gilbertgumphrey

Review coming soon, once I return from Hawaii.

I wonder how long this film would be if you cut out all the shots where we see the main character walk in slow motion, and keep walking, and keep walking, long after any point could possibly be made. I'm betting that's a good 30 minutes of the film, right there. Cut out the endless slow mo shots of skateboarders skateboarding, and the movie would be 15 minutes long. There are two kinds of pretentious films - those that are born pretentious and have no choice, and those that are forced to be pretentious by their pretentious filmmakers. An example of the first film would be Last Tango in Paris. An example of the last would be Paranoid Park, although just about any Gus Van Sant film would do. It's been a long time since I've so actively disliked such a critically praised film (I think the last time this happened to such an extent was Sweeney Todd). Paranoid Park is dull, plodding, boring, pointless, inane, and a total waste of time. I feel comfortable throwing out those adjectives, even when I know it means alienation and disappointment from all my snotty film school buddies. I'm starting to get the idea that many people say they like Van Sant's movies just so they aren't looked down upon by snobby film critics. There's so much that's wrong about this movie, it's difficult for me to start. Lets begin with what's good about the movie. It has an excellent sound design. The cinematography is actually pretty nice - as much as I loathe Van Sant as a filmmaker, I cannot deny that the shots he actually composes are, in and of themselves, impressive (too bad each shot he makes is about 3 minutes longer than it should be). And that's about it, for the positives. Paranoid Park is like a CSI episode, stretched out to 80 minutes. Only CSI, as crappy as it is, at least has the courtesy to not decieve the audience about what it is. CSI is silly nonsense, and the makers know it. But Paranoid Park is just as silly, just as nonsensical, and just as crappy - but the filmmakers try and pretend it's something far better, deeper, and more important. It's not. Reading reviews of the film is like trying to decipher morse code. Critics constantly refer to it's "brilliant themes of alienation", but never actually discuss what the film SAYS about alienation, or any theme for that matter. They can notice the movie's points, but never say wether or not those points are actually made. They aren't. What's Van Sant saying here? That teenagers sometimes feel confused and alienated? Gee, stop the presses. There is no thematic depth here that I can see. The movie is about a gloomy little piss-ant that is involved in a murder and nothing in life afterwards really changes. Sure, he writes about it, buys a new skateboard, dumps his girlfriend. But who cares? This is the most stock individual I've seen in the movies this year - he starts the film glum and boring, and ends the film glum and boring. He never changes, and in truth he's possibly the dullest hero of a film I've ever witnessed. It doesn't help that the actor who plays him is gawdawful. Van Sant was praised for finding this kid through a casting call on Myspace, but that kind of experiment is only praisable if it gets a good result. This kid speaks in a forced monotone throughout the film, never showing any sort of expression or acting whatsoever. It's a terrible performance, one that is so reminiscent of the teen performances in the movies I made in high school that it's embarassing. And no one else is any better. Of course, it doesn't help when they're forced to read lines like "Dude, I'm soooo getting laid tonight". Is it bad I'm already reminiscing of the days of Juno, where teens didn't talk like retards? I'll give Van Sant one thing - he nailed these kinds of skid-kids perfectly. The problem is that I hated these kind of people when I took high school with them; watching a movie filled with them doesn't exactly lift the spirits. Ok. So the acting is awful. Shots go on for way longer than they should. The dialogue is atrocious. And the plot is bullshit, as well. Here's the story - skateboarder kid gets involved with murder. Writes about it. Isn't happy. The End. The reason the movie is told in such a confusing, non-linear fashion is because there's no plot to speak of. It wouldn't even fill in the time of a Law & Order episode. The murder, in all it's over-the-top ridiculous glory (the man is cut in half by a train, and his top half crawls around, looking rather benign and casual considering he's been chopped from the belt buckle down) is seen half way through the film, which means whatever surprises Van Sant had are gone by the the 50 minute mark. The movie is filmed in the pretentious experimental film kind of way me and my friends had to do for experimental class this year at film school. But Van Sant is an elderly, respected filmmaker...surely he's grown up past this hogwash by now? Believe it or not, Gus, we are no longer impressed by long tracking shots on Super 8 cameras with bird chirps and plate