Pros- Well, Johnny Depp, for one. Although I wasn't in love with this film, he does a solid job portraying the self-serving books dealer who's in it for the money. He finds ways to fit some quirky humor into the role at times as well which, with a movie over two hours in length, is arguably necessary.
Despite the fact that the movie itself is so long, the pacing seemed pretty smooth. There weren't any parts of the film that dragged, and the few times that you sensed the movie was following a predictable pattern, they found a way to make slight changes that threw you off.
The idea of devil worshipping and idolatry is not new, but the way this one played out was slightly different. I definitely liked that there were three books, and there were puzzle pieces hidden within them. It made it more interesting and complex. It also added obstacles, as the book itself was too precious for any of the owners to part with, making Depp's character have to work for the information.
By the time the film was coming to a close, I hope most audience members realized the film, and particularly the woman, was going in one of two directions. I thought it was definitely interesting which direction was taken, as it was not the predictable ending that I assumed it would be. It was a gratifying in ways, but not in others. Definitely points for going against the grain, though.
Cons- The music. Oh, God, that music. I have no idea who scored this film, but there were parts of it that were literally laughable because of the score. Bad, bad, bad. There were one or two parts where I did feel that the music did enhance the scene, with some light, minor piano nuances, but those were much too few and far between.
The fight scenes. Really, 1999? Is that all you've got? It was very poorly done, and because the rest of the movie wasn't so, it made it stand out in a less than favorable way. Lucky for me, there were only a handful of fight scenes throughout the whole thing, so the suffering was minimal.
Awkward levitation. Was that absolutely necessary? I mean, clearly she's getting from point A to point B way sooner than humans can, so can't she just teleport? Or just show up there in the scene? It's fine that she can levitate, and I get that it puts a sort of tangible awareness to her non-humanness, but if you can't make it look right then I wouldn't bother. We're an adult audience, we can figure it out without seeing horrible special effects that ruin the magic of her presence.
The ending left some questions. I would research this further or read the book if you're confused. It helps.
Wrap up- I can't say my first tackled film of 2014 was a hit. It definitely had some massive potential, but too many tiny flaws blew it for the movie as a whole. This film is whole-heartedly so-so.
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