Saturday, 1 February 2014
Friday, 31 January 2014
A Film a Day: Day 5- Hard Target
Day 5- Hard Target
Director- John Woo
Year- 1993
What is it about? Acclaimed Hong Kong director John Woo made the transition to Hollywood... and wound up making a Jean Claude Van Damme movie as his first American film.
Why did I watch it? I am a huge fan of John Woo's work in Hong Kong and towards the end of last year I had a mini marathon of watching A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, Bullet in the Head and his final movie before he went to the USA the genre-defying Hard Boiled, a movie which I think is the greatest action movie of all time. So I wanted to work my way through his US films next... or the two I have on DVD anyway. I nearly watched Face/Off, but I saw a triple DVD boxset of Van Damme films going cheap in a second hand shop and along with Knock Off and Nowhere to Run was luckily for me (or perhaps unluckily- we'll see how good it is) the final one was Hard Target.
Before we go any further lets get the two main questions out of the way first of all;
1. Yes, this is the film where Van Damme punches a snake.
2. Yes, this is the Van Damme film that stars Wilford "Diabeetus" Brimley.
Hard Target stars the "muscles from Brussels" as Chance Boudreux
Thursday, 30 January 2014
A Film a Day: Day 4- Forbidden Kingdom
Hi and welcome to post detailing my attempt to watch 365 films this year. Thus far I've seen 37 movies, but only reviewed three. So in order to catch up I'm going to do shorter reviews and do several on the same day
Day 4- Forbidden Kingdom
Director- Rob Minkoff
Year- 2008
What is it about? Jet Li and Jackie Chan star together for the first time in this Chinese-American martial arts film loosely based on 16th Chinese novel Journey to the West.
Why did I watch it? My brother, who's a big fan of Jackie Chan and Jet Li lent me this DVD about a year ago and I hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. He told me my favourite actor, Chow Yun Fat, was in it too. He isn't.
The Forbidden Kingdom seems to be a confused movie. On the one hand it's about the Monkey King (Jet Li) who was tricked by evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chow) and turned to stone and a motley crew lead by drunken immortal Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei) a young woman out for revenge against the Warlord and silent monk Sun Wukong (also played by Jet Li) who want to free him. The other half of the plot focuses on the main protagonist Jason Tripitkas (Michael Angarano), a massive martial arts movie geek who's walls are plastered with posters of Bruce Lee and who even dreams about kung fu. He also seems to be bullied because of his love of martial arts until on day he grabs a magical staff which teleports him back in time to ancient China where he joins our other characters and is shocked to find out he is the chosen one, prophesied to save the Monkey King.
It's almost as if this film was initially supposed to be a classic wuxia retelling of Journey to the West in the style of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, only for the American half of this production to insist that the film stars an American boy, shoehorned into the plot, so the audience can relate to it or some other corporate baloney. I don't know if that's what happened, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Clearly whoever made the films posters got the movies main appeal- Jackie Chan vs Jet Li, with Angarano's name not even featured.
I'm of the opinion that the movie would have been better without the Jason character. Yes the bar fight where Lu Yun fights off dozens of goons, whilst protecting the incompetent Jason and even using him as a weapon at times is a highlight of the movie and it doesn't even take that long until he's thrown back into ancient China, but his whole story arc is incredibly tired and cliched that you'll see how it ends a mile off. It also seems to send the message that the best way to deal with bullies is to fight them off with kung fu.
Not that anybody would ever look to something as shallow as this for messages anyway, but it's still there. Funny how in the two movies I have seen this year to involve a kid being picked on were resolved by either beating the bullies up with martial arts or befriending a vampire child who can slaughter your tormentors. Couldn't they I dunno, simply tell someone about it? In fact why a martial arts film makes the main character out to be a loser because he likes martial arts is an incredibly strange writing choice and again goes to show how bi-polar this movie is.
