Josh Benner

Tag: Grace

  • The Fault in our Stars: movie faithful to the book

    Fault_in_our_stars

    When I first heard that the book “The Fault in our Stars” was about a girl with cancer, I thought that it was going to be a piece of schmaltzy garbage. When I picked up the book in February, I was immediately drawn in, reading it in two long sittings over the span of about 11 hours. Since that day, I had been eagerly awaiting the movie that was released last night.

    I won’t say anything that would potentially spoil the movie until the last paragraph. The theater was one of the fullest I’ve been to in a long time. I felt that this movie was as true to the book as any film adaptation I have ever seen. Shailene Woodley, who plays the book’s protagonist, Hazel Grace Lancaster, had the feel and spunk that you would expect from Hazel. Ansel Elgort plays Augustus Waters and even looks like how I pictured Gus, and was another perfect embodiment of the fictional character. In the book, a love story develops between Hazel and Augustus as they meet at a support group for teens with cancer. Woodley and Elgort had great chemistry on-screen, and the development of their relationship felt natural. (more…)

  • Review: Taken 2

    The movie Taken is my favorite action movie ever. Today, the sequel premiered. While I’ve been eagerly awaiting this release for the last few months, I also had concerns.

    For a blockbuster hit, the original Taken was a relatively low budget film. After its initial success, more money was pumped into the sequel. Part of what I love about the original is its simplicity. It doesn’t have all of the bells or whistles of some action movies. There aren’t ridiculously extreme circumstances. We don’t see cities destroyed. It’s simply about a highly trained man on a mission to save his daughter who has been kidnapped into an all to real underworld of human trafficking. After some intial plot development, the original Taken was all action. There weren’t any corny jokes, they didn’t slow us down with some love story subplot. It was just Liam Neeson killing bad guys. (more…)