Julia’s Eyes (Los Ojos De Julia)

A film with Guillermo del Toro’s name on it is like a car with a Ferrari badge, you know it is going to be good quality, and ‘Julia’s Eyes (or ‘Los ojos de Julia’ in Spanish) is no exception. Although there is a lack of Guillermo del Toro’s visual prowess and grandeur, director Guillem Morales creates a film that is probably more shocking and thrilling than ‘The Orphanage’.

The film makes the audience jump right from the start and doesn’t let up for the entire 112 minutes. Julia (played by Belén Rueda) is devastated after her blind twin sister Sara has committed suicide. Although both the police and her husband Issac (Lluís Homar) believe there was no foul play involved, Julia suspects otherwise, and goes off in search for the killer. She must shine light upon this mystery quickly as she is slowly losing her sight due to the same degenerative disorder that affected her sister. And as her sight gets worse she becomes the killer’s new target. This short synopsis does not do the tension the film creates any justice as this is a film that is all about successfully creating tension the likes of which most audiences never feel.

Julia’s failing vision is certainly the aspect of the film that is most terrifying and is what puts this film leagues ahead of many other thrillers. The idea of being unable to see who or where the killer is, of being constantly in the dark and not knowing who to trust, the concept is terrifying and the movie expertly plays off this primal fear. Morales uses the great cinematography and music to constantly build up the tension to unbearable levels that leave the audience craving for something to happen just to give them some relief. The soundtrack causes hearts to beat faster while the blacked out shots create real fear during the chase scenes.

A distinct part of the film that really helps heighten up the tension is Belén Rueda’s sympathetic and engaging portrayal of Julia. Unlike many other thrillers, such as Paranormal Activity or Scream 4, Belén Rueda manages to make the audience engage with her character so that in the end we want her to survive. When she hears someone in her room at night we hope she gets out of there quickly and as her sight starts to fade we feel sorry for her. These feelings comes about partly due to Rueda’s engaging portrayal of Julia, but also because Julia is a well written, interesting character, at least for a thriller movie. She has a job, relationships, dreams, fears and a personality, which instantly makes her more relatable and therefore easier to empathize with. When this is all put together means that Julia’s survival is important to us and this helps raise the tension beyond a normal slasher/thriller.

The ‘who dunnit’ aspect of the film potentially lets it down a little bit. Although there are plenty of twist and turns within the story the more experienced moviegoer will likely see outcomes of a lot of the twists. Saying that, however, Morales and co-writer Oriol Pualo, have included enough red herrings so that although you may have a good idea about what will happen next you never completely know. The tension does also drop a little about 2/3^rd of the way through, but this comes as a godsend as up till then you are on the edge of your seat for almost every minute. This doesn’t mean the ending is a let down though, although the film never reaches the tension highs it did at the start it still manages to hook us up till the very last scene.

Overall this film is by far the scariest film on release at the moment, and possible up there with being one of the scariest ones of all time. It does all that a scary film should do and it does it well. There is tension, gore, mystery and surprises they stay with you till the next day. Don’t say you weren’t warned. See it for yourself.

Degree- 1st

Easily one of the scariest film out at the moment

and possibly one of the scariest films ever

this one will certainly keep you up at night afterwards.

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

Catfish

Before I start it should be said that this film is better the less you know about it. As soon as you do any research it gives the whole game away; even the title spoils the twist. For this reason this article will be deliberately short and vague so that not too much is revealed. You will just have to trust me.   And when I say spoiler alert, stop reading if you must!

The film is a documentary that follows Nev Shulman as he creates a relationship with a family he meets on the Internet. His friend Henry Joost and his brother Ariel Schulman film the entire thing; Nev develops an email correspondence with an 8 year-old artist called Abby after she paints one of this published photographs. Through emails, phone calls and Facebook Nev soon gets to know the rest of Abby’s family who he jokingly dubs ‘The Facebook Family’. Nev even begins to have some sort of romantic relationship with Abby’s teenage sister Megan. Since this all happens online and over the phone, the whole audience can tell it won’t end well no matter how sweet the veneer. In fact the ending, (spoiler alert)

attempts to turn the film into a thriller that shows the darker side of the Internet and social networking; possibly this film should be shown to children in their personal development classes. That is if the film is an authentic documentary (spoiler over).

