Beautiful Creatures - La sedicesima luna

In Gatlin, South Caroline, the teenager Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) dreams on leaving the conservative town and go to the college. Ethan has dreams with a mysterious girl and when he meets the fifteen year-old newcomer Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) in his class, he realizes that she is the girl of his dreams. The outcast Lena is rejected by the mates since she is the granddaughter of Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons), who is considered a worshiper of the devil by the superstitious dwellers.

Ethan gives a ride to Lena and they fall in love with each other. Soon he learns that Lena is a good witch that on her sixteenth birthday will be claimed by the light and the darkness. She may stay in the light, but is cursed to change to the dark side if she falls in love with him. Further, her evil mother Sarafine (Emma Thompson) is a caster that is pushing Lena to the dark side. Now they are seeking a spell to save their doomed love. Will the lovers succeed?

"Beautiful Creatures" is a pleasant romantic fantasy about love, curse and sacrifice. The fight between light and darkness is well resolved and the conclusion is open to interpretations. It will never be nominated to an Oscar, but entertains. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Dezesseis Luas" ("Sixteen Moons")

Despite the mixed/average reviews, decided to see 'Beautiful Creatures' anyway as someone who did enjoy the book series, liked the idea of the story, enjoys films that fit under the same genres that this does and who really likes to loves a lot of the cast members in other things. Other than the reviews, what did make me a little nervous too was the constant references by many to the 'Twilight' franchise, am very much indifferent to that franchise to put it lightly and the best film from it ('Eclipse') is only slightly watchable.

Will get the comparisons out of the way. 'Beautiful Creatures' is in my mind much better than any of the 'Twilight' films combined, better made, much better acting (the 'Twilight' films only had like two good actors, whereas even with the accents the acting mostly wasn't an issue for me here) and the story, for all its problems, interested me more. 'Beautiful Creatures' is by no means perfect and would hesitate in calling it great, only generally found it slightly above average, but judging it as a film on its own merits (rather than frequently comparing it to the books, of which the film is a pretty poor adaptation of) it's a better film than given credit for.

Starting with the bad things, 'Beautiful Creatures' would have leant itself better to a film series rather than just one film, because there is a feel (and it was what was pretty much happening) of elements of two or more books in one film, which made it feel rushed and cluttered. The caster mythology could have been delved into much more, because that did tend to be convoluted (anybody who has no knowledge of the books may find themselves lost). Particularly towards the end, before the film ends in a vague and rushed way complete with a clumsy twist, it is not a surprise that book fans found the ending too much of a slap in the face.

Also found some of the earlier portions of 'Beautiful Creatures' to be too exposition heavy, with some clunky dialogue and the pace in need of a tightening up. The Lena's first day at school portion was very badly acted by the secondary cast, was really cringing, and written in a very bad teen school comedy film way. It has been said numerous times about the Southern accents being bad, do agree with it veering on either extreme of come and go (Jeremy Irons, accents never really has been his forte and this is coming from a fan of his) and exaggerated (Alden Ehrenreich) of the main cast. And it's even worse for the secondary cast playing characters that are very broadly stereotypical, that is true of a lot of Southerner portrayals on film, and never feel like real people.

Conversely, 'Beautiful Creatures' is a surprisingly good looking film, it was clear a lot of time, effort and money went into it. Especially loved the locations, with a big standout going to the Ravenwood mansion and the photography is both beautiful and gothic. The costumes are also ni nicely done, the kookiness of those of the Ravenwoods (including Eileen Atkins with a pink wig!) added to their mysteriousness, and the dinner table scene sees some editing and lighting that are wonderfully psychedelic without giving me too much headache or dizziness. The music fits quite nicely too and was hardly unattractive to me on its own, am big on both those things when it comes to music in film so both are good positions to be in.

The script is flawed early on but as the film progressed the snappier, more intriguing and tighter it became. Macon, with the film livening up by quite a bit when he appears, has some of the best lines and that's in his first scene alone. The story isn't perfect, but enough of it does compel with two scenes in particular standing out. One was the dinner table scene, along with Ridley's flashback that was the most striking scene visually, and the other was the Macon and Sarafine confrontation, the chemistry between Irons and Emma Thompson sizzles and seeing a clash of the titans-like moments between two great actors is always great to watch. The likeably natural, no awkwardness here (actually did get the sense that they were in love), chemistry between Ehrenreich and Alice Englert also helps as does the confident direction.

Found Ehrenreich and Englert to mostly not be bad at all in their roles, Ehrenreich's accent is not the best and he overdoes it at times but the quirkiness and likeability is there. While Englert is more subtle without being sullen or expressionless, did root for Lena myself having been treated like an outcast in school for prejudicial reasons too. They are very well supported, outshone even, by the veteran cast, with Atkins and Martina Martindale doing a lot with small roles and Viola Davis bringing sincerity to hers. The authors had Irons in mind when writing Macon and one can tell because not so good accent aside he was made for the character, and he looked like he was having fun while bringing gravitas and menace. Thompson even more so, camping it up deliciously and nearly stealing the film, and the same goes for a truly delightful Emmy Rossum.

Summarising, not quite beautiful but far from ugly. 6/10

OK so I postponed watching this movie due to the harsh comments it had gotten from many people about how it wasn't worth watching and I have to say I completely disagree with them!

I watched this movie and loved the story and will admit even got sad/happy at points following the characters growth and change in the movie. It took me to a place that I had never thought about and I will say that, that is something when there are so many movies out these days.

For those who give it crap for not being like the book I do have to say that look at most any book to movie series i.e Harry Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games there are things that have to be left out or reworked in order for a movie to go through it will never be EXACTLY the same. Some things just don't work in the movie world.

Again I loved this movie and would love to see a sequel come out of it. (Yes I do plan on reading the book anyways.)

Im 33 years old and probably not in the main-group for this movie (teengirls maybe). But me and my friend got a free ticket and went for this movie we would normally not had seen.

But i was charmed. The young actors played well, was cute and had chemistry together. We smiled many times, and the effects was good. The story was OK, and i have never read the story this movie is build on.

This is a good movie i think, and probably they will make more movies so we see how the story will go. I found it fun with the southern small town fun of religious narrowness. And the fight between good and evil is a fight in many of the fantasy-movies, and that was a red line in this movie and worked good.

Fun also to see Emma Thompson, she did a awesome actor-work.

When I first heard that Beautiful Creatures (the novel) was going to be adapted into a movie, I was hesitant to see it, due to the fact that the trailers were absolutely horrible. I'm just glad that the movie focused on a lot more than a supernatural romance, because that's only one of many interesting and complicated plot lines.

Despite the fact that the LA Times and the NY Times gave the flick great reviews, a bunch of lesser-known critics were much harsher on it. After reading some of these reviews, I was shocked to see how biased and silly some of the comments were. It was clear that these were people that walked in to the theater expecting Twilight and were too self-conscious about praising a teen movie to say that it wasn't.

Twilight is all about the romance. Beautiful Creatures has a big Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but at the same time, there's mysteries, prophesies, hypocrisy, Southern politics, Civil War history, religion, death, evil forces, and all sorts of madness making for quite an interesting story (with some very witty and sarcastic dialogue to put a cherry on top).

Other people that read the book were likewise upset, because they thought it strayed too much from the source material. The only MAJOR change made was about 3/4 of the way through the movie, and the end result was still the same as the book. The reason why the writer did this was for the sake of TIME. If he hadn't made that change, the movie would have dragged on for three hours as oppose to rapping itself up nicely at two.

I thought the acting was good as well, and Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert had nice chemistry as Ethan and Lena. Of course, Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, and Viola Davis gave great performances, but that comes as no surprise. Emmy Rossum as the wicked siren, Ridley, was fabulous, and Thomas Mann was hilarious as Link.

I especially loved Thompson's twisted character-she played a crazy Republican fundamentalist named Mrs. Lincoln, who gets possessed by Sarafine Duchannes, the most powerful Dark Caster alive. As Sarafine, her performance was definitely "Dark", bridging on psychotic. Not what I was expecting, but I liked it.

However, I thought some of the other actors, like the girls that played the Barbie cheerleaders, were horrible. There is a way to portray phony people and there is a way to pull off a satire while still keeping it believable.

Besides plot and acting, I loved the costumes and set. They were very beautifully done and really captured the gorgeous yet creepy atmosphere of the story. In addition, the effects were cool-nothing to die over, but they served their purpose.

Lastly, I thought the soundtrack was awesome and very different. The mix of classical, blues, country, and alternative music worked great with the film.

Overall, I think the movie is an 8 out of 10. It's not amazing, but it is entertaining, interesting, and something I recommend seeing.