steve is presumed dead.  Decades later, Steve is found and comes to in a 1940s style hospital room but realises something is wrong due to the radio in his room playing a game he went to so he runs out into the streets and is met in modern day Time Square by Nick Fury (Jackson) who tells him he has been asleep for 70 years.  Later, Fury approaches Steve with a mission which sets up The Avengers.

Rating: 10

Recommended To: Anyone; Marvel lovers

Favourite Characters: Steve, Nick, Sam - all three for multiple reasons

Favourite Part: Nick Fury: Well it's about damn time.

Good Points: The dynamic between all of the characters; massive plot point for Marvel series; a lot of action sequences

Bad Points: Some plot points were obvious

Jennifer Estep - Kiss of Frost

So I've read normal books recently, I've read some really odds ones set in another reality, and I've read dystopic/post-apocalyptic ones and now for a magical high school based one that I do have a tendency to read along with all the other weirdness.

Kiss of Frost is the second book in Jennifer Estep's Mythos Academy which focuses on Gwendolyn "Gwen" Frost, a Gypsy girl with psychometric magic who became Nike's warrior in the previous book at Mythos Academy, a place that trains young men and women to fight against Reapers who are warriors of Loki and want to release Loki from his prison.  Previously, Gwen had no friends at the school until she develops a friendship with the Valkyrie Daphne and her new boyfriend Carson after Gwen helps Carson find something he's lost.  As she's new to this school, Gwen is still out of place because she's not been training as long as the other students to be a warrior who have been training since they were children.  In the previous book, Gwen fights with a student who is a Reaper in disguise and wants to release Loki and intends to sacrifice anyone to do it.  During this fight, Logan Quinn the Spartan, who Gwen has a crush on, saves her and helps defeat the Reaper, saving the school and the world from Loki's chaos.

Rating: 7

Recommended To: Those that liked the House of Night series and Starcrossed series

Favourite Characters: Vic - sarcastic and bloodthirsty like last time; Oliver and Logan - both heroic but for different reasons

Favourite Part: Part of me was thinking about Logan, but the other part of me was thinking about Daphne[.] [...] Daphne was great with a bow. [...] An image flickered in my mind then, one of Daphne using the bow, instead of me-              
[...]
"Yeah, come on, Gwen, while we're all still young," Oliver sneered.       
My anger flared up to supernova level at Oliver's snarky tone, so much so that I didn't think - I just let go.     
THUNK!
The arrow hit the target dead center - perfect in the middle of the black bull's eye. - Page 17

Good Points: Taking the story out of the Academy; Oliver's character development; would almost be a funny story if Gwen's life wasn't in jeopardy permanently

Bad Points: Felt a bit repetitive; the identity of the Reaper was a bit obvious

Kiera Cass - The Selection Stories

After a mix of weird books and fairly normal, I have picked up a dystopia fiction, The Selection Stories, from a series I've started a while ago, The Selection.  My original plan was to read this book much later on because it is fairly new and I've only just received it through the post but once I finished Reckless, I picked up The Selection Stories immediately because I really wanted to read this.

The Selection Stories is the collection of the two short stories from Kiera Cass's The Selection series which follows America Singer, a young woman who comes from an underprivileged part of the country she lives in where she used to work as a musician while the other members of her family are artistic types so they can earn money to survive as well as her two potential love interests.  Along with thirty four other girls, America is chosen to be part of the Selection, their society's way of finding the bride for the prince of the ruling family when he becomes nineteen while the public watch through reports.  Sometimes the Selection takes months, even years, for the prince to choose his bride but this time, it seems more urgent as the country is in crisis with people rebelling in certain parts and are even attacking the palace while the Selection are staying there.  Unfortunately, America only put herself up for the Selection because her boyfriend, Aspen, told her to take the opportunity because it would be her best chance in life in his opinion as he is a lower caste than her.  America is reluctant to take part in the Selection because she is still reeling from her break up with Aspen and unintentionally insults the prince, Maxon, on the first night but they start to get along and their relationship grows over the course of the first book and eventually fall for one another (him faster than her though).  However, despite America seems to starts to get over Aspen, he shows up in the palace as a guard which throws her through a loop because now she questions her feelings for both Aspen and Maxon; the second book deals with how America comes to terms with her feelings for Maxon and Aspen and deciding which one she wants to fight for while neither young man knows what she is thinking.

Cornelia Funke - Reckless

I am giving up on normal books for a bit now, the stories don't interest me as much as paranormal or fantasy books and after An Enormously English Monsoon Wedding, I dove straight back into the weird and wonderful with a book from a German author which is a new one for me.

