The Blog
This blog will be all about film reviews. I'm going to be watching a lot of movies, writing reviews, and hopefully not spoiling any movies you plan to watch.
Director: Milŏs Forman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a dramatic movie about Randle McMurphy as he attempts to break the status quo of a mental institution. Through a series of sharp events, McMurphy slowly changes the mood within the institution. However, McMurphy soon takes a step too far. Randle McMurphy is sent to a mental institution from a prison farm, but it becomes quickly apparent that he has no mental issues. He soon becomes upset with the stern chief nurse, Nurse Ratched. He begins subtle mind games against her and tries to undermine her authority and make the other patients more independent. He befriends a supposed deaf and dumb native american called Chief and he helps him escape, however if is recaptured. After a fight breaks out, he and Chief and another patient are punished, but McMurphy learns that Chief has been faking all along. McMurphy sneaks in two girls and bribes the watchmen to let the patients throw a christmas party. However, in the morning, they are all discovered passed out. One of the patients commits suicide as a result and McMurphy tries to strangle Ratched. After being beaten down, he is given a lobotomy. When Chief discovers this, he smothers McMurphy and escapes. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is largely lead by strong performances from many of the actors. Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy is one of the strongest ever. It is a perfect role for him which he plays brilliantly. He really pulls the film together and helps propel the plot forward, an area where the film is lacking. The dynamic between McMurphy and Ratched pulls the film along as they constantly try and get the upperhand over each other. William Sampson is another stand out. He is initially a very low key that seems to get too much attention for who he is. However, he slowly becomes more and more significant and when we finally hear him speak and he becomes more human and by the end of the movie, his emotion is almost the greatest of all. The supporting actors interrelationships are a major support to help prop up the plot as they all compliment each other. The acting is what really pulls up One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest through as the plot drifts around for a long time before pointing in the final direction. However, regardless of the short comings, it is a brilliant movie with amazing acting and an emotional ending.
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Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Verdict: Thumbs Up The prison thriller Cool Hand Luke is a brilliant display of plot construction and acting, leading to a film that leaves its viewer with long lasting set of emotions. These were carefully crafted and impressed upon the audience through a deliberately slow plot and a brilliant performance by Paul Newman and George Kennedy. The plot of Cool Hand Luke revolves around Luke Jackson, a war veteran who has let his life slowly drift apart. He is arrested for “destroying municipal proper”, which he constantly reminds the viewer of, and is sent to a prison farm. Here he challenges the status quo and gradually gains the respect of the other prisoners earning him the nickname Cool Hand Luke. However, following the death of his mother and the subsequent poor treatment he receives, he repeatedly attempts to escape from the camp, with both of his first two attempts ending in recapture and increasing punishment. After he is captured the second time, the guards break him and tell him if he escapes again, they’ll kill him. He appears to have been completely broken and submissive and the fellow prisoners lose respect for him. However, he once again escapes, this time Dragline, the de facto lead prisoner, joins him. However, that night they are tracked. In a church, Luke prays to God and asks why he has tried to make his life so difficult. When Dragline comes in and tries to get Luke to surrender peacefully, Luke walks to the window and taunts the police, only to be shot in the neck by Boss Godfrey, the imposing prison guard. Luke dies on the way to the hospital but Dragline continues to tell his story. What truly makes the film work is the pacing of the plot and the mood. It is intentionally very slow, almost to the point where one wonders whether they are watching a life unfold in real time. However, it is this effect that makes the movie as a whole work. It envelops the viewer into the world of Cool Hand Luke, you and transferred from the real world into the world Rosenberg created. The film is purposely disambiguous as to what the year is and what war Luke took part in. Rosenberg does all these little things to totally remove you from your world and into the lives of Luke and Dragline and the others. The mood also lends itself to the pacing. During Luke’s first two escape attempts, the mood is able help control the pacing and plot, making sure that, even there is no plot based evidence Luke will be recaptured, the audience is always aware he will. However when it comes to the final escape, this is thrown out the window. Rosenberg leaves the viewer confused as to what will happen to Luke and Dragline, will they be caught or not, and if so what will happen? It is this clever pacing and mood that continually pulls the viewer in more and more, becoming more emotionally invested as to the fate of Luke. The acting, especially of Paul Newman as Luke, and George Kennedy as Dragline, are one of the greatest assets to the film. Paul Newman is able to emotionally engage the audience in his plight and pull them into his world. His reaction to seeing his mother, hearing the news of her death, and his interactions with his fellow prisoners makes him a genuinely likeable character. You find yourself rooting for him and hoping he escapes, hoping he survives the prison camp. His infectious smile, his never give up attitude, and his good humor not only affect those at the camp but also those watching. He becomes so much of a guy that you couldn’t imagine anything truly bad happening to that when the end comes, it leaves you with a long lasting sense of sadness that you can never really understand. George Kennedy for his part is incredibly personable and engaging and a character you can feel transform over the course of the movie. However his transformation isn’t outright and very obvious. It’s little bits and pieces here there that all lend themselves to his character. By the end of the movie, it’s almost impossible to believe that he could live with himself after Luke’s death. It almost felt as though he would perish as well, although there is always that sense that he wasn’t meant to die, that he was meant to share Luke’s story, continue his legacy. It could almost be argued that if two were to be chosen to die at the end, it would be hard for you to decide which you would rather die. Kennedy, from being the hard, dominating figure in the prison, respected by all, transforms into a kinder, gentler soul from his time with Luke. He becomes that guy you could never hurt. In not such an obvious way, Boss Godfrey adds an element the movie would be hard pressed to replace. He has an almost god like presence about him, that he will strike down all that oppose him, that defy him. He is cold and distant and the movie would lose a large part of its emotion without him. Cool Hand Luke is a brilliant demonstration of how pacing and mood can almost drive the plot in the viewers minds. Strong performance lend themselves to the film in an incredible way and help cement the emotions created by Rosenberg with the audience in an infinitely intimate way. Director: Bryan Singer