My other problem with Jason is that his story doesn't leave much time for any of the other characters to make an impression. There's a character Ni-Chang (the brilliantly names Li Bingbing) who's a white-haired assassin witch who's hatred for men is disappointingly not really explained. The Jade Warlord is reduced to being portrayed as pure evil, taking any interest out of him. Lu Yun is simply a drunk, Sun Wukong is irrelevant and while Golden Sparrow has a backstory it is somewhat undermined when Jason completes her mission for her. The writers have given Golden Sparrow the gimmick of talking in third person in a failed attempt to add character to her, but it's just distracting. Lastly the Monkey King himself comes across as such a smug little shit that if I wERE the Jade Warlord I may have turned him to stone too.
There is a lot to like here though if you can get on board this silly American fantasy tale such as the aforementioned fight in the bar and the movie's main selling point, the Jet Li/Jackie Chan fight, really does deliver. The battle at the end is also exciting and the CGI used, most notably for Ni-Chang's hair which she uses as a whip, actually didn't take me out of the picture which CGI usually does. Some of the landscape shots are truly fantastic too, in particular the desert scenes.
So in short, (I said at the start of the review that this whole review as meant to be short, so much for that I guess) this is a fun movie if you turn your brain off and just enjoy the action, however there's a great movie here somewhere and this could have been so much more.
Not that anybody would ever look to something as shallow as this for messages anyway, but it's still there. Funny how in the two movies I have seen this year to involve a kid being picked on were resolved by either beating the bullies up with martial arts or befriending a vampire child who can slaughter your tormentors. Couldn't they I dunno, simply tell someone about it? In fact why a martial arts film makes the main character out to be a loser because he likes martial arts is an incredibly strange writing choice and again goes to show how bi-polar this movie is.
My other problem with Jason is that his story doesn't leave much time for any of the other characters to make an impression. There's a character Ni-Chang (the brilliantly names Li Bingbing) who's a white-haired assassin witch who's hatred for men is disappointingly not really explained. The Jade Warlord is reduced to being portrayed as pure evil, taking any interest out of him. Lu Yun is simply a drunk, Sun Wukong is irrelevant and while Golden Sparrow has a backstory it is somewhat undermined when Jason completes her mission for her. The writers have given Golden Sparrow the gimmick of talking in third person in a failed attempt to add character to her, but it's just distracting. Lastly the Monkey King himself comes across as such a smug little shit that if I wERE the Jade Warlord I may have turned him to stone too.
There is a lot to like here though if you can get on board this silly American fantasy tale such as the aforementioned fight in the bar and the movie's main selling point, the Jet Li/Jackie Chan fight, really does deliver. The battle at the end is also exciting and the CGI used, most notably for Ni-Chang's hair which she uses as a whip, actually didn't take me out of the picture which CGI usually does. Some of the landscape shots are truly fantastic too, in particular the desert scenes.
So in short, (I said at the start of the review that this whole review as meant to be short, so much for that I guess) this is a fun movie if you turn your brain off and just enjoy the action, however there's a great movie here somewhere and this could have been so much more.
6/10
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
A Film a Day: Day 3- The Artist
Day 3- The Artist
Director- Michael Hazanvicius
Year- 2011
What is it? Best Picture Oscar winning black-and-white silent movie.
Why I watched it? After hearing that my local Blockbuster was closing down and having a clearance sale I ventured down to the store and battled my way past hoards of other like minded people to try and find a steal in a bargain bin. I bought several DVD's and as I was about to pay for them when I saw The Artist on blu-ray for just £4. Just four pounds for an Oscar winning film? That has to be a good deal, right? Oh God yes.
It's not every day that you buy a movie and feel like you ripped off the movie distributor, but I feel that I owe more money to everyone involved in making this wonderful joyous work of art.
The movie begins in 1927 with a premier screening of a silent-picture (a silent film within a silent film? It's like Inception. A silent inception) being shown before an enthralled audience and after a standing ovation we see George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) come out to take a bow before he introduces his co-star and pet Jack (played by a Jack Russell named Uggie) and the two bask in the spotlight much to the chagrin of his female co-star who's impatiently waiting to be introduced backstage.
