welcome to shutter island, we hope you enjoy your stay

the sure sign of a great movie is that when the credits are rolling – you wish you could watch it again… immediately!

this is no truer than with scorsese's incredible thriller, shutter island, which i watched for the second time last week.

in case you haven’t caught it, teddy (dicaprio’s troubled character) is a federal marshal sent to the island asylum to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient. accompanying him is his newly assigned partner chuck (raincoat ruffalo). you know immediately that this investigation is going to be anything but straight forward, especially when we meet up with dr. cawley (creepy kingsley), who proves to be of little help to our investigators.

scorsese has created an incredible visual treat. here we have a film noir that harks back to the old movies of hitchcock, and it effectively grabs you by the shoulders and drags you in. the dark lighting, long shadows, awesome music, the storm that isolates the island from the mainland, the lighthouse [who doesn’t love a creepy lighthouse?!?] and let’s not forget the memorable characters who occupy this mad island.

all that aside, it’s the raw emotion that you get from the movie of both the characters and their surroundings, that make this movie so incredible intense. all the characters serve a purpose, they are not just empty plot devices, and they are fully realised, and help make the movie deeply moving and occasionally very hard to watch.

this is not just a movie with adult content, this is one of those rare hollywood movies that’s not aimed at teenagers suffering from adhd. it’s an intelligent, emotional movie aimed at those of us who don’t just want to watch a movie – we want to experience it.

great filmmakers like scorsese, malick, haneke, salles, chan-wook park and aronofsky should all be encouraged [if not forced] to make films outside of their usual area of excellence and show the likes of bay, sommers, ratner and even spielberg a thing or six.

anyway – i digress – shutter island is a great example of a modern thriller, with an ending that has kept myself and my friends talking since i first saw it last year. 

elizabeth

i’m not generally a fan of costume dramas, but i am known to partake of the odd one. going way back in our own history is intriguing, and when done this well, can be fascinating. i know that it’s never entirely structured on fact and there is always the element of having to please the viewer and bring home the bacon, but to get a glimpse of what life was like nearly 500 years ago is mesmerising.

the movie follows elizabeth i ascension and early days on the throne. she was the second daughter of king henry viii, and is a protestant. queen mary i, the first daughter of henry viii, is catholic as per her father. their religious differences threatens elizabeth's life [even the pope sanctioned her assassination!), and then severe illness sees off queen mary.

elizabeth is now queen and surrounded by advisors who may or may not be plotting against her. it’s gripping stuff.

cate blanchett is stunning as the young queen, and also geoffrey rush is brilliant as her ruthlessly loyal bodyguard, sir walsingham.

this is one of those historical dramas, when the final credits have rolled, that makes you want to go and find out more about this time in our country’s colourful history.

there are historical inaccuracies present – such as mary queen of scotts being killed in the chamber rather than beheaded – as the history books state. why this needed to be altered for the movie I do not know – but it doesn’t distract too much.

in my honest opinion we should be spending more time teaching our children the distant history of this country and a little less time focused on ww2.

the hurt locker

well the student movie night didn't go quite as planned. there was some miscommunication regarding who was actually bringing along the dvd - resulting in us not having one to show. oops!
anyway, after gaz took a trip home [btw - i'm not referring to myself in the third person, it's a different gaz!] we settled down in the cold churchhouse loft with snacks and our very large screen to watch 'the hurt locker'.
i could go on about how it garnered best film oscar [amongst many] but i personally don't put any worth on the flakey goldness of the oscars as they really only have one purpose - and that's to do a little self glorification. as it stands, the hurt locker *was* the best film of that year... period!
so it was good to get a chance to watch it again. it's not really a standard war movie in that there is no over the top action, non-stop large scale battles, or even the psychological examinations a la platoon. it's a relatively small film, the focus being on one man and the 2 or 3 men who he works with. these guys are bomb disposal experts - in iraq. we come into the movie part way through their tour, ride along with them in the incredibly tense situations of ied's that they have to deal with along with snipers - they are never safe, and you get a real sense of that. then we leave them in the same way we were introduced to them. it's great to see a movie that breaks the mould.
that's all there is to this movie. it's tense, sometimes slow, often thoughtful, sometimes moving, always brilliant.
there were other good movies that year [avatar, inglourious basterds, district 9, up] but there really was no contender for *best* movie...

the book of eli

another movie night coming up this w/e with some friends and students from the uni.

the movie of choice this month is the ‘book of eli’. i have already seen this twice, but it's a good'un!

denzel is eli, a lone drifter travelling the open highways of a washed-out post-apocalyptic landscape. in his possession is the only remaining bible in the whole world [oddly enough, he also seems to be the only remaining black man!]. gary oldman is carnegie, a crazy [no surprises there] despot controlling/trying to control a small town. carnegie wants the bible so he can use it to… have more control over the people!

into town strolls eli, and that’s when the touch paper gets lit.

personally i’m a bit of  a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, although some aspects do get rather repetitive - lone wanderer – check, washed out landscape – check, cannibalistic animal behaviour – check. however, this is not your usual run of the mill p-a movie. this is a far more powerful movie than you first realise.

the film is essentially a christian metaphor. eli appears to be protected by some greater supernatural force, on a journey guided by "God". this is a movie about faith and believing in something/someone bigger than yourself. if you haven’t already – go see.

even though it does have it’s weak points, this is an excellent film.

yes ‘the book of eli’ is violent – but so is most of the old testament. hey, sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

faith in the one true God in the world that we live in today looks a certain way, this same faith probably looked very different 200 years ago, and who knows how it will look in another 200 years. even in this day and age it differs from country to country. we are relatively un-persecuted here in the west, most of which amounts to people thinking of christians as different or weird or even weak in some way. our actual physical life and the lives of our loved ones are not threatened with *death* because of our faith in Jesus Christ. how much would we be willing to stand firm in our faith if it were *really* put to the test? would we cave in as the disciple peter did and deny him or would we stand strong and face the consequences?

