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Glennisbest
Reviews
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Looking back with gratitude
Saving Private Ryan is such a powerful and necessary film and one everyone should watch at one point in their life.
It's a simple story; a small group of soldiers are given a mission to retrieve the last surviving of four brothers from behind enemy lines in France. The symbolism of this story and of Ryan himself are profound and personal for all of us today who are partakers of the rights and freedoms given to those liberated by the allied invasion of Europe. The graphic depiction of what these men went through to establish that freedom gives us a difficult reminder of how much we each as individuals owe these men veterans that are still with us actually went through this! I remember feeling so grateful for their sacrifice, and I left the cinema not so much entertained but shaken. The depth and accuracy of this film remains a testament and a tribute to those brave people, and not the filmmakers themselves. The acting is honest and superb, and the characters are as rich and interesting and ordinary as the real soldiers they could represent. The first time I watched this it was difficult to watch and there were several times when I had to just look away. A technical marvel, an incredible achievement for Steven Spielberg, who remains for me the greatest filmmaker ever.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Great, while it lasts!
One of Spielbergs weaker films, yet amazing in many ways. In a nutshell this is worth seeing because of it's style, special effects, and buttock clenchingly high levels of tension and engagement.
Spielberg hiccuped on a few areas; the most common complaint arising from a major technical detail that contradicts the continuity (one phantomly powered video camera sort of brings down his empire for a minute) while others are the consequence of re-making an already clunky finish: yet passing such quick judgment on an inherently abrupt ending feels a little foolish - and I must defend that there is still plenty on offer here, almost enough to make up for it, almost.
There was also a lot less war in the film than I had anticipated (a lot more running and hiding, and a little girl screaming). But if we can grudgingly accept Spielberg's chosen perspective of the war - through the eyes of our pedestrian Cruize and his pair of wriggling children, we can accept his vision for this film. Once we're over that hurdle we can realize that his skills are still razor sharp. Indeed Spielberg delivers everything we expected and more on an epic scale and it is the story, not the presentation that flounders. This film feels fresh and bold, satisfying our hunger for new levels of realism and tension.
A panoramic montage of the human race with a reading of part of Well's novel by Morgan Freeman is both obligatory and begrudgingly necessary as an opening sequence, but the true butterflies finally take flight only once the next sequences create a working class situation, in a sagging New Jersey dockland. Not too long and a storm starts a-brewin' and we, nervously begin to realize what Spielberg is about to do with this very real place and (notably) post 9/11 people. For me there was uneasiness about of what I was about to see - Spielberg has been known to disturb with the brutality of realism and the way he was playing it, I got the feeling that this was going to be one of those times. You just don't exactly know how it's all going to happen, and you feel very much on the street, as the first tripods emerge.
When he finally releases the tension, it hits hard and fast. What happens is quite incredible and disturbing as our audience's gasps tended to agree (not conventionally gruesome, just unusual and a bit frightening). The ball was rolling, and doesn't stop until said ending. Yes, this is a classic Spielbergian study in tension building and the release of terror, with no mistaking the quality of the effects or intensity of the action. Blammo!
Cruize's necessarily fast development into a more dedicated dad is alright - but it's his childish, selfish dysfunction and his struggle to care about his responsibilities as a week-end father that really holds the most interest and humour for us - indeed most of the actors shine pre-invasion.
Of style? It's a feast for the eyes and imagination. For much of the film, the "money shots" of the alien machines are masterfully obscured by dust, debris or clouds - we have to look hard to make out their shapes and dimensions. I read somewhere that Spielberg's intention was to give you a similar perception of events to what we had on Omaha beach; hand-held at eye level, the camera desperately glancing back as we run for cover. The effect is that we catch incidental (yet deliberate) glimpses of people being incinerated, the alien machines as they emerge, and the shock and intensity of their assault. Notably, the action is rarely presented to us outside of these subjective angles and the result is a terrifyingly immersive experience, giving the director a connection to us that allows him to shock and jolt us at his leisure. We get to witness Spielberg's ever developing genius as he plunges us into greater depths of realism.
I saw this in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, and my wife will tell you it was the location of the quickest mid-movie toilet break ever.
My verdict: Not the strongest of stories, running out of steam too early, yet presented with undeniable skill. 7/10
Powerless (2004)
A solid debut from a promising director
When the lights went out overhead in the Cardiff film festival screening of powerless I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be ironic if there was a power cut
now?" Thankfully I got to watch the whole film without interruption.
Matt Daniels and Seth Wilkins script charts the survival of some well drawn characters in a somewhat familiar mold a broken family in a time of crisis. Post 9/11 terrorism being the crisis maybe, but this was premiered before the 7/7/05 London attacks, pre-dating the reality of new terror attack on British soil. This can only add to the films relevance and validity.
Powerless however is not a study of terrorism so much as it is an exploration of a family under intense pressure.
Spielberg's War of the worlds and Matt Daniels' Powerless have a few similarities then in that respect (Daniel's came first), but where Spielberg chose to focus on a broken family in a time of disaster to 'see how they run, when we shoot at them with all we've got', Daniels chose a similar subject and focus without all the comforts of ILM's wizardry. This is by no means an action film, this film is about our dependencies and independence, our comforts and our complacency, our strengths and frailties. It's about surviving. The result is a film that still captivates in many ways. A much closer view of real people in a more credible situation.
Powerless, then, weighs heavily on its complex narrative for intrigue and mystery, but leans even more heavily on its young actors who bear the weight well, almost like a real family....wait a sec! (as the credits roll you'll be surprised to realize that the majority of the cast are actually brothers and sisters and most other people in the movie are related to them also!). On their first outing on the big screen they prove that they can act and act well. They effectively transmit the claustrophobia and emotions of being stranded in such a way that you cannot help but begin to imagine yourself trying to handle life without electricity. The overall effect is unnerving, believable, credible, and the ending is complex and interesting! I was well impressed!
Powerless is fueled by a metabolism of a director's love of films, the sheer confidence of its actors and a twisting plot. We should take pride in the fact that independent filmmakers can come up with this with only basic tools. Don't get me wrong, the film is not perfect and yes at times the inexperience shows itself, but the enigma of Powerless is not in its perfection; the triumph of this movie is that finally outside of the wasted millions of Hollywood dollars, here are some pounds well spent on a topic that's ever closer to home and was made at home.
That's why everyone stood and applauded at the end of the Cardiff Screening. A solid debut from a promising director. Well done.
What next?