It's clear that Valentin is on top of the world as he poses for the paparazzi outside the cinema when young adoring fan, the brilliantly named Peppy Miller (played by the director's wife Berenice Bejo) is accidentally pushed onto the red carpet and into the spotlight. Peppy takes advantage of her 15 minutes of fame and plays up to the cameras and plants a kiss on Valentin's cheek. The newspapers the next day are covered by the photos of the kiss with the headline "Who's that girl?", something that Valentin's wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller) doesn't take kindly too.
Peppy takes uses her new-found fame and manages, with the help of Valentin, to convince studio boss Al Zimmer (John Goodman) to give her a job as a an extra. George draws a beauty spot on Miller's face to help her stand out from the rest of the actress wannabes and we see her rise from extra to small roles such as 'the maid' to full-blown movie star in a fantastically innovative montage of stills of movie cast credits. She also grows closer to Valentin as we can see in a beautiful shot of outtakes in which the two mess up take after take of a ball scene because they can't stop dancing together, a scene alone which deserved the Oscar that the movie won. However there's something on the horizon that threatens to ruin the friendship between Peppy and Valentin and change the whole movie industry as they know it- the advent of sound.
Valentin upon being first being shown a talky picture from Zimmer completely laughs it off as just a fad (something I currently think about 3D movies. I hope I'm not wrong like Valentin was). Peppy Miller on the other hand is more open to the idea of non-silent films and her first talking movie Beauty Spot trounces Valentin's money-sucking silent epic folly in box office gates. Al Zimmer ends production on silent movies and whilst Peppy Miller is pushed into super stardom George Valentin is put out to pasture and in a downward spiral that leaves him penniless and divorced with just his pet Jack and loyal chauffeur Clifton (James Cromwell) standing by his side.
The Artist reminded me of why I fell in love with movies and the magic that cinema is capable of when it's not simply issuing remakes of classic films, dreary money-making sequels, soulless CGI flicks or rebooting a popular comic book franchise for the umpteenth time. Had I not seen this movie and had it rekindle my love of cinema then this blog wouldn't exist and my crazy idea to watch a film a day wouldn't have been born. It's a picture so full of imagination and wonder that it could only be made outside away from the conveyor belt Hollywood system. By taking away sound (there are intertiles with dialogue every now and then, but these was a concious effort to use these as sparingly as possible) director Michael Hazanvicius has to be creative on how to tell his story and how to make us feel for our characters.
He's aided in that by a pair of sensational actors. While it could have been simply nepotism giving a big role to his wife the gorgeous Bejo more than proves that she landed the role pure merit and both her and Dujardin have superb chemistry and convey emotions so well with facial expressions alone that it's incredibly easy to imagine that they would have been huge hits if they had been silent actors in the 1920's. Cromwell and Goodman are also great psychical actors and fit their roles to a tee and everybody is almost outdone by Uggie the Jack Russell. When The Artist came out there were calls for the Academy to make a special award for the dog and while that never came to pass there now is a separate award show for animals in movies and Uggie now has his very own star on the Hollywood walk of fame, complete with paw print.
The acting as mentioned is great, but Hazanvicius has a few tricks up his sleeve. I've already touched up the outtakes scene and cast credits montage, but there is a terrific use of sound in a dream sequence and a delightful scene where Bejo playfully acts with a dinner jacket. Hazanvicius also takes advantage of the silent picture medium by using an intertiles as an incredibly tense, cruel cliffhanger near the film's climax. The one word on that tile "Bang!" might by favourite movie moment in years, although the film's feel-good ending sequence rivals that and left me grinning ear-to-ear, making me want to stand up and give it a one-person standing ovation.
There are also little references to movies of the era for movie buffs. indeed Valentin's name is only one letter off 'Valentino', and his decent from movie star is similar to the fate that fell upon Douglas Fairbanks. Peppy even says 'I want to be alone' at one point echoing Greta Garbo, who like Peppy, was one of the lucky silent era movie stars who was able to move into talking pictures. The plot also has similarities to Singing in the Rain and A Star is Born and the film as a whole seems like a love letter to Hollywood's golden era, silent movies and MGM musicals.