Reckless is the first in the Mirrorland series from Cornelia Funke, the author of the Inkheart trilogy, the first of which was turned into a film starring Brendan Fraser.  The Mirrorland series is set in two realms, ours and a hidden world that can only be found by going through a special mirror - one that coincidentally, Jacob Reckless's father owns.

Rating: 9

Recommended To: Fantasy lovers

Favourite Characters: Fox - really sweet

Favourite Part: Fox rubbed her head against Jacob's lifeless hand.  A last moth rose from his chest.  Suddenly she flinched.  His body shuddered - his lips gasped for air, and his hands clawed into the grass.
Jacob!
Fox impulsively jumped on his chest, causing him to groan in pain. - Page 200

Good Points: Thrown straight into the story; story for fighting for one's family; well written

Bad Points: Ending was a bit predictable

Christina Jones - An Enormously English Monsoon Wedding

After a few weird/fantasy books, I went onto something extremely normal and soppy from my point of view which isn't unusual for me but isn't particularly regular either as I find paranormal-romance and urban fantasy books a lot more interesting because I like the completely different stories that come from not being based in reality but in my mind could still happen if certain things were different or real.  However, back to reality or what is considered to be reality in chick flick books.

An Enormously English Monsoon Wedding is a chick-lit novel from Christina Jones who is known to write a number of these type of books which I consider to be holiday books where you just sling it in your bag when you are going to the beach or sitting by the pool and just want something fun to read.  After looking at other books from Jones, I have found her to be similar to Jenny Colgan and Abby Clements whose books I enjoyed as well so I thought it was worth a shot.

Rating: 7

Recommended To: Holiday book readers

Favourite Characters: Gina - loveable, funny, beautiful, yet insecure

Favourite Part: Jay smiled gently. 'I told her I loved her too.'
Oh God... Erin sighed.
'And that I'd marry her if she gave me all her samosas.'
'What?'
Jay laughed.  'We were at my Aunt Ganika's birthday party.  We were eight years old.' - Page 269

Good Points: Interesting to see a multi-cultured wedding; easy read; the inclusion of other couples not just the happy couple

Bad Points: Everything ended up going a bit too smoothly

Alex Scarrow - The Mayan Prophecy

I am definitely back on the weird books after a few - what most people would call - normal books.  This is one of the book series I have read written by a male author as I seem to primarily read books from female authors because they are more character driven but it's good to mix it up with a more action based book.  Thankfully, I know for certain that this book is also character driven with an interesting story as I've thoroughly enjoyed the preceding books.

The Mayan Prophecy is the eighth book in the TimeRiders series by Alex Scarrow; the series focuses on three young people - Liam O'Connor, Maddy Carter, and Sal Vikram.  The background behind this series is that the three main characters were meant to die in different periods of time; Liam, a young Irishman, should have gone down on the Titanic in 1912; Maddy, a young woman from Brooklyn, who should have died on a plane which was going down during a terrorist attack in 2010, and Sal, the youngest of them all, a young girl from Mumbai, who should have died when a skyscraper collapsed due to fire in 2026.  They are recruited by an older gentleman called Foster who gives them a second chance and live, to work for a secret agency that supposedly helps prevent time travel destroying history.  They go on many adventures throughout the books, traveling through time to ensure that they fulfil their objective of keeping history on track until they start to question what they are doing and who they are and are then in turn targeted by the people they are supposed to work for.  Because of this, they go into hiding and then travel to the Victorian age to set up shop there under their own agenda, helping if the world if they need to but making sure no one picks up on where they are.  Over the time they have spent working as time travellers, they have begun to realise that there is a price for going through time as they all begin to age rapidly, Liam more so than the others because of his more frequent trips travelling through time.

Rating: 9

Recommended To: Science fiction lovers

Favourite Characters: Liam - loveable, loyal, brave, caring, and Irish

Favourite Part: It took Liam no more than an hour to reach the halfway point of the 'climb'; it was more a stiff uphill walk than proper climbing.
[...]
But apart from needing the rest and the water, it was a perfect place to stop, if for no other reason than to take a couple of minutes and savour the spectacular view.
He was no more than a hundred feet up from the jungle floor, above the green canopy of the rainforest, and yet it felt like he was halfway towards the sky. - Page 191-2

Good Points: More character/story driven; characters continued to develop; dynamic between the TimeRiders; this book stood out against the others yet again

Bad Points: Bob wasn't featured as much