Verdict: Meh An intense crime drama, The Usual Suspects is a complex story of a group of criminals as they are controlled from the mysterious Keyser Söze and chased by the police, held together strongly by the plot. The story follows the police as they interrogate Roger “Verbal” Kint and a hungarian gangster who is severely burned. Five men have been coerced into destroying tonnes of cocaine. However the plan goes bad when no cocaine is found. It is learned that Söze is a notorious underground crime lord who no one really knows if he exists or not. As Verbal is set free by the FBI, it is learned that he is Söze and the agent runs after him, but he has already disappeared. The plot is extremely confusing and complex as it flips between present day and events that lead up to the present as well as events nearly completely disconnected from the plot entirely. It is also told mostly through flashbacks, making b=keeping events, characters, and motives straight is very difficult. However this lends itself to the movie as a whole as it adds to the mood of the film. If it was a cut and dry straight through movie it would be rather bland with the movie never having a proper climax and a lack of suspense. The Usual Suspect is not a movie a casual viewer with other things preoccupying their mind can watch and fully understand. It demands the attention of its viewers to fully reveal its true magnificence. Director: John Hughes Verdict: Thumbs Up Sixteen Candles follows the comedic romance of Sam Baker on her sixteenth birthday as she struggles with being ignored and finding her way through life. The use of sub plots and surprise twists help drive the movie and keep the viewer watching, waiting to see if Sam will get her man. Sam Baker wakes up on the morning of her sixteenth birthday to find that no one in her family remembers it’s her special day. With her sister getting married the next day, they all forget. At school, while writing a note for her friend about who she has a crush on, she drops it but her love interest, Jake, picks it up instead. As the day goes on, it is learned that Jake likes Sam as well. Coming home on the bus, Sam is hit on by Ted, a geek. She painfully rejects him. At home, relatives are arriving, leading to her growing resentment. She leaves dinner early to go to the school dance where Ted, after hitting on her more, tells her that Jake likes her. Ted goes to a party at Jake’s house where he and Jake have a man to man where they realize they both are good people. At the wedding, Sam walks out to see Jake waiting for her. A major driving force of the film is the sub plot which helps develop the characters and shows motivation behind the characters actions. One of the most important sub plots is Ted and how his character grows. After finding out about the issues that Sam was experiencing, he changed. Following him from then on, there was a sense of growth and knowledge. Like a hard math problem, once you know how to do it, it becomes so much easier. Once he learned from Sam about the issues of life, he seemed to become a much more mature person. He was still very, very immature, but far more mature than he previously was. Another major driving factor was how Jake acted throughout the film. At first it appeared as though he was a jock who would somehow magically fall in love with Sam at the end of the movie. However, throughout the movie, he continually showed he had affection for Sam, which appeared to grow stronger throughout the movie. It left the viewer curious as to what would happen next, who would make the first move, would they end up together at all? This coming of age film is a beautifully filmed movie, with a skillfully written and developed plot, complex, evolving characters, and a downright brilliant movie. Director: George Lucas Verdict: Thumbs Up (just) The opening movie of the Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace is possibly the most expositional movie ever created. Looking at the franchise as a whole, it feels almost as though it was the sacrificial lamb offered to the Force so that the rest of EVERYTHING may make sense, and yet it is really just the beginning of the disastrous crashing, burning wreckage of the whole prequel trilogy. The premise of the movie is to establish the events of the upcoming movies and the series as a whole, how the Empire came to be. The Story revolves around the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo, leading to a Galactic Senate to question what is going on. Through a series of unfortunate events, two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi end up on the backwater planet of Tatooine. It is there that they discover Anakin Skywalker, who is very strong with the Force. They rescue Anakin from slavery and save the planet of Naboo. However in the process, Qui-Gon is killed by a Sith, Darth Maul. Enraged, Obi-Wan Kenobi cuts Darth Maul in half and reunites with his Master just long enough from Qui-Gon to tell him that Anakin is the Chosen One. I’m not sure what George Lucas was trying to achieve with this movie. He seems to have gone out of his way trying to over explain everything that would come to follow in the next two movies. This is really bizarre because the first Star Wars movie had almost no exposition and just got on with the story. Had this been the case with The Phantom Menace, a small amount of exposition could have been focused on finding Anakin but the rest could have been a brilliant film about the arrival of the Sith. This would have helped transform the whole of the prequel trilogy that could have resulted in a remarkably better feel. Instead, The Phantom Menace was the bearer of bad news and was only really remarkable for the brilliant lightsaber duel between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenodi and Darth Maul. The sadness that fills any Star Wars fan when they hear of The Phantom Menace is do to the massive let down of it and the prequels as a whole. It could have been so much better but was strangled, mugged, and drowned in endless exposition that made the movie borderline painful to watch. |
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June 2018
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