Yes, it's black-and-white, yes it's a silent picture, but I'd urge everyone to watch this film of pure cinema perfection, if only for the cute dog. A modern day masterpiece and one of the greatest movies I have ever had the privilege of seeing.
It's not every day that you buy a movie and feel like you ripped off the movie distributor, but I feel that I owe more money to everyone involved in making this wonderful joyous work of art.
The movie begins in 1927 with a premier screening of a silent-picture (a silent film within a silent film? It's like Inception. A silent inception) being shown before an enthralled audience and after a standing ovation we see George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) come out to take a bow before he introduces his co-star and pet Jack (played by a Jack Russell named Uggie) and the two bask in the spotlight much to the chagrin of his female co-star who's impatiently waiting to be introduced backstage.
It's clear that Valentin is on top of the world as he poses for the paparazzi outside the cinema when young adoring fan, the brilliantly named Peppy Miller (played by the director's wife Berenice Bejo) is accidentally pushed onto the red carpet and into the spotlight. Peppy takes advantage of her 15 minutes of fame and plays up to the cameras and plants a kiss on Valentin's cheek. The newspapers the next day are covered by the photos of the kiss with the headline "Who's that girl?", something that Valentin's wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller) doesn't take kindly too.
Peppy takes uses her new-found fame and manages, with the help of Valentin, to convince studio boss Al Zimmer (John Goodman) to give her a job as a an extra. George draws a beauty spot on Miller's face to help her stand out from the rest of the actress wannabes and we see her rise from extra to small roles such as 'the maid' to full-blown movie star in a fantastically innovative montage of stills of movie cast credits. She also grows closer to Valentin as we can see in a beautiful shot of outtakes in which the two mess up take after take of a ball scene because they can't stop dancing together, a scene alone which deserved the Oscar that the movie won. However there's something on the horizon that threatens to ruin the friendship between Peppy and Valentin and change the whole movie industry as they know it- the advent of sound.
Valentin upon being first being shown a talky picture from Zimmer completely laughs it off as just a fad (something I currently think about 3D movies. I hope I'm not wrong like Valentin was). Peppy Miller on the other hand is more open to the idea of non-silent films and her first talking movie Beauty Spot trounces Valentin's money-sucking silent epic folly in box office gates. Al Zimmer ends production on silent movies and whilst Peppy Miller is pushed into super stardom George Valentin is put out to pasture and in a downward spiral that leaves him penniless and divorced with just his pet Jack and loyal chauffeur Clifton (James Cromwell) standing by his side.
The Artist reminded me of why I fell in love with movies and the magic that cinema is capable of when it's not simply issuing remakes of classic films, dreary money-making sequels, soulless CGI flicks or rebooting a popular comic book franchise for the umpteenth time. Had I not seen this movie and had it rekindle my love of cinema then this blog wouldn't exist and my crazy idea to watch a film a day wouldn't have been born. It's a picture so full of imagination and wonder that it could only be made outside away from the conveyor belt Hollywood system. By taking away sound (there are intertiles with dialogue every now and then, but these was a concious effort to use these as sparingly as possible) director Michael Hazanvicius has to be creative on how to tell his story and how to make us feel for our characters.
He's aided in that by a pair of sensational actors. While it could have been simply nepotism giving a big role to his wife the gorgeous Bejo more than proves that she landed the role pure merit and both her and Dujardin have superb chemistry and convey emotions so well with facial expressions alone that it's incredibly easy to imagine that they would have been huge hits if they had been silent actors in the 1920's. Cromwell and Goodman are also great psychical actors and fit their roles to a tee and everybody is almost outdone by Uggie the Jack Russell. When The Artist came out there were calls for the Academy to make a special award for the dog and while that never came to pass there now is a separate award show for animals in movies and Uggie now has his very own star on the Hollywood walk of fame, complete with paw print.
