Movie Review: The Host (2013)

This is the movie based on the Stephenie Meyer novel of the same name.  This movie combines a couple characteristics of Robert Heinlein books I have read, aliens inhabiting a human body, and two personalities being inside the same person.  It is hard to make something entertaining with two people inside the same body, but it is done effectively here.  This is a movie about sacrifice, and sometimes finding your true home where you don't expect to find it. 
Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) has been running free with her brother, Jamie (Chandler Canterbury) and boyfriend Jared (Max Irons).  However, the invading hosts are determined to capture everyone, and they come up to her.  However, the human host is strong and remains inside, while the alien soul, Wanda, is divulging all of Melanie's secret, with the goal of finding the other humans.  This leads to a conflict, which is finally a bit resolved when they take off and find the human refuge, headed by Melanie's uncle (J.D. Evermore).  Being hosted, your eyes shine differently, so everyone knows she is not human.  Their are conflicts and suspicions with the group; and even romance, Melanie and Jared, but also Wanda and Kyle (Boyd Holbrook).  Also in the cast is a seeker, Lacey (Diane Kruger) who will not give up, who herself is torn by her host's personality.  She finally finds their hide out, which  creates a dilemma with an interesting solutions.
Like some of Meyer's books, this movie is a bit slow at times as the story deals with the romantic parts, but over all very well done.

Movie Review: ***^Justin and the Knights of Valour (2013)

Tony and I enjoyed this movie for movie night.  Tony actually started it.  What happens when you father, the king, has outlawed all Knights, and you feel your destiny is to become a knight.  This is a show of family conflict, but also growth from a boy to a man.  It also involves discovering who you really love, and it is not always the high society person, but sometimes the kitchen maid.  This movie stars Freddie Highmore as Justin, Tamsin Egerton as Lara, his crush but the wrong girl, and Saoirse Ronan as Talia, the spunky girl he meets and Antonio Banderas as Sir Clorex, a fake knight.  Mark Strong portrays Sir Heraclio, a banished knight who is coming back to seek revenge.  A lesson learned in this film is that trying to make everyone equal so as to preserve peace it not always a good idea.  There are those that are always willing to fill the void when you rule from weakness.

Movie Review: ***^The City of Ember

After reading the book by Jeanne Duprau, I watched the movie.  This is the story of Doon (Harry Treadaway) and Lina (Saoirse Ronan), finding their way out of an underground city which has become ole, and is deteriorating.  There are power outages, and things falling apart.  There are also shortages of food and medicine.  A couple of changes they made in the movie, I didn't really like.  They had added creatures, which were roaming the underground tunnels.  They had made it so, perhaps due to nuclear issues, insects were now very large.  In the book they pointed out how creatures were very rare, and there were just a few insects.  Doon had a love of drawing what creatures he found.  This version had a side story of Doon's and Lina's fathers having tried to find a way out.   This resulted in the death of Lina's father.  This version does not explain very well how Lina came across the box, and the message for how to exit.  (In the book it was the Message for egress.)  I enjoyed the book more than the movie.  If the movie had followed the book a little more, it would have been very good.  As it was it left somethings unanswered.  Bill Murray was the mayor, and portrayed his roll very well.  In the book he drowns, but in the movie one of the creatures gets him.