Memento

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

Such a great film. Been a while too so good to catch up.

We have a series of slightly overlapping scenes, ordered backwards and a single sequence that creates the beginning, shot in black and white, split between the backwards scenes until they meet up at the end. And some flashbacks too. And yet it's all pretty straight forward to comprehend. Probably what gave Christopher Nolan the ambition to do something like Inception. Should probably get around to watching that again too.

Guy Pearce is great, I really like Carrie-Anne Moss in this role and even though her time is brief Jorja Fox gives a heartbreaking performance.

Beyond being a great concept this is a fantastically crafted script, translated into a fantastic film. It's a different headspace it pulls you into. A classic.

Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

Oh boy, regretting my decision already hahahaha.

Great early 90's hair.

Man it's rather terrible though. Despite some of the kids best efforts. That whole thing with the native american is just horrible.

Children of the Corn

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

My Stephen King viewing continues. I don't know how much this follows the short story but I do know King wasn't very pleased with the adaptation.

Well I don't think it's that bad. I quite enjoy a lot of it. Fun to see a young Linda Hamilton. Some of the kids are really good too. There's a kind of Midwich Cuckoos or Who Can Kill A Child? vibe to it with the added King religious frantic stuff.

It just so happens I got my hands on the whole collection of all the sequels, none of which I've ever seen, nor do I hold much hopes for, but still it might be fun to go through like I did with Friday the 13th's, Nightmare on Elm St's, Halloween's and Hellraiser's a few years ago.

For this first one at least, it actually holds up better than I thought. So we're off to a good start.

Vertigo

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Tyler

Decided to watch this after the Oscars last night. So many arbitrary films nominated this year, none of my favourites made the grade and only one or two that I thought were worthy of any kind of award. Alfred Hitchcock never won though so what do they know?

Some very cool Saul Bass designs for the credits. And an awesome total trip out dream half way through the film. Very cool.

I forgot how slowly the film moves. Everything is methodically told to the audience. You'd never get away that today. But it does allow long periods of no dialogue where Bernard Herrmann gets to show of his music. This is a far more melodramatic score that I'm used to from him but it's till great. They used it in The Artist, which is probably what made me want to watch it again tonight.

Without that music we're just watching James Stewart tailing Kim Novak for an hour. But the music gives a sense of mystery and dread to the whole affair.

Now I'll be honest I've never been a big James Stewart fan. I know he's had some cool roles but I don't get him as an actor. I know him more as a funny voice impression than anything else. Kim Novak's pretty great though.

This whole film has such an eerie feeling. But despite the slow pace is always riveting. Good stuff!

May

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Tyler, Jordan

Lucky McKee's breakthrough film is just delightful due in no small part to a wonderful lead performance by Angela Bettis. They two have collaborated on pretty much everything since and their latest film together, The Woman, was one I really enjoyed too.

This film is basically a quirky late 90's indie romantic comedy and it's easy to fall in love with May, the central character. Things get kinda dark towards the end but as horror-ish as it gets, it never looses that sweetness. I probably also helps tat I love Jeremy Sisto too.

This is a great film to see cold, without knowing about where it ends up. The journey there is wonderful and although everything is very clearly set up people usually don't realise it until it's too late.

This really is just the sweetest little horror film ever made. Adorable and always a pleasure to watch again.

Contraband

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

I somehow managed to avoid ever seeing a trailer for this film so going in all a knew about it was Mark Wahlberg has some money strapped to his abs, from the poster in the lobby.

So imagine my delight when I see Lukas Haas, Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Foster's names come up in the opening credits. Damn solid supporting cast there. Also noted that it's a remake of some foreign film (Iceland's 2010 Oscar entry Reykjavik-Rotterdam, which oddly enough stars the guy who ended up directing the remake) which gave me some hope as to the story being worthwhile enough to consider remaking. I should probably track down the original now.

Indeed the plot flows well for what you would think to be an uncinematic heist. They layer on some ransom kidnapping drug dealers and squeeze in an armoured car robbery too.

The morals in this story are a little grey though, apparently crime doesn't pay, unless you're a nice guy like Mark Wahlberg. The film has so many moments where it's completely obvious the plan is going to fall apart that it almost made me uncomfortable. But I guess that means it's working.

Kaboom

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

This plays out like a slightly more intentionally comical episode of Dante's Cove. If you've never heard of that reference, chances are you wouldn't be interested anyway. But it's like someone tried to smooch together a very sexually charged teen coming of age comedy and a lovecraftian end of the world cult mystery and once they figured out how to get them to work together didn't bother to finish either of them.

But it's kinda funny the way it ends. I dunno, I think i'm still trying to process this.

