Ethan Wate longs to escape his small southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena Duchannes. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history, and th... Read allEthan Wate longs to escape his small southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena Duchannes. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history, and their town.Ethan Wate longs to escape his small southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena Duchannes. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history, and their town.
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Featured reviews
Typical fantasy romance film plot, but it is fun to watch.I liked the fact that the story occurred in an isolated town and the rest of the world being completely oblivious to the existence of witches. Personally it made me feel as if something like this, no matter how absurd, could actually be happening.
Note- this is my first ever review and it is rushed, so be nice.
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.
For one, Twilight has poor acting and a stupid story line. I read the books before the movies, and they were only okay. This has a fantastic story line and it is more... realistic i guess. Yes it has magic and what not but he likes her because of her! Not because he "just cant stay away from her". The movie does have a lot of romance but it's more believable that they really care for each other.
It is an insult comparing this amazing book and pretty good movie to Twilight. Yes if you like Twilight you should like this too, just because Twilight was made into a movie first does not mean that this should be compared to it. It is not a Twilight copy. Especially if you read the book, it is for a much more mature mind.
I went to see the film expecting to follow Lena, the caster girl who is struggling with the powers of light and dark inside her, but was (pleasantly) surprised to see the story was generally told from the point of view of her love interest Ethan, the 'normal' boy who falls for the outsider when everyone else shuns her. He's a very likable character, clearly passionate and compassionate, and has a good sense of humour that provides fresh light on the sometimes dark story matter.
It was also a bit creepier than I expected. There is conflict between the light and dark casters, as well as these elements within the characters, fighting for supremacy - danger and fear run through the film, and you will be surprised more than once.
Personally I found this film really entertaining, though I understand many fans are unhappy with the adaptation and I'm considering reading the books myself. I thought it offered everything, humour, action, fear, a sweet romance, a healthy dose of magic - and it's fresh! This is a solid, quality young adult movie.
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.
Did you know
- TriviaEthan's failure to recite the Charles Bukowski poem was actually Alden Ehrenreich having difficulty remembering the order of the lines and making Alice Englert laugh. He performed the poem perfectly in all other takes. But Writer and Director Richard LaGravenese liked the idea of a "Romeo" trying to impress a "Juliet" and screwing up the poetry.
- GoofsEthan is reading the book "You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense" by Charles Bukowski, but the poem is not in that book. The poem was published "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flames."
- Quotes
Ethan Wate: Everybody has to deal with shit in their lives, Lena. You want to be a normal human what do you think that is? We don't have powers to change anything any time we want. Being human is feeling bad, it's feeling pissed off, it's feeling scared, it's you not being able to do anything about it until you don't feel that way anymore 'til you can just see your way out of it. And I yelled at you because I care about you, that's what normal people do who love each other! When one of them is acting like a brat! Now would you please stop raining on me!
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.77 (2013)
- SoundtracksSubterranean Homesick Blues
Written and Performed by Bob Dylan
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By arrangement with Sony Music Licensing
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Hermosas criaturas
- Filming locations
- Covington, Louisiana, USA(as Gatlin, SC)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $60,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $19,452,138
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $7,582,595
- Feb 17, 2013
- Gross worldwide
- $60,052,138
- Runtime2 hours 4 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1