Movie Review: Sylvia

I've recently gotten obsessed with adding bio-pics and documentaries to my queue on Netflix. Tonight I watched the first of many on the list, Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow.


This movie chronicles part of the life of the poet, Sylvia Plath, and her turbulent love affair with fellow poet Ted Hughes. I thought it was not bad. Good movie, and especially great performances from Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.

My biggest problem with this movie was I thought it should have shown much more of her early life to give a true depiction of her life. Unfortunately, they start the story at the very moment she falls in love with Hughes and from then on it looks like everything she does has to do with him. It seemed that Hugh was the only influence over Plath's poetry and writing when in reality there was much more to it. Also, they made her out to be both needy and insecure. It may have been better if they had also shown how strong and sassy Plath was. How playful she was about suicide and not necessarily always so desperate and distraught.

I wanted there to be more of her poetry, too. They quoted other poets almost as much as they quoted her. I was also disappointed not to see Anne Sexton as a character in the film, but that was just a personal hope. I guess I'd need a documentary to get all the little tidbits I was hoping for. Haha!

I know I sound really critical, but I really did enjoy the movie. It's hard to reduce someone's entire legacy to a 2 hour film, and this movie did just fine. One thing especially that I was impressed by was how close the main actors looked like the actual people. They did a great job casting!

Overall, I really liked this movie. I thought that some of it wasn't completely accurate, but it made for a great movie. Gwyneth Paltrow was wonderful and so was Daniel Craig.

Movie Review: Paranormal Activity

I purposefully did not see this movie in theaters because I KNEW it would scare the crap out of me. So here, I have finally gotten around to seeing it and have made a hasty review of it. (Thinking back on it for too long may make me scared again...) SPOILERS!


I was very much frightened out of my pants most of the time. The ending was really powerful. I didn't feel like it was contrived. The story and how it was presented, seemed to me, to be really organic. I kind of wanted Micah to get punched in the face most of the time, but it was a really great movie. There were parts where I wasn't sure if I bought into it (such as when the Ouiji board caught on fire), but I was still freaked out even in my doubt. Demon stories are always the ones that truly freak me out the most. I will now have trouble sleeping for a good week or two.

The story is basically about this poor girl who has had trouble with encounters periodically throughout her entire life. When it starts happening again, Katie's boyfriend, Micah, thinks it would be cool to film the activity with his new camera and use some equipment to get audio, etc. Even after things get really bad, and Katie is begging him to stop with the camera, Micah gets a Ouiji board against her wishes, and screws everything up even worse. Then of course the two fight, the negative energy exacerbates the demon situation, which ultimately makes their arguing worse... and so on and so forth. A vicious cycle emerges. It makes the movie really interesting because you can see things that they don't realize is perpetuating the problem.

I felt badly for Katie because she was the one with the demon, the nightmares, all the fears, but it was because of Micah and his obsession to get something good on film that spurred the happenings on. Even after she begged repeatedly to stop luring the thing in by recording it and yelling at it (Micah was stupid), he still chased after it and tried to connect with it. It wasn't until the picture was broken over his face that he was truly freaked out. While it was hurting and upsetting Katie, he didn't take it seriously. But as soon as he feels personally threatened, it suddenly gets real. He was a selfish douchebag.


Overall GREAT! Believable characters, well-told story, and I didn't get sick from the camera work even though it was supposed to be a home video.

PS. One thing that kept me from being completely inconsolably scared was when they found the demon's foot prints in the powder and it had three toes, I laughed because I imagined an ostrich was the demon. And then the next scene after that is Micah laying down over Katie to comfort her and I pictured the ostrich laying his wing over both of them and I laughed out loud again. From then on when I got super scared , I'd just imagine it was an ostrich and it would be a little bit ok.