battlecrusadersgames
I found this a little slow and confusing. The whole movie revolves around the connection between the 2 storylines, but it is both predictable and tenuous.
The music is also very distracting, which is especially noticeable in the silent parts of the movie.
Thank god Oakes Fegley is both watchable and a great little actor and carries the movie. Also i have to give credit for the director to try something a little bit different.
Overall the movie was watchable but not one i will be buying on dvd
bartelkatherine
This story has so much potential. I loved "Hugo," by the same writer. The parallel time periods and similarities in the stories of the 2 children could have been wonderful if the movie contained some cleverly written exposition.This film was so dimly lit I could hardly see it, even when it was supposedly a normally lit space. The written notes on paper were not readable and they would have probably given me a clue about the plot. It is ultimately about a newly orphaned child, a worthy subject. However, it is unclear who the boy is staying with in the beginning, unclear whether the adult women is a neighbor, a foster mother, or a friend's mother. It is unclear why the 1927 female lead leaves her home to see an actress. There are notes back and forth I couldn't read. Why is the bookseller significant? Who is he? Is he merely a device to introduce the grandmother? How did the boy get the name of this bookshop? It was hard to see the book he was looking at, so maybe there was a clue there?Why a museum setting? What will happen to the boy? Will he get lost in the fake city? Is the fake city better than his sad life? Are we to get from this that real life is too hard and we should escape in fantasy? The grandmother leaves home and never goes back. She gets incorporated into a museum. Is that the boy's fate?
dokrauss
One of those coming-of-age movies where you're supposed to be short of breath and gasping at the Big Reveals. I was gasping from the urge not to vomit. Ben, a precocious youngster (they're all precocious youngsters, ain't they?) embarks on a journey by himself to find his father because his mother won't tell him who his father is. Why? Who knows? There's absolutely no reason presented as to why the identity of the father must remain this big dark secret. Indeed, the father turns out to be quite a good guy. What the hell, Mom? Can't ask her because, you see, she died, carrying her incomprehensible and downright cruel reasons to the grave. So Ben has to move in with his aunt, who lives in a house right next door to his house, both on the same plot of land, apparently, and his house is bigger than the aunt's so why didn't they all just switch over? Got me. I guess it wouldn't advance the proposition that Ben is Cruelly Treated by his Aunt and cousin, necessitating the whole running-away-to-find-my-father shtick. As if that wasn't bad enough, superimposed over all this is a black-and-white sub-story involving Rose, a deaf girl who runs away to...well, we're not really sure. Visit the museum where her brother works, I guess. See, Rose is also cruelly treated because her Dad doesn't think 12-year-old deaf girls should run around New York City alone. And, get this, he wants her to learn sign language (why doesn't she already know sign language?)! Yeah, cruel bastard, he. Oh, yes, Ben loses his hearing during a lightening strike, so I guess that connects the two stories even though there's no reason why these two stories even relate...well, there is, but you don't know that until waaaay later, long after you've lost interest. Oh yeah, the 1977 New York City blackout's involved, too. What a godawful YA mess this movie is. I'd kick out my screen before watching it again