crashing sounds in the background. It's as if Van Sant purposefully films all his movies in the most irritating, frustrating, emotionally cold way he can. Why does he always seem to want to alienate us? Is this his penance for tugging so many heart-strings with Good Will Hunting? Why do all of his movies have to be 10 minute stories stretched out to 90 minutes by filming everyone walk in slow-motion for no reason other than, I guess, to make the movie 90 minutes long? It's this kind of arrogancy that drives me insane. Sure, something like 10,000 BC is unherald idiocy. But the filmmakers knew it sucked, and every audience member who bought a ticket knew it would too. That sort of movie doesn't offend me, because it never pretended to be something it isn't. Van Sant constantly writes these bullshit, useless stories we've all seen a thousand times, fills them with characters and dialogue completely unbelievable and boring, and calls it art. And what's worse, people buy it. Critics loved this film. Most of my flixster friends did too, and I trust many of their opinions as much as my own. What are they seeing I'm not? It's not even like Van Sant, in all his pretentious slow-filmmaking glory, is telling us something we don't know. These aren't real teenagers - these are Teenagers Through The Eyes Of Gus Van Sant. Meaning, they look like real teens, they might occasionally talk like real teens, but they are never remotely resembling real teenagers. When a detective tells a classroom of kids about the murder and shows them the picture of the dude's legs, many laugh and joke about it loudly. Really? What teen do you know of would do that, with the cop standing right there? That's not showcasing real teenage life - that's Van Sant shoving the message of how desensitized kids are down our throats. While he was at it, he should've shown them blogging on their Myspace profiles about how hilarious murder is then kill the cop and film it on their iPhones. That would've been just as subtle. And what about the sex scene, where the 15 year old virgin has sex, quietly enjoys it, and says they should do it again immediately after? Call me crazy, but last time I checked, sex for virgins HURTS. There's blood, there's screaming, there's agony, and it's not a lot of fun. Even the kid responsible for the murder walks around like nothing happened. Anyways, I gotta wrap this up. Paranoid Park pissed me off like few films can. It tells us nothing new, but takes an extraordinary amount of time to do that. It pretends to be art, when really it's pretentious bullshit. And it takes the focus away from some really good movies out there, ones that are far more deserving of praise and attention than this rubbish. I'm fed up with Gus Van Sant, continually pretending to be something he's not (which is strange, because in interviews he sounds like a very intelligent, down to earth man). He may be an artist, but in my mind, he's not a filmmaker.

There's a graphic anal rape scene in The War Zone that causes everyone who dares to watch it flinch and wince in agony. Mostly because it's between a man and his daughter, with the son secretely videotaping the event. But it's not this scene (which is easily one of the most powerful and troubling scenes of recent cinema) I want to talk about. It's the moment immediately following it, which hopefully helps explain why I can only give this movie 3.5 stars. The son witnesses this horrible, disgusting event. He walks away, holding the camera, the evidence inside. He goes to a rocky cliff with the crashing waves below. And then, without a change of expression, he throws the camera away, destroying the evidence. Now, many people love this sort of ambigiouity. But, for me, it ruined the entire film, and is the primary reason why I don't love this movie as much as seemingly everyone else. You see, I don't believe this character would do that. Moreover, I don't believe ANY human being in they're right mind would throw away that camera. I can only imagine how horrible it would be to discover and witness this sort of event, but no matter how disturbing it would be, I know without a doubt any sane person would keep that footage and use it to send that sick bastard straight to jail. So if no human being alive would do this, why did this character do it? Simple - because he's in an independant, art house film. And that is this movie's ultimate weakness. It caves into the art-house style of filmmaking so often, so easily, and so excessively, that no enjoyment can be had from watching the flick. You probably know what I mean when I say "art house film". I'm sure you've seen the type - glacial camera movements, characters barely speaking more than a couple words at once, everyone acting very morose and quiet, no character really doing or saying what real people would in that situation. These are just some of the art-house film characteristics that almost sink The War Zone. It's not that these elements are bad, it's just that they're so common in independant movies that they become tiresome. Having said this, and