The acting as mentioned is great, but Hazanvicius has a few tricks up his sleeve. I've already touched up the outtakes scene and cast credits montage, but there is a terrific use of sound in a dream sequence and a delightful scene where Bejo playfully acts with a dinner jacket. Hazanvicius also takes advantage of the silent picture medium by using an intertiles as an incredibly tense, cruel cliffhanger near the film's climax. The one word on that tile "Bang!" might by favourite movie moment in years, although the film's feel-good ending sequence rivals that and left me grinning ear-to-ear, making me want to stand up and give it a one-person standing ovation.
There are also little references to movies of the era for movie buffs. indeed Valentin's name is only one letter off 'Valentino', and his decent from movie star is similar to the fate that fell upon Douglas Fairbanks. Peppy even says 'I want to be alone' at one point echoing Greta Garbo, who like Peppy, was one of the lucky silent era movie stars who was able to move into talking pictures. The plot also has similarities to Singing in the Rain and A Star is Born and the film as a whole seems like a love letter to Hollywood's golden era, silent movies and MGM musicals.
Yes, it's black-and-white, yes it's a silent picture, but I'd urge everyone to watch this film of pure cinema perfection, if only for the cute dog. A modern day masterpiece and one of the greatest movies I have ever had the privilege of seeing.
10/10
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
A Film a Day: Day 2- American Hustle
Welcome stranger. So in my last post I mentioned that I was going to watch a film a day and review them here. The problem with that is that it's already the 27th January and I have only posted one review thus far, so over the next few days I'll be playing catchup and will be posting several in a day until I do so. I may not write as much about some of them as I did to Let the Right One In, but we'll see.
Day 2- American Hustle
Director- David O. Russell
Year- 2013
What is it? Comedy caper with a killer soundtrack staring Christian Bale and Amy Adams as con artists forced by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to help him take down corrupt politicians including Jeremy Renner's Mayor Carmine Polito and loosely based on a real life FBI operation in the 1980's.
Why did I watch it? I heard via word-of-mouth that American Hustle was very good, so I went to see if they were right using my unlimited cinema card for the first time to do so.
My thoughts- As far as opening scenes in films go seeing Christian Bale's conman carefully construct his come-over-toupee while the credits roll is quite the attention-grabber and it sets the scene for a wickedly funny comedy caper full of memorable characters and bad hair.
Christian Bale plays Irving (or "Irv") and it's not just his hair that is fake as he's a small-time conman stuck in a loveless marriage with Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and only stays with her for the sake of their child. His life is changed when he meets and falls for Sydney (Amy Adams) and while at first she reacts disgustedly to his schemes pretty soon (within 30 seconds actually) she's putting on a British accent and pretending to be an aristocrat in order to connive people from their money in Irv's cons. All goes well for our pair until they try a sting on undercover FBI agent Richie DiMaso, played by Bradley Cooper who also has terrible hair and in an amusing scene him and Sydney are talking on the phone whilst both of them have their hair in rollers.
DiMaso arrests Sydney, the more seasoned Irv managers not to incriminate himself during his attempted plan to scam Richie, but agrees to let both her and Irv go just as long as they help him with the arrest of four politicians, by getting them to take bribes on camera from a fake sheikh. One of Richie's targets include popular New Jersey Mayor Carmine Polito (Renner), who wants to legalise gambling in Atlantic City. Carmine however is something of a rarity for a politician- a genuinely nice man, who's sole concern is for his family and his constituents.
As part of Richie's scam Irv and his wife, to much jealousy from Sydney, befriend Carmine and his family and in turn Irv begins to fell horrible for deceiving him, especially after the mayor buys him a microwave (or a 'science oven' as Rosalyn calls it in a hilarious scene). More complications arise as Richie's sting operation threatens to anger the local mob, who have an invested interest in gambling being legalised. Pretty soon Irv has to try and hatch a plan to keep him and Sydney out of jail, protecting them from the Mob, helping Carmine escape prison time and to stop his wife from ruining it all.
