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Watch Breaking Dawn Part 2 Online. To even attempt a movie version of the musical Les Mis�rables is an act of insanity. There are few musical productions more beloved or more memorized, and so the end result is either going to be a success or a colossal failure. Seeing the finished product, it can be confidently said that director Tom Hooper, brings together a full-blooded, oversized production that is anything but shy. He pulls out all the stops, takes no prisoners and creates a big, lavish, garish, but always entertaining adaptation of a musical that leaves subtlety smoldering in the dust. Is it sad? Is it melancholy? Is it full of grimness and death? You bet, but hey, it�s Les Mis�rables.
Watch Texas ChainSaw 3D Online. The story, for the uninitiated, begins in 1815 on the day that Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is to be paroled after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. By law of the land, he is to be on parole for the rest of his natural life. By law of the destiny, Valjean finds his place in the eyes of God after being shown kindness by a priest. Frustrated with the tyranny of his bondage, Valjean tears up his parole notice and goes on the lam. He knows that the stone-hearted Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) will never give up searching for him, but he doesn�t know that this defiant gesture will alter the destinies of both men.
Watch A Haunted House Online. Years later, we catch up with Valjean who has taken the assumed name Monsieur Madeleine and is running a factory that makes rosaries. Working in the factory is the sad-eyed Fantine (Anne Hathaway) who is working to feed her illegitimate daughter. A mishap reveals her shame and she is thrown out in the street by the shop foreman. A whim of destiny keeps Valjean just out of earshot of what has happened to the young woman, who is eventually forced into prostitution.
By an act of kindness, Valjean finds himself adopting Fantine�s daughter Cosette (played as a child by Isabelle Allen and as an adult by Amanda Seyfried). This will be the pattern of Valjean�s life. Once the priest shows him kindness, it opens a door in his heart and he finds that the kindness that he shows to others comes back to him when he needs it most.
Watch Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 Online. The pattern of the story is centered on two separate figures, Valjean who sees kindness as a balance to the natural order, and Javert who is blinded by devotion to duty. Their duality is seen appropriately against the backdrop of Paris�1832 June Rebellion in which angry citizens rise up against the French army. Of course, all the elements of the story are told through music � non-stop music. Even the speech is a form of talk-singing and Hooper was smart to cast well-known actors who can actually sing.
Watch The Hobbit Online. Jackman, of course, won a Tony Award winner for �The Boy from Oz� and imbues Valjean with a kind of good-heartedness that comes from his very soul. Russell Crowe is less schooled but has fronted his own band since 1980. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette has a bird-like lilt to her brief musical interludes. Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter provide the much needed comic relief as the greedy Monsieur and Madame Th�nardier. Also, along the edges of the film, is an unforgettable performance by 22 year-old Samantha Barks who has been in the stage production. She plays the sad-eyed Eponine, the Th�nardier�s daughter who gets caught up in the rebellion. They are all wonderful, but no one can outclass Anne Hathaway as the doomed Fantine who, with limited screentime, brings to light the disparity of being a poor woman in 19th century France. Cast out in the street for the crime of having a child out of wedlock, she is forced to sell her hair before being forced to sell her body. There, amid the squalid Hell that is the den of the hopeless and the wretched she emotes the power of Sch�nberg�s �I Dreamed a Dream�; of a life that now feeds her broken promises and poisoned dreams. For six unbroken, unforgettable minutes, Tom Hooper�s camera holds steady on her withered face as she cries out for the once-golden promise of a life that has blown away in the dust. Hathaway has always been a good actress but here she reveals a depth and a range that are beyond anything we ever expected. It is nothing sort of a revelation.
That moment is a showstopper, but the rest of the production never slouches either. You walk in asking whether director Tom Hooper scored a masterwork, or a sour note? The answer to that question may rest with you. Your enjoyment may depend on your personal history with this production. What can be confidently reported is that this is probably the best adaptation of this musical that one could hope for outside of a concert hall. It is rousing, beautifully mounted and wonderfully well-acted production that entertains and does the job quite well. Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's expansive 1862 novel, goes from decrepit ex-con, to reformed small town business magnate, and back to fugitive from the law while caring for an ailing prostitute and her young daughter and dodging a dogged police inspector throughout revolutionary France (how's that for summing up a 1,463 page book in less than 50 words?) in this screen adaptation of the enduring Broadway musical. "Les Mis�rables" is a highly anticipated project, and when reviews began to pour in ranging from lukewarm to scathing, I began to prepare my "musicals are a highly subjective genre" review. Now I realize this is not a case of a bad movie, though it is that, but rather a poor stage-to-screen adaptation. There are so many things wrong with the film, but they begin with the music. Director Tom Hooper has been roundly commended for his decision to film his actor's singing live, rather than in a studio post-filming, but this decision does nothing to aid the film, which should be a primary concern, and voices and sound come off as flat, inaudible, and unimpressive. Hugh Jackman has never been any great shakes as an actor and despite his background in musical theater, his voice is all wrong for Valjean. Russell Crowe would have been ideally suited to the role of Javert, but since this is an almost exclusive singing outing, he comes off poorly with, again, a voice ill-suited to the role. Anne Hathaway, who has been generating awards buzz, is again way too much and may as well have been belting, "Please Give Me The Oscar" during her "I Dreamed a Dream" number. Hooper's intimate, close-up heavy mise-en-scene (which I thought would have played well) is disorienting and not conducive to the material. Also, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen turn up in recurring anachronistic roles which serve only as a reminder to "Sweeney Todd", a far superior musical rendering. I wanted to love this movie, I really did. I liked a filmed stage version I had watched prior and have listened to the original soundtrack, but this movie left me feeling disconnected from the characters and their interrelationships and, sadly, it instilled in me a moderate hatred for the material.
