Finishing off the year in style

The Hobbit.

Once again what Peter Jackson has proved is that he can't make second films, or that he shouldn't be allowed to make three films.
The third part of the hobbit brings back the quality that we all knew Jackson was capable of producing and that we had come to expect from him. A critical annalysis would claim that it was all battles and not very true to the book and lets not take anything away from it- they are correct but Jackson and team had left themselves a huge task to complete with the third film. If you imagine the twelve tasks of Hercules then this is basically what Jackson and Fran Walsh were facing when they made this third film. The second film was so terrible and so made up that we all knew that it was coming. De Ja Vu, it was like watching The Lord Of The Rings all over again. I had loved the first part and I even enjoyed the final part but it was let down by the middle.
Orlando Bloom, with no disrespect to him, no amount of CGI can stop him from looking at least ten years older that what he was in the rings films. His character was unnecessary and even though I liked his development and it explained a lot about him and tied in nicely to the lord of the rings (which was the point) it was a shame that with him came this completely fictional elf that made everyone want to vomit with her love for one of the dwarves (either Fili or Kili). 
At the end of the desolation of Smaug I had felt that it could have ended several times before it did and that generally shouldn't happen in a film however with this one i enjoyed it through to the end.
I loved the fact that Billy Connolly rode a pig into battle and swore a lot and I loved the fact that there were battle elks and battle rams as well. Discrimination clearly wasn't ongoing in the animal kingdom in this film!
My overall Oscar award goes to Radagast as I loved his performance throughout, especially when he appears to ride off with Gandalf. I loved the ninja skills from Hugo Weaving and Sir Christopher Lee to bring the level up a notch and once again, assisted by Cate Blanchett.

Overall verdict- much better but to make it seem like there was more happening than just battles he should've merged the book bits in the second film with the book bits in this film and just made two films, thus cutting out the made up crap in the middle and keeping everyone happy.

A nice way to end the year. Readers, look forward to a crazy start to next year when i upload about six posts on the trot due to my crazy Christmas schedule leading to the acquisition of a selection of films to chose on.
Hold on for a few days and I will be back to start the next challenge!

The last one for the year

So here we are- this is the last post for the year and of course the last post of the challenge!

This post is The Amazing Spider-man and This is Spinal Tap combined.
I realised that i hadn't actually watched that film and that it was on the list so that because i had said that this would be the last post then i needed to watch them both on the same day and combine them in this post so now i have.
This is spinal tap is a terrible film. It's a rockmentary of the band Spinal Tap but it's just boring. I didn't know anything about it before watching it- i didn't even know that Spinal Tap were a band so i learnt something there but even so, the music is ok but it just lacked any real action.

So now on to The Amazing Spider-man (of which they have just made a second film). This is a great film. Andrew Garfield is much better than Toby Maguire and the film was overall much better.
If anyone is a Bo Barnum fan then they will understand what i mean by I was just singing about Lizards the whole way through.
I liked the take on the film, starting with a shot of his parents before they die and kinda working up to the main story that everyone knows and remembers. Spider-man was less irritating and pathetic as it went on. The introduction of the new high school girlfriend was kinda cool- especially her connection to science and Oscorp.
I know that someone had to die but why oh why did it have to be him? Uncle Ben had already died, they could've left things happily ever after.

Anywho- enough of me ranting! The film year for me ends tonight (with the Hobbit) so I would like to take this chance to wish all of you out there that have been reading my blog throughout the year a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Signing out for the last time- Clare

Freaks

The penultimate post of the blog for this year has finally made it to fooltheeyefoolthebrain.
Once again i was not responsible for Freaks ending up on the list but it ended up being the second last film that i watched over the year so now i have to post about it.

For those that have absolutely no idea what the film is, it is a black and white film about people that are deformed (hence the title). It shows a very accurate representation of the way that society used to treat people that were considered to be slightly different.

A Circus woman and the star of the show apparently falls in love with a young man who is very small but then it is later discovered that she is only doing it for his inheritance.