David O. Russell has put together a fantastic cast from his two previous movies The Fighter (Bale, Adams) and Silver Linings Playbook (Lawrence, Cooper and Robert DeNiro in a cameo role) and all of them seem to embrace their roles with relish.Christian Bale, who famously lost 62 pounds for his role in the Machinist has now packed on the pounds and sports a pot-belly to go with his toupee. Amy Adams is able to flit between English and Americans accents with ease. Bradley Cooper continues to prove any nay-sayers wrong who doubted the Hangover stars acting chops (not mine, I remember how great he was in Alias!) and his scenes with boss Stoddard Thorsen (played by Louis C.K), where Richie keeps interrupting Thosen's pep-talks, thinking he knows the moral of the story are a recurring gag throughout the movie. Jeremy Renner is perhaps the heart of the whole film. Much like Irv you too will be swept up for what a nice guy his mayor is and will be hoping that he doesn't fall prey to the FBI sting.
Then there's Jennifer Lawrence who's character is described by Irv as the Picasso of passive-aggressive karate and her emotionally-manipulation her husband is just a joy to watch. Even with her limited screen time she completely steals the movie and a scene where she sings a version of 'Live and Let Die' whilst cleaning the house with marigolds on is perhaps the highlight of the whole thing. I wouldn't be too surprised to see her win a second Oscar of her career.
So in retrospect this is a thoroughly enjoyable film and a great way to spend your evening.
8/10
Monday, 27 January 2014
A Film a Day: Day 1- Let the Right One In
Greetings stranger and welcome to my blog Tim Reviews Life. I'm Tim, go figure, and I'm obsessed with making top 10, top 20 or top 200 lists of everything from best PSone games, my 100 favourite films and even what I consider to be the top 10 coolest animals (it's the scorpion by the way, just edging out the king cobra in case you were wondering!). Reviewing things for me kind of goes hand-in-hand with creating lists and in this blog I'll be reviewing movies, TV shows, videogames, wrestling PPV's and basically everything I can think of, but for now it'll be mainly movies to start with.
Now this blog came about because at the start of the year my friend Nick and I decided that we should mark every film we see at the cinema a score out of 10 and come years end we should look back at our ratings and decide what we consider to be the bets movie of 2014. It seemed like a fun idea, however I also had a pile of DVD's I'd just been lent or bought for myself of never-seen-before films and I decided to give them a mark out of 10 too. Before long I realised that I had seen more movies than days of the year had gone past and that gave me a rather interesting, and incredibly stupid, challenge- to try and watch a film for every day of the year.
Yep so that's 365 movies that I plan on watching in 2014. Now this sounded like something fun, but something that I'd ultimately give up on after a couple of weeks, but I am writing this on the 27th of January and I've already seen 36 films, so surprisingly I have kept this going thus far. I told a friend of mine about my crazy idea and he suggested I create a blog, so here we are.
Anyway on to the first film!
Director- Tomas Alfredson
Year- 2008
What is it?- Critically acclaimed Swedish vampire movie in which young bullied boy Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) befriends Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl who's recently moved next door to him who may be more than she seems.
Why did I watch it?- From the minute I first saw Chow Yun-Fat wielding two pistols in the opening scene to John Woo's seminal classic The Killer I instantly became a fan of world cinema and love 'discovering' foreign films that I can introduce my friends to. Even if such 'discovering' simply involves reading lists (yep, me and lists again!) of the best foreign-language movies, which is how I came to learn of Let the Right One In. I bought the DVD of this film a few months back, but for whatever reason had never got round to watching it till this month. This was mainly because I have to be in the right mood for horror movies and the film's famous image of young girl covered in blood made me believe that this would be quite an ordeal to watch. It wasn't.
My thoughts- To steal a line from Zoolander, vampire's "are so hot right now" with True Blood, Vampire Diaries and the Twilight 'saga' all being big modern hits. It's been over a hundred and fifteen years since Bram Stoker's literary classic Dracula was first published and over ninety years since silent German expressionist film Nosferatu popularised the concept of the modern vampire and introduced many of the lores and we still can't get enough of the blood-sucking creatures of the night.