Jesus said to martha: “the one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. and everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. do you believe this?"

so?... do you?...

one train you'll want to miss! [sorry]

"oh look, an unstoppable train."

truth time... i love tony scott movies. i know i know, they are loud, shaky, bold [in colour] and i think i'm right in saying - uses pretty much every trope going when it comes to action movies.

all the way from top gun through crimson tide, days of thunder, true romance, enemy of the state, deja vu, man on fire and even pelham 123, they are all great fun and cheesier than a giant cheese thing covered in cheese!

which is why i'm a little upset by having to confess that i absolutely hated unstoppable. i think he's gone too far. with both the tropes and the cheese!

i'm not giving anything away here when i tell you how the movie begins. see it as a warning if you will.

a huuuuuge freight train, uncoupled brakes that will be "connected when we've moved her to the other track!" [1st doh!]. a chubby driver who has to then disembark said train in order to change the track direction, obviously he doesn't make it [2nd doh!]. the jerking of the train causes the throttle lever to move into full steam ahead [3rd doh!]. a train full of school children coming straight at it on the same track [4th doh!]. denzel is a train driver a few days from retirement [5th doh!] and then there's the cocky rookie who comes good [6th doh!] and so on and so on ad nauseum.

it really doesn't get better. for instance half the movie is showing the story on foxnews, interviewing bystranders who are basically telling us what we are already watching on screen. *yawn*

i'm even bored of writing a review of it...

an unstoppable train that needs to be stopped but can't because it's unstoppable... until someone stops it!!
nuff said!

movie vs book

haven’t written a movie review for a while. so let’s get stuck in…

the last movie i watched was the boy in the stripped pj's.

i read the book about two years ago and it blew me away. by the end i was crying like a little girl, and had to force myself to pick it up and finish reading it to it's inevitable heartbreaking ending.

i put off seeing this movie as i *knew* it wouldn't match up to the book, and i knew that however 'great' the film was, to me it would be a huge disappointment.

and so to the story.

it's 1942 in berlin, and a family receives good news: daddy has been promoted…

…however daddy’s promotion is to the post of commandant of an extermination camp.
this story, however, is not about daddy. It’s about bruno, his 8 year old son. bruno is blissfully unaware of what his father is involved in. to him the people in the fields out the back of his new home are just oddly dressed farm workers.
like so many young boys, bruno wants to be an explorer, and it’s bruno’s forbidden explorations in his back garden that bring him to the fence that surrounds the ‘farm’.
behind the fence sits a boy his own age, shmuel. shmuel is experiencing the same loneliness as bruno and very quickly a bond builds between the two boys, but they are both unaware of the horrible reality of their situation.
you can’t say that you “enjoy” a movie like this. you simply observe it and hopefully - if it’s been done right - it will absorb you. also – I feel I need to point out that this isn’t a war film. It’s a film about a family experiencing change beyond comprehension. coming to a realisation that so many must have gone through.
Even though I think the impact of the film was muted due to me having read the novel, I have to say this is one of the most human stories about this dark era that i have ever seen.

discover the cove

i love a good documentary. i’m not talking about your al gore powerpoint nonsense, i’m talking about the ‘real’ documentary, where there is real footage with real people in real situations.
‘the cove’ is one such documentary.
it’s true that the best documentary is one that manipulates audience into accepting it’s viewpoint as the truth and nothing but the truth, but when the subject matter is as visceral as it is in this movie, it’s difficult to feel anything other than sickened.
‘the cove’ is directed by louie psihoyos, the founder of ops [oceanic preservation society], and his movie documents the goings-on in taiji, japan. taiji is a small place that to your normal visitor gives the impression that it loves sealife – there are boats shaped like whales and giftshops packed with fluffy dolphins and whales, flags, and other paraphernalia. however what actually happens in the town of taiji, between september and march every year, is the slaughter of thousands of dolphins!
ironically, the crusader for this cause is ric o'barry, the guy who trained and stared in ‘flipper’ in the 60s, and introduced the idea of capturing dolphins for ‘entertainment’. he has dedicated the last 35 years of his life as an activist against the capture and senseless killing of these beautiful, intelligent creatures.
the power and message of this movie is very hard to ignore.

as we grow up we are aware of certain causes that are fighting for the restoration of order to so much of this world. these kind of things have been happening for years, but i find it deeply disturbing that the older i get the more i discover about the wanton destruction of our planets habitats and life in almost every area.
we cannot be in-activists when we see so much that is wrong with this world that needs putting right. and as the movie says, we cannot wait for governments to make the changes that are needed, as the governments are part of the problem. we as individuals need to make a stand.
save the dolphin
save the whale
save the brown bear
save the trees
for goodness sake, we are stewards of this world. charged with it’s care and nurture by it’s creator.
…save the planet!