Cazadores de sombras: Ciudad de hueso

I enjoyed this film although I'm in no ways its target audience. It's a teen film, primarily for chicks, but I'm having a cold and my wife isn't home, so perhaps I'm a little more sentimental than usual.

It starts off like any other coming of age yarn. Clary, our protagonist, is littering the house with drawings of her womb, a clear sign that she's on the verge of Growing Up. Luckily, she runs into the right people first, and they teach her what she needs to know about tattoos and black outfits with buckled boots, and all that other stuff that makes you cool and adult. A romance story is fired up right away as well, between Clary and this guy Jonathan with the cool sticky hair and silky British voice, and the two seem a little naive in that they don't pick up on each other's signals, but I guess that takes some life experience.

The story is very simple, utilizing all the expected elements of the genre, but does manage to keep them fairly fresh, and the plot has sufficient twists to stay interesting, although most of them have only minor impact on later turns of events. At some points it meanders a little and several scenes could have been cut out without affecting the plot at all. It would have suited the film to be a little bit shorter.

The characters are all exceptionally pretty people, and most of them have no character flaws either, yet it didn't become annoying like it very easily does in such cases. Clary is sympathetic enough for one to care about her, and it helps keeping you involved in the story despite the often predictable setup.

All in all, it had good entertainment value, and I think I only zoned out briefly a couple of times. Worth a watch, just don't expect anything from the Deep End of the pool.

This movie was not bad. I never read the books so I can't compare, but I saw the TV series "Shadowhunters" first. I feel the TV series did more for the story than the movie. Especially when they were able to fit the whole book into seasons. The movie was rushed and so much left unclear.

Yes the they hit the bullet points, but I still felt lost. I think they left out major characters, they left out major storylines, they didn't work with the characters properly, and they changed the importance of many charters.

Another thing I'm not sure of, but noticed. It seemed they mixed various parts of the other books and put them in this movie. Not sure if they ever planned on doing the entire series of the books.

I do recommend watching the series "Shadowhunters", its well worth it.

I liked the book, but was quite disappointed with this adaptation.

First of all they just changed so much about it. Secondly, they added in lots of cheesy lines. And the whole film ended up with this twilight-esque vibe about it. I just found myself rolling my eyes or snorting a number of times throughout the film. Magnus Bane who is so cool in the book, ends being really watered down and uninteresting. I don't know if it was the direction, the actor or a combination of both, but he came off really flat. Also Lily Collins is not really much of an actress. She's not terrible, but she needs help. I also felt like they glossed over details. I wanted them to take a bit more time explaining things better.

I still like the overall story and plot. And Robert Sheehan is fantastic. I definitely want to see more of his work. I also enjoyed the action scenes and the special effects.

So even though there were flaws, I still managed to enjoy myself. It was decent, but far from amazing.

In the tradition of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson etc. the Canadians have started a series of films based on Mortal Instruments. This first in the series, City Of Bones has a strong resemblance to the quest for the Holy Grail in modern times.

Young Lily Collins when her mother disappears she discovers that she's a belongs to a group of demon hunters and these demons seem to be everywhere. Among the great unwashed of Mundanes which is what these kids call the vast rest of us here on earth.

These demon hunters led by the leather clad Jamie Campbell Bower search in and among us Mundanes for demons. Lily makes their acquaintance when after going to a Goth type club she sees a murder no one else sees. It's Bower and he's done in a demon. After that mom disappears and Lily joins Bower and his crew searching for the Cup of Immortality which mom very skillfully hid.

I see already another film is in the works for this series. City Of Bones was nicely done with an attractive cast. But it will have to go some to reach the popularity of Harry Potter or Twilight.

I just got done watching a midnight showing of City of Bones. First off I will say that I am a fan of the series and I will try to make this review as middle ground as possible.

I have spent the last few days reading over threads on the discussion board and once the critics reviews came out I read most of those too. Yes I know a lot were negative and abrasive, and sometimes even childish in their mockery of the young adult genre. I went into this movie as open-minded as possible knowing that there were some changes made to the film.

Firstly, several reviews, both good and bad, had issues with the pacing. The time line is very condensed at the start of the film so things do seem to be happening in a whirlwind. This is because they condensed a few of the events from the novel into a shorter time span to enable the movie not to drawl on and be way too long. I didn't mind how they chose to change things up a bit and thought they tied things together fairly well. I just could see it being a bit hard to follow for the non fans that don't know what was cut out.

I was worried about the romance being played up too much since some reviews were so caught up in the triangle. It was a small part of the bigger story much like in the book. Parts of it did come off a bit cheesy, but overall it did not overpower the movie like I thought it was.

I really enjoyed the action sequences. They weren't too short or too long and I felt they were well coordinated. There's definitely enough action for the guys that will be dragged to this with their girlfriends.

Some of the changes will probably be unsettling to the fans or upsetting because more of the film was different than I was warned or expected. Many reviewers were adamant that it kept to the book most of the time, but I would say it was a pretty even mix.

Like most fans I had a certain idea how some scenes or characters would be and I felt a little let down because characters weren't how I imagined or expected them. Magnus falls flat and lacks the charisma and attitude of his book counterpart. I also felt the way Valentine was played/portrayed did not fall in line with how he was in the book. But everyone who reads has there own interpretations and he wasn't close to he Valentine I had envisioned.

Lastly I feel this is a pretty solid movie for the fans and non readers. I wouldn't say it's perfect, few movies have ever come close to achieving that status. There are a lot of good elements going on here and a lot of decent acting from people I least expected it given the time they had to actually develop the characters. If you have any interest in watching the movie don't let all the negativity sway you. Go in with an open mind and make your own judgement. I won't say I loved this movie, but I did really enjoy it and would definitely see it again.