There has been a lot of debate about whether this film is a real documentary or just a marketing ploy. At one end of the spectrum the stars claim it is all real while critics claim it is simply a fake, or possibly somewhere in the middle with parts of it being authentic footage while the rest is a dramatisation of real events. I have my own theories, but will keep them to myself since how much you believe in the authenticity of the footage will effect how ‘mind-blowing’ the ending is.The film is well put together and uses a lot of computer imagery and cinematography (Google Maps, Facebook and SatNav) to bind the scenes together, which gives everything a more interactive feel. As well as that the characters Nev, Areil and Henry, are nice enough. They all seem like ordinary guys that don’t mean any harm. What brings the film down for me, however, is the ‘mind-blowing’ ending which severely lacks a ‘boom’. I was waiting for my mind to explode throughout the entire 87 minutes and then upon realising the big climax happened earlier felt a bit put out. It might be that this is a genuine documentary so that the ending does reflect real life and not an adrenaline fueled version of it, but it was still not as shocking as I expected. Giving the filmmakers their due they carefully handled an ending that could have been made into something more shocking and less heartfelt. However, I still wanted my mind blown as I was promised and am disappointed it did not happen.

‘Catfish’ is an interesting documentary, how authentic it might be is questionable, but that is also not that important. However, the ending was not nearly as personally shocking as expected and this disappointment reduces my opinion of the film. My advice, go in blind.

Degree- 2:2

Having been brought up with all the internet horror stories

the end delivered the bare minimum that I expected.

To real enjoy the film avoid all spoilers

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

The Tourist

Here are a few clips from the sleek new movie ‘The Tourist’ staring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. Out next week it looks very very good.

The American

George Clooney is one of the most recognisable faces in American cinema, with good reason; as director Anton Corbijn has said ‘he can say a lot without a script’ so it comes as no surprise that he was the first choice to play the only American character in this European style film ‘The American’.  It is a shame that Clooney’s magic touch, which has gained many award nominations in the past (Michael Clayton, Up In The Air), cannot give more ‘je ne sais quoi’ to this beautiful, but empty film.

The story is very basic with Clooney playing an unnamed gun mechanic who customises weapons for assassins until he is forced to hide after he becomes a target. He stays in Castel De Monte, working away on another assignment, whilst avoiding the locals, all except the prostitute Clara (Violante Placido); he first visits her out of loneliness, but then falls in love with her.  With such a basic plotline you hope that there are some extra story arcs, but this is not the case; the pace of the film drags out everything mentioned to happen over 103 minutes. When something unexpected does happen, Corbijin handles it with quick, precise expertise, which is a nice change from other Hollywood films where the guns battles and chase scenes last over 20 minutes. Saying that it would also have been nice for the action sequences to have had a bit more to them as they would have broken up the film’s laboured pace.

Consequently, without the distraction of too many action sequences, there is plenty of time for detailed characterisation, but Corbijn neglects to do this choosing instead to keep the character a mystery. We are not told anything about his past, so he is completely unrelatable and uninvolving. What is worse is that the protagonist is asking for forgiveness for his past, from both the audience and those around him, but he does nothing that can be considered redeeming. We are never really supporting him and because of this we lose interest in him and also the film.

With all this in mind there are some good things in this film that go some way to make up for the long rant above. Corbijn has used his photographic eye to create some absolutely beautiful shots; the countryside of Italy has never looked this idyllic. Using plenty of wide landscape footage and fantastic shots of the architecture creates a sense of openness and emptiness that reflects the loneliness of Clooney’s character. Both Clooney and his co-star Placido have a real chemistry that can be felt on screen. The sex scene is especially intense, with Clooney revealing more usual (this might be reason itself to see the film for some viewers) and there is tangible passion between the stars. When asked about that scene in a chat we had with him, director said that he tried to film ‘… it in a way that you feel sexuality rather than seeing it, which was important because a lot of sex scenes usually don’t feel sexual, you see everything, but it is not sexual.’