now that you know that this movie is filled from top to bottom with characters never breaking a smile or speaking above one decibal, and how characters will often act or react in completely inhuman ways, it still manages to be a powerful film. The subject matter of incest itself is so harrowing that I'm glad director Tim Roth refused to pull any punches. Make no mistake - this movie will shake you and be hard to get rid of. Ray Winstone, who plays the despicable pedophile father, is so good in this movie he'll likely give you chills of fear and disgust. He's simply excellent in this movie, as is the girl who plays his daughter and bares herself emotionally and physically for the role. Everyone in this movie is brave and respectable, except the kid actor who plays the main character, the son. He's awful. I hated his character - not only for doing inanely stupid things like throwing away the camera, but because he never does anything. He's not a human being - he's a robot, gliding around, moping, sulking, his head always down, his voice rarely above a whisper. It's a terrible teenage performance. The direction of the movie is solid, the cinematography and music are exceptional. The screenplay, however, I have a problem with. Roth eschews so much sentimentality in this movie that he winds up with a script that occasionally is so muted and dour, it threatens to become nearly invisible. There's no character we can relate to - feel sympathy for, yes, but when no character is given any interesting or remotely revealing lines of dialogue to say throughout the entire film, it's hard to really relate and become engaged. All this ambigiuty, mystery, and real-life messiness causes the film to be unbelievably praised. Critics adored it - in fact, one of my favourite critics thinks it's the 25th best film of all time. Astounding praise. But I just couldn't quite see it. The movie redeems a lot of it's failures by having some scenes of incredible power and an ending that's suitably haunting and eloquent. The film is painful, yes, the critics are definitely right about that. But is any of it especially real? I'm sure many people would tell me that incestual rape is something many keep secret and that the boy throwing away the camera is not that unlikely. But I still just couldn't buy that scene, and several others. The movie's I find particularily moving - not just painful and important, but really strong enough to get under my skin - are not usually art-house films where characters act and talk too much like they're being written. The movie's that really get to me are ones where characters are real, human beings, allowed to think and speak in a manner which can actually express more than just the basic horrible things we humans can do. All in all, The War Zone is indeed a good movie, but I don't think it's worthy of all the high praise heaped upon it. It's very graphic, chilling, and disturbing, so it's not for every viewer. But if you can stomach it (and can suspend your disbelief in regards to the typical art-house form), you will definitely see a film you'll never forget.

Note: Before I commence this review, let me admit the (probably obvious) following - I downloaded this movie. Which is why I got to see and review it early. No, sadly, I did not see a press screening or anything like that. There's a good quality version of the movie floating around torrent websites (don't ask me how), and once I realized I'll be in Hawaii when this movie comes out in theatres, I decided to say hell with it and watch it on my computer. So, unlike most times I download, this means the studio did technically lose 5-10 dollars from me because I did not (and never will), pay for a ticket. I would apologize, but since they stole almost two hours of my life with this film, I feel we're even. Anyways, let the review continue.
88 Minutes is a Great Trailer Movie. You know the kind. They're the movie that look absolutely fantastic in the trailer because they have that one great plot pitch, the kind that got the script sold without having been read beforehand. Flightplan was another recent example of this. Great Trailer Movies usually have a very well made trailer that makes you think "Wow, I wonder how that movie's twists and turns will play out". The problem with Great Trailer Movies is that they're made with the trailer soley in mind, and therefore are only effective for 2 minutes. Once the pitch is expanded to feature length, everything falls apart like a deck of cards. 