To start with it is told in a flashback, kinda like 'let me take you back twenty years' or very similar to the opening of 'The Phantom Of The Opera' if anyone reading this has seen that. The camera moves with the narrator and i am glad to say that it manages to stay stable and there are no feelings of sea sickness in the film.
People say that it is harder to really judge and i guess enjoy the acting in black and white but i think that it shows true quality. I'll be honest and say that i can't name anyone in that film bu because there is nothing that immediately sparks the eye and draws interest, the audience had to be captured by the acting abilities.

The nature of the film makes it difficult to enjoy, it is more of a film that moves you but it doesn't spark that happiness that you would find from certain films.

Anyway- the last one (if i can find it) is The  Amazing Spider-man.
I know that if you have been following then you would know that there are a few films that i haven't reviewed but that is due to not actually being able to find them!

See you all next time!

Life of Pi

Another film that won a fair amount of awards when it was released is Life of Pi.
The book is a best selling hit so lets see how i felt about it.
As you can imagine, the film is obviously about maths but this is not one of the better films about maths. The discovery of Pi is interesting but not as interesting as some films such as a beautiful mind that really show the brilliance of the mind and the maths about it.

I can see why people have been saying that this film isn't anywhere near as good as people it was made out to be. It is just about on a par with Argo- which makes it terrible.
Once again it was a film that i managed to watch whilst doing something else so it's fair to say that i wasn't particularly moved by it.

filmed using flashbacks to explain the story, it had a similar resemblance to Slum dog millionaire, in fact, striking resemblance now that i really think about it. The flashbacks helped explain the story well and it definitely suited the film but i don't know what it is that put me off but maybe because there are so many similarities between Danny Boyle's film and this film.
Yes there are a lot of differences but to start with the comparisons were just filtering through which is never good.

I've included the synopsis underneath for anyone that wants to watch the film.

A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger.

The way we were

Streisand is once again on this list and is the topic of tonight's conversation.
It's lovely to see her in something that isn't a musical. She is, of course well known for starring in the musical 'Funny girl' which had the hit 'Don't Rain On My Parade' in it. I loved the musical but i found her kind of irritating in it. I wanted more than anything else to see her play a character that wasn't playing for laughs and i found it in the way we were.
She is superb. Very typically Streisand but enjoyable nonetheless.
Once again she is putting her voice to good use but this time in public speaking. Instead of being the dominant leading lady, she plays the leading lady in a much more minor role, not taking center stage and working more with her husband and the other characters. It would be fair to say that everything she is in this film is the opposite to what she was in Funny Girl (in my opinion).
I love to see versatility. Those of you that have been following this blog and have actually been reading all the posts will have noticed that i can't stand actors who only ever act as themselves. That's not talent- anyone can do it and most people do do it on a general everyday basis.
The way we were was refreshing. The style was typical of that era but even so it was a change from the other films that i had been watching. I'm not really sure how to put it but i felt like there was a more relaxed feel to it. The tempo was slower, i almost wanted to start singing as time goes by during the film!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMeu34o_jQ

I liked the presentation... actually i liked everything about it. I didn't jump up and down for joy whilst watching it but i liked it well enough to enjoy it, enjoy it more than i have enjoyed a film in a long time.

You may be wondering why i haven't written about Robert Redford. The answer is kinda easy- it takes a while for his character to get going and i haven't seen anything else with him in so i didn't feel that i could write as much about him as i could about Streisand. Robert Redford definitely played his part in the film but in many ways he was overshadowed.

I know that we are coming to the end of this series of posts and making way for the film challenge 2015, we still have something like 5 films left to go so that should take us up to the end of this week and maybe the end of next week. Stick with me for the last five films on the list before a short break and then a bog plunge into the next exciting chapter.