The only Gregg Araki film I've seen before is Mysterious Skin and that is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from this film. That was a deadly serious character double hander but this movie has more funky transitions than an Amanda Bynes film. It's a much more pop aesthetic and has gloriously bright saturated colours.

The supernatural mystery dream stuff never works as well as the teen character relationship stuff. It's a really odd mix and hard to tell how straight a face they are telling the story with. Judging by the end, they seem in on the joke, I just don't think I found it that funny.

30 Minutes or Less

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

This films release has been delayed and delayed in Australia. I had been looking up release dates for it since mid last year and found out it's apparently because of some real life bombing incident in the country where a girl had a bomb strapped to her. Unfortunately during my research I also found out that there was another real life event except the poor guy actually exploded.

Knowing that really tainted this entire film. It made laughing at it feel wrong. The filmmakers claimed to have no knowledge of the incident but the entire set up plays out the same, so I presume the writers did.

I like Jesse Eisenberg. He isn't required to do that much here but I still like him in the role. Michael Peña has managed to make another classic Observe and Report-esque character for himself. It's kind of strange that the film spends almost a s much time giving funny scenes to the villains as to the good guys. Danny McBride and Nick Swardson have some funny stuff together and you never get the feeling that you want to see them killed or hurt, despite what they are doing.

This film feels like a fun little interlude for Ruben Fleischer, hopefully before making a sequel to his debut Zombieland. The film has quite a pace to it and manages to keep upping the stakes but building the laughs throughout the running time.

Despite the knowledge of the real life incident, I really did enjoy the film. It's the first straight comedy film I've seen this year too which makes it a nice change of pace.

Killer Elite

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Michael

I saw Film Victoria's name in the opening credits, which I thought was odd. But then every other actor in the film was Australian and most of it looked like it was filmed here doubling for somewhere else. Even Ben Mendelsohn showed up but he only opened his mouth to speak once and he had a thick scottish accent.

That's always a little jarring and never helps suspension of disbelief. Neither does a script made almost entirely of trailer moment dialogue. So many bad examples of characters stating something about other characters or their situation that just reeks of bad exposition. Probably the only levity I got from the film.

Jason Statham seems to just churn out these kind of moderate to okay action flicks. While I'd say this is probably one of the better ones it still didn't leave much of an impression, however much they claim it's based on a true story.

Never really cared about which characters would live or die, in fact towards the end I had no idea which side we were supposed to be rooting for. Perhaps that's a good thing but it didn't feel like it at the time.

It's not trashy enough to be fun and it's not engaging enough to be taken seriously. It exists in this middle of the read area where I think it was okay but probably won't remember a thing about it tomorrow .

Gone

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

This film is the definition of a by the numbers thriller. It's a pay day for all involved. Sure it's well put together and if you've never seen a thriller before it might provide some interest but for the rest of us, it's just this years model.

The Abyss

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Alex

This is one of the best movie ever made period. For the sheer audacity of the filmmaking and for the epic final product. For some reason even many James Cameron fans don't seem to know about it. And it's not out on bluray. These things both need to change.

James Cameron makes big movies. And not just long movies, but big ones, where you get your monies worth in the cinema. They are just so darn satisfying and manage to cram everything you could want from a story into their running time. Now I'm of course looking at the "special edition" cut, I haven watched the theatrical cut for probably 15 years and don't think I ever could again know how the soul of the film was just chopped out. The heart is still there but the whole point of the story seems to have gone.

And for many that's cool, they don't need social messages with their adventure films as was made quite clear when Avatar came out. I want it though. Somehow every time I watch this movie there's a huge stretch of action and finally some gut wrenching character relationship scenes that always get me so worked up I completely forget the start of the film which always make the final moments an unexpected surprise EVERY TIME. I love that. I love that this film is juggling all these narrative threads so expertly and the most esoteric of them is leaves lingering for so long only to pull out the big guns for the finale.

Now we all know Young Sherlock Holmes started the CG craze in feature films, but really this was the film that made it logistically practical for use on productions. Amazing. Not half as amazing as knowing that everything else besides that one effect had to be done either with old techniques or practically.

And boy do they do a lot of this practically. I don't think there'll ever be a production like this again, because they'd just do whole environments with effects now. But nothing beats seeing the real actors doing some bloody dangerous stunt work.

I know the actors went through hell on this film but they are all so good. I love it when Cameron writes for a team or group of characters and he somehow manages to give each one an individual voice and a reason for the audience to love them. Or give you villains that are so big and easy to despise. A bit of a change up for Michael Biehn but he's so good as the villain this time around.

