Badlands

Firstly- thanks to Rhys for posting the first ever comment. After more than a year with this blog someone has finally commented and started to talk back to me!
My blog is being a bit weird and wont let me respond to comments so if you do post a comment then i will reply to it (if it's needed) in the next post or maybe i'll just create a post in response.

As you can see from the title, the next film that i watched was badlands. This was in colour and so a step towards the world that we live in now. I am a huge fan of Martin Sheen and i was kinda keen to see how he was when he was young...
The most important thing to say is that this film is weird. A fifteen year old girl and a guy of something older (probably 21) murder her father because he doesn't approve of their relationship and then a few other people as well. From one point of view you could say that it is a lovely romantic story about two people in love that will do anything to protect their love.... one the other hand you the people that would say that it is twisted and weird because she is only fifteen. I am one of those people because i don't believe that anything is worth killing for, which made this film very weird for me.

some of the scenery is quite lovely in this film, especially one of the houses they visit when pretending to be a plumber and co. I really liked the house, it kinda reminded me of the house from North by Northwest.
I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing and it is very much up to interpretation but a lot of this story is being told by the woman as the narrator and being British, I kinda struggled with her Texan accent and kinda developed a half -hearted and  very tired attitude to it as it went on and so the two hour film started to feel like four hours instead. I think that it was just a personal thing, so don't let it put you off watching the film- there is no reason as to why you shouldn't watch the film, in it's own weird way it is a very good film and quite a moving and powerful one- just depends on your mentality.

Rhys- I totally understand your comment. It's really hard for me to appreciate black and white horror because it just doesn't have the same effect. There are some films such as The Artist and The Phantom Of The Opera that are fantastic as black and white but i don't think that Horror is one that should be put in that category. I guess it made it's money from everything that you have said but it is a very dated film.

The Night of The Living Dead

I don't know if there's anyone out there that will read this and think 'same' when I say that the immediate thought that pops into my mind when the title of this film is mentioned is a song by a finish band called Lordi.
I have to admit that personally i found the song more entertaining and enjoyable than the film that i just spent an hour and half watching.
If you are like me an didn't know what the film was about before watching it then add it to your zombie/undead genre and probably on the pile of overrated and not worth spending the time on. I almost want to say that once you have seen one of these films then you have seen them all. Shaun of the Dead (which is obviously a miki take of Dawn of the Dead) and 28 days later do a remarkable job of showing every aspect of a film about dead people being brought back to life.

This film was made before both of those (1968) and almost kinda shows it. The story is dragged on. You knew what was going to happen about an hour before it did happen. The only thing that I couldn't quite predict was the very end.
Black and White makes it far less scary as you can't see any blood and the really reverb-y echoing screams at the end were just overdone and made me laugh hysterically. Talk about dying dramatically and dragging the death on a bit.

The film was apparently criticised for its explicit gore and in 1968 you can probably see why but in today's world its so out dated and got nothing on the stuff that they are making today. I am happy to see that they remade this film in 1990 but I have not yet watched the remake. This film became a financial success- how did it manage that?

Some of these films i find really hard to review. What did you think?

Lawrence of Arabia

Travelling back towards some of the greats to a film staring Alec Guinness. I loved the man in the white suit and Great Expectations so I had high hopes for this film.

I found it vey difficult to watch this film. I was bored by it. There seemed like there was nothing much to it and it was a 2 hour long film full of nothing.
Lets not take anything away from Guinness, we all know that a film can be not great but there can be some outstanding acting. This is definitely not my favourite role for him but he managed it none the less. It did take me a long time to work out which character he was and I usually consider that to be a bonus.

I think that it is fair to say the film is dated. There is no way that a film like that would get through box office in today's film society... it would lose so much money before starting that it probably wouldn't even get to screening. Those kinda films that are set in the middle east but take way to long for anything interesting to happen would have never made it past proposal- they are just too long and not adventurous or in any way particularly entertaining.

I felt like Monty Python would be able to make a great spoof out of this film.

Good Will Hunting

What to do when I have the house entirely to myself.... I could have a party... or play really loud music to annoy the neighbors that are busy making lots of noise but instead i decided to watch Good Will Hunting.
My mum brought this film back with her after staying with my sister and she kinda kept going on about it so I put it on the list so that I could say that I had seen it.
Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting- the brilliant mathematician that is actually a janitor at MIT. The Sweedish guy from Pirates of the Caribbean and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo stars as the math professor, Ben Afleck is Will's friend that drives him everywhere and Robin Williams is the genius in the film.
Robin Williams is absolutely amazing and Matt Damon at that age is much better than how he was in Oceans Eleven. Some people say that Matt Damon is overrated but I don't think that he is. Yeah he makes some films better than others but so does everyone... he's not like most actors that make a whole bunch of terrible films and only a few good ones in their career.
Ben Afleck and Matt Damon wrote the script for the film and I have to say that I really enjoyed the film. I don't think much of Ben Afleck- I have really only liked him in Daredevil and this ( Armageddon he was ok in but nothing more and lets not go back to Argo) so it is nice to watch a film with him in that isn't complete rubbish.

