The book to movie review melee

I have seen three book to movie adaptation in the last week. I am going to make some comments. Once again the disclaimer: these are my opinions, take them or leave them. I welcome other people's opinions, about the movies, but keep your opinions about ME to yourself, thanks. Oh, and as always *spoiler alert*. (I put the titles of the movies in a color so that you can just read the ones that interest you, or that you have seen/read).

We will start with Ender's Game.
I saw Ender's Game last Saturday. I meant to see it sooner, but there were just too many other movies on the list to see, and I had heard mixed reviews on it. My thoughts?  It was well cast. I liked Harrison Ford as Graff and Viola Davis was a great Anderson. Even the children were well thought out and cast. Most people's complaint about the movie was that they cut years out of the book. Ender actually started at the Battle School when he was six, and though I see the point in the book, I also see how it may have caused some difficulties in film, especially a movie that has to fit in a two hourish slot. So that part didn't bother me too much. I would have liked to have seen more of the antigravity battles, to show how good Ender's mind was at improvising the fights, but again the time constraint. Overall, I think it was an excellent adaptation, that felt a bit rushed. But hey, I said I would have sat through another hour of Catching Fire, so I am all for making movies longer as long as it feels true to the book. I also heard the complaint that Violet and Peter's political "invasion" was left out of the movie, but to be honest, it wasn't necessary to the plot and would not interest the overall sci-fi public.

The second is The Host.
Why did I see the Host? Honestly, still asking myself the same thing. My daughter decided she likes Care Bears and if you think the 80s versions were painful, try watching the new ones. Any way, so I was desperate for anything else to watch, and it had to be something I could watch on my laptop since she was on the TV, so I was browsing Netflix, and I just started watching The Host...
For starters, I liked the book better than Twilight (yes, sadly I have read both). But the sad part to me is that the plot had some REAL potential, but the book got really slow in the middle, and I kept thinking surely something would happen. Most of the excitement was skipped in the beginning where we could have watched the aliens take over the world, or something with action instead of hanging out underground doing nothing.
When it comes down to it, I actually liked the movie better. They added some action. Some of the lines were still TOTALLY cheesy, and I missed the part where Ian and Wanda fell in love. It was definitely more exciting than the book, but I am still not going to recommend you drop everything and go see it. It wasn't that great. Like I said, there were still some cheesy lines, and the acting left something to be desired.

The third is The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
When I started this one, my expectations were pretty low. The book was, ok, but I didn't even finish the series because, once again it got really slow in the middle, and I wasn't blown away by the writing (if I don't recall, some of her metaphors were just plain strange). Also, I know it didn't do that well in the boxoffice, and after seeing the trailers, I didn't bother to go see it in the theaters because it just didn't look that great.
So, my first thought: Lily Collins is a red head like Josh Hutcherson is a blonde, seriously, can't they do something about their eyebrows? And hers were SO thick it was impossible to think her hair wasn't naturally black, at least they could have thinned them out or something. But I digress, the movie was actually pretty good. It made me think about picking up the rest of the series, so that is saying something. I think (it has been a while since I read it) that if followed the plot really well, and though some of the elements of it were different, they were in the book too.

Up next? Hopefully the Book Thief, which if you know me is on my top ten books of all time...