BELOVED (2011)

Told over the course of 30+ years BELOVED starts in 1960's Paris where we met a young woman (the beautiful Ludivine Sagnier) who works at a women's shoe store and makes money on the side by sleeping with guys for cash.  She ends up falling in love with a young doctor and they have a daughter.  Life happens and the two separate, she takes the daughter.  Years later we met the daughter as an adult and she's pretty messed up.  Partying hard and in and out of troubled relationships.  The mother is now played by Catherine Deneuve and the father by Milos Forman, who continue there on-again-off-again sexual relationship despite the fact she's now married to some other dude.

One thing that struck me off guard, but I ended up enjoying, was the characters occasionally start singing.  Not full length musical numbers, but brief musical moments of dialogue or sometimes just, I guess you would call it narration.  The first time it happened, I was like "What the fuck is going on?", but then I came to expect and enjoyed it.  I don't know if the singing was done by the actual actors or not, but it seemed pretty believable to me.  It brought to mind the singing from THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.

I liked BELOVED, but at 139 minutes it overstayed it's welcome by like 20 minutes.  Also I never really cared for any of the characters.  Yeah, they've got problems, but it seemed to me that most of their problems were self-made.  They all had nice clothes and places to live, but yet they filled their time by getting shitfaced and feeling sorry for themselves.  So I guess in that sense it's pretty realistic!

Okay story that's never compelling, interesting little musical moments, Catherine Deneuve looking old but still beautiful, self-pity, good acting by Radivoje Bukvic and Paul Schneider.  Worth a watch, but nothing to go out of your way for.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX* BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (1972)

Another pre-ANNIE HALL Allen that suffers badly from dated humor.  This time around it's seven short sequences answering different questions like "What Is Sodomy?" where Dr. Gene Wilder falls in love with a female sheep...I'm not exactly sure how that answers the question or is even funny, but that's what happens.  Another: "What Happens During Ejaculation?" has Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds as operators inside a mission control center (a human brain) controlling a dude's body during a date and sex.  Hardy-har-har.

Seeing as how this was a box office success back in 1972, I guess, this kind of humor was cutting edge or somehow funny, but nowadays it's extremely dated.  EYAWTKASBWATA is interesting as an historic artifact, but I can't even imagine how a younger audience would enjoy this film today.  Hell, I love Woody Allen and even I had a hard time getting through the whole thing.  Skip it.

HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013)

Entertaining time-waster about how the two young children from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale grow up (after killing the witch in the candy house) to become professional witch hunters.  Hansel is diabetic thanks to all the candy that he was forced to eat and Gretel is extremely hot thanks to being extremely hot.  They've created quite a reputation for themselves and get called in to solve the case of children missing in a remote village.  After some initial fighting and witch killing they discover that there's actually something much bigger afoot.

Visually H&GWH looks fine, the story is darker than I expected but ultimately forgettable, Gemma Arterton is easy on the eyes, at times Pihla Viitala looks like a young Catherine Deneuve, non-annoying CGI and 3D effects, witches that look like Mortiis, Peter Stormare in a small role.  Worth a watch if it came on TV but I would never buy it.

If you need me, I'll be in my room playing The Witcher 3.