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Fiddling Around (1930)
Not bad for early Disney
This quick little short has all the marking of early animation. Repeated sequences to fill the time, a small amount of dialogue, relying mostly on the image to tell the story, and a very simple plot. None of these things are criticisms of the cartoon though, they are of course limited by the technology available to them, but I point them out because if these are things that have bothered you about vintage cartoons, I am here to tell you that this one won't change your mind.
The story isn't particularly engaging, and very little is really going on, we are mostly watching Mickey play violin on stage. Most of the interesting stuff, the heckling etc, is happening off screen. There are a few minor mishaps throughout the performance that are designed to get a chuckle out of the audience, but overall it's very mundane in terms of the actual cartoon.
However, compared to some of the other animation studios at this time, you can still see how ahead of his time Walt Disney was, even at this early stage. If we compare it to WB and the early Bosko cartoons, there are a lot less repeated frames, a lot more of a coherent plot, and the backgrounds and characters have a lot more detail to them. A great precursor to the work that he would become renowned for in a few decades time.
Khlib (1930)
Interesting editing, but it's mostly Propaganda
OK, so that synopsis makes this film sound a lot more interesting than it actually is. What this film really is, is a forty five minute, silent film, full of Soviet propaganda, and reminders of the might of Soviet power. Now, nearly 100 years later, with a whole bucket of hind sight, we can see how ridiculous these messages were, and we know that it all ended in tears. But in the thirties, if these were the films that were being shown to soviet citizens, it is easy to see how so many bought into the idea.
The acting is pretty terrible, even for a silent film the melodrama here goes a little too far. But there are some really great shots in this film, and some really interesting editing, that make the film a lot more interesting to look at than a lot of the films I have seen from this era.
Lacplesis (1930)
First half enjoyable, second half not so...
The first act or so, which takes place in the fantasy world of Lacplesis is a wonderful example of the kind of surreal fantasy that was being made around this time. All of it rather dark and abstract, full of nefarious characters etc. This portion of the film I really enjoyed. I wished they would have stuck with this setting for the entire time. Once the story switched to the wartime storyline I quickly lost interest, and was confused how the two storylines were meant to be connected. It felt like two entirely different stories to me.
Confusion and frustration with the film. Either way this one felt far too long, and couldn't really hold my attention for that long.
Tonka Sibenice (1930)
Pretty Good, if a little drawn out
The first 'talkie' from the then 'Czechoslovakia', the majority of this film is silent, with a few songs and sound effects thrown in. Overall this one was fairly good. As with a lot of silent movies, to really get the emotion across without dialogue, the acting and storyline really does tend to lean towards the melodramatic, but that is a side-effect of the limitations of the era, and shouldn't really be seen as a negative the way it would be today.
It was a little drawn out, especially the second half, where we see Tonka's past revealed and her subsequent fall from grace. The ending of course is utterly predictable, as these kinds of romantic dramas always are, for a guy with such strong morals, he sure did change his mind quickly.
#22 (mis_ing) (2008)
Interesting Visuals
This is great to look at, the visuals are interesting and done in a different style. But the intended graininess of the picture, the amount of dark lighting, and the lack of dialogue, make it very hard to decipher what is actually happening.
#1915House (2018)
A Great little Amateur Horror Short
Shot in the style of a Youtube-esque renovation vlog, this is a very amateur film, directed, produced, shot and acted by one man. And yet the story is pretty engaging. It starts off pretty innocuous, and because of that, you wait around to see how and why everything goes wrong.
There is some genuinely great atmosphere and dread built up and although I am not sure I entirely grasped the ending, I still had a great time watching it.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Some Films Don't Need Sequels
If you go into this film expecting it to be anything like Stanley Kubrick's 1980s masterpiece of horror, you will leave disappointed. Let's just start there.
Little Danny Torrence is now a grown man, and still haunted by the things that happened to him at the Overlook Hotel when he was a kid (understandably). Most days he drinks his hours away to silence the voices in his head. On a whim he travels to a new town and wile there, gets his life together, and meets a young girl Abra, who 'Shines' just like he does. Against his will he ends up protecting her from a group of powerful psychics, lead by Rose the Hat, who hunt young children with psychic powers in order to feed on them to make themselves live forever. In order to keep Abra safe Danny is forced to return to the overlook hotel and face his ghosts, in ore ways than one.
Generally, this isn't a BAD film. It's entertaining enough. The problem is, it's following one of the most iconic horror movies ever made and it hard to forget that. There are a few great nods to the original, using both cinematography and sets and props to jog the memory of anyone who ever saw the original movie, so that's fun. But the plot is a little slow for me and lacked punch.
Sadly most of this film was just...meh. It lacked the nail biting atmosphere that 'The Shining' had in spades. It lacked a lot of fear of any kind really. The recurring visuals (The naked Lady in the Bathtub for example) that were meant to be scary, by the end just induced eye rolls form me and while the acts of Rebecca Ferguson and her group of cannibalistic psychics were horrific, they weren't really scary. After the amazing experience of watching 'The Shining' last week in the theatre, watching 'Doctor Sleep' was just disappointing. I expected more.
You do wait the whole film to see Danny return to the Overlook, and then when we finally get there, its anti-climactic and not really worth waiting for. Everything they do there to try and scare you has already bee done, you aren't shocked by anything you see. You can tell the director was trying to incorporate things from the first film, but his just comes off as a cheap imitation.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself and leave a comment below.
Luce (2019)
Big build up for little pay off
The trailer for this film is what sold it for me. It appeared to me to be a psychological thriller set in an American high school, centred around the relationship between a Black student and his teacher. And I wasn't exactly wrong...but I wasn't exactly right either.
