127 Hours movie review - 5/5 stars

Watch my quick and dirty movie review of 127 hours

I stumbled across this movie by accident while channel surfing - (hundreds of channels with nothing good on!)

I thought to myself, Hey I haven't seen this yet, the synopsis seems interesting, might as well give it a go.

I'm glad I did because 10-15 minutes into the movie and I''m hooked.

This is a story of survival, where a man basically has to save his own life using only what he had on him, which wasn't much to begin with.

It's based on a true story about Aron Ralston. It's set back in 2003 when he went trekking out into the canyonlands of Utah for a dayhike. Even as an experienced outdoorman, he neglected to tell anyone where he was headed off to that day. He didn't have a mobile phone on him - not that he would've received any signals out there anyway.

So he's descending down into a narrow chasm when the rocks give way from beneath and sends him hurtling down. His right arm is pinned by an immovable boulder and keeps him there for the next 5 days with very limited supplies: a dull knife, some water from his hydration bladder and water bottle, a little bit of food, a headlamp, a camcorder and a camera to name a few.

James Franco did a fantastic job with this role considering he was pretty much alone in the majority of the film. It was just him and the camera. He managed to exude cofidencce in one frame and be vulnerable in the next. He was likeable and believable in the part.

The director did an amazing job with capturing it all. The shots were carefully placed, I think, with varying angles to convey space (or lack thereof), claustrophobia, desperation, panic, suspense, and even a bit of hysteria. His use of montage for the flashbacks and hallucinations was well done and not over the top. It maintained a good balance when the scene got too "heavy."

I highly recommend this film. If you like outdoorsy, survival type movies, put this in your must watch list. You'll end up viewing it more than once. Even if this is not your type of movie I think you'll still enjoy all the elements of it. Watch it at least once.


***
ApocalypseHub gives this flick a 5 out of 5 stars

Lessons learned from the movie:
1) always tell someone where you're going
2) always carry a good quality pocket knife
3) carry more food & water than what you need, just in case
4) outdoor adventures are safer with the "buddy system" in place.

Go watch it and let me know what you think.

Editor's note: I really should stop filming screencasts when I'm tired. I'm a lot more high energy than this in person. =/ (oh well, live and learn)

