What’s with all the films? Many of my posts are mini-reviews for the films I'm watching as part of the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge. Read more here. |
January 13th, 2010
WALL·E is ranked 43 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
I don’t have much to say about Wall-E but that’s not to say it’s not a good movie or not deserving of being in the top 250. Wall-E is another film from the house of Pixar, the studio we’ve come to expect to deliver the most technically adept CGI films over the last decade or so. It revolves around the titular character, the last surviving robot from a fleet of similar bots tasked with clearing up Earth after we made such a dump of the place we had to go on permanent holiday into the stars. The story is entertaining and will keep the kids glued to the screen with predictable pratfalls and plot twists but for me I feel that it was a little too preachy (waste and consumerism bad, exercising good) and a bit obvious laying the blame of the collapse of society at the foot of massive conglomerates (and a bit rich coming from the land of Mickey), which could be put down to the influence of Disney values.
It is entertaining and very watch-able however, though this is one that deserves its place in the top 250 through a milestone of achievement rather than being an all-round fantastic film. The CGI is staggeringly good. You may not have noticed it but that’s half the point. The work on shadows, texture and depth of field really adds to the suspension of disbelief. I could pause any frame of the movie and just pour over the beauty of the textures of the walls, let alone the remainder of the gamut of detail littering the backgrounds of each shot. Truly Pixar are masters of their field and for that reason, this film gets a higher score than if it just had the plot to carry it.
8/10
January 11th, 2010
Oldboy is ranked 116 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
Oldboy is a South Korean film about a man named Oh Dae-su, who after being kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years before being unceremoniously released, quests to find out who kidnapped him, but more importantly why. We follow his story as he converts from the a drunken, loutish father, through to a shell-shocked prisoner and to a vengeful yet humble warrior on his journey seeking answers.
This one is hard to review without spoiling it, though in short it’s entertaining and enthralling. His imprisonment and release turns into a bizarre series of mind games, plot twists and bouts of violence (like many eastern films, western viewers may be put off by the intensity and graphic nature of the violence, though we’re not talking about a slasher flick here). The plot can be hard to follow and like many twist-ful films is probably worth a second screening so you can watch it again with a better understanding of how it plays out, though this is probably half caused by a lost-in-translation effect.
Technically speaking, the filming and framing of each scene is quite good, the prison scenes are shot very tightly and often at strange angles for example, enhancing the feeling of claustrophobia. The acting, even without an understanding of Korean to check if the actors are flubbing their lines, is very intense. The action scenes, though infrequent, are well done and don’t fall into fantastical bouts of unrealistic Kung-Fu. Special mention goes to the corridor scene, which is shot almost like an old side-scrolling arcade game. The film is afflicted with what I’d coin as the ‘Sixth Sense Effect’ though, that once you’ve seen it a couple of times and fully explored the winding plot, the impact of the film might be lost on subsequent viewings. Still, definitely one to watch.
7/10
January 10th, 2010
While trying to ‘unlock’ the digital copy of the Star Trek Blu-ray I came across a problem where the DRM component of Windows Media Player needed upgrading, which bounced me to the following URL: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp.
The problem with this link was that the sole upgrade button on the page was greyed out, meaning I couldn’t upgrade the DRM component. I’m running Windows 7 but I would guess the problem affects Vista as well. There’s a few posts online but none of them resolved the problem, but instead this is what I did to fix it, simple when you think about it:
- Find Internet Explorer in the Start menu. Don’t use Firefox, Chrome or another alternative, it has to be IE.
- Right-click on the icon and select run as administrator.
- Enter the URL provided above (or whatever variation the disc you have provides you with).
- Bingo, problem solved.
It’s also worth noting that part of the DRM process for the Star Trek disc asks you for your name, DOB, email address and some other personal data. You don’t have to fill any of this in to unlock the digital copy.
January 7th, 2010
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is ranked 59 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
Eternal Sunshine is an odd film. It’s about a relationship but it’s not really a romantic film. It stars Jim Carey but it’s not full of slapstick comedy. It falls into the realm of sci-fi but doesn’t go into the realm of techno-babble. It is however, fantastic. If you’ve not already read the plot synopsis elsewhere, Eternal Sunshine follows Jim Carey’s character, Joel, a shy, quiet man (and thus completely unlike Carey in most of his other films) who after a long relationship with Kate Winslet’s Clementine finds out that after a row she has not only left him, but gone through with a procedure to remove him from her memory completely. Joel then decides to go through the same procedure and most of the film follows his sub-concious self travelling through memories of their relationship as he slowly realises that he wants to cherish what he had rather than obliterate the memory of it, while in the real world these memories are being targeted and deleted.
It is a story about love but without the sappy one-liners or puppy-dog eyes. Carey is just fantastic, I think it’s clear that if he bottles up the crazy and lets is leak out rather than explode, he can be a really powerful actor. Winslet plays the quirky love interest well, her character being a lot more three-dimensional than the quirky love interest of say (500) Days of Summer. Carey’s narration of his feelings of their relationship seem genuine, you do feel for the character of Joel as he decides he must hide the memories of Clementine from the ‘brain men’. Visually, the film is well shot. As his memories are destroyed his dream world begins to fall apart, people disappear around him, books lose their text and faces become a blur. It’s a great way of exploring the slowly depleting memory of his relationship with Clementine and feels bitter-sweet as he finally comes across the memory of when they first met. On the downside, the ‘real world’ characters and their b-story, featuring among others, Elijah ‘Mr Frodo’ Wood and Kirsten Dunst, is a lot weaker than the story of Joel and Clementine, though the film wouldn’t work without it.
