The Secret World of Arrietty

Arrietty, aka The Secret World of Arrietty aka the Borrower
Arrietty aka a lot of French words on a poster.

"Do not be seen by humans. That's been the law of children of the underfloor."

Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Studio Ghibli's Arrietty, which has like three different names but I will refer to it just as Arrietty, because that is shorter. The most recent of Studio Ghibli's efforts and a film from the post-Miyazaki era, Arrietty follows a teeny tiny girl (named Arrietty) and her adventures. The film is based upon The Borrowers, a novel by English author Mary Norton, (and a book which previously received an American film adaptation in 1997... a bad one) and centers around the Clocks, a family of borrowers living underneath a small country home. These tiny folk are called borrowers because they take things from the house they live under (little things like a sugar cube or a tissue) of course 'borrowing' seems like a cute way of saying stealing here. I mean, I'm not saying I'd miss single tissues or anything, but I hope to god they don't give them back when they're done using them, that sounds pretty gross.

Butter

The people aren't butter though. Just other stuff in the movie.

"There's going to be a meltdown."

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Butter, a movie about sculpting things, out of butter, to prove that you're better than a nasty housewife, or a dirty stripper/prostitute. No really that is sort of what it's about. So a locally famous butter sculptor, Bob Pickler (Ty Burell) who has dominated the yearly competition for the past 15 years (because I guess people do that) is asked not to compete so maybe someone else can win. 10 year old Destiny (Yara Shahidi) who has been placed with foster parents Ethan and Jill Emmet (Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone) wanders into his exhibit of buttery prowess, and decides that she wants to take part in this years contest (because she's apparently good at sculptin' that thar butter). However she faces competetion in the form of Bob's awful wife Laura (Jennifer Garner ewwww Elektra ewwwww) who wants to win the competition as some sort of weird social supremacy marker or something I don't know she's horrible. To try and screw Laura because Bob still owes her 600 dollars for...services rendered, a stripperwhore named Brooke (Olivia Wilde, pics forthcoming) also enters.

Seeking Justice

Remember: always either whispering or shouting

"Would you cross the line for vengeance?"

Hey gang, you're most of the way to the exits for the week, and I'm here with the Tagline to ease the transition with a movie where Nicholas Cage seeks revenge etc. etc. you've heard this story before. Mr. Cage is a high school English teacher in New Orleans named Will Gerard whose wife is brutally raped by a stranger on the way home one night. Will is then approached by a man named Simon, claiming to represent a group of 'concerned citizens' willing to 'take care' of the man who raped Will's wife, by 'murdering him' with a 'gun' (they're a shadowy group of vigilantes okay?). After waffling over it for a little while, Will agrees to make a deal with this suspicious man he has never met who works for a group of shadowy criminal murderers. This seems like a good idea for exactly 0 seconds. It isn't long before Simon is back, looking to have Will do some favors for him. For starters its just dropping off a letter, and other cryptic instructions, but soon after he asks Will to push a guy off a bridge into traffic.

The Factory

What factory. What does that... WHAT.

"Based on true events NO REALLY"

So starters, the tagline for this movie suggested it was based on real events. There is no proof or even suggested evidence of that. So get that out of the way!

Happy Tuesday everyone, welcome back to The Tagline. Netflix was recently flooded with an explosion of new crappy movies, and so I'm here to deliver the goods, starting first with a police murder mystery called The Factory. It follows two detectives, Mike (played by our main man John Cusack, check out my fave five here) and Kelsey (Jennifer Carpenter, of Dexter fame) as they attempt to hunt down a man they believe to be a serial killer of prostitutes. During this hunt (which isn't going at all well) Mike's daughter Abby (Mae Whitman, she appeared in my review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower), after being dumped by Tyler from the Vampire Diaries, is picked up by said serial killer, because she basically looks like a hooker.

The Caller

Victoria is held captive by a past lunatic.

"Some calls are best left unanswered."

Like the call to be in a Twilight movie or two for instance! Welcome to another gripping edition of The Tagline! Today I'll be talking about The Caller, a film that somehow merges horror, being stalked, time-manipulation and land-line telephone service. Starring the bountifully tressed Rachelle Lafevre (who was Victoria in the first two Twilight movies, but NOT the third) as Mary Kee, a woman who is attempting to escape her abusive husband who she is trying to divorce. She moves into a new apartment and finds an antique phone which she decides to use. Around that time she begins to receive phone calls from a clearly crazy lady named Rose. What's really freaky though is that Rose is apparently from the past. Rose seems to be calling from somewhere in the 70s or thereabouts, and despite Mary's attempts to stop the calls, Rose just keeps on a'callin. This only adds to Mary's problems, because her ex-psycho is stalking her. Fortunately she meets John (Stephen Moyer, who most notably portrays Bill Compton on the series True Blood), who is a really nice guy. Things might turn around for Mary, right? not likely.

The Host

RADIOACTIVE RADIOACTIVE.

"Love never dies."

Hey everyone, welcome to another spectacular week at The Tagline! Just for you guys, I went to the movies today and watched The Host, the movie adaptation of the only Stephanie Meyer novel yet to receive a movie adaptation. The Host takes place on an Earth that has been conquered by a race of aliens called souls, who are placed into human bodies and subsume their consciousness, taking over their host body, though often retaining memories. Melanie Stryder(portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, who you may have seen either in Hannah or The Lovely Bones) is a girl who is caught by the souls,  and implanted with one called Wanderer. Despite this, she continues to resist her alien parasite, and tricks her into seeking out Melanie's surviving family and her boyfriend Jared. Over time Melanie bonds with Wanderer, and other romantic stuff happens that who really cares about them answer not me. This is Stephanie Meyer at her finest, and now I will elucidate exactly in what ways this movie is just like the Twilight movies (though admittedly there is slightly more of a plot in The Host than in most of the Twilight novels).

Les Miserables

Can you hear the people sing?

"Fight. Dream. Hope. Love."

Hello all, welcome to a very sleepy edition of The Tagline. Tonight I'm going to talk about the recent adaptation of Les Miserables, which modeled itself after the musical rather than the novel (unlike the 1998 adaptation which was less musical) Starring Anne Hathaway as Fantine, Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, and (weirded out) Russel Crowe as Inspector Javert. For the uninitiated Les Mis focuses primarily on the trials of ex-convict Jean Valjean, as he attempts to redeem himself, having been driven low by circumstance. This tale takes place against the backdrop of 19th century France, and is as much a story about human circumstance at large and the trials of that nation as it is about the specific characters involved in the plot. As a quick rundown (hyper-simplified version of the plot) Fantine is a lady who works in a mill, to pay the scummy innkeepers extorting her in exchange for taking care of (see abusing) her daughter, who was born out of wedlock. Fantine loses her job at a factory when the foreman finds out about her daughter, so she has to resort to prostitution. Eventually she is picked up by Javert for assaulting some guy who was being an ass, but Jean Valjean (who is by then the wealthy mayor of the town thanks to changing his name and the help of a priest who essentially let Valjean rob him) intervenes and saves her, taking her to a hospital because she is dying from hooker diseases or something. Valjean agrees to bring her daughter to him, but before that he is forced to reveal his true identity, blah dee bloo but he escapes from jail anyway, and then takes care of Cosette, Fantine's daughter and.... okay the point is a whole ton of shit happens, if you want to hear the rest of this tale, watch the movie, read the book, watch the other movie with Liam Neeson, see a production of it... it is available to you.