This is just an amazingly well-shot, well-acted thriller from the UK that in actuality explores a lot more than you think it does as you watch it. It's an exploration of modern urban blight, human weakness, and revenge. Really methodically paced, so you can just marinate in the performances and the cinematography. The final act is devastating.
This came out a few years ago and I caught it on the Sundance channel about three-quarters over. At that particular moment I saw a sequence where Anton Yelchin has an acid trip and the music was simply too beautiful to ignore. As soon as the light guitar started playing this hypnotic wonderful score, the narrator of the filmstrip he watches of his anthropologist father in the amazon begins talking to him about how he is a member of the tribe and it was so well done I finished the movie and then went back and watched the beginning the next night it was on. The beginning is pretty light, but the end payoff is earned and there is a lot about adolescence and longing that seemed pretty universal to me. Great performances by Donald Sutherland, Yelchin, and even Chris Evans.
Ralph Richardson really makes O'Neill's language sing in this adaptation. I read the play in college and thought, "Man, this is really long. I like it, but it's sooooo looong." Well, Richardson's character is the eogotistical theatrical patriarch of the Tyrone family and it's that imperiousness and command of language that pushes you through it. I can't wait to see some of his other work, he is a master. Watched this for research for GCW. Not so much.
What can I say about this one? Another long movie but cinematically worth every minute. The acting is top shelf and the photography absolutely breathtaking. I'd never seen Omar Sharif in anything before either and I was really impressed all around. This was Dalton's pick and he did not disappoint.
Hats off to Guy Ritchie for getting such a lovable crew of thieves together. This cast could not go wrong. I pretty much liked everyone before I saw this, but the work here pushes them each a little outside their Hollywood leading men image and makes them all really goofy. Really goofy. I can only imagine what fun it must have been to work on this. Got to hand it to Mark Strong, man. The guy can really do it. And he's starting to become a household name after Sherlock Holmes and the upcoming Kick-Ass. We'll see.
Wow, surprise movie number six that I watched this very afternoon. Had to watch it with subtitles to get all of the dialogue, but by god this is right on the line between funny and scary, mainly because it deals with the ineptitude of government and outrageous behavior in politics. Hilarious seemingly improv-ed set pieces of miscommunication and incompetence in the grand, dry English tradition. Great accent research, too. I could listen to the Scots and the British and all the regional dialects in between for days.
+1.jpg)
And now that I wrote about a funny/scary movie it made me think of this one which is actually just flat-out terrifying scary. It basically chronicles a female suicide bomber being groomed by faceless, nameless handlers as she prepares for her mission to kill herself in Times Square. Not filled with heart pounding action sequences or even a ton of dialogue, the movie is instead an intimate study of routine and stubborn humanity. The camera exhaustively follows her going through actions that are entirely mundane yet loaded with menace because of the context. A scene in which she washes her face and brushes her teeth on the morning of the deed is slowly, sickeningly heightened as she meticulously uses every item in her toiletry bag and then throws those items away in turn: face cream, followed by her toothbrush, followed by the toothpaste, never to be needed again. There is also a lot of disturbing metaphor for the process of filmmaking as a whole. Getting details correct, getting the presentation just so, hair, makeup, costume, lighting. . . all these things appear in the film in some way or another but through the twisted lens of terrorism. To say nothing of the fact that the lead woman is walked through all of these details by people of different races, frustrating the natural human desire to lump one people together as the clear enemy. A very haunting, finely crafted movie that takes its time and is all the scarier for the investment. Some very powerful New York verite location shooting, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment