Welcome back to weekly editions of What We Learned This Week at the Movies, it’s been a little bit since we posted a true edition of the article and I’m excited to get back into it. It’s the week of Halloween and I want to wish all of our dear readers a very happy All Hallows Eve! This article has a look at some recent Halloween films and one classic, however, it’s not a full Halloween article. If you want an in depth look at our thoughts on great things to watch on Halloween, take a look here at last year’s article! http://www.nerdfive.blogspot.com/2012/10/top-5-things-to-watch-on-halloween.html. But as for this week, let’s dive right into our 5 lessons this week at the movies, and enjoy!
Movies Seen In Theatres This Week: The Birds; Carrie;
Rush; Romeo & Juliet; Ghost Team One; Captain Phillips
Lesson 5. Don’t Paraphrase
Shakespeare! – There is a reason that William Shakespeare is a
household name and Julian Fellowes is not. The 2013 version of Romeo & Juliet is one of the
absolutely worst written films I’ve ever seen. How? That’s a good question
considering it’s based on one of the most well-known and beloved plays of all
time. Fellowes takes several liberties with Shakespeare’s dialogue, he doesn’t
try to update or modernize the language but instead Fellowes ties to rewrite
scenes in Shakespearean tongue. Some “classic” lines now attributed to
Shakespeare are “why was this man so rude? He likes to use his tongue to filet
a woman,” “The Princes kindness is a golden ax that cuts off my head” and “Same
as Juliet. Blubbering and weeping, blubbering and weeping.” The entire film is
filled with painful gems likes these. The worst of all is Friar Laurence,
played by Paul Giamatti, sounds like low rent Dr. Seuss character. I really
can’t understand who thinks they can rewrite and improve Shakespeare’s
dialogue. Fellows goes so far as to cut classics scenes such as the “Do you
bite your thumb at me, sir?” Apart from these issues Romeo & Juliet is
terribly directed; it seems as if director Carlo Carlei lets the actors go on
their own in most scenes with very little direction. It’s clear that Carlei
focused all his attention on the production design, filming sequences and
costume design (these elements are the only thing that shines in the film.) Good
actors such as Damian Lewis, Stellan Skarsgard and Giamatti give off the rail performances
and academy award nominee for True Grit
Hailee Steinfeld seems utterly and completely lost as Juliet. Actor Kodi
Smit-McPhee, who plays Benvolio, is the only bright spot on the acting side;
I’ll be excited to see what he does in the future. Romeo & Juliet is a straight forward take on the story and is
almost a complete waste of time as it brings nothing new to the story and hurts
some classic elements. If you want to watch a film version of this great play
stick with the ’68 Franco Zeffirelli classic or Baz Luhrmann’s ’96
modernization Romeo + Juliet (which is
an unequivocal masterpiece compared to
the current adaptation.)
Lesson 4. What Goes Up Must Come Down – Over the last week, I went down to Ballard
Underground and Ghostlight Productions as they showed a free screening of The Birds in promotion for their
upcoming production of Rope, which
I’m excited to see. It was a great time and I’ll for sure be visiting them
again. With that said. I worship at the altar of Alfred Hitchcock, he a great
filmmaker, but even the best of us have misses and I’m sorry to say that The Birds is as miss. Now, before you
start viciously flying toward me beaks agape pecking out my eyes I’m not saying
it’s, I’m saying it’s a miss and Hitchcock’s misses are far better than most peoples
best. Sadly The Birds doesn't hold
up; the puppet birds aren’t scary, the plotting and travel scenes drag and the
characters reactions are very broad. With that being said, there are long
stretches of this film that highly enjoyable and if you've never seen The Birds its worth a fun watch with
friends. My main issue comes with the end of the film… AND IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN
THE BIRDS STOP READING AND SKIP TO LESSON 3… still here, okay then you've seen
the film and you know how it ends, and man is it anti-climactic. These birds,
who have been angry and attacking the town, for no good reason, all of sudden,
just as quick as it started, stop attacking and let the family walk out of
there and to safety. They pass right by a group a bird who were bloodthirsty mere
moments ago and now they are like “eh… walk on by, have a good day” It’s the
most annoying and terrible end that I could think of for the film. It’s a clear
case of not knowing how to end the movie, and it really hurts the outcome.
Unless I’m missing something and if I am, bring it on please tell me.
Lesson 3. Don’t Waste Opportunities -- Was there a need to remake Carrie, no. Could this have been a good film, yes. Could this film be worth your time, no. This
time around Carrie is played by Chloe Grace Moretz and her mother Margret White
by Julianne More and this relationship should be the focus, center and
emotional core of the film, it fails miserably at this. You never quite care
about Carrie, or anyone else in this picture and it falls flat for this very
fact. The 2013 Carrie plays with the
exact themes and styles of the book and the Brian De Palam ’76 film of the same
name; while they could have actually had a unique spin on the film instead they
choose keep it familiar and in some scenes almost like a shot for shot remake.
What could have been unique about this film is that it could have been a female
take on this overtly female story that had previously only been adapted and
written by dudes; instead it feels like a studio driven traditional horror film
that follows it’s paint by number formula to a tee and bores it’s audience into
lull.
Lesson 2. Don’t Get Upstaged – Ghost Team One is weird film. It’s a good film, but it’s a weird
film. This little-film-that-could made its debut at this year’s Slamdance Film
Festival, a festival that takes place at the same time and place as the
Sundance Film Festival with the goal to showcase the “true” independent
filmmakers and their films. Because of its success at Slamdance Ghost Team One and has gotten it’s self
a limited nationwide release date. I’d be surprised if this gets a full
nationwide release, and yet, we are sitting at the starting line of cult
phenomena. Ghost Team One is the type
of film college students and high school students are going to find on DVD,
streaming, on-demand or however they will be finding films in 5 years and fall
in love with it. Always raunchy, always profane, at times raciest and
completely oversexed Ghost Team One
tells the story of Sergio (Carlos Santos) and Brad (J. R. Villarreal) college
roommates who find out their house used to be a brothel and is haunted by its
former madam. Filmed as if it were a documentary Ghost Team One uses its style, actors and it unique take on the
horror comedy genre well. The film falls off the rails in its extremely adult
and exceedingly bizarre ending, nonetheless
Ghost Team One is an above average film with a strange and eerie point of
view that would make for a good time on Halloween.
Lesson 1. Once More, With Feeling! – Lesson 1 this week is twofold. The Oscar films have started to roll out this year and two of the first ones out of the gate are Rush and Captain Phillips and while nothing per say wrong with either film, in fact both are quite enjoyable in their own rights, neither film has enough gusto to get over the top and be a true contender. Both films fall into the category of not doing anything wrong but also not really going above and beyond to become memorable classics. Both films feature fantastic Oscar caliber performances from their Best Actor contending lead actors, Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt in Rush and Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips in the film of the same title (I think Hanks will be a serious contender this year either for this or Saving Mr. Banks). Both films are good and worth seeing but both need a little more feeling, a little more oomph behind them! Let’s take a quick moment to look at the films individually.
Rush is a film in Ron Howard's mold and yet feels
distinctly different from his recent films. This film looks at the racing
rivalry between James Hunt (Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) and picks
up when their rivalry kicks into high gear. Rush
is a slow starter and anti-climactic finisher but has strong middle
section. You can’t really blame the film for its anti-climactic ending because
it does it’s best to work around the real life ending that did not play out
perfectly. Howard did a good job with Rush
but not a great one.
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