Corbijn also uses atmospheric techniques to great effect making many scenes, even ones with Clooney alone in a room, incredibly tense as he ‘can carry that [tension] and keep you interested, his body language was really good.’ We never know when someone will jump out to attack him and this keeps the audience wary of the silences. Although the music helps add to the tension, it is the silences that really make you sit up in your seat. Corbijn plays around with the sound very effectively, knowing exactly when to have a huge crescendo and when it is more appropriate to have nothing at all.

Saying all this the looks and the tension are not enough to hold ones interest throughout the entire film.  It is sad, but it seems that Corbijn hasn’t quite been able to get away from his photographic origins and create something that stood up to his last film ‘Control’. This will likely come as no surprise to him since he admitted to us ‘I know that I can’t top Control in the critical sense, the recognition was so immense it is just something you can’t aim for.’ What made  ‘Control’ was that Corbijn effectively balanced both aesthetics and story; sadly this time around he only seems to have concentrated on the former. Though it is highly doubtful this criticism will phase him since his philosophy is ‘If people hate the film I am sure for anyone that is hard to take because you work so long on the project… [but] you make a movie that you want to make and you have to let it go and see how people react.’

Degree- 3rd

A film that looks beautiful, but lacks any real substance,

characterisation or story telling.

 

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

The American

Here is a film I just went to see yesterday. Nothing can be put up till closer to the release date, but here is something to get interested in.

The film is about an American (obviously), played by George Clooney, who makes guns on request from assassins. After becoming a target himself he goes to hide in a small Italian village until it all blows here. While he meets a variety of locals including a priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and a prostitute (Violante Placido). The is directer by photographer turned director Anton Corbijn and is out 26th November.

Buried

Buried has a simple concept; a man, Paul Conroy, is trapped in a box underground and being held to ransom for $ 5 million. Not much else to it, right? Well it is a credit to both leading and only on screen actor Ryan Reynolds and director Rodrigo Cortes that they manage to make something so simple one of the tensest films I have seen in months.

The film starts off with an incredibly ‘Hitchcockian’ feel: the use of music, the every day man trapped in a situation that he didn’t cause; surrounded, in this case using a phone, by people and none of them can help you. Cortes borrows a lot from the master of tension and it makes the first half of the film un-missable. Add to it the close camera angles, face shots and occasional submersion into darkness and each member of the audience is taken into that claustrophobic box. Then, just as quickly, the cameras will pan out and surrounding the coffin is blackness and a sense of complete hopelessness. Cortes plays with the audiences’ emotions very effectively.

Being the only one on screen Reynolds has a tough job of carrying the whole 95 minutes, but he does it superbly and is excellent to watch, for the most part. Conroy goes through a whole spectrum of emotion from anger, to despair, to acceptance, to hope and everything in between with Reynolds demonstrating them all superbly. However, he is not alone for the entire film as there are plenty of voices on the other end of the telephone. Some of the voice acting was excellent, such as Robert Paterson as Agent Dan Brenner, while others felt a little cliché such as Jose Luis Garcia Perez as the Iraqi kidnapper.  Reynolds admitted himself that this was likely the toughest shoot he has ever done. He left the set after 17 days of being buried with splinters all over his body, singed fingers and heavy asthma; it all seems a very long way from Van Wilder.

The film, however, was not perfect and suffered from not believing enough in itself. After about half way through someone, I don’t know who, seems to have felt the audience might have got a bit bored and decided to crank up the tension factor, using some very obvious cinematic ploys. Some of these ploys worked and kept me on edge, but some didn’t, like a snake appearing, and these ones looked silly and ended up breaking up the tension. Sadly the film never really recovers and it is a real shame that no one felt the situation would be tense enough without having to make it seem even more so.

All in all it is a very good film that has a great concept, which unfortunately couldn’t be maintained throughout the entire film. I think if the film had been made 20 minutes shorter then all the ‘cheap’ thrills could have cut out, leaving the audience with as much tension and the film would have been better for it.

2:1 A unique film full of ambition and promise which it delivers…mostly.

Black Swan

A psychological thriller set in the middle of a New City ballet group. Natalie Portman plays Nina a competitive dancer who finally gets her big break to perform the lead in Swan Lake. However she is soon caught in a web of competitive intrigue with a fellow dancer (Mila Kunis). Dirtected by Darren Aronofsky who also directed The Wrestler and a smash at the Venice Film Festival this film looks like it will be very dark and very twisted. Portman seems to be on great form and I’m extremely excited to see how this beautiful art form will come across on the silver screen.