The film also has Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street which if any of you are saxophonists you will know has a brilliant saxophone riff throughout that most of us love to play.

I actually really liked this film. It's not comedy or action or even particularly funny, it's just got all the right things in it at the right point.
I always have to be careful about the films that my sister recommends... some of them, like the madness musical have been really awful but this one was another to go on the list of good recommendations.

American Psycho

I'll be totally honest... I watched this film because of the Fallout boy album American Beauty/ American Psycho. Last year I watched American Beauty and so this year i decided to add American Psycho onto the list.
Both are very weird films. Kevin Spacey stars in American Beauty as a slightly perverted man that wants to sleep with his daughters friend and Christian Bale stars in American Psycho as the man that likes to kill people... especially women after having sex with them and filming it all.

I don't know what to make of this film. Christian Bale was magnificent as Patrick Bateman and played the psychopath very well... I would have believed that it was real if the case had not said Christian Bale on the front. Reese Witherspoon I didn't even notice in the film. I honestly can't remember who she played because i didn't recognise her at all... she was magnificent.

I wouldn't watch this film again... probably not ever because i remember it all. It's weird enough and in its own way disturbing enough for me to remember it and never want to watch it again. This is a personal thing and i'm sure that a lot of people like this film and would probably watch it more than once but for me... it's not my type of film and once was enough.

The worlds greatest martial arts film

The first thing that I will say is that I watched this film in Chinese so I actually have no idea about the plot other than it involves martial arts.

I watched Ip man: the legend is born before watching this so I kinda have an idea what it is about or at least some background knowledge into it but no clear understanding of what was going on.

My brother has been going on about Ip man and how i should see it. Generally he does seem to be the oracle on martial arts films so it is worth me taking his advice.

I can only comment on the martial arts sequences as i can't comment on the plot or the acting as i didn't understand the plot. The martial arts is superb. Sometimes we see these sequences that have time for spins and a lot of somewhat ridiculous stuff in it that just seems all flashy and not actually necessary but not with this film. I loved the part where he pushes himself back up to his feet in a jump and manages to block the attack with his feet as he goes... style and maybe a little unlikely but you never can tell what those guys are like.

I've seen a few martial arts films- the Forbidden Kingdom, Kung Fu Hustle, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bullet Proof Monk are a few to name and whilst i love crouching tiger hidden dragon and kung fu hustle is genius, this beats them all.

If you can find a version in English then buy it and watch it and it will probably be one that you keep for a long time.

Hitchcock

So I think that i've now reviewed five of his films over the last year that this challenge has been going on for. This is the review of the film that they made about him and that was almost solely about the making of Psycho.

Anthony Hopkins attempts to present himself as Hitchcock. If there is anyone that studies film and reads this blog then it would be great to get your opinion on his performance. As someone that has absolutely no idea whether it is truly an accurate presentation or not, i was very impressed with Mr. Hopkins. The character that he took on wasn't always an easy one to play and I have become used to seeing him in The Silence of the Lamb and a few other weird-er films like that. I don't think that i can recall seeing him in a role like this. He is superb in this role.

Supported excellently by Helen Mirren, who really deserved an award for her performance, they create a unique team that manages to make a fantastic movie that is always drawing emotion out of you. I don't think that i ever felt the same thing twice in this film as every scene gave me something different. I don't recall seeing a film like this before and this makes me very happy.
Helen Mirren is playing the determined and very able wife of a man that everyone knows. A man that for some reason the public didn't like when he made vertigo (I thought it was wonderful). I know that Alfred Hitchcock made a lot of films and having seen a few of the less well known ones i would be able to see their point if they had been referring to one of those films but i completely disagree with vertigo... it was fantastic. I didn't know that he had a woman that was actually better at directing than him and her part at the end of the film is something to admire.

I remember seeing the adverts for this film in one of the odd and very few times that i went to the cinema and immediately saying that i wanted to see it. At this point i hadn't seen a single Hitchcock film but i was desperate to see Anthony Hopkins as the man that was so famous. I was glad that this film didn't disapoint.
If you are a Hitchcock lover like me then i would recommend that you watch this film and most importantly, comment and let me know what you thought of it!

The Imitation Game

This is the truth about the man who cracked the enigma code in the second world war, causing it to end two years earlier than otherwise and saving fourteen million lives.
This is the film that should have won a lot of awards but was beaten by the theory of everything for every award it was nominated for. I have yet to watch the theory of everything but when I do I will compare them to see if it was a deserved winner.

Benedict Cumberbatch is Alan Turing, an Autistic mathematical genius. No one knows much about Alan Turing except that he was educated at Cambridge, bullied in school and built the Turing machines that we now call computers.