Brazil - A film for the times

Film review by Noel - http://lekayrnthon.wordpress.com/

          Brazil follows Sam Lowry, a desperate, petulant everyman working in his nation’s public sector. Sam’s life is at a dead end; he works in the Department of Records, thinking for his boss, a most paranoid and aged bureaucrat. At night he dreams of soaring through the skies with his blonde haired, blue eyed lady love, the only escape he has from the daily drudgery. Sam possesses no ambition, a fact stated by his mother, an aging socialite, as instrumental in her decision to arrange a promotion. He at first turns it down, but when he discovers that his dream love actually exists he wakes from his lethargy, taking the promotion with the intention of using the power it affords him to find her.
           Brazil is a masterpiece; a comedy that at once entertains and, in ways both obvious and subtle, moves us to thought. The world in which Sam Lowry lives is stifling and oppressive, mistrust and suspicion being encouraged by the powers that be in guarding against an undefined enemy. Posters and slogans encouraging this are to be found everywhere, drawing from both soviet propaganda and 1984, a book which Terry Gilliam, one of Brazil’s writers, its director and a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, intimates to be a heavy influence on the film. Said powers and their agents are made to seem buffoonish and idiotic, but with every chuckle at their actions comes the thought that these people are in charge of this world and their actions, silly as they might seem, impact all of its inhabitants in far reaching ways. Sam does not even appear onscreen until late in the tenth minute of the film, the previous time being used to make clear the exact nature of his society. In them, a mistake is made in a central ministry that causes a man to be bagged and hauled out of his home in the dead of night, his family being left with nothing but a shattered home and a receipt for his arrest.
          Jonathan Pryce is brilliant in the lead role and Kim Greist shines as Jill Layton, ephemeral and seductive in Sam’s dreams and tough-as-nails in reality. They are backed by a cast that performs to perfection; from Robert De Niro in a memorable supporting role as a terrorist heating engineer (no, I’m not making that up), to Katherine Helmond as Sam’s irrepressible mother and Jim Broadbent as Dr. Jaffe, a smarmy plastic surgeon catering to the social elite. The world they inhabit is grey and tired, filled with crushing architecture, charred landscapes and ducts. Yes, ducts. These ducts are everywhere, running in a literal sense, throughout their society. As the logo of the Ministry of Information has arachnid overtones and these ducts are everywhere, one wonders at their real purpose. The only real colour comes from Sam’s dreams and the numerous posters, as well as his mother’s hair, dyed a startling shade of red. The entire production feels futuristic and yet dated, with hi-tech computers possessing typewriting keyboards and miniscule screens equipped with mirrors. Every layer of their society is designed to appear as comic as possible, without slipping into heavy parody.
          All of that, combined with a plot that meanders between reality and Sam’s dreams can be a bit confusing to follow, but this also is felt to be intended. Sam’s decision to accept the promotion is followed by one rash decision after another, as he tries to grab and hold onto happiness. It is telling that his quest for happiness brings him into direct opposition with the aims and policies of his society and nation. That is the brilliance inherent in Brazil; it is at once a hilarious comedy bordering on slapstick and a film that, on several layers, serves up extensive food for thought. Consider a world wherein a man is forced to give up his dreams to fit, where expressing dissent gets you labelled as a terrorist, where the rich and the poor lead markedly different but no more fulfilling lives, where the citizenry are treated as the property of the state, to be dealt with as they please, where working outside of the system affords you more space for good than within it and where ducts are to be found running everywhere. Well, maybe not the ducts. It is in the hilarious yet deadly serious presentation of these matters for our consideration, which Brazil shines. I highly recommend it. 4 stars out of 5.

Brazil - Directors Cut (1985)
Running Time - 142 minutes
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written By Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles Mckeown
Starring: Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowry, Kim Greist as Jill Layton, Robert De Niro as Archibald "Harry" Tuttle, Jim Broadbent as Dr. Jaffe , Michael Palin as Jack Lint and Katherine Helmond as Mrs. Ida Lowry.

Film review: The Running Man

Running Man is set in a dytopian future where America has turned into a Fascist state. Any cultural activity is pretty much censored. Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger who plays Ben Richards, a helicopter pilot for the Federal police who disobeys a direct order from his superior by refusing to shoot down women and children during a food riot. Next thing you know he's locked up and the media had already broadcasted a different remixed version of the actual massacre that sent him to the labor camp.

He manages to escape along with fellow cohorts only to be caught and forced into participating in a game show called The Running Man. The state-run production chooses a prisoner "the runner" to be hunted down by professional "stalkers". A futuristic gladiator-type setting broadcasted live on TV to keep the rest of the population docile. Ben Richards is supposedly given the chance to earn his freedom if he manages to stay alive for the next 3 hours. But we all know there's no "winners" in a dystopian movie, just unmarked graves and a brainwashed population.

The movie is filled with falsified media reports and terrible one-liners such as "I'll be back", "Hey Christmas Tree!! Hey Light Bulb!!", "Here is Sub-Zero, now Plain-Zero", "Get me the Justice Department - entertainment division".

My fave one-liner: "I don't want to be the only a**h*le in heaven."

Lots of familiar faces in this movie:
Jesse Ventura, Mick Fleetwood, Dweezil Zappa, Richard Dawson

The movie is based on a short story by Richard Bachman (Stephen King). I've never read the book but apparently it's very different from what the film ended up being. By different, I mean better. I'll be sure to add that to my reading list.

I'm categorizing this movie under "things you should watch at least once that way you can say you've seen it but nothing more"




Buy the movie and enjoy the dystopia (and the one liners!)