88 Minutes is highly disappointing, because I truly thought this could not only be a return to form for Pacino, but also another great new tightly-plotted suspense/thriller, like Phone Booth or Panic Room. Alas, it was not to be. There is nothing about 88 Minutes that isn't completely pedestrian, cliched, and surprisingly flat. There isn't a moment's tension or suspense or even action in the entire film. You see the trailer and think there will at least be lots of chases with Pacino running for his life, but we don't even get that - most of the movie Al just walks around, surprisingly cavalier. With such a great premise, how'd they go so wrong? Lets start with the actors. Al Pacino is one of the greats, but he's been plagued with crappy scripts recently. He's quite good here, as always. But it's not a good character. Even the name, Jack Graham, is so painfully "written". There are moments where Pacino is forced to deliver constant back stories to his character so we're supposed to empathize, but all it makes him do is look like a wimp. Pacino sells as much of the story as he can be just being as great as he is, but he's not helped by anyone else. To put it mildly, with the exception of Pacino, this is the worst acted film I've seen in a very long time. Every single actor or actress are embarassing to watch, especially the red-head girl that tags along with Pacino - she knows he's being threatened with his life and supposedly only has few minutes to live, but that never seems to stop her from blabbling on about her ex-boyfriend and all her other crappy life moments. Boo fucking hoo. The script is dead in the water. Nothing interesting is done, besides the great premise, and even that basically becomes forgotten after a short period of time. The Law of Economy of Characters applies exhaustively - because we see all these relatively big actors playing such small parts we instinctively know that many, if not all, are going to be Not All What They Seem. The script not only has terrible characters, an unconvincing and cliched plot, and dialogue that is extremely immature - it also has no action, no suspense, and no tension. There's long stretches of this film where just about nothing happens, right around where the movie was supposed to be tightening the screws. In fact, Pacino himself barely does anything in the movie - most of the detective work are done by his friends, and he spends 70% of the movie screentime talking to them on the phone. Speaking of his character, he never once acts as if his life is counting down. If I was told by a psychotic killer I only had 88 minutes to live, 70 minutes, 14 minutes, what have you - I'd be a little upset. I wouldn't be sitting in the car telling my student about my dead sister. The movie's overly complicated for it's own good, considering how little twists and surprises it contains. After a while, it's not even an issue of predicting plot twists; the movie becomes Spot the Cliche, and it never changes from this course. There's a scene about 25 minutes in (mild spoiler alert), right after Pacino first hears the countdown to his life. He runs into one student, than another, than another, in the same parking garage. One he tells what's happening, another argues about a court case, and the other is bleeding from being attacked. These come one after each other with such precision that we immediately think "Hey, something's not right". I'll leave what happens for you to discover, but it's sloppy writing like this that immediately telegraphs to the audience that they're probably looking right at, yep, a killer, or the killer, or someone connected with the killer, or just plain someone who will probably wind up in the Big Revelation. Wether or not this hunch turns out to be true, I won't say, but just the fact that it makes the audience raise it's eyebrows is bad enough. In fact, the movie does something very interesting I had pondered in my own scripts - make everyone in a thriller script suspicious. What I've found from watching the film, however, is that this doesn't put the audience on edge, it needlessly confuses them. An early scene has a moment where Pacino eyes a cab driver suspicoiusly, looks at his license, stares at his tatoo's. We think "Better log that away, he's probably a killer or something". Nope. The cab driver's forgotten instantly. Why the suspicion? The filmmakers, I'm sure, wanted to throw us off track. But by making literally EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, from supporting to minor to background, inherently suspicious doesn't throw us off - it makes us even more highly aware that there will inevitably be a "twist" to the killer's identity, and after seeing all these creepy suspicious people, it'll probably be one of the ones that AREN'T creepy and suspicious. And the ending is simply embarassing - this kind of Talking Killer scene was overdone in the 80's, and now is hard to find in even Direct to DVD features. It felt like they just plucked a character out of the script at random to be the big surprising bad guy, regardless of having a decent motive or abilities. And when Pacino is forced to say "You know what I don't understand...?" to the killer, and have he/her blab on about their great plans...I died a little inside. Anyways, I better wrap this up. 88 Minutes pissed me off for wasting the great potential of an awesome plot idea and wasting Al Pacino's time and talent. It's highly disappointing and ultimately a completely flat and uninvolving movie. Don't make the mistake of seeing this film, or you will be counting down the minutes before the end even more than Pacino.

