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Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

It's one of those movies I've put off watching due to never developing an interest in it for whatever reason. I had been reminded of it recently after talking about film with some friends. They said it was one of those movies you had to watch, like the Godfather or Fight Club. I wanted to be able to say I'd seen it.

I wouldn't say I really enjoyed it, but it was schizophrenic and bizarre enough to hold my attention. I need to check it out again at some point to wrap my head around it.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
This had some genuinely funny and heartwarming moments, and although it was let down by a few silly scenes and some more silly scenes, overall it was a nice bit of fun. Seeing young Kevin Bacon for about 5 seconds was also a hoot. There's a slight twist at the end that was a bit predictable (or it was for me) but it didn't make it any less impactful.

3/5

"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

Hmm...I don't think I catch your drift.

Nacho Libre (2006)

Still has the same style of wit and humor of Napoleon Dynamite, and even though it's "another underdog story", it's a hilarious and sometimes charming story with Jack Black and his usual awesomeness at the heart of it all.

9/10

So I actually got to catch up on a few of the films tipped for awards, meaning I hopefully won't fall asleep through the whole of the Oscar ceremony like I did last time because I hadn't seen any of the films nominated and thus didn't give a hoot who won.

Big Eyes

Hooray! Tim Burton doesn't suck anymore! He's just OK now!

Amy Adams pulls a great performance, and the moments when she becomes distorted by the ubiquity of her own creation are by far the best. Christoph Waltz is perhaps too over the top, but he's Christoph Waltz - what do you expect? Also, out of nowhere Terence Stamp provides this hilarious deadpan performance as the harshest critic in the world - as though the guy from Ratatouille came to haunt the realm of live-action.

The only problem is that it lacks creativity. I know it's really weird that I say Burton needs to tone down, but this is going too far the other way. It feels too much like a conventional biopic rather than an exploration of an artists work.

Burton clearly made Ed Wood because he absolutely loved the man's work. He made Big Eyes because he liked the story behind the paintings. It's a good film, but it just doesn't feel as much of a labour of love.

The Theory of Everything

As a drama about a man suffering from motor neurone disease, this is pretty good. As a biography of Stephen Hawking, this is pure crap.

It says hardly anything about Hawking's actual work, what he discovered, what he created, what he thought, how he changed science. The film's just like: "Oh yeah, and he did some sciency stuff too."

I get that Hawkings theories were dizzyingly complex, and would have been difficult to explain to a common moviegoer but....actually, no. Film is a visual medium. I know absoultely nothing about music, yet watching Amadeus I was convinced that Mozart was a genuis because it explained using only sound and visuals that Mozart was able to simulate an entire orchestra in his head and dictate it onto a page. Stephen Hawking utilises a similar technique where he uses geographic locations to work out the worlds most difficult equations in his head. It's absolutely incredible. It's what's made Hawking perhaps the greatest mind this earth has ever seen...and the movie never mentions it once.

The film does delve into religion, which is bizzarre as it's the only thing Stephen Hawking has been absolutely certain about. He's reached the same conclusion Gallileo did: that there might be a god, but no-ones found him yet. He's certain that the possibilty of a god is uncertain - and is too busy trying to work out the secrets of the universe to bother with a question that he'll almost certainly never answer.

Such a waste of potential. We have a good director, a great cast, an excellent subject-matter to tackle - and what we're given is a painfully adequate drama that slots perfectly into the age of bland white young-adult heterosexual romance. Just read A Brief History Of Time instead.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Good god this is awesome.

Not since Brazil have I seen a film so tight in it's production design. Every shot feels choreographed. Every frame painted. This is like Amélie without the French-ness and the boring romance and Audrey Tautou's terrifying face.

The only real problem is Ed Norton. I love the man. He's an outstanding method actor, but I feel he's miscast here. He does subtle, emotionally intense performances. What this movie needed was someone ridiculously over the top playing the head of police desperately chasing after our heroes. I think of the glorious live-action cartoon that is this movie and I don't think: "Yes! Ed Norton!"

But everyone else is perfect. F. Murray Abraham is going full-on Amadeus, this is the best I've seen Ralph Finnes, Adrien Brody is clearly having a great time, and I think William Defoe was born to play his role. The plot is exceptionally flimsy, but that really doesn't matter when we're having so much fun. For once, I'm prepared to overlook a dodgy plot because everything else is so great.

Well, I was given the duty of choosing the movie today. Would you recommend this or Unbroken?

Oh, OK. I actually went and saw something else instead, but thanks for the insight.

The Imitation Game (2014)

Yes, the Oscar-baity Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle about the man who is credited with building a machine that discreetly shortened World War II and saved more than 12 million lives. Without Cabbage-Patch's character, this site wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't be typing this review right now. I mean, right now. Like, right now.

Imitation is one of Cucumber-Patch's best work, and Keira Knightley and him share a lot of genuine chemistry. There are a lot of moments that were awkward for me, because at times, I would cry when others in the theater would laugh. I felt like when Alan Turing, our main character, would feel something, I would feel that too. Maybe that's because I've done extensive research on his life and legacy well before this movie's release.

Last November, about a week prior to the first public English screening of this movie (and well before the late-Thanksgiving weekend release in my own country), I was doing a school project about Apple, and how overly repetitive their copy-and-paste consumer products are. For the project, we had to think of a recent event in today's world and relate it to a historical happening. First thing I did was grab my dad's iPhone (ironic, isn't it?) and ask Siri to tell me who the first inventor of the computer was. When not much research was given, I had to think of something more recent. I knew about the release of this movie and decided to look into Turing and his work.

