'Snowden' is a genuinely important movie.

Even though I have watched a lot of movies lately,  I wasn't that enthusiastic about watching Oliver Stone's drama film 'Snowden'. I didn't feel that the movie would be able to entertain me and keep me that interested.

Even though the film had gotten a fresh rating at rottentomatoes (62%  positive), I thought that the critics had simply been kind to the movie. It was a bit hard to believe that the film would eventually be worth my time.

Nevertheless, after I finally managed to watch the film last week, it turned out that my expectations had been wrong. 'Snowden' not only is a really well made movie, but it's also a genuinely important film that is full of substance.

When it comes to the film, it's a dramatized version of recent real life events. It's about a fugitive Edward Snowden, who in 2013 disclosed to wikileaks and British newspaper Guardian details about the illegal spying activities that the U.S government was involved in.

The movie begins when we see our idealist main character at a boot camp. Our protagonist, a high school drop-out is trying to become part of United States marine corps, where he could fulfill his duties and responsibilites as a U.S citizen.

When it turns out that he suffers from multiple stress fractures and is physically unfit for service, he has to try something else. Snowden tries to recruit himself to the services of U.S intelligence, where he could use his amateur computer programming skills.

At the admittance tests, it turns out that he manages to pass the programming test faster than anyone else - and gets hired despite lacking formal education. He quickly rises up in the ranks and becomes a system administrator for the CIA.

While working for the 'company', he starts to notice that not everything that occurs seems to be legal or justified. He witnesses cases where it's clear that laws are being broken when it comes to our privacy and our constitutional rights.

Later, when he resigns and starts working for the NSA and its contractors, things don't seem to be any better. He becomes increasingly bothered by the arbitrary drone strikes, the invasion of people's privacy, and the framing of innocent people. 

Eventually, he decides that enough is enough and that something has to be done. He decides that it's his responsibility to become a 'whistleblower', who is willing to risk his own life in order to serve and inform the public.

So when it comes to this film as a whole, in my opinion 'Snowden' does a really good job at keeping us in the audience entertained. At least in my case, I didn't have any problems in following the movie during its two hour plus length.

Very likely the biggest reason that the film works so well is because of its main protagonist Edward Snowden. The film and its expertly written screenplay manages to pay attention to this interesting and courageous character.

The screenplay works because of its structure, which allows the scenes to go back and forth in time between Snowden's career. This storytelling device manages to add to the film, especially when it comes to the meeting with the reporters in Hong Kong.

When it comes to the acting in the film, I was impressed with Joseph Gordon Levitt as Snowden. He not only looks the part and sounds like his real life counterpart, but he also manages to bring understated dignity to his character.

I was also impressed with the supporting characters. Shailene Woodley as Snowden's girlfriend, Rhys Ifans as the high ranking official, Zachary Quinto as Glenn Greenwald and Nicolas Cage as a disillusioned NSA employee were all super solid.

I think it also has to be mentioned that unlike in some other films directed by Oliver Stone, 'Snowden' feels balanced and doesn't try to be too gimmicky or too flashy. It's one of the most low key approaches that the veteran writer-director has managed to take.

As a whole, even though the film looks good and is stylistically shot, there's no sign of JFK's quick cuts or experimentation with different camera lenses. The film has almost a relaxed feel even though it's categorized as a suspense movie.

All in all, when it comes to judging 'Snowden' as a film, I have to admit that I was more than surprised by its quality. Even though I had my doubts about watching it at first, it turned out that I was wrong about how entertaining the movie would be.

As far as I'm concerned, 'Snowden' is a surprisingly well written, well acted and a well directed movie. It's a film that not only manages to thoroughly entertain us, but it also makes us think and inspires us to become better as human beings.

So if you want to see a film about a modern day hero, I couldn't recommend Oliver Stone's 'Snowden' more. It's easily one of the most important films in recent years and it's a film that we all should see at some point.

Less is usually more when it comes to writing.

One of the things that really bothers me as a writer is watching episodes of tv shows that don't make enough sense. Watching these episodes might make you think that you didn't pay enough attention and that there's something wrong with you.

