The Bling Ring (2013)

Let me start off by saying that this movie is probably one of my favorites of this year, and maybe of all time, so forgive me if it seems like I'm being too nice about it. I, frankly, had very little issues with it at all and thought it was pretty grand.

The Bling Ring is a movie about a group of teenagers who intrude the homes of celebrities while they are on vacation and steal their clothes because...why not? This film, based off of true events and a news article entitiled "The Suspect Wore Louboutins", was directed and co-written by Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette).

The movie starts with Marc, a teenage boy (subtly hinted at being ridiculed for choice of clothing and his sexuality) beginning classes at a new school in LA made for delinquents, when he meets Rebecca, Lindsay Lohan-obsessed rich girl, and they become friends and sneak in to one of Marc's old hook-ups' house and take his car on a joy ride, as well as ditching a party to steal money and drugs from people's cars.

Rebecca introduces Marc to the cast of female characters portrayed by some pretty great actresses, almost designed for each role. Emma Watson and Taissa Farmiga play Nicki and Sam, adopted sisters who are also rich and go to parties and do drugs a lot, and they briefly mention the aspiration to be models and actresses. Claire Julien plays Chloe, other rich white girl with a thugs vocabulary, but doesnt play as significant of a role as Rebecca and Nicki do.

In fact, Rebecca and Nicki might be the most important characters of the movie. Marc is the main character, but much like Fight Club, this isn't really his story. He's a sideliner telling the star player's best game to a crowd. Sam and Chloe offer up roles that support the others and round off the group, making it feel as thought the five of them truly are friends. Their are scenes in which the characters are sitting around and talking and it did not feel scripted, it felt like the cast did have some good chemistry, and made the movie feel a little more realistic.

Marc is telling the story to a reporter, posing him as the narrator, and essentially directs the movie in to its theme of idolization. The entirety of the film is about idolizing people. Rebecca admires Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities so much that she decides to rob them and wear their clothes like a badge of honor. She is wearing a coat that Paris Hilton wore to that award show last year!! Nicki and Sam adore the life style, and Chloe joins in for the thrill of it. But Marc, he idolizes Rebecca. He sees her as his best friend, possibly even his sister. He knows what they were doing was wrong but he doesn't press much further than a few "we should go"s because he doesn't want to be annoying, and because Rebecca thinks it's okay, he begins to as well.

The only issue I had with the film was a scene where Marc smoked weed and danced in front of his webcam (presumably) because it just dragged on for like two minutes and I didn't fully understand the point of it, nor was I entirely interested by it. I don't recall exactly when this took place, but I thought I should mention my issue with the movie before you start thinking I'm getting too soft already.

The climax of the movie is when everyone gets caught. Marc, Nicki and Chloe are arrested and Marc tell's the police it was all Rebecca's idea and she had run off to stay with her dad for a little bit and thought she could escape punishment. When she gets arrested and all four of them await trial, she drops all contact with Marc completely, leaving him feeling like trash.

Nicki takes her opportunity to be the star of the show and becomes extremely famous simply by talking about what happened and exploiting the whole ordeal. This plan is slightly ingenious, but it fails to get her out of her punishment at all.

All of them end up with jail time, but Nicki still ends up on top and presumably ends up a celebrity of sorts.

The characters in the movie made rookie mistakes and attempts to get away from their punishment and were still condemned. The conflict was based around their flawed plans for disguising what they had done, as well as themselves on the security cameras of celebrities' homes. There isn't really a happy ending, all of them have jail time and quite a bit of money to pay to get themselves out of the mess they created. They adored the lifestyle, and the clothes they stole opened a window in to it, but they made mistakes and ended up bringing themselves down.

I'd say I would give The Bling Ring a 8/10. I liked the actors, the writing, the cinematography, and the pacing was really swell as well. The end of the movie was a bit rushed, but the basis of the film was really all the rising action, that's where the characters grew and formed in to what they would be by the end of the film. Once again, Sofia Coppola manages to remind me that not all movies about teenagers are the worst things in the world.

Captains Log: Welcome to the Blog

Yo, I'm Britney and I like movies. Pretty self explanatory, I mean that is the title of the blog after all. The whole purpose of this thing is for reviews and suggestions, and I might even do reviews of games someday.

I'll be doing an assortment of reviews on movies that range from horror to romantic comedy to old and to new, as well as compiling assorted lists of movies such as: Top 10 Movies of 2013 (which will be happening soon considering it's December), and Top 10 Most Overrated Films of All Time (which will be a personal favorite because all it is is complaining).

It is safe to say that I'm pretty excited about this whole thing, and I'm looking forward to get to talk about movies on the internet, as if I don't already do that.

For my first couple of reviews you'll have to ignore my total love and bias for indie movies and put up with the following things, as well as a much more popular title, and the reviews probably won't be posted in this order due to lack of motivation and also....no it's really just that.

Spike Island (2012)
The Bling Ring (2013) (any of my friends that are reading this right now are laughing because they know I don't hate anything about this movie)
Whip It (2009)
Catching Fire (2013)


That last one might get me a bit of hate, because I do have mixed feelings about it, but regardless I hope I can provide a good enough reason to watch or not watch these movies, and trust me their will be many, many others to follow suit.