nickykelly-65134 Reviews

It (I) (2017)

Has both great and poor aspects

[7/10 · 21 September 2017]

All in all, I enjoyed my time at the cinema watching this film. The excels in characters but unfortunately contains many horror movie tropes.

Full disclosure - I haven't read the book, although I will get around to it.

The characters, as I said, are handled well, and there are a number of characters. Most films that have these many characters become a complete mess and can often lead to very un-compelling films. The film of course, did have something of a head-start since Stephen King was truly the one that wrote and created these characters, however I have to give it to the film for presenting these characters as well as they did and actually make you care about them.

Bill Skarsgard did an incredible job as Pennywise, and was without a doubt my favourite part of the film. However, I think the director should have re watched 'Jaws' before making this film, as Pennywise does get quite a lot of screen time, which can make him less scary at times when the film is trying to be at its most terrifying moments. Despite this, Skarsgard's performance is fantastic.

As for the tropes, jumpscares. Lots and lots and lots and lots of jumpscares, in fact I'd say about 90% of the film's scares come from jumpscares alone, and they become quite forgettable. What's funny is that the film's scariest moments are not the jump scares, which shows that the director knows how to frighten the audience, but decided instead to devote many of the scares to a technique that almost literally any common person on the internet can achieve. As well as this, there are a number of times at which these kids suddenly decide to go full idiot and wander off on their own before being predictably attacked by Pennywise. There is also a massively tropey part towards to end of the film, that I won't spoil, but I've seen so, so, so many times before and it made me laugh when it happened. As well as this, this film re-uses the old 'to overcome our fears, we must face it full on' message which although I think is a good message and is absolutely true, has been used in many horror films before.

The film's direction is OK at best. I can't say I was impressed by the way the director created scenes, in actuality a lot of the film's scenes follow the same exact structure. The editing was good although the film didn't quite flow seamlessly from scene to scene as it probably should have, it's a lot of a scene ending, skipping time and saying 'oh, and then this is what happened next' which wasn't by any means a big distraction but I think it's worth noting.

Overall, I would recommend this film to horror or Stephen King fans, but don't expect 'The Shining', expect something closer to the average modern horror movie.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption

[9/10 · 14 September 2017]

In my eyes, a marvelous film, but one of the best, if not the best film ever made? I wouldn't agree. I think there are a number of films with better stories, characters, meanings and film making out there. I think the incredible following behind this film has come became this is a film that can appeal to just about anyone. It is, perhaps "impossible" to hate. Where someone may watch 2001 and find it boring or too ambiguous, or may find the likes of Citizen Kane, The Godfather or Lawrence of Arabia to be overly long snooze fests, on average the number of these reactions are greatly reduced by a film like Shawshank because of its happy, neatly tied up ending and it most people may find it more entertaining.

Please do not get me wrong, I do think this is a great film, and when I watch it I cannot find flaws AT ALL. I do not think though that a flawless movie is automatically the best movie, Pulp Fiction I would say is a better film, but still has little flaws here and there, like Butch Coolidge's uninteresting girlfriend getting a little too much screen time.

What I love about this film is how it depicts prisoners, prisoners that have been sentenced to decades of isolation from the outside world. The film never really wants the audience to sympathize with any of the characters except Andy Dufresne, whom we know, or at least assume, is an innocent man. The film shows that prison, for a lot of these men, become their home, and they cannot withstand the outside world. The character Brooks goes into prison early in his adult life, but comes out when he's an elderly man, and cannot handle how much the world has changed, its things like this that I appreciate about this film.

I greatly recommend this film to anyone and everyone, however, I do not believes that this film deserves the #1 spot on the IMDb Top 250, for me it should be around the 70-80 mark, but that's just my opinion.

Suicide Squad (2016)

Utter Crap

[1/10 · 14 September 2017]

Every once in a while, more often than not unfortunately, you come across a bad film, a film that felt like a waste of time. But it is a very rare instance that you come across a film that actually insults the intelligence of the viewer, and has such a minimal understanding of how to create a conceivably acceptable film.

This film has so many flaws, and so much bullsh!t logic that a lot of it flies over your head, not to mention the *horrible* script that puts absolutely no effort into hiding exposition, or make the characters interesting. The editing is one of the fatal flaws, as it is mostly unbearably difficult to figure out what is even happening most of the time, and the titles are subtitles that appear on-screen are displayed so lazily and out of place that not only do you not get enough time to read them, but early in the film one piece of o- screen text becomes greatly obscured by the background. This is a child's level of editing, and its infuriating to watch.