In most cases though, it's not your fault that you didn't 'understand' what happened on your tv screen. Most of the time the blame is on the writers, who for some reason weren't able to deliver coherent and entertaining scripts.

To give you an example, let's look at an episode of Modern Family that aired a couple of weeks ago. This episode, 'Ringmaster Keifth' (S8e10), managed to make very little sense, even though it was packed full of content.

One of the biggest problems with the episode was that it didn't know what it was supposed to be about. The episode had so many things going on and went into so many different directions that it made my head hurt.

The episode basically had three different premises in it:  Phil and Claire were at an amusement park waiting to get on a scary ride, Jay & Gloria were celebrating the new year's day in their backyard, and  Cam & Mitchell were about to roast a full-sized pig. 

These premises by themselves weren't that bad and could have lead to a decent Modern Family episode. Had the writers used their imagination and expanded from these premises organically, we could have seen something entertaining.

Instead, it didn't take more than a couple of minutes before everything fell apart and all the story openings were ditched. Each and every one of these couples got an additional storyline that made it impossible to pay attention to what was going on.

For example, Phil and Claire's storyline about being at the amusement park switched to them coming back to their home. They arrived at their home, where they met Phil's dad with his new girlfriend, who was revealed to be Phil's first crush.

The story thread about Jay and Gloria spending time with their mischievous bulldog switched quickly to them talking about Gloria's past in their attic. This 'new' stuff came from nowhere and I couldn't understand it at all.

Still, by far the worst storyline was the one with Cam and Mitchell preparing that pig. This storyline very quickly switched to them bizarrely ordering another already roasted pig through a phone service - ran by Cam's former boyfriend (Kelsey Grammer).

It made absolutely no sense that - only five minutes in - they would fail at roasting the pig in the ground. Even if they did screw up with the fire, they still had six more hours to get it done - and the pointless melodrama with Frasier could have been avoided.

Needless to say, after the episode ended, all I could think was that the writers had completely dropped the ball when it came to the script. None of the storylines made sense and I don't think I managed to smile even once during the episode.

In the end, I guess what we should learn from the whole thing is that you aren't supposed to mess with your storylines too much. It's not okay to think that just because your original storylines and premise weren't strong enough, you can forget that they even existed.

On the contrary, when it comes to writing, you should always follow your premise and keep things as simple as possible with your storylines. You should make sure that your characters and your situations are going to be as plausible as possible.

If you're not willing to do this, there's almost no chance that your script as a whole is going to work. There's no way that you're going to write a good script based on ideas that aren't coherent and that go in every possible direction.

All in all, in the case of Modern Family's episode S8e10, the writers simply forgot the basics when it came to writing quality stuff. Their script made no sense, the story was impossible to follow and watching the episode made most of us in the audience unhappy.

The importance of foreshadowing in writing.

One of the most important things about writing is your ability to keep your audience interested in your story. It's crucial that what you're writing makes sense and that your storylines and your characters are easy to follow.

No matter what happens in your stories, the actions and decisions of your characters always have to be at least somewhat predictable. It's never okay to write something that comes out of nowhere and doesn't make any sense at all.

The reason that I'm writing about this is that last week I managed to watch Disney's animation 'Frozen' with my friend. This was a movie that had been very successful at the box office and had also gotten pretty good reviews.

When it came to the quality of the film, I more or less enjoyed watching it during its first 60 minutes. I managed to appreciate the characters and the humor, even though the story in 'Frozen' wasn't necessarily that original.

Unfortunately, that all changed when it came to the last third of the film. This was when it became obvious that the storylines wouldn't come together, so one of the characters in the film had to be completely rewritten.

Naturally, I'm talking about the scene in which it was revealed that Hans, Anna's fiancee, turned out to be the big villain. This was a turn of events that pretty much no one could have seen coming and that made no sense at all.

Reaching up to that moment, nothing in the story had suggested that Hans could be the antagonist. We already had a real, genuine villain in Duke of Weselton, who wanted to capture and kill our 'Frozen' princess Elsa.