See you all tomorrow!
Clare

Fatal Attraction

Something i could go without ever watching again.
A better than mediocre film but not good enough to be 'good'. Michael Douglas stars with Glenn Close in a film that basically reinforces the point that having an affair is stupid.
Glenn Close plays the psychopath lover that tries to kill herself many times to stop Michael Douglas going back to his wife and family.
Because this isn't an action film, there isn't much to say about the way in which it was filmed. No helicopter shots or panoramic views, just life in the city.
I liked the acting and to an extent i liked the issue.What i didn't like was the character of the psychopath lover on the side. I mean i get that some women can be totally jealous and possessive but not all of them are going to kidnap the mans child, attack the wife and then break into his house and kill themselves in front of the wife. To me it seemed incredibly dramatic (and put me off my food).
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this film. I always am but the world doesn't seem to respond so i feel like i am talking to the dead!
leave a comment or for those of you that come to this blog via twitter feel free to message me on twitter.
This is only a review based on my opinion, if Esther had been following this as well then i would have someone to argue with but she hasn't so i am left on my own.
Most importantly, the point of this is to encourage people to watch movies that they haven't seen, movies that were made way before they were born. Broaden your horizons (as my sister would say).

Cloverfield

This is gonna be a super short post on cloverfield.
What can i say about it? I didn't like it.
The director was trying to do something different by filming it all with a hand held camera but that was what put me off. I hated the fact that what i was watching felt like i was watching it on a boat. I almost started to feel motion sickness by the end of it.
I can't think of anything stand out about the film excluding the way that it has been filmed. I don't really have much to say about it at all.

Hopefully the next one will be better!

To celebrate 100 posts

We're back again and to celebrate 100 posts, meaning that I've completed the challenge initially set of watching 100 films in a year I watched Raging Bull. Yeah i can hear some of you saying 'that's a celebration?' it's not, we had more than 100 films on the list and to be clear i've got something like 9 films left to go:
life of Pi,
Amazing spider-man
Dead man's shoes,
cloverfield,
28 days in paris,
This is spinal tap,
Freaks,
Fatal Attraction
The way we were.

I want to get them all done within the next week so keep watching this space.
I've got a manic week at work before we move in to the christmas holidays so if i don't finish it then i'll to watch them in the christmas holidays but fingers crossed that i'll get them done by the end of next week so that i can finish deciding on films for next years challenge.

Robert De Niro stars in Raging Bull. The film about a boxer and the way he treats his family. This is black and white so it was before Rocky and is much better than rocky.

There isn't much of a soundtrack, so that cuts out any analysing of that.
Next on to shots. There are loads of close ups and i really hate loads of close ups. Loads of bridging shots. I want to say that it isn't shot well but that was probably more to do with the time in which it was filmed. Everything is either really close up, straight ahead from a distance or at an awkward angle to the side.
in the ring there a several spinning shots that make me feel like i've drunk too much and kinda make me want to vomit. Occasionally this is good but i found it really distracting because i couldn't work out what was going on at the moment and in the film the fight was still going on.
A badly shot movie isn't necessarily a bad movie. Robert De Niro doesn't tend to make bad films.

The Lost Boys

Welcome back guys!
It's been a while for me- finding the time to sit down and watch films has been challenging but today i turned my attention to the lost boys.

As always I don't want to give you a plot summary because you could find that from most sites on the internet if you typed the name of the film in to Google.
I am going to start to talk more about the filming than the acting. Of course acting will be a big part of the review but i am going to be talking about location, screen shots and music as well.

The lost boys has a better than decent soundtrack. The rock and roll music of what i would call classic rock is always a pleasure to listen to and very well suited to the film and characters. The features of the music seem to fit well with the film. Songs that were obviously created whilst on drugs work well with the drug taking in the film. There are several tracks by INXS and Jimmy Barnes that keep the classic rock feel going throughout.

Trying to keep a hold of what the hell is going on whilst one of the most overrated and terrible films (Avatar) is playing in the background is extremely difficult. It seems to be about teenage gangs but i couldn't say for sure so i wont try!
This is one of the most hallucinogenicly weird LSD films that i've watched in a while.

I like the ways that it's shot. I really am not a huge fan of close ups and panoramic helicopter shots so i'm glad to say this film doesn't have many. The pov is genius, sometimes looking down from the actor and sometimes just above. Never looking down in to an endless pit,close enough to keep it real.

Just to mention- this is a film about vampires. I didn't know that when i started watching it but i managed to work it out in the end!