If Hannibal Lecter had first been played by Shia Lebeouf, would anyone know Silence of the Lambs? Certainly, I would say, there's no way it'd be considered the horror classic it is now. You see, on paper, Hannibal's not that impressive. I mean, think about it - he spends almost the whole first movie in a jail cell. The idea of him isn't all that scary. It's the performance by Anthony Hopkins that makes him terrifying. If it wasn't for Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs just plain wouldn't have worked (this is proven by watching Manhunter, the very first Hannibal Lecter movie, where Brian Cox played the cannibal doctor. Good actor, but completely wrong for the part, and therefore the character wasn't remotely scary). I mention all this because P2 is completely sunk by bad casting, and a script that only has 2 major characters and doesn't know what to do with either of them. Wes Bentley, from what I've seen of him, is not a bad actor. But in P2, he's never scary, not even remotely. In fact, he was creepier in American Beauty. This is for two reasons. One, the character is poorly written. His motivations are not clearly defined, many of his actions are incomprehensible, and he just plain doesn't really do much during the whole movie (walking around with a flashlight telling the victim "I'm trying to help you" isn't exactly heart-pounding). But the much worse reason his character sucks is because Bentley is not the right man for the job. It's not that his performance is bad; it's just that he's the wrong guy to play it. When we see this character tie up his victim, put makeup on her and clothe her, threaten her and beat another man to death...we just don't believe it, and aren't scared, because he looks like a GQ model the whole time. This isn't an evil looking man. Imagine how much more effective this movie would be with, say, Crispin Glover in the lead role. Now that man is creepy. If I woke up tied to a chair with him singing me Christmas carols, I'd be petrified. But Wes Bentley is no Crispin Glover on the richter scale of scary. While watching him, we just think of him as this petulant, screwed-in-the-head college dropout. Hell, even someone like John Goodman could be creepy in this role - all that was needed was an actor who just plain would not look good with the lead actress, and that would be enough to put the audience on edge. Bentley, unfortunately, is a good enough looking dude that he and the girl could totally be seen dating in real life, and that helps destroy the illusion of suspense. Having narced on Bentley this whole review, it's hard to say even with someone like Glover if the movie would be good or not. My guess is still not. P2 just plain has a crappy script. It's filmed effectively enough, shot appropriately, scored tensely, but it all adds up to nothing without a decent script. Think of the last parking garage you were in, and you will realize how little there is to such an environment to make an entire horror film around it. The movie starts spinning it's wheels literally halfway through, and by the end when we see the two main characters playing chicken with each other in opposing cars, we realize how desperately this film is trying to just be feature length. The opening twenty minutes, however, is relatively suspenseful. The main character is never really clearly defined or nice enough to have a connection to the audience with (neither, for that matter, is the villian - all we ever learn about him is that he has a crush on the girl, and that's about it). But we still manage to buy her situation, and I guess we wind up kinda rooting for her. Every review of the movie talks about her cleavage, and I guess I can't buck the trend (how can I, when the movie clearly focuses so much on it?). Yes, her cleavage is impressive. In fact, it's downright wonderful. But aside from having a great pair of knockers and being able to give a wicked scream, Rachel Nichols isn't a very good actress. She can cry well enough, but when she recites dialogue we occasionally cringe. And there's not much else to talk about with regards to this movie. It's not bad, so much as completely ineffective, much like watching a well-made comedy film that's not funny. It's a forgetful suspense/horror flick without any horror and very little suspense. If you want to see some great looking boobs heave and run around from a supposedly psychotic villian, then check P2 out. But you most likely won't be scared, you won't be thrilled, and you may wind up just laughing your ass off.
P.S - I just remembered something I thought of while watching the film that would've made it a hundred times creepier. There's a brief scene where Nichols sees a videotape showing Bentley putting lipstick on her and touching her face while she was knocked out. How intensely creepy would it have been to show him raping her? I think the idea of being violated in the worst way while knocked unconcious and then having to watch it later would be horrible, sick, and very intense for a movie. Just another missed opportunity this movie makes in scaring the audience.

If you're planning on seeing 10,000 B.C in theatres, stop over at IMDB.com first. Go to the main page. It has an average 4.9/10 rating, with audiences rating this mind you (not snobby critics, but normal average joes, people who usually like this crap). But that's not the real funny part. Go to the section makred Memorable Quotes, and go to that page. Guess how many there are? Two lines. They are as follows; first, the classic - "Do not eat me when I save your life!" (spoken by the hero to a sabretoothed tiger, by the way) and, even more memorable, "Look, it's growing so fast". Sage, timeless passages of dialogue. Up there with "Here's lookin' at you, kid" and "May the force be with you". Hopefully this gives you a little bit of an idea of the intellectual level this movie is based at. 10, 000 BC is one of the great modern howlers of recent cinema. You'll likely be hurting from laughing so hard. But unlike other funny recent films like Planet Terror or Superbad, this one isn't in on the joke. I truly believe writers Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser (also the film's composer and actually talented composer of other films) felt they were creating a new modern action/adventure classic, a fantasy/fable people of all ages could enjoy. Well, they didn't. 10 Thou is a lifeless, inert, braindead film that is so fucking bad it sometimes achieves a certain level of respectibility - any movie this bloody stupid has to have some balls to show it's face in cinemas. Lets start with the historical inaccuracies. It's causing a lot of annoyance with many audience members - not only the snobs and critics, but yes, even the Jo Blo's. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to feel vaguely suspicious about a movie showing a time on Earth where a tribe can become involved, in one long trek, with native americans, african americans, vikings, and egyptians. I was half expecting the Roman Empire and Napoleon to pop up. The filmmakers are insisting it's just a fantasy and shouldn't be taken as historical verbatim, but I feel that's a total copout. The title suggests - no, PROMISES - that the movie will have some sort of basis in fact. Look, 300 had some historical inaccuracies too, and also spun a little storytelling embellishments to make things more exciting. But it never insulted our intelligence, and because the film was created in such a different and modern way, we never really thought about it or cared. I mean, for chrissakes, there were electric guitars on the soundtrack - clearly, they were just having fun. This movie is too dull, too banal, to fucking stupid to be having fun, or giving fun. Look, I wanted to enjoy the movie too, on a sort of Congo type hilarity level. But it just couldn't happen. The movie takes itself way too seriously for something so shoddily created. The special effects are about on the level of Jurassic Park's, further continuing the road block of quality CGI has apparently reached. The script itself is hilariously bad, contrived, and predictable. The dialogue is painfully wooden and cliched, with some of the above mentioned lines only a sampling of it's stupidity. A really great exchange of dialogue was "I will never leave you." "You'll never leave me?" "No, never". I mean, who comes up with this stuff? I recently re-read a Batman script I wrote in grade 6, and it had better dialogue than this crap. The way the actors recite it doesn't help. How can we take someone seriously saying this shit without any twinkle in their eye? When Al Pacino or Anthony Hopkins are given duds of lines to say, they give it with such gusto we don't really notice, and often wink to prove they know it's bad but wanted to have some fun anyways. Not so here. The main actors are all uniformly terrible, with the main actor being once a model and clearly did not take any acting classes from said Pacino or Hopkins. The plot itself is a let down. Not only is it completely predictable (wasn't this the exact same plot of Apocalypto, an infinitely better film?), but it often is completely incomprehensible due to the fact the filmmakers clearly never looked at a map in their entire life. These characters literally walk from snowy mountains in what appears to be North America to a rainforest jungle to an African wasteland to the Egyptian desert, all in what is apparently a couple months (the jungle is really bad, because they literally step right out from the mountains into the jungle, and the snow is still seen in the background when they enter this massive rainforest). This trek is because the heroes are following a small captured tribe of theirs, containing the love interest as well, but it doesn't make any sense for the villians to be going to all this work and treking across what is apparently the entire world, for just a small handful of slaves. It doesn't ever hold water, and is just an excuse for Emmerich's crappy special effects and what is surprisingly a very boring and action-less story. The movie constantly brings up comparisons not only with Apocalypto, but also 300, which the studio obviously wanted this movie to be. The comparisons aren't nice to poor little 10,000 BS (I meant to type BC, but i think BS somehow works better). Apocalypto was tense and involving - this movie isn't. 300 was adrenaline filled action and excitment - this movie isn't. The film this is most comparable to is Excalibur, which is one of my most hated movies of all time and appeared to be made by a small porn crew for 5000 bucks. This flick isn't much better. Look, it is indeed possible to derive some pleasure from something this awful. It really is a funny movie. I watched it rather innebriated and kind of enjoyed myself, even though I was cringing in embarassment as often as I was laughing at the retardedness of the film. If you completely turn off your brain, and I do mean COMPLETELY turn it off, you might have an Ok time. I'm sure I would've liked this if I was 10 years old. But it's lazy filmmaking, it's sloppy filmmaking, and during a time where there are literally dozens of treasures just coming out on DVD, why waste your time in the theatre watching this idiocy?

My most favourite film. Perfect in every way, shape, and form. Beautiful, powerful, mesmerizing, haunting, exceptional, enjoyable, wonderful, intelligent, uplifting, moving - there aren't enough words in the English language to describe how amazing this film really is. From top to bottom, Frank Darabont, the writer/director, achieved success. The performances are wonderful - has Morgan Freeman ever done a better voice over narration? The cinematography is perfectly suited for the story. The camera work is terrific, but never distracting. The music by Thomas Newman is one of the very best of musical scores. And of course, Darabont himself - debuted with this film, deserved the Oscar he never got, and wrote probably the most literate, thought-provoking, and awe inspiring screenplay film has ever seen. I read an email where 50 priests, pastors, and other religious figures listed their favourite films, and 38 out of those 50 all said Shawshank. It's well deserved. If ever there was a film to change someone's life (as this movie as for me - I attribute 90% of my success with Alycia, my lovely girlfriend, to this movie), than this would be the flick. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Heck, now I wanna go watch it again for the 1000th time.