Yet, in one single scene the writers did a full one-eighty and changed his character completely. Hans went from being a loyal and loving fiancee to a murderous and power hungry opportunist who only cared about himself. 

Not surprisingly, it was almost impossible to enjoy the film after this turn of events. There was no foreshadowing or any kind of hint in the story that could have made this reveal even remotely plausible or acceptable.

This mistake that we saw managed to break pretty much all the basic rules of screenwriting. It was pretty incredible to see a huge company like Disney pull off a cheap stunt like this and undermine its audience the way they did.

In the end, this all goes to show that just because you have nearly unlimited resources at your disposal, it doesn't mean that your story is going to work. It still takes a lot of good judgement and good decision making before things come together.

At least in the case of 'Frozen', the writers didn't manage to fix their story so that it could work from start to finish. They screwed up and perhaps even thought that it wouldn't matter that much whether they did their jobs well or not.

Unfortunately for them, even though the film was a success, the fact remains that the characters in 'Frozen' didn't make enough sense. They were inconsistent, poorly motivated and at least in the case of Hans, completely implausible.

Review of the film 'The Accountant'.

Even though I have been watching quite a few movies lately, I haven't managed to watch that many drama films. Most of the movies that I've watched in the last few months have been either animations or action films.

The biggest reason that I don't like watching drama films is that I'm worried that they don't put me on a good mood. Life is pretty depressing already, so why should I watch something that wouldn't cheer me up?

Nevertheless, a couple of days ago I managed to watch a drama film called 'The Accountant' with my friend. This is a movie that had gotten pretty good reviews at imdb.com, so we thought that we should give it a chance.

The premise of the film is that an autistic accountant, played by Ben Affleck, lives a secret life. This math genius is someone who not only excels at uncovering accounting frauds, but he also happens to be an adept killing machine.

The movie about an autistic hitman begins with an introduction that deals with his childhood. Our main protagonist is a young kid who despite his serious behavioral problems has an uncanny ability to solve intellectual tasks and puzzles.

A bit later, when the film moves to his adulthood as a small town accountant, you can't help but to be interested in his life. How does this guy manage his life and deal with us so called 'normal' everyday individuals?

In the first act, thanks to his smart accounting advice, he manages to befriend a local couple. He accepts their invitation to their countryside farm, where he spends time with them and demonstrates his sharpshooting capabilities.

Not long after that, our accountant gets his big accounting assignment (inciting incident). In this task he's supposed to uncook the books of a company and figure out whether there's a problem with this hi-tech firm that is about to go public.

Here he manages to befriend another accounting afficionado, played by the lovely Anna Kendrick. She manages to make our main protagonist seem a little bit more human and not as hopelessly distant and cold.

After pulling an all-nighter (in the picture), Affleck's character figures out where the problems within the company's accounting practices are. Someone high enough in the firm is laundering money for his or her own endeavours.

Not surprisingly, all hell breaks loose when this multi million fraud is about to be unveiled by our accountant. The bad guys go mercilessly after Affleck's and Kendrick's character - and are determined to take care of them for good.

When it comes to the story in this movie, at least during the first ninety minutes or so, just about everything in it seems to work. This is when the autistic hitman storyline works and it looks like those behind the movie know what they are doing.

That is that, during the first two acts of 'The Accountant', pretty much all the charactes are interesting in the film and the story is focused. The storyline about the slow humanization of Affleck's character is something that you can easily follow.

It's not until the last 30 minutes when the film's story unfortunately starts to get off the rails. It turns out that there are simply too many subplots in the film that get expanded and that get attention for no reason at all.

For example, there's the subplot about the federal agent and his female assistant that gets too much attention. Especially when it came to J.K. Simmons' giving that 5-6 minute speech that was all about exposition, I had to shake my head.

Not only did that speech turn the tables around and change the focus of the film, it made Affleck's character inconsistent too. I didn't know who his character really was anymore and what were the values that he represented.

It also has to be said that the stuff about Affleck's family in the third act felt way too contrived. The fact that they made one of the bad guys his brother was just too much and made the film feel like its story was all over the place.

