I was very impressed by this adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Mist'. I have been a fan of the story since it came out and have played the text game and have heard the 3-D audio version of it. This is a masterful suspense/monster movie that puts an ensemble cast into the untenable situation of being in a deteriorating situation they cannot escape from. We watch as alliances are formed, religious paranoia takes hold and, nicely, the movie takes the time to establish characters whom we come to care for before the true action begins. I dock it a couple of points because some of the monsters seemed a little too cgi, and the middle lags a bit, but the much talked about ending is indeed awesome and I was most impressed by the director's decision to keep the music soundtrack down and even eliminate it completely during many of the action sequences. So many movies nowadays crank the music up to 11 to make up for the fact that their suspense scenes do not work. This movie does. I was breathlessly on the edge of my seat for most of it, even though I was already familiar with the story. Highly recommended.
Reviews
5 Reviews
Pan's Labyrinth
(2006)
Often hard to watch but ultimately very rewarding and powerful
18 February 2007
This movie is pretty brilliant, I would say that it is a great movie, including a quite excellent performance by the male lead (villain) who the producers cautioned the director would not be able to deliver the role. Boy were they wrong. He deserves an award for his performance. Much of it was pretty brutal and rather hard to sit there and watch but I was very glad to have seen this. I was really glad that the filmmakers had the good taste to cut away at some points and didn't show on screen some things that happened in the story.
It concerns a gruesome battle going on between fascist forces in Spain and resistance forces circa 1940's I think, and in the midst of this is a little girl who gets involved in a rich fantasy world of magic and monsters. It is a rather intense, emotionally powerful, enchanting and violent movie. A dark fantasy.
Pan's Labyrinth is about many things and works on many different levels, but for me it seemed to be showing that in brutal, desperate times as in the story, some people will follow orders without question so that they can sort of save their own hides for a time, while others will do the compassionate, right things for others around them, even if it means giving up their own life and die with their moral boots on. And it suggest that maybe there is a higher system of things that is testing us to see what side of that line we will fall on and who we really are under such circumstances. A brilliant movie.
It concerns a gruesome battle going on between fascist forces in Spain and resistance forces circa 1940's I think, and in the midst of this is a little girl who gets involved in a rich fantasy world of magic and monsters. It is a rather intense, emotionally powerful, enchanting and violent movie. A dark fantasy.
Pan's Labyrinth is about many things and works on many different levels, but for me it seemed to be showing that in brutal, desperate times as in the story, some people will follow orders without question so that they can sort of save their own hides for a time, while others will do the compassionate, right things for others around them, even if it means giving up their own life and die with their moral boots on. And it suggest that maybe there is a higher system of things that is testing us to see what side of that line we will fall on and who we really are under such circumstances. A brilliant movie.
Children of Men
(2006)
Wow. Just Wow.
19 January 2007
'Children of Men' can be described as a speculative fiction thriller set in the UK 20 years in the future.
I was really blown away by this movie. I wasn't quite expecting it and went into it knowing extremely little about it which is probably how it actually should be viewed. I picked up right away on the technical reasons for its specialness which I won't go into in order not to spoil anything about it. But I will say that it is perhaps the most uncompromising, haunting and compelling vision of the future I may have ever seen and that it is very rich with a lot of heavy details, many of which could have been the whole subject of a whole lesser movie in itself. I read the synopsis of the plot on Wikipedia to better understand it and I literally had to stop for a few minutes after reading each sentence and let what they were saying sink in, in light of what I had seen. It is quite often extremely intense almost to the point of making you want to look away from the screen, but they do not achieve this intensity really in any of the traditional Hollywood ways. I'd have to see it again, but I don't even think they used any music during those sequences. It has a very raw feel to it and yet is very sophisticated at the same time, but it is not totally relentless either. The makers of the movie were very clever in how they marketed it. It has been a very successful movie at least in the U.S. without really any commercial hype behind it, relying almost totally on word of mouth and it very much deserves that success. It makes V for Vendetta look like a Saturday morning cartoon. The violence in it is very very realistic and grim and disturbing, as in fact violence should be! It's not glorified or gratuitous in any way. This is not a movie to see if you don't like movies that give you a lot to think about. Quite frequently while watching it, I had to remind myself again and again that I was just watching a movie that somebody had produced. That says a lot to me because I tend to be pretty jaded and cynical when it comes to movies, I've seen so many of the moves they can make. But I got the impression that effect was a pretty typical reaction to it. No doubt one of the best movies, if not the best movie, to come out in 2006, it will give me a lot to remember and ponder about for a long time to come.
I was really blown away by this movie. I wasn't quite expecting it and went into it knowing extremely little about it which is probably how it actually should be viewed. I picked up right away on the technical reasons for its specialness which I won't go into in order not to spoil anything about it. But I will say that it is perhaps the most uncompromising, haunting and compelling vision of the future I may have ever seen and that it is very rich with a lot of heavy details, many of which could have been the whole subject of a whole lesser movie in itself. I read the synopsis of the plot on Wikipedia to better understand it and I literally had to stop for a few minutes after reading each sentence and let what they were saying sink in, in light of what I had seen. It is quite often extremely intense almost to the point of making you want to look away from the screen, but they do not achieve this intensity really in any of the traditional Hollywood ways. I'd have to see it again, but I don't even think they used any music during those sequences. It has a very raw feel to it and yet is very sophisticated at the same time, but it is not totally relentless either. The makers of the movie were very clever in how they marketed it. It has been a very successful movie at least in the U.S. without really any commercial hype behind it, relying almost totally on word of mouth and it very much deserves that success. It makes V for Vendetta look like a Saturday morning cartoon. The violence in it is very very realistic and grim and disturbing, as in fact violence should be! It's not glorified or gratuitous in any way. This is not a movie to see if you don't like movies that give you a lot to think about. Quite frequently while watching it, I had to remind myself again and again that I was just watching a movie that somebody had produced. That says a lot to me because I tend to be pretty jaded and cynical when it comes to movies, I've seen so many of the moves they can make. But I got the impression that effect was a pretty typical reaction to it. No doubt one of the best movies, if not the best movie, to come out in 2006, it will give me a lot to remember and ponder about for a long time to come.
