Showing posts with label Revisited. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revisited. Show all posts

Friday, October 4, 2013

Revisited: The Grey

Hey readers, I formally apologize for not posting any content for the last month. I was involved in an accident which landed me in the hospital and got me stuck in a cast for three and a half months and on top of that, I've been very busy with school and such and I simply haven't had time to write here or even go to the movies.
That being said, here's an article that I wrote for a journalism class that I'm taking. The teacher I submitted it to said that it was one of the best papers he's ever seen from a student so, yeah, enjoy it and please excuse the lack of sarcastic tone, as this was more of a formal review.



There are some films that take the same old, tired formula of movie-making, reskin it and call it a new thing and there are other films which seek to create something new. The Grey is the latter of these types.
The 2011 film, The Grey stars Liam Neeson and is about a small group of survivors trying to stay alive after a plane crash in the dead of Alaskan winter. The handful of men finds their situation to be increasingly dire as they realize that they’re being hunted by a pack of highly intelligent and territorial wolves.
While the rest of the cast is a bit dull, Liam Neeson does a phenomenal job at acting out the film’s emotionally distraught protagonist who is struggling to cope with the (implied) death of his wife. In the very first scene, he attempts suicide but is interrupted and loses his nerve. Over the course of the movie, he acts out some impressively dramatic moments that can be heart wrenching to watch such as in one scene where he fails to rescue a drowning man and the audience can really feel a sense of agony over the situation largely thanks to the convincing acting.



Despite the general blandness of the bulk of the supporting cast, this film does not take death lightly. Whereas in most films, characters are simply picked off and are hardly spared a moment’s remorse from the crowd members, here every death is an emotional undertaking. The Grey forces the audience to feel for every character and one of the ways it does this is through it’s remarkable ability to illustrate a situation in a way where it’s easy to insert yourself into the film.
The best example of this, and what is likely the most poignant scene in the movie, would be during a scene wherein one of the survivors, who has sustained a substantially damaging leg wound, decides that he’s gone far enough and sits down never to move again. The sequence is painted in such a way that it’s easy to put yourself into it. The feeling of sweat and humidity building up underneath your heavy winter coat, the exhaustion burning through your legs. Every step you take you’re trying to convince yourself to only walk but a few more steps, the sense of dread as the gap between you and your party-members becomes wider and wider. This scene goes on for several minutes before they arrive at the conclusion to leave the man to die as per his own request. The tragic process of simply losing the will to live is captured amazingly well during this sequence right down to a final lingering shot of this man just sitting there, waiting for death. It lets the audience fully grasp the impact of what’s just occurred, reminds them that this is not a fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after and it lets the man ponder over whether he made the proper decision.



The film is accented with a fantastic score as well as unique and creative cinematography. What is overall a standout and impressive feat of cinema is belittled by the looming fact that the wolves depicted in the film are unrealistic. Audiences simply cannot buy into this movie due to that one absurd detail. Years of prior study shows that The Grey is anything but an accurate showcasing of wolves in action and for some reason, this is grounds to debunk the film in it’s entirety.
What does that say about modern audiences and the future of cinema? Today’s audiences have lost the ability to suspend their disbelief. The films of today are endlessly nit-picked for even the most trivial of details. Rather than stand back and look at the big picture, or simply allow themselves to forget about reality and enjoy the film, moviegoers today prefer to dissect every individual moment and scan for mistakes, unrealism and other such incidences of non-perfection.
This truly spells doom for the already bleak future of cinema. In a world that is diseased with sequels, remakes, recycled plots, CGI and shameless money grabbing, film must now also contend with audiences unwillingness to simply sit back and appreciate what’s flashing across the silver screen. What is truly an extraordinary display of emotion, drama, grit and tragedy is overridden by morose, over-analytical, acrimony; almost as if audiences watch films only to find it’s mistakes.



The Grey is a beautiful yet horrifying story of life and death. It’s a heartbreaking tale of men who are fully aware of their own impending demise and must struggle to embrace it of their own accord. Despite that many criticize it’s unrealism, one would be hard-pressed to find a film where death and hopelessness feel more real. With all of the movies out there, where faceless actors are killed off and thrown aside without so much as a flinch, The Grey stands out.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Revisited: The Dark Knight Rises


Welcome to One Year Later, where I look at movies that came out about a year ago re-review it and see if it still holds up. Today I will be revisiting The Dark Knight Rises given that it's release date was July 16, 2012 and that my first initial review of it was, in my opinion, very shoddily written.

The epic finale that is The Dark Knight Rises is not by any means your run-of-the-mill hollywood blockbuster. But if you've seen either of the other films in the trilogy, then you should know full-well what you're getting into with this film.
This decade has ushered in a new age where superhero and comic-book inspired films are taken very, very seriously. Many of the biggest summer blockbusters coming out these days are about some kind of caped crusader and they're often largely grounded in realism. Sure you have to suspend your disbelief, buying that a radioactive spider bite could make a hormonally stressed-out high-schooler into a crime fighting machine but it's still handled with remarkable realism and I believe this trend can be traced back to Sam Raimi's first three Spiderman movies, which were all pretty well received.
But The Dark Knight trilogy emblematizes the most extreme example and is drenched in it's own gritty recipe of filmmaking style. In a recent review of Man of Steel, I called Christopher Nolan a glimmer of hope in Hollywood and he is just that. He makes his movies real. He doesn't take the easy route and CG everything; matter of fact, that first scene where an airplane is hanging off of a bigger airplane? All real, stuntmen and all, no CG.


But while the special effects are always an important thing in any movie, that's not what makes The Dark Knight Rises a standout film. It's not the kind of movie where you can just sit back and expect everything to make sense, you actually have to think. The movie feels really intelligent and seems like something that could conceivably happen in real life.
Furthermore, all of the characters are great, save for one, Miranda Tate played by Marion Cotillard who just doesn't really interest me much and I feel like she didn't even really need to be in the movie at all. The rest of the cast is magnificent especially that of two film legends, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman who play Alfred and Lucius Fox, respectively. Bane is a great villain. He's big, he's scary and he has a really strong presence in every scene he's in, especially whenever he speaks.
Anne Hathaway, who plays Catwoman was perfectly cast for the role and makes the Halle Berry movie look more embarrassing than it already was. Catwoman is an interesting character and her screen time doesn't feel needless, it's not like they threw her in there just to get another character.

All of this promotional artwork is nice to boot.

As a finale to a trilogy, it works well. The first he begins, the second he falls, the third, rises. I don't think it's quite on par with The Dark Knight which was largely subtle and more of a suspense movie. This one is more of an epic than that one was and the final action scenes are a real edge-of-your-seat kind of thing with a ticking time-bomb countdown.
The Dark Knight Rises is still as good as it was a year ago. Christopher Nolan really had a vision for his Batman trilogy and, in my opinion, it's the best Batman has ever been. The Dark Knight Rises is a great finale to the story. If you haven't seen it by now, see it.

9/10 - Great.