All in all, it's fairly obvious the film would have been much better had the writers trimmed the script and cut many of the side character storylines. These needed changes, in my opinion, would have given the film a much better flow.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that the writers had too many 'darlings' in the script was unfortunate. These 'darlings' were mistakes that could have been avoided had someone paid a bit more attention to what worked and what didn't.

I mean, even though it's true that there were a lot of good things about 'The Accountant', as a whole these good things weren't enough to redeem the movie. There were simply too many serious problems with its script.

In the end, I just wish that the film would have worked better from start to finish. In that case, 'The Accountant' could have been a really good movie, instead of being a promising film that didn't deliver all the way through.

Looking back at last year & what to do this year.

When it comes to summing up last year's events, not all things went exactly as one might have expected. 2016 as a whole, not only could have been a better year for myself, but it could have been a better year for others too.

Below I'll try to list some of the things that were important to me and that in my opinion are worth sharing about 2016. Some of these things that happened aren't that good but not everything went totally wrong last year.

🔼 When it comes to me, almost certainly the best thing about last year is that I managed to start running again. Even though I was pretty sure that I would never be able to do heavy exercises again, I have now been regularly running 4-5 times a week.

🔼 Just like last year, I managed to write 48 articles on this site that hopefully were entertaining and informative. It took a lot of serious work (700+ hours) and I'm fairly happy that I managed to have a solid writing routine.

🔽 Unfortunately, I didn't manage to write a movie screenplay in 2016, even though it had clearly been a goal for myself. It turned out be a lot harder to come up with a solid & a potential premise than I had thought at first.

🔼 The upside to this is that after a lot of procrastination, I did finally start the project late last year. This time consuming task is going to take a lot of work and probably a lot of help from others is going to be needed.

🔼 I managed to show at least some initiative after entering a television writing competition with my Modern Family spec. This slightly revised script, in my opinion, was good enough to win any competition that's out there.

🔽 Unfortunately, when it came to this contest, it turned out that I had wasted 60$ of my precious money. I didn't even make through the first qualifying round, which just goes to show that most writing competitions simply aren't legit.

🔼 I also showed some initiative when I tried to get a 'real' writing job at Remedy gaming. I thought it would be smart to give these guys a chance, especially considering that I live only like 10 minutes away from the company headquarters.

🔽 Unfortunately, those in charge of games like Alan Wake and Quantum Break didn't [even] write me back. This was one of the biggest disappointments of the year and I can't exactly say that it encouraged me to try harder.

🔜 In any case, when it comes to this new year, I know that I should probably try a bit harder than I did in 2016. Even though I did spend considerable amount of time writing stuff, I could have done a lot more too.

🔜 Hopefully, this year I'll be able to come up with a steady writing routine for my other projects. I should be able to dedicate at least a certain amount of time every week so that I could keep going further with my script.

🔜 I will also try to do my best when it comes to updating this writing blog. Even though it's true that there are times when I don't know what to write about and that I sometimes tend to get frustrated, I still love publishing articles here.

🔜 All in all, I really hope that 2017 is going to be a solid year as a whole. I hope that I'm going to be prolific as a writer and that I'll be able to come up with stuff that is not only going to be good enough for myself, but good enough for others too.

'Storks' is a contrived but watchable film.

At least when it comes to me, one of the good things about last year was that I managed to watch a lot of animated films. I think I saw most of the animations that were released in 2016 and that had gotten decent reviews.

Of those dozen or so animations, none of them were that disappointing. Even though films like Angry Birds and Sausage Party could have been better, most of the movies that were released were fairly entertaining and well made.

In any case, a couple of days ago I managed to see 'Storks', an animated film that was also released last year. This film had received somewhat positive reviews, so I had to check how good the animation turned out to be.

In a nutshell, the story is about a stork and a girl that work in a special courier firm. This special stork powered firm used to be a baby delivering company that delivered babies for couples that wanted to become parents.

In the story we also have a young kid who is bored of being the only child in the family. This kid is more or less being neglected by his career-oriented parents, so he wants a brother or a sister that he could play with.

