Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

While I've heard of Four Wedding and a Funeral many times over the years, always from people who enjoyed the film, I never watched it because of Hugh Grant — I'm probably the only woman in the world who feels this way but I don't like him. 

The story follows a small group of friends as they attend four weddings and a funeral of mutual friends or acquaintances — hence the title —, and it mainly focuses on Charles (Hugh Grant), a carefree bachelor who is some sort of perpetual Best Man. At the first wedding though, he meets Carrie (Andie MacDowell), a young, free-spirited American woman, and falls in love with her, and over the course of the four following gatherings, he reassesses his thoughts on marriage.

It's definitely not your standard love story, I'll give the film that, but the plot is nearly non-existent, it's filled with holes and it's incredibly predictable for most of its running time —while I was expecting someone else to die, the happy ending can be foreseen from the very beginning.

The characters didn't particularly strike me either. They are barely characterized, they don't have any depth, especially the supporting characters, and no backstories — I read that they are given in a deleted scene, but they needed to be in the film — and because of these lacks, it's almost impossible to care about any of them.

And yet, I did care about them. Actually, I cared about Charles, the self-centred bachelor played by Hugh Grant, the reason I didn't watch the film before. My heart ached when Carrie kept turning him down and when she went on marrying that old dude, as I really wanted Charles to be happy and the credits entirely go to Grant. He gives such a charming performance and gives the character just the right amount of insecurity that it makes it hard if not impossible to not root for him.

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The supporting cast does a fine job, the most memorable being Kristin Scott Thomas and Rowan Atkinson in the role of Charles's enigmatic friend Fiona and Father Gerald respectively.

Thankfully, the cast isn't the only enjoyable aspect of Four Weddings and a Funeral as the film is filled with charming, subtle British humour and some nice slapstick and manages to be quite funny throughout its running time.

Tomb Raider (2018)

I never cared much about Lara Croft. I never played the video game and I never even bothered with Angelina Jolie's movies. I do like Alicia Vikander though (and I'm tremendously jealous of her for marrying Fassbender) so I decided to check out this new Tomb Raider movie. Having read some brief reviews, I was expecting it to be bad but I wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it turned out to be. 

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is a fierce and independent young woman whose father (Dominic West), an eccentric adventurer, vanished when she was barely a teen. When forced to handle her father's global empire, she decides to leave everything she knows behind in search of her father's last-known destination, a mythical island somewhere off the coast of Japan. Needless to say, her mission won't be an easy one.

And needless to say, the plot is tremendously weak, unappealing and boring. It is filled with holes as big as moon craters, a pretty much useless father and daughter subplot, and basically, all that happens before Lara reaches the island is completely useless. There's also an intriguing twist at the end, but it falls flat completely.

The main character is just as dreadful and uninteresting. Lara Croft comes out only as a rich and spoiled child who is looking for daddy. She doesn't learn anything, she doesn't grow. Basically, nothing happens to her. It feels like the writers didn't care at all about the character, as if trying to make Lara Croft interesting was too hard, required too much effort. In a scene, she has pretty intense eye contact with another woman --they are basically eye-fucking. Sure, there's a gay twist everywhere nowadays but it could have made the character more interesting. Instead, they drop it and we never see that woman again. 

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Vikander's performance is in line with the rest of the film. While her physical transformation is truly impressive as she gains a lot of muscle to fit the role, her performance is flat and wooden. She doesn't convey a single emotion. All she does is shout and groan, but she's terrible at those too. Frankly, I can't believe some "men" complained about her boobs being too small instead of complaining of all the above mentioned. 

The supporting characters too are one-dimensional, their motivations aren't really explained and make no sense whatsoever, which, of course, results in dreadful performances from the rest of the cast. Nick Frost makes a brief slightly funny appearance though. 

Tomb Raider doesn't work that well as a dumb action/adventure flick either. The action sequences aren't that exciting, the CGI is average --it is nice in the darker scenes but doesn't look very good in daylight--, and the sound isn't particularly good either --the volume was too loud in some scenes. The purpose was to add drama but it didn't happen.