Because Everybody Else Has One

I mentioned this film a lot in my Edge of Tomorrow review so I might as well take a quick look at it. It also happens to be really, really good and is easily this year's biggest cinematic surprise, as far as I'm concerned. I effin' loved this movie - and I don't care how much of a girl that makes me! Also, I should mention that I have not read the book on which this was based but now I think I might just have to. Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) is a teenage girl whose terminal cancer may be being kept at bay by a miraculous new experimental treatment but she knows it's only a matter of time before her time finally runs out. Augustus "Gus" Waters (Ansel Elgort) is a teenage boy who survived cancer by having his leg amputated but who tries to make the most of his new lease on life. When the two have a chance meeting at a cancer support group, sparks quickly fly and what follows is a tragic, star-crossed love story that not only includes ple...

So this is a very big week for films with a number of major and/ or worthwhile releases coming out. Lets starts then, with the biggest and best of them... Like most seemingly unfilmable novels, Yann Martel's excellent, if occasionally slightly tedious, Life of Pi is heavy on theme and character and heavier still on subtext. Yes, the basic plot of a young boy surviving for weeks on a small lifeboat with only a vicious tiger for company is hardly uncinematic, but as anyone who has read the novel can tell you, Life of Pi isn't really about the plot at all. It is above all else a story steeped in symbolism and largely plays out as a fairly brilliant metaphor for humanity's need for storytelling and for religious/ spiritual belief, as well as the way the two are interdependent on one another. It's also a novel steeped in ambiguity and while you can argue for days whether it's ultimately pro- or anti-religion or -  no, that would be telling (insert final revelati...