In the film, the kid sends a letter to the courier firm, which leads to the stork and the girl accidentally creating another baby. This baby has to be delivered to the kid and to his parents, which of course turns out to be easier said than done.

Over the course of the next hour and twenty minutes, our main characters stork and the girl run into all kinds of obstacles. These obstacles include all kinds of complications that prevent them from delivering the baby to the right address.

When it comes to the animation as a whole, I think the film is fairly entertaining and funny. Considering how contrived and derivative the premise is, I didn't expect that it could keep my attention from start to finish as well as it did.

This is not to say that there aren't any significant problems with the film and its story. Like probably many others, I couldn't help but to notice how the movie had problems with its exposition and how things didn't always make sense.

For example, the characters weren't that well drawn or well defined. I think it was fairly obvious that the writers could have done a better job with fleshing them out, even though the characters weren't by definition unlikable.

The story also felt as if it was stretched too thin and that there weren't enough story beats in the script. There were numerous scenes that didn't progress the story that were simply there to add to its running time.

Yet, despite these obvious flaws, 'Storks' as a whole managed to be relatively uplifting and enjoyable. There are certain unexpected moments in the movie that manage to surprise you and that make you feel better about it.

So if you're like me and want to be entertained, there's no reason why you shouldn't watch 'Storks'. It's not a great film, but it's still a solid animation that provides some laughs and keeps you entertained throughout its length.

I'm a big fan of 'The Graham Norton Show'.

Like probably many of you, I have never been that big of a fan of late night talk shows. I have never understood what makes it so interesting to watch stiff hosts interviewing boring celebrities and telling weak jokes to their audience.

In most cases, when it comes to talks shows, we're dealing with a television format that isn't particularly enlightening or entertaining. This kind of format doesn't aim high and in most cases provides empty laughs that you'll forget quickly.

Fortunately, there's at least one big exception to this superficial genre. As weird as it is, Graham Norton's talk show on BBC has managed to entertaing me over the years and has provided me consistent laughs and joy.

One of the biggest reasons that the show works so well is because it doesn't follow the standard late night structure. This is not a show that is based on the host having endless monologues, stupid sketches and short, forced 'interviews' with the celebrities. 

Instead of the host spending the first twenty minutes on some weak jokes and skits, the Graham Norton show moves almost immediately to its guests. Mosts of the guests on the series are introduced almost right away.

Naturally, what this means is that the celebrities are the actual stars on the show. Unlike with the rest of the 'big' talks shows, Graham Norton as a host is just one of the people taking part in the discussion, instead of being the center of the attention.

Unlike with most of the shows, in a format like this there's a lot more time to actually get to know these celebrity guests. This way it feels as if these celebrities were real people who had relatable personalities and had actual talent.

For example, it wasn't that long ago when I saw Matt Damon as a guest on the show. I was genuinely impressed when he told us about what he thinks is important in life - and what in his opinion are the things that don't matter that much.

I also liked it very much when a couple of weeks ago Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt were guests. I was more than impressed when Pratt performed a story-based card trick that surprised everyone in the audience.

Of course, there have been other great moments on the series too. Guests like Hugh Grant, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Russel Crowe, Michael Mcintyre, Emma Stone and others have managed to bring laughs to our lives too.

Still, none of these things change the fact that when it comes to the series working so well, the biggest reason for this is its host Graham Norton. He is the one who manages to be a natural and a likable host who keeps things going. 

Unlike with so many others in the business, he doesn't make the show about him. Unlike most hosts, he just blends in and does his best to make sure that his guests feel comfortable and relaxed so that they could be funny.

In the end, when it comes to 'The Graham Norton Show' as a whole, it's a well made series that doesn't follow the standard late night formula. It's a show that manages to avoid the usual pitfalls that most talk shows tend to suffer from. 

The series works because the guests in it, more often than not, turn out to be surprisingly likable, relatable and entertaining. They, alongside with the show's wonderful host keep us smiling and laughing throughout the series.

In that sense, even if you weren't a fan of talk shows in the first place, you probably should give 'The Graham Norton Show' a chance. At least in my view, there's a pretty good chance that you'll like the show and that it will keep you entertained.