Let the Right One In (based on a 2004 book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the film's screenplay and helped oversee the whole project) differs from your typical vampire film by focusing on its characters rather than go for cheap thrills and blood-splattered scenes. That's not to say there isn't blood, indeed one of the first scenes has Hakan (Per Ragnar), an older man who Eli has moved to the neighbourhood with, that is not her father as you might first suspect, murdering a passerby in a bungled attempt to drain his blood for Eli, it's just that the childhood-love story between the two children takes centre stage.
Oskar's parents have long since separated, his Father has moved out and despite one scene showing them brushing their teeth together his Mother seems distant. His school days mostly involve trying to hide between lessons from a trio of bullies and his home life consists of keeping newspaper cuttings of crime stories he reads and visualising a brutal revenge of his school tormentors. Eli is if anything is even more isolated. Confined to her house during the daytime (for obvious reasons), her only companion is the aforementioned Hakan who she relies on for providing shelter and blood, but who is becoming more and more careless and reckless in his attempts to secure the latter for her.
The film doesn't delve too deep into Hakan/Eli relationship unlike the book of the same name, but it doesn't require a great deal of suspicion to suspect that Hakan perhaps isn't simply motivated by goodwill and generosity of heart to help the young feminine Eli. So it makes the moment where she finds a true friend in Oskar, who says he doesn't care if she was a girl, or a boy, or something else all the more poignant. Pretty soon he is teaching her Morse code so they can communicate through their bedroom wall and in turn Eli is teaching him to stand up for himself against the bullies.
There is another subplot involving a desperate Eli, now alone due to Hakan being arrested after getting caught in the midst of an attempted murder, attacking random townspeople in need of blood and one of them Lacke (Peter Carlberg) attempting to to avenge his loved ones that climaxes in a pivotal scene which brings our two leads closer together, but also further apart as it becomes clear that Eli can no longer remain in town.
Our two leads, both aged 11, are superb in their roles here and it helps that they are both actually children as opposed to two twenty-somethings having to pretend they are teenagers like every American high school movie ever. The movie is beautifully shot contains imagery that will stay with you long after seeing it such as Eli's ascent up a hospital wall or the moment she enters Oskar's house uninvited (finally a film which explains what happens when a vampire breaks the 'need to be invited in' rule) in a scene which gives the movie and book its name. There's a moment shot underwater in a swimming pool near the end which is filmed with marvellous restraint by director Tomas Alfredson, proving the old adage that sometimes what you don't see can often be more effective.
All in all Let the Right One In is a tense movie that while it may not scare you it will get under your skin and make you think about it for a few days after. Besides some terrible looking CGI cats and a shot of a vampire's reflection in a mirror (which made my inner-geek quite irritated!) this is a film you should *ahem* definitely let in to your life. Oh and there's not a sparkling vampire in sight, so that's a plus.
Now this blog came about because at the start of the year my friend Nick and I decided that we should mark every film we see at the cinema a score out of 10 and come years end we should look back at our ratings and decide what we consider to be the bets movie of 2014. It seemed like a fun idea, however I also had a pile of DVD's I'd just been lent or bought for myself of never-seen-before films and I decided to give them a mark out of 10 too. Before long I realised that I had seen more movies than days of the year had gone past and that gave me a rather interesting, and incredibly stupid, challenge- to try and watch a film for every day of the year.
Yep so that's 365 movies that I plan on watching in 2014. Now this sounded like something fun, but something that I'd ultimately give up on after a couple of weeks, but I am writing this on the 27th of January and I've already seen 36 films, so surprisingly I have kept this going thus far. I told a friend of mine about my crazy idea and he suggested I create a blog, so here we are.
Anyway on to the first film!
A Film a Day
Day 1- Let the Right One In
.jpg)
Director- Tomas Alfredson
Year- 2008
What is it?- Critically acclaimed Swedish vampire movie in which young bullied boy Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) befriends Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl who's recently moved next door to him who may be more than she seems.