So Luce is a young Black student, praised by all his teachers and in line to be class valedictorian. But one of his teachers is worried that he is involved in some illegal activity and gets his parents involved. As the web of lies gets more tangled and the tension rises, we start to find that we don't know who to believe.
So lets start by talking about the spectacular performances of all the actors. There are some really seasoned actors and actresses in this film, and they of course give the kind of performances tat you would expect of some of these household names. However, what Is amazing is that the breakout performances by virtually unknown actors are just as good. Kelvin Harrison Jr.'s performance as Luce was truly spectacular and it is his amazing portrayal of the character is what makes the whole thing work. The whole reveal at the end would never work if his performance wasn't as excellent as it was.
Now we need to talk about the ending. But to that we need to look at the pacing of the whole film. So it is a very VERY slow build, as all psychological thrillers are. And you can feel the film building towards a huge climax...and was is the most disappointing thing is that I don't feel like that amazing climax ever really arrives. It was quite unclear at the end what the scheme actually was or what the motivations were, and for me, that is the most important thing in a psychological thriller. Instead I felt unsatisfied. Not a good feeling for the end of a thriller.
Not the best thriller I have seen so far this year and not one that I will remember in a few weeks from now. Enjoyable to watch once, but not one I will be returning too.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
It's not deep or profound, but it is plenty pretty and entertaining
I vaguely remember watching this film on it's release, and feeling a little underwhelmed by it. And I do not think on second watch, it has endeared itself to me anymore than it did the first time.
So, Major Mira Killian is a hybrid between an android and a human. She has a human brain inside an artificial body and she works for a kind of spy organisation, which works to stop cyber crime in a vastly technologically advanced age. But she finds out that not everything she has been told is true and that her past is not as black and white as she thought.
This film was one of the most Visually beautiful things I have ever seen. The city-scape scenes, with the cameras soaring over the top of the downtown area make my jaw drop. Its just stunning. All the sets are gorgeous and all the character visuals are just beautiful. I mean we could have done without the stupid amount of scenes with ScarJo wearing little else than a skin coloured body suit thing. I mean she wasn't naked, but she may have well of been. The airbrushed look to her face was also a little unsettling but I guess it was done to make her look a little more inhuman that the others, to mark her as something other.
Plot wise, there isn't a lot of plot. It's a pretty basic premise, uses a lot of plot points from your average soy thriller and places them in a futuristic setting. It was interesting enough, but it was completely predictable and nothing that happened was really all that shocking. So if you are looking for something that you haven't experienced before, this wont be for you, but if you want some fairly interesting sci-fi then you will be entertained for and hour and a half.
Countdown (2019)
Cheap knock off of Final Destination
WOW! So I have always had a penchant for really tacky and bad horror movies. They always have some kind of redeeming quality, even if it is how hilariously bad they are. Sadly, this one had no redeeming quality...at all!
This film centres around the idea of a cursed app (yes really.) If you download the app, it tells you how long you have to live. However once the timer runs out, you start to be stalked by a grim reaper looking dude and ghosts of dead friends and relatives right up until... you die. And how do you beat this terrible evil? By beating death and staying alive longer than your timer, or if someone dies BEFORE their timer runs out. Are you seeing the similarities to Final Destination yet? Cheating Death etc. etc.
So besides that fact that this story has been done, a lot, and not always in the most successful and enjoyable way, what else is there to say about this film? Well, none of it is memorable. The scenes that are supposed to be emotional, just fall flat. You don't know or care enough about any of the characters to make these scenes carry any emotional weight. You find out very little about anyone in the film at all really, they are all very shallow. The Mobile Phone Sales Guy is probably the character in the film with the most personality and he is on screen for approximately 3 mins.
And can we talk about the ending? So yes, Peter Faccinelli's character was a complete a**hole, and really did deserve to be hit with that tire iron, but he is literally there to serve the ending of the film, he serves no other purpose at all, another wasted character. And then the ambiguousness f the final moments of the film where it looks like they are hoping to hold the door open for a sequel? Please God no!
I can't tell if this is meant to be a cautionary tale about reading the terms and conditions or if someone genuinely thought this idea was going to do well, but sadly neither are true and this whole film was a disaster.
Jaws (1975)
Its a classic for a reason
What can I say about Jaws that hasn't already been said a thousand times in the last 44 years. There is a reason that this is considered a classic. It won 3 oscars and as on pretty much every 'Greatest movie ever made' list that I have ever read. So what made this film so iconic?
If you have been under a rock for the last 45 years, Jaws is about a small holiday town on an island somewhere on the east coast-ish area of the US. This town is being plagued by a giant shark and the chief of police not only has to deal with a man eating fish, but with politicians that don't want to risk loosing the town's summer income in order to deal with the problem.
It is pulse-pounding, nerve shredding tension right from the start. And there probably isn't a film aficionado left on earth who doesn't know John Williams famous score for this film. That serves as a way of really dialling up the suspense. And what is so great about this, is that it does all of this without you actually ever getting a good look at the shark. That is left entirely up to your imagination, as all good scary movies should be. That way you are naturally inclined to imagine the worst thing you can think of. Which in a film like this, means you get all the scares with none of the expensive CGI bills.
The acting isn't always the best, the brief glimpses of the shark we do get make it obvious that the thing is basically just a stuffed puppet, and it isn't exactly the fastest paced but it IS a classic and one that every film fanatic should see at least once for sure.
Recommended for fans of:
Jurassic Park
The Thing