Now the film doesn't have massive Avatar style action but it has its fair share of big sequences. Some thrilling and really cool stuff. But most importantly throughout these sequences and the drama around them is this rising tension that just never lets up. Probably in no small part due to the inhospitable location that's just a s scary as deep space. Anyone with a fear of drowning will have many a heart stopping moment.

Which leads to that one scene that I know is coming and I still have a hard time making it through it's so overwhelmingly intense. That dreaded inevitability just creeps up in that scene and makes for probably the biggest hold and joyous release of tension I've ever seen in any film ever.

Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are the heart of this film and it's a beautifully realised relationship. God, they are so good. More than Ripley and Hicks, more than Sarah and Kyle and even more than Jack and Rose, I want these two to survive this and get together. Which is why the rest of the film works so well.

And Alan Silvestri's score! So Good!

Incase you can't tell, I just love this film. So good to watch again.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

I was sceptical going into this one. The trailer made the film look extremely pandering and incredibly schmaltzy. Don't know the book but the film was pretty much what I was expecting and just ever so slightly more interesting than I thought going in.

But really the do lay it on thick. For over 2 hours. I think it just begins to ware you down by the end.

There's a lot to like about it, the editing and cinematography is nice, the performances are all pretty great. They ask a lot of their lead and newcomer Thomas Horn delivers for the most part pretty well.

A lot of the contrivances are probably easier to swallow when introduced gradually over a longer period of time like you can afford to do in a novel. Squeezing it into a film will always be tricky. It's gonna work for some and not at all for others. I think I fell somewhere in between.

Weekend

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

This one has a very Before Sunrise vibe to it. A couple that share a brief moment together spent talking ideologies, plans, wishes regrets and whatever else about their life. And then they have to let it all go.

It's a conversation film, dialogue driven and doesn't try to be that visually stimulating. A very indie low budget affair with a few nice moments and a lot of sections I didn't care for at all.

But I get that annoying dilemma of spending time with someone you can see yourself in a serious long term relationship with only to discover they are just about to leave the country for and extended period of time. That's happened to me twice now and it sucks.

It paints a very honest picture of these characters and I suppose the success of the film will depend largely on how you connect to them. The do in fact do the running to the airport cliche, although it's a train station here but manages to never feel false or unrealistic.

It's a sweet little film with modest intentions and a few rough patches where it lost me but overall enjoyed alright.

Shame

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

I thought Steve McQueen's Hunger was interesting and featured a dedicated performance from Michael Fassbender but in the end wasn't really my cup of tea. I'd say the same about this film except many the last part, I was hooked on this film much easier.

There's a much larger story that's hinted at over the course of the film and I was waiting for the inevitable exposition but McQueen seems content to let the audience fill in the blanks or indeed forget about them completely. And it's true, the film stands alone, it doesn't need any backstory or rationalisations for these characters and their actions and relationships.

What we end up with is a slow building character study with more than a few long single take scenes examining the life of someone struggling with what is more than likely a serious addiction.

While the film feels evasive at times that only emphasises our character plight. Add to that an ending that's left open to interpretation and you have a film designed with ninja like precision to generate discussion for one reason or another.

Of course the other reason being how casually nude Fassbender is in certain scenes. The depiction of sex is frank and given Fassbender's character is largely emotionless. I think he was snubbed an oscar nom as he does brilliant work here.

Likewise Carey Mulligan, who gets to play a bit of a different role to what I've seen her do in the past, is great too. And we get to hear her entire rendition of New York, New York. That, along with a few other scenes I felt went on a bit but that's a minor grievance in an otherwise intriguing film.

Kill List

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Holy crap this film is intense. Brilliant. Horrifying. Incredibly uncomfortable. I loved it!

Even well before the plot kicks in and it's just setting up characters the normal suburban domestic relationships are so infused with an oppressive tension it made me so uncomfortable. I felt like I just wanted to leave the room but the camera wouldn't let me.

The editing is great and sets up a lot of what you're gonna need to know stylistically about the story it's telling. It's filled with small jump cuts and rather than show us a whole scene it just cuts right to the most important beats. But never in a jarring or unnatural way. Now I reflect on the story I see how the structure mirrors this too.

If the whole film continued to be a character study of this man and his family and friends it would have been riveting. However things just progress from there. It somehow manages to just keep upping the stakes and taking left turns. You have no idea what's going to happen next you just know it's probably going to be bad. By the time I got to the last few scenes I was just loosing my mind.

This one really did a number on me. I want to say it's a slow burn thriller, and it is, but it's one that starts with you walking on eggshells around these characters already. Masterfully directed and acted. Go watch it right now.