It is very difficult for someone without ASD to accurately portray someone with it, especially as each person with autism is different. Psychologists like to say that we are all on the spectrum and it's true, we are however for most of us, we cant see that our actions are any different from the actions classified as the norm and society has enough other labels to categorize us before we get further onto the spectrum.
Prior to this I have only seen one actor effectively portray an autistic child and that was Leonardo Di Caprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
That was a different type of autism, a more serious behavioural form of autism. Cumberbatch shows a different, more mild form of autism and is neck and neck with Di Caprio on his performance.

Had this film not been released around the same time as The Theory of Everything then I am confident that best picture and best actor would have been claimed by this awesome array of talent from Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Charles Dance and dare I even say it Keira Knightly. I am not a fan of hers and this is the first film that i have seen her in and liked her in to the point that I hardly noticed her inability to close her mouth.

This is a film that goes on the pile of greats, alongside the Spielberg films!

I missed the trailer for it so I have included it below in case any of you did as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CjKEFb-sM

Sabrina

I wasn't aware that i had put this on the list but I am not complaining. Jojo lent it to me and as with all Audrey Hepburn films, it was wonderful. My uneventful day turned into a lovely, relaxing evening by watching Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart star in this black and white classic romance film.

Featuring the song La Vie En Rose and sung beautifully by Hepburn, the somewhat relief of being able to watch an old film that wasn't a musical is fantastic. Her voice is beautiful, there should be no doubt about it but I think that she has proved that she can be out powered when singing with others.

Bogart and William Holden are both older men in this story and Hepburn is the daughter of the Chauffeur that has been in love with Holden since forever. After spending a few years in Paris she comes back to America as a lady and both brothers fall in love with her.

There are some comical moments involving champagne glasses and some lovely moments involving cooking but most of all this is a feel good, classic romance film that has everything in it. I am quickly becoming a Audrey Hepburn fan.

Schindler's list

Steven Spielberg really will be leaving a legacy behind when he dies. There is no other film maker out there like him in the world at the moment. No one makes films with as much meaning and as much passion as he does.

Schindler's list won every award going at the time, it is a film that everyone accepts to be: moving, passionate and above all else utterly brilliant. Liam Neeson stars as Schindler and this is the story of how one man saves 1100 Jews during the second world war. The performance from Neeson is absolutely world class. Normally when i watch these type of films I struggle with them and have to find many other things to do but with this one, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I didn't know what to expect in any scene. I was amazed by his performance. Recently it has become something of a custom for Neeson to be holding a gun and to at least kill one person yet in this film he didn't kill a single person.
Ben Kingsley as his accountant was superb, so much so that after a while i forgot that it was Ben Kingsley. I've never been as impressed with him in any previous role that i have seen him in as i was with him in this film.

It may be three hours long but that isn't three hours that drags on - this is three hours of possibly one of the best films ever made. I would watch this film again, I could watch it again because it didn't have me crying and wanting to vomit. It was sensitive but not completely horrific as the damaging moments were few and far between.

WOW

The Wolverine

So, just to round off the collection so far we turn our gaze towards a solely Hugh Jackman based film. Most of us will have seen X-men Origins:Wolverine and most of us will agree that it really wasn't worth the effort, so where could they go with this film? It's still not as good as the first x-men film but it is much better than the prequel of the trilogy.
Explaining something else from his past that until now had never been mentioned but was probably in the comics, Wolverine takes a trip to Tokyo and there the entire film (pretty much) is shot.
The scenery is wonderful, it does kinda make you want to go to Tokyo, unfortunately it is a place that i will never venture out to.
The introduction of Viper is brilliant. A relatively unknown Russian woman pulls off being american very easily. From the moment she entered the film i turned to my brother and said... she's evil and i wasn't wrong- i just couldn't guess what her powers were going to be.
Her costume reminds you very much of Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy in the Batman and Robin with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, if she was modelling herself on Poison Ivy that she did a really good job. The characters can be compared in several ways and personally i don't think that this is a bad thing.

This film was more simple than the first one. It had a plot and it stuck to it. It had characters and it stuck to it- nothing complicated, just well written but not confusing in any way. The simplicity is what makes it a good film. Nothing fancy was done with the cameras and nothing fancy was done in the directing of the film, strip it down to the bone and let it be what it is which is very refreshing to see.

Rating- much better than the first one and even better than Days of Future Past.

Once Upon A Time In The West

So maybe not the best film i've ever seen but it was pretty typical of a western.
The constant Harmonica theme is one that i can't decide whether it's a great theme or just really irritating.
An hour in and i was still trying to work out if anything was really going to happen in the film. A bunch of people pointing guns at each other from time to time and riding around on horses doesn't make a good film, just a boring one. I found this film really dull.

I do have to admire the main female role in the film. She was brilliant and not just a pathetic damsel in distress. The way that she delivered some of her lines with passion and managed to fire a gun was awesome and lovely to see in a typical western. Resistance is great to see and not something that is expected in this genre.

Made in 1968 and definitely showing it, a pleasant rebellion against the norms of 1968 but nothing more than that.

What did you think?