Why did I watch it?- From the minute I first saw Chow Yun-Fat wielding two pistols in the opening scene to John Woo's seminal classic The Killer I instantly became a fan of world cinema and love 'discovering' foreign films that I can introduce my friends to. Even if such 'discovering' simply involves reading lists (yep, me and lists again!) of the best foreign-language movies, which is how I came to learn of Let the Right One In. I bought the DVD of this film a few months back, but for whatever reason had never got round to watching it till this month. This was mainly because I have to be in the right mood for horror movies and the film's famous image of young girl covered in blood made me believe that this would be quite an ordeal to watch. It wasn't.
My thoughts- To steal a line from Zoolander, vampire's "are so hot right now" with True Blood, Vampire Diaries and the Twilight 'saga' all being big modern hits. It's been over a hundred and fifteen years since Bram Stoker's literary classic Dracula was first published and over ninety years since silent German expressionist film Nosferatu popularised the concept of the modern vampire and introduced many of the lores and we still can't get enough of the blood-sucking creatures of the night.
Let the Right One In (based on a 2004 book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the film's screenplay and helped oversee the whole project) differs from your typical vampire film by focusing on its characters rather than go for cheap thrills and blood-splattered scenes. That's not to say there isn't blood, indeed one of the first scenes has Hakan (Per Ragnar), an older man who Eli has moved to the neighbourhood with, that is not her father as you might first suspect, murdering a passerby in a bungled attempt to drain his blood for Eli, it's just that the childhood-love story between the two children takes centre stage.
Oskar's parents have long since separated, his Father has moved out and despite one scene showing them brushing their teeth together his Mother seems distant. His school days mostly involve trying to hide between lessons from a trio of bullies and his home life consists of keeping newspaper cuttings of crime stories he reads and visualising a brutal revenge of his school tormentors. Eli is if anything is even more isolated. Confined to her house during the daytime (for obvious reasons), her only companion is the aforementioned Hakan who she relies on for providing shelter and blood, but who is becoming more and more careless and reckless in his attempts to secure the latter for her.
The film doesn't delve too deep into Hakan/Eli relationship unlike the book of the same name, but it doesn't require a great deal of suspicion to suspect that Hakan perhaps isn't simply motivated by goodwill and generosity of heart to help the young feminine Eli. So it makes the moment where she finds a true friend in Oskar, who says he doesn't care if she was a girl, or a boy, or something else all the more poignant. Pretty soon he is teaching her Morse code so they can communicate through their bedroom wall and in turn Eli is teaching him to stand up for himself against the bullies.
There is another subplot involving a desperate Eli, now alone due to Hakan being arrested after getting caught in the midst of an attempted murder, attacking random townspeople in need of blood and one of them Lacke (Peter Carlberg) attempting to to avenge his loved ones that climaxes in a pivotal scene which brings our two leads closer together, but also further apart as it becomes clear that Eli can no longer remain in town.
Our two leads, both aged 11, are superb in their roles here and it helps that they are both actually children as opposed to two twenty-somethings having to pretend they are teenagers like every American high school movie ever. The movie is beautifully shot contains imagery that will stay with you long after seeing it such as Eli's ascent up a hospital wall or the moment she enters Oskar's house uninvited (finally a film which explains what happens when a vampire breaks the 'need to be invited in' rule) in a scene which gives the movie and book its name. There's a moment shot underwater in a swimming pool near the end which is filmed with marvellous restraint by director Tomas Alfredson, proving the old adage that sometimes what you don't see can often be more effective.
All in all Let the Right One In is a tense movie that while it may not scare you it will get under your skin and make you think about it for a few days after. Besides some terrible looking CGI cats and a shot of a vampire's reflection in a mirror (which made my inner-geek quite irritated!) this is a film you should *ahem* definitely let in to your life. Oh and there's not a sparkling vampire in sight, so that's a plus.
8/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)