My second favourite flick of all time. Alongside Raging Bull and above all, Shawshank Redemption, these movies are as perfect and wonderful as film can be. It's Hitchcock's best film; yes, no scene is as iconic or important to film history as Psycho's shower scene, but it's a more mature, focused, and personal film all around. Hitchcock wore it all on his sleeve for this picture - the obsessive, controlling love for a blonde, the unattainable dream that is more important in chasing than achieving, the hypnotic desire for murder and murderous notions...all these themes and more are addressed in the film, and all of them describe Hitch better than any autobiography has. The movie isn't just his normal suspense/thriller, although there are moments that are creepier than anything else he's done, excepting Psycho of course (like the nun's voice in the end, coupled with the scream - gives me terrifying goosebumps just thinking about it). It's also a romance/drama, with intensity not expected of Jimmy Stewart (the controlling madness he exudes in the last act is frightening). There are some scenes that stick with you and never let you go - the suicide, the nightmare, the Scene D' Amour, the climax. It's a haunting, mesmerizing, evocative, disturbing flick, no question. But it's also dramatically powerful, which isn't something I say often about movies before 1960ish. Oh, I almost forgot to mention Bernard Herrmann's wonderful score, that enhances every scene it plays under. Great, great, great film. A true masterpiece.

To anyone who doesn't like this movie - your loss. Raging Bull is quite simply the third of a top 3 echelon of movies that can be labelled as being "perfect", meaning without any flaws to my own eyes. There is not a frame I would change on Raging Bull (along with the other two perfect films, Shawshank Redemption and Vertigo). It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't seen it (or even some that have, Alycia :D) why this film is so haunting, so evocative, so powerful. Because when one asks you to describe the movie, it sounds as dull as dishwater. Narratively speaking, this is a straightforward movie - violent and mentally unstable boxer has huge ups and huge downs both in and out the ring. Essentially, yeah, that is the barebones plot of the film. But that's like saying the plot of The Wizard of Oz is a young girl gets lost and eventually comes back home. There is more to this film than meets the eye, and take repeat viewings to fully see the poetry being used. Some scenes have twisting dialogue - De Niro, in his best and most psychotic performance, always circles around people, suspicious, trying to bust them for sins they may not even have done. The boxing scenes are shattering in their brutal violence. The cinematography and music displays true, unendurable sadness, a tragedy which sometimes we don't see yet. He's just dancing around the ring - why the Shakespearan music? Because Scorsese, who makes the best film of his stellar career here, damn well knows what he's doing. If the film was made today, it would be softened for audience comprehension - La Motta would be a tragic figure who's fate was imposed upon him, with friends and family who loves him, who tries his best but fails, and maybe even some voice overs to explain what's going on in his head. None of that is in this picture. Scorsese doesn't let up - we barely sympathize with this monster, even when we wanna beat him as hard as he beats his wife. He desires redemption, but is too weak and unstable to ever try for it. And we never see what's ticking in his head - the closest reveal to his true emotions we see is when he's in prison, having just lost everything, and begins punching the walls screaming "Why? Why? Why?" It's the most powerful scene in an incredibly powerful film, which never ceases to haunt me and get under my skin. Brilliance from start to finish, and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise :)

What's left to say about The Godfather? What many consider to be the perfect movie (except maybe Peter Griffin...and my girlfriend), this is an exceptional piece of work that is just....sublime. As gay as that sounds, it really is. Strange, how a movie that's almost all talking manages to be the "ultimate guy movie". Great, great stuff.

Yeah, Tarantino's a dick. But that dick's got some holyballing style, man. This movie's great fun from start to finish. Perfect dialogue, some distrubing and horrific violence to go with the laughs, and probably the most iconic storyline in modern cinema. My only complaint is that it's a little too long - Tarantino, like all his movies, could've cut it a bit more. But it's a minor quibble to a terrific film.

Not to be confused with Gus Van Sant's masturbatory remake. This is Hitchcock's second greatest film - surely his most popular and iconic, and probably the greatest thriller ever made. Yes, the shower scene, in the appropriate setting with chuckling friends and popcorn, can be laughably dated. But watch it with the lights off and no one in the house with the sound cranked, and trust me, it'll still get you.