Little Otik

I have no idea how I heard about this movie…but I’m glad I did. It’s based on this Czech fairy tale about this couple who can’t have a child. In desperation to make his wife happy, the husband carves a baby out of a stump he dug up that resembles a child. When he gives it to his wife, almost immediately I think he realizes that it was a bad mistake. She immediately attaches to it, and cares for it as if it were real.
She puts a huge amount of effort into creating this lie that she’s pregnant…different sized pregnancy stomachs and everything…I’m sure she’s convinced herself that she’s pregnant. After she finally “gives birth” the husband comes home to find the baby alive…haha yah, wtf this wooden baby is now breastfeeding…
She keeps the baby hidden from others…obviously if people saw they would be very suspicious and well…that’s not normal…
The baby, who they named Otik in case that wasn’t obvious, grew at an extremely fast pace, and had an incredible appetite…for flesh…dun dun dunnn XD
At the same time as this whole thing is unfolding, the next-door neighbor, a little girl, is reading a Czech fairytale. The fairytale is eerily similar to what the girl is observing next door.
First of all, the stop motion in this film was fantastic, and I wish that there were more…all the scenes with Otik were done with stop motion.
Something I think the film could have done without would have been…when the girl was reading the story out loud…they took us and actually showed us scenes from what she was reading…and, it just felt redundant to me, because most of them ended up happening in real life anyway. I mean, that could have been done on purpose, well, I’m sure it was done on purpose, but it just didn’t work for me…personally.
I think I need to look into more of this directors films…talking to a few people, they’ve said that a couple of his other films are actually much better…so, if I enjoyed this one as much as I did, I think I’ll enjoy the others.
Funniest moments in the movie…the dinner times at the next door neighbors house. Every single meal was absolutely disgusting! Haha. That, and the father in that household, it just cracked me up.
Annnd one more thing, the ending. I loved how it ended. We are read from the book, that the way that Otik is killed is by an old woman with a hoe, a gardening hoe…and she slices his stomach and everyone/thing he has eaten comes out. They end the movie with the old woman, hoe over her shoulder, marching down the stairs, determined look on her face, with the little girl practically hanging off her legs, protesting and screaming for her to stop. (:

7.8/10

Jacob's Ladder

Mkay. So, basically, this is about a soldier, Jacob, who was in the Vietnam war. The movie starts out in the middle of the war, they're under attack, then suddenly flashes to after the war. Now, after the war, Jacob is seeing all these creepy people and voices and shit, and he's kinda on a mission to figure what the fuck is going on.
I think this is one of these movies where you either love it or you hate it. I mean, I wouldn’t really know…no one I know personally has seen it, so I haven’t been able to talk it out with people, but I get the feeling that some people would just totally give up on it. It’s definitely not for people who are looking for a movie that serves you the answers on a platter…it brings up question after question. And when it finally seems like your getting your questions answered, BAM they get you with the big ‘What the fuck!?’.
Anyway, Tim Robbins plays the main character. I think he's a strange guy lol...Ever since seeing Shawshank Redemption, I just think he’s really funny looking! And it was honestly hard for me to get past that, it was so strange.
I didn't think that the acting was great...but the plot made up for it, it really did.
I think my favourite character was Louis the chiropractor!! He had some of the best lines. Amoung my favourite: "Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth"
Most of the film is dark...and it gets darker as it goes on (I feed off of this stuff in case you haven't noticed lol) BUT you get the dark and gory feel without an excess of actual gore. Then, when they do throw a bit of gore in, the impact is much more intense.
Usually, I would have hated the way this film ended...I won't go into great detail...because doing so would totally ruin what I love about this movie, and would be beyond unfair. BUT Jacob's Ladder actually pulled it off.
It made me feel content with an ending that I usually hate, because it just fit, and they made it work.
I dunno. I loved it though.

9/10