To steal the tag-line from (500) Days of Summer (which you may have noticed, I’m feeling more bile towards as the days go by) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not a love story but a story about love. It’s wonderfully shot and acted and worth repeated viewings. I have a feeling this may become a timeless – yet slightly indie – classic.
8/10
January 5th, 2010
My Neighbour Totoro is ranked 247 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
My Neighbour Totoro is a Japanese children’s film from Studio Ghibli, a studio famous for films such as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away (both of which also feature on the Top 250). It follows the story of two children, Satsuki and Mei, who move with their father to a new home in the countryside to be closer to their mother, who is in hospital with an unnamed condition and meet the friendly spirits of the forest, the Totoro.
The appeal and originality of the movie comes from the fact that this film features no conflict, anger or threat while not going down the sterile, PC, modern children’s story route. The bulk of the film simply follows the two girls exploring and playing in their new home and surroundings, which sounds boring but is anything but- the key to this being that the animation work retains the charm and magic of being a kid again. It’s hard to put down in words, but I – a grown, cynical Brit – was smiling from cheek to cheek all of the way through.
Special mention has to be given to the animation which is simply beautiful. It’s not an orgy of colour or gimicks, but a magical rendition of rural Japanese life. Highlights include Mei stroking Totoro for the first time: although this is a cartoon you do get the sensation of someone actually stroking a bear-sized furry animal (not that I’ve stroked any bears lately) and the watercolour-eque backgrounds.
A joy to watch, for adults and children alike.
9/10
January 4th, 2010
(500) Days of Summer is ranked 227 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
500 slots into the romantic genre, of which I’m not the world’s greatest fan. Still the Internet has heaped praise on it for being a funny, original take on the story of boy-meets-girl so I gave it a bash.
The story follows 500 days of the life of Tom, a drone at a greeting card company and the events of his relationship with the eponymous Summer, whom he meets at work. The ‘twist’ is that the film is chopped up in non-chronological order bookended by which of the 500 days in question the scene features, though these are not Tarantino-esque cuts. Because of this very early on we learn that the relationship between Tom and Summer doesn’t last and the film flips between their dating and the relationship falling apart and of course the lessons that we the viewers can learn from their time together. For this reason alone I had high hopes for the film as normally you’d walk into a rom-com already knowing the ending.
Unfortunately the film is original isn’t the slightest. As soon as the scene was set where we learn that Tom’s job is to write cheesy greeting card slogans but yearns to be an architect, it becomes obvious that he’ll rage-quit his job at some point with a speech on ‘what is love’ and pursue his architectural dreams. Summer turns out to be a two-dimensional generic slightly-quirky girl-next-door. Tom’s friends include the non-threatening mate with no sex life who gets them together, conflict includes a jock-businessman trying to cut in between Tom and Summer at a bar, and so it goes on.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining film with several laugh out loud moments, the acting is above average for this type of film and I’d recommend watching it once, but I don’t see why it features in the IMDb Top 250. I could probably come up with another hundred (non-rom-com) films that should feature above it. It’s, well, it’s average.
5/10
January 1st, 2010
Reservoir Dogs is ranked 64 in the 2010 IMDb Top 250 Challenge.
Right so I’ve watched the first of the 250, Reservoir Dogs:
I had my first viewing of Reservoir Dogs at about the age of 12. It was one of those films – like Pulp Fiction or Terminator 2 – that you were too young to watch but were ‘cool’ (wow I sound old) if you had seen it. Of course the main reasons for watching these kinds of films at that age were not artistic merit but simply blood and swearing. I haven’t properly sat down and watched Reservoir Dogs since having borrowed it on VHS many years ago and I’m pleased to say there’s more to it than just those teenage requirements.
It’s well shot though different to how traditional films are shot. Scenes between two people that should be close-ups are shot down the corridor for example, yet somehow it works. Unfortunately the sound is all over the place, lots of dialogue can be missed because it’s too fast and too quiet and the picture quality varies shot to shot. I think Tarantino learned a lot of lessons on these fronts in time for his later films (as well, no doubt, as receiving a much larger budget).
My main concern is that a lot of the dialogue went over my head (I’m probably too young) and in fifty years time it probably won’t make a lot of sense being dipped in pop-culture as it is. It’ll probably be on the top 250 in fifty years time too, but one of those films where people will note it as a classic, as a milestone, but not very good up against modern film.
It’s a hard one to review. Like Pulp Fiction you can pick out your favourite scenes or quotes which make it memorable to an individual but when you put it all together you’ve got a film which almost every critic would agree is a classic.
7/10
January 1st, 2010
2009 was quite a roller-coster year over in the land of turtles called SiD. The year drifted past and I’m not quite sure what happened to it, even though it was quite eventful. Thus time flies past and blogs become neglected. So, on to a new year, a new decade, same old decline in posting as the years goes by? Let’s see!
So, stealing an idea that Nokkon Wud had at the start of 2009, I am going to attempt the IMDb Top 250 Challenge. This involves watching the Top 250 films as rated by IMDb’s user population in one year. That’s, well, that’s a lot of film, but it’s at least a more original and probably more attainable New Year’s Resolution than say exercising more! The rules I’ve set myself are to watch all of the top 250, including those I’ve seen already. If you want to give it a go but 250 is too much for one year try say the top 100. If you’re not a fan of older movies, try the top 50 lists from each decade.
IMDb’s Top 250 can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top, though of course it’s always moving so a static list as of January the 1st, 2010 can be found in this Google Doc I put together: (link).
I’ll post mini-reviews of each one as I go, though some other thoughts will often show up in these forum threads:
The IMDb Top 250 Challenge @ Boat Drinks
The IMDb Top 250 Challenge @ OcUK
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