Buried

I am very excited to see how this one turns out. ‘Buried’ is about one man (Ryan Reynolds) being trapped in a coffin for 95 minutes. Director Rodrigo Cortes says you won’t be bored for a second, I wonder if he is right.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

For the twelve people who haven’t heard of Stieg Larsson, he is the Swedish journalist turned novelist who wrote the ‘Millennium trilogy’, a phenomenally successful crime series which has sold over 3 million copies world wide. The first book, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, was adapted onto the silver screen over a year ago, and has grossed about $100 million worldwide since then. Larsson tragically died in 2004 before his books were published so was unable to see what a phenomenon he had created. However, it has also been rumoured that Larsson left half finished manuscripts on his computer, so we might yet witness the release of more books and films by this talented thriller writer. Having heard all about the hype, this reporter settled down in the balmy French countryside to read all three books as ‘research’ for reviewing the DVD. How’s that for dedication?

‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ follows Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) as they try to solve a 40 year old mystery. Henrik Vanger, the retired head of a Swedish industrial dynasty, wants to learn more about the disappearance of his favourite niece Harriet and hires recently disgraced reporter Blomkvist to help him. The film becomes very dark very quickly as Blomkvist and Salander delve into the hidden secrets and lives of the Vanger family, all of which are suspected to be involved in the disappearance. Director Niels Arden Oplev keeps very close to the original material, even including the disturbing sexual and religious aspects that could have been downplayed by a less daring director. Larsson himself was an expert in right wing, anti-democratic extremism and Nazi organisations, and to ignore the more disturbing aspects of his book would have been an insult to its fans. Thus, many scenes are necessarily graphic, and the 18 rating strongly hints at some of the horrors you might witness; even pre-warned readers will find certain scenes hard to watch – they are far more hard hitting than words on a page.

The stand-out character in ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is different, very different, to most heroines. She lacks the usual beauty of the girl-next door or the femme fatale, instead sporting the grunge look with an all black outfit and multiple piercings and tattoos. She is a social outsider, but has computer skills (amongst other talents) like no one else; she also has a strong sense of justice, an unbreakable will and a violent streak. All of these qualities make her unpredictable and therefore completely interesting to watch. Although Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth extremely well, the film’s audience cannot understand her as well as readers of the book do. Oplev is unable to get into her head fully through the medium of film, and as a result it is a lot harder for the audience to comprehend the complicated mechanics of her mind and see her as more than just another troubled young woman.

In fact, losing detail in the translation from page to screen seems to be a recurring flaw in the movie. Many minor characters and plot-lines are missed out in order to make the 500 page book into a more streamlined 153 minute film. This, however, means that the story loses a lot of depth and characterisation, and at times it feels that you don’t really get to know any of the characters that have been left in, particularly the two main ones. For instance, Lisbeth’s first guardian and Mikael’s boss both play huge parts in the book in adding dimension to the protagonists, but in the film they do not feature at all. Still, Oplev does certain effective things with the film, such as showing the beautiful scenery of Sweden (one suspects the Swedish tourist board may have been involved at a few points in its creation) as well as having it all filmed in the country’s native language. Oplev also introduces new scenes to tie in with the parts of the story that become jagged due to the loss of minor characters. This is done very effectively so the film adaptation feels closer to ‘Lord of the Rings’ in continuity rather than ‘Harry Potter’. However the great aesthetics don’t counter-balance the slight loss in depth that has occurred due to the editing and alterations.

Overall the film is very good: dark, tense and rewarding. Its a good adaptation of the book and perfect for those who want to experience the story telling of Larsson, but don’t have the time to read the novel. Tragically, our American cousins’ dislike of subtitled films meant that it only grossed $10 million. Predictably, a Hollywood version is on the way. It remains to be seen whether Rooney Mara will be able to pull off unconventional Lisbeth Salander, certainly not if the studio bosses have any creative input. So before the American rehashes grace our theatres, it would be best to check out the original Swedish version on DVD and its sequel, ‘The Girl who Played with Fire’.

Degree: 2:1

A gripping thriller that stays loyal the book, but

loses something along the way onto the silver screen.