King Kong
(2005)
Mind-blowing
14 December 2005
I kept thinking while I watched Peter Jackson's King Kong that this is the movie I've been waiting 30 years to see, since 1976, when the first remake of King Kong came out. It is a grand early Christmas present.
I also couldn't help wondering what if this movie came out in 1933, what would audiences have made of it? When the original was made they chose to cut out a scene (now lost) with giant spiders because it was 'too intense'... this movie would have definitely sent theater-goers in 1933 running screaming from the theater into the street... kind of like they do in the film itself, set also in 1933. There's a lot of self-reference to movies in this movie about making movies amongst other things, but it's primarily a love story at it's core. A heart-wrenching love story, that in the telling, and in the story itself, now takes it's place in the firmament of spectacular modern-day mythologies such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Titanic.
The action is incredibly intense, sometimes almost too much so. Past the first hour, I just sat there much of the time with my mouth wide open and my eyes agape. The whole finale is so dizzyingly realistic it's hard to imagine it not really happening. (If you're afraid of heights, beware). And the character of Kong is so evocative and expressive throughout it's really hard most of the time to remember that he's cgi. This really is a film to be seen, and appreciated on the big screen.
I think that, in a technical sense, this movie is another high-water mark that T2 and Roger Rabbit and Jurassic Park were for their times. I think it will definitely sweep the visual effects (and sound) awards and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't get best picture of the year come Oscar time. The sound design is excellent. You can hear every insect of Skull Island and Kong's roar is truly menacing. I would be interested in learning how they created the roar. I even remember hearing a squealing velociraptor whiz past my right ear during a chase scene.
Naomi Watts is quite good in the role of Ann Darrow (played by Fay Wray in the original 1933 version) especially when one considers that much of her performance is non-verbal. Jack Black is also good as the maniacal Orson Welles-resembling director turned evil monetary opportunist.
On the downside, I give it a 9 because the special effects, in detail, in some sequences, didn't look quite finished (but they do come across quite strong for the most part) and some pretty blatant product placements including one for Universal Studios itself. Also the first hour does drag on too much. Plus, as I say, the movie is a bit too intense in some of the action sequences for my tastes anyway.
Some trivia: Keep an ear out for a line near the beginning referencing Fay Wray and also even a line stolen from a Bill Hicks comedy routine spoken by a producer at a movie screening.
I also couldn't help wondering what if this movie came out in 1933, what would audiences have made of it? When the original was made they chose to cut out a scene (now lost) with giant spiders because it was 'too intense'... this movie would have definitely sent theater-goers in 1933 running screaming from the theater into the street... kind of like they do in the film itself, set also in 1933. There's a lot of self-reference to movies in this movie about making movies amongst other things, but it's primarily a love story at it's core. A heart-wrenching love story, that in the telling, and in the story itself, now takes it's place in the firmament of spectacular modern-day mythologies such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Titanic.
The action is incredibly intense, sometimes almost too much so. Past the first hour, I just sat there much of the time with my mouth wide open and my eyes agape. The whole finale is so dizzyingly realistic it's hard to imagine it not really happening. (If you're afraid of heights, beware). And the character of Kong is so evocative and expressive throughout it's really hard most of the time to remember that he's cgi. This really is a film to be seen, and appreciated on the big screen.
I think that, in a technical sense, this movie is another high-water mark that T2 and Roger Rabbit and Jurassic Park were for their times. I think it will definitely sweep the visual effects (and sound) awards and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't get best picture of the year come Oscar time. The sound design is excellent. You can hear every insect of Skull Island and Kong's roar is truly menacing. I would be interested in learning how they created the roar. I even remember hearing a squealing velociraptor whiz past my right ear during a chase scene.
Naomi Watts is quite good in the role of Ann Darrow (played by Fay Wray in the original 1933 version) especially when one considers that much of her performance is non-verbal. Jack Black is also good as the maniacal Orson Welles-resembling director turned evil monetary opportunist.
On the downside, I give it a 9 because the special effects, in detail, in some sequences, didn't look quite finished (but they do come across quite strong for the most part) and some pretty blatant product placements including one for Universal Studios itself. Also the first hour does drag on too much. Plus, as I say, the movie is a bit too intense in some of the action sequences for my tastes anyway.
Some trivia: Keep an ear out for a line near the beginning referencing Fay Wray and also even a line stolen from a Bill Hicks comedy routine spoken by a producer at a movie screening.
Flightplan
(2005)
A good thriller but gradually turns more and more unbelievable
7 December 2005
This movie has a really great premise and is very interesting for the first 2/3 of the movie and is reminiscent of great 'in the air' thrillers such as Airport. Jodi Foster plays a mother who loses her daughter aboard a plane. Beyond that I won't describe what happens. It is immensely entertaining and riveting for the first 2/3 of the movie. The performances are good. And the casting is very good. Foster, as usual, has a very good capacity for conveying suppressed tension, even panic. However, when the viewer finds out what is 'really happening', it's hard to suspend disbelief, in a fundamental way. I found this to be a flawed thriller that could have been great except for the third act which was ultimately pretty disappointing.
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