Full Metal Jacket - Private Pile

The opening half of Full Metal Jacket is just awesome. The drill sergant is one of the funniest and most frightening characters in cinema. His eventual fate is the scene that I've chosen from the film. Private Pile has been turned by the drill sergant from a bimbling fool into a cold-blooded killer, now he's about the demonstrate that if you instill fear, hatred and bloodlust into a generation of young men you shouldn't be surprised if they behave as such.

Network - a prophecy on the future of Television

I thought I'd post some videos from YouTube of some of my favourite ever movie scenes. YouTube is a great place to go to for re-living classic moments of cinema, especially while bored at work.




I thought I'd kick things off with a classic scene from a movie which I knew nothing about until about a year ago. 'Network' is a film that was made in the early 1970s yet somehow manages to predict the rise of modern television. From reality TV, to the phenomenon of happy slapping and the conflation of opinion with news in the media, 'Network' is most impressive in that it could easily have been made only a few years ago as a satire on the Fox News Network.

In this scene Howard Beale - the news presenter who has had a nervous breakdown on air and has been turned into an overnight celebrity - is paraded in front of our screens for our entertainment. Although his sermon is one of portentous doom, his terrifying words warning of the future of television fall on deaf ears as what he says is perceived as mere entertainment.

"When the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome god-damn propaganda force in the whole godless world; who knows what shit will be peddled for truth?" - whenever I hear that line it makes my skin tingle.

The Spirit - some style, no substance

"The Spirit" is the latest in a fairly short string of films written or directed by Frank Miller and in his now well-established comic book style. By describing his films as being in the comic book style I am doing my best to categorise a visual styling which needs to be seen to be understood. Half cartoon and half live action, the most outstanding thing about this style is the way that the colours in the film have been altered from the subtle hues one might expect in real life to the large blocks of inked colours one might find in a comic book. This visual style is great to watch. In "Sin City" it added a level of despair to the grim violence of the terrifying cityscape in which the film was set as well as helping to suspend disbelief.

All well and good. However it's not enough to keep basing films on this.

"The Spirit" tells the story of the eponymous hero, who is - it is never really explained - some kind of undead good guy who runs around the roof-tops of his city putting bad things right. Fair enough for a set up, but that's just about it. There's no real development beyond that as The Spirit fights against a villain (The Octopus) as he searches for some kind of blood of some hero that will make him immortal... (falls asleep). The film almost from scene one falls into the dumb comic book trap of treating the bad guys as insane asylum escapees while the good guys are dark and brooding - and if you're a woman then you'd better be a super-hot vixen, or The Spirit wont care about you!

I like to think I'm not too much of a movie prude, but there's only so much of this I can take. Frank Miller is trying to base an entire film around a visual style and a pile of nonsensical characters without personality, motivation or any decent lines. It's not just the characters that make no sense, the film looks like it has been written in one go without anyone editing the plot. Scenes which should be played seriously look like parodies, scenes which are clearly meant to be funny fall totally flat (Samuel L Jackson and Scarlett Johansson interrogating The Spirit in Nazi outfits - what on earth is that all about?).

I left the cinema not really understanding what I had seen, or in fact why I had bothered given that every review I had read said it was shit. Apparently Miller is currently working on sequels to "Sin City" and "300", please can someone who knows him go over his script before he starts shooting. Otherwise we're going to end up with yet more style over substance.

Slumdog - worthy of the hype

Let's kick these reviews off with a couple of films I have seen recently, firstly we'll look at something which is pretty much universally being accepted as great, then I'll move on to something that I can't find anyone saying a good word about.

Slumdog Millionaire is a film which I first heard chatter about ages ago when Danny Boyle was interviewed on the Radio 5 Live film show. At the time it seemed like something I might go and see at some point. Since then though the hype over this has snowballed to the point that when I went to see it on Saturday evening at the Reading Vue it felt like something of an event movie. Like when there's a new Harry Potter film out or something like that. Such was the general excitement that the showing me and chums had intended to go to was sold out - one of the many reasons not to go to the cinema on a Saturday evening.

When we eventually got in to the screen and were able to watch this hugely hyped film, it became clear to me that the hype was well-placed. The film follows the story of a day in the life of Jamal Malik, a guy who becomes a contestant on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", gets to the final question and is then arrested - suspected of cheating. The story of his life then unfolds as he tells the police of his upbringing, of his life in the slums, mistreatment by local criminals, falling in love and most recently his job as a teaboy. Through this story we get an insight into who Jamal is and - most importantly - how he came to know what he knows and come so close to beating "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"?

Not only is this a charming tale of growing up and coming of age in the face of the sheer terror of India's slums, it is also a story about class warfare which is surprisingly funny. One favourite moment of mine was when the policeman reacts in surprise at Jamal being unable to tell him which famous Indian is on a bank note - Jamal merely asks the policeman who stole a bicycle in the local neighbourhood the other day, because Jamal does. When the policeman reacts unknowingly, Jamal's point is proven - knowledge which is common in one walk of life is a deep mystery in another. The fact that the slumdog can't answer questions which everyone else finds easy does not make him stupid.

As if this wasn't enough the film builds up to a resounding finale - when it opens we don't get to see if he actually wins "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", just that he makes it to the final question. Can you see where the climax of the film is heading...

I left the cinema with a huge grim on my face, not least due to the fantastically vibrant Bolywood style dance sequence that plays out during the first few minutes of the credits. There's quite a bit of influence of Danny Boyle in there too, plenty of frenetic camera work reminiscent of "28 Days Later" or the final few minutes of "Sunshine". It's simply a great film.

Go and see it!

Hello and welcome to my blog. Here I will be posting film reviews in the near future. This is an extension to my website which has existed for several years but has received little attention from me recently. The intention is that this blog will replace the film reviews portion of the website.

With luck some people will look at this blog and enjoy what they read.

Thanks

Deano