Seeing the movie now, it is a very excellent one, even if I already knew all the plot points after the research I had done. The cinematography is beautiful, the musical score is wondrous--the best I've heard since Interstellar--the screenplay is tautly written, and the supporting cast members each give a good performance.

But, Benedict Cumberbatch's award-winning performance as Alan Turing is what really did it. It's the best part. He adds many uncomfortable jitters to Turing when delivering his performance, and there's no one else that could give such a fine portrayal. As stated before, The Imitation Game is his (as well as director, Morten Tyldum) best work.

In the weeks drawing closer to the Oscars, and in the final hours leading to the Golden Globes, I can safely say that I've found a film worth rooting for. Either that, or Selma, which I'm planning on seeing during the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.

Definitely recommend this.

9.8/10

Last edited by Mickey (January 10, 2015 (09:12pm))

Quite serendipitously, I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel quite recently and was intending to write a review, so....

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Warning: Pastry metaphors incoming.]

Apparently, this is Wes Anderson's most Wes Anderson film yet.  If that's the case Wes Anderson needs to tone down on the Wes Anderson.

It's not bad per se, but I can't say I enjoyed it either.  There are a number of issues.  For a start, there's the aspect ratio.  When it starts out, it's close to 16:9, then switches to a TV-style aspect ratio when the Author is telling his story on the videotape, then 2.35:1 when Young Author meets old Zero, then a really weird almost square aspect when Zero tells his story.  It really bothers me, since the main aspect used feels really unbalanced and therefore noticeable.  The constant jumping around is quite jarring.  Whilst I like the idea of using different aspects to tell different stories, the switching around means I get constantly reminded that I'm watching a film, and I'm unable to immerse myself in the story.  It's as though my eyeballs are constantly getting magically switched around every few minutes, and it's really distracting.

The cinematography is jarring, too.  I know, Wes Anderson is fond of using a strong central composition, but it's far too overused here and gets overpowering.  Shots are pretty much always dead-on looking into the camera, or profile.  A conversation between two people sitting at a table typically involves a shot of one looking directly into the camera whilst talking, then cutting to the person sitting opposite in the exact same position and angle, to the point where it's basically jump-cutting.  Sometimes, this approach lends itself very well to visual comedy (the arrival at the train station, the jailbreak, or the gun battle in the Hotel, for example), but it soon becomes stifling as we only ever see these angles.  It feels weirdly mechanical and artificial, like the film has been chopped up into little bits and stitched together, instead of organically flowing from one shot to the next.  The whole point of cinematography and editing is to hide cuts, not make them blatantly obvious.  It gets to the point where I feel like I'm looking at a deranged children's picture book instead of watching a movie (albeit with considerably more bloodshed and language, which sits rather oddly with the otherwise whimsical, quirky tone and pastel colours).

The story itself is a bit weak, although entertaining.  The performances by the actors are excellent and the dialogue is witty and well-written.  The main cast, particularly Ralph Fiennes, does a great job, and also I particularly liked the character of Jopling. 

  I also thought Edward Norton's role was humourous.  Maybe because I didn't know he was in this film, so him suddenly popping up was really funny to me.  There are some great moments, such as the aforementioned jail-break sequence, and gun battle.  The quote at the beginning from the Old Author is brilliant.

The film, though, falls flat in many cases.  For example, the character of Agatha basically doesn't exist beyond helping M. Gustave and Zero.  She feels like a convenient accessory used by the main characters when there's trouble, rather than a living, breathing, 3-dimensional character.  All in all, these aspects feel combine to make the film feel insubstantial and vaguely dissatisfying.  The cinematography, the editing, the story, even the garish colours, it all combines together to make the film feel like an over-sweetened pastry laced with artificial colours and flavours with a veneer of whimsy and the odd splatter of blood.  There's no emotional impact. 

In the end, I feel like this film is rather analogous to one of Mendl's delicately over-wrought, pastel-coloured confections.  It's not necessarily bad in of itself, but after a certain point it becomes a bit too much of a good thing.  The concept is sound, but I don't feel like execution worked especially well.  At the end of the day, I'd prefer more substantial fare.

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (January 12, 2015 (04:18am))

A River Runs Through It
If you like fly fishing, you'll really like this movie. I'm not into it, but it still was pretty interesting. The main thing I liked about this movie was the Montana scenery the film showed off, and the narration by director Robert Redford. The story, based on a short story by Norman Maclean about him growing up in Montana with his brother Paul, was pretty good, but nothing too special besides the sense of foreboding that arches over the film. The relationship between the brothers was well done and seemed pretty real, and Brad Pitt didn't feel like he was playing Brad Pitt, which I've felt like he was doing in 12 Years a Slave and Troy.

The Mission
I like this film a lot, but it feels incomplete. I had a similar feeling to Interstellar. This film may be about a Spanish mission trying to protect against slavers in 1700s South America, is a beautiful film, the cinematography and scenery is great, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is his best work, possibly one of the best soundtracks of all time, and Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons play the main characters, with Liam Neesan as one of the priests. What is there not to like? I'm not sure, but it has some great scenes and shots.

The Seventh Seal
I've heard the name of this film a lot, so it was neat to see it. It's weird and really interesting. The story seems simple, a Knight returning from the Crusades plays chess with Death as the Black Plague ravages Europe, but there is so much more to this film and I definitely didn't catch it all. It feels like a folktale, but its not really, and it's questions about God are good ones. I want to see this film again sometime, and hope I catch some more of it.