The fact that this film can be rightfully named an Academy Award Winner is an utter disgrace, exactly what was so good about Harley Quinn's face paint, and Killer Croc's laughable stupid kids costume? The award was much better suited for Star Trek.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey

[10/10 · 14 September 2017]

This is my favourite film of all time, and in my opinion the best film of all time for two main reasons. 2001, for me, has the some of the best film making ever, and this film also has a point that is and will always be important and relevant. Where 'The Godfather' may tell you the importance of family, 2001 raises questions about evolution, mankind, artificial intelligence, the universe and the unknown.

Before I go on to give my thoughts on the film's meanings I'll list off all of the film's great technical aspects (which could be given a review of their own). The direction, cinematography, art & set production, special effects, sound effects, lighting, production value and music is absolutely outstanding, and some of the very best in cinema history.

I'll split this review up into 3 sections, much like the film, and start with the Dawn of Man sequence.

I think that going back in time, is ironically a perfect opening for a film based on the future. Kubrick displays how humankind began, by showing primates first discovering how to use tools (bones) in order to kill, before a clean edit which skips over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and shows a spacecraft. This simple edit exemplifies how far humankind has come, from using bones to kill prey, to building spacecraft which orbit our Earth. It should go without saying, but this opening sequence is beautifully directed and shot, the only real nitpick is to say that at times the chimps may look dated, but for a film that came out in 1968, I'd say it holds up brilliantly.

The middle section of the film could stand as a film on its own, the Discovery spacecraft is on a mission to Jupiter. This is when we are introduced to HAL 9000, who has went on to become one of the most infamous film villains ever. This section of the film mainly concerns artificial intelligence, and just how accurate it can be, and if this dangerous. The film also concerns whether or not artificial intelligence can actually have real emotion, or just emulate it, I personally believe in the latter.

And then we get to the final section of the film, where thing go incredibly ambiguous, the stargate sequence is still mesmerizing even to this day. Dave Boeman, the astronaut on the Discovery, and the film's main character is transported to some kind of space hotel, or maybe this is all in his head? Or maybe he's in a higher state of being? Or maybe he's dead? Anyway, in this place, he sees himself grow old (literally) and meets with the mysterious monolith in which he transforms into the starchild, and the film ends. There have been of course, many, many interpretations of the film, people who may like science see this film as displaying how alone we are in the universe, the starchild represents mankind in it's infancy. To others, this film is a religious experience, neither is wrong, Stanley Kubrick and Athur C. Clark intended for this ambiguous end and for people to discuss it, which they definitely achieved.

In my opinion, the ending is both a representation of evolution, the starchild being the next step in evolution, the next goal for mankind (meeting extra-terrestrial beings for this first time, or exploring other planets and galaxies). But also the film's final few seconds for me represent how even though we have space travel, and have satellites in space and have gone to the moon, we as a species have only seen an incomprehensibly small portion of the universe.

So all in all, I love this film, its a masterpiece.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Brilliant Piece of Crime Cinema

[10/10 · 12 September 2017]

In my opinion, this is the best thing to come from Quentin Tarantino's mind, and one of the most unique film ever made, although ironically borrowing a lot from other films.

The strongest part of the film's story telling isn't that it has a particularly emotional or epic plot, but rather the way in which the film's stories are told. Tarantino decides to take the film's story and present it out of chronological order, and although things like this have been done before, no film as done it quite as perfectly as Pulp Fiction. This non linear structure allows for Tarantino to make the film uber-rewatachable and incredibly unpredictable to first time viewers, making the film much more compelling to watch. If Tarantino didn't use this structure, the film may have still had great dialogue and great scenes, but it wouldn't be half the film it is now.

Another great strength of this film is it's script, which has to go down as one of the best film scripts ever written. The dialogue is perhaps the most entertaining part of the enter movie, as the two leads (John Travolta & Samuel L. Jackson) carry their scenes excellently with their back and forth dialogue. Tarantino also manages to use this quick and witty dialogue in some of the film's most intense scenes such as when Jules and Vincent take their boss's briefcase back from Brett, and the film's climax scene in the coffee shop.

Overall, this is masterpiece of non-linear storytelling, dialogue and originality, and this film deserves all the fame and awards that it did receive, and perhaps more.

Dunkirk (2017)

Incredible Film, Wrongly Criticised

[9/10 · 12 September 2017]

Christopher Nolan has created yet another massive hit, however this time his film does not concern memory loss, Batman, dreams or black holes. This film concerns the real evacuation of over 300,000 soldiers at Dunkirk during the second world war.

Nolan is absolutely correct when saying this is an event film, and this film does an amazing job at making the viewer feel the stress and terror of being killed at a moments notice.

Nolan also manages to make do without blunt exposition, which have unfortunately plagued some of his works in the past, mainly Inception. The only piece of exposition that I noticed in the film was visual, the propaganda posters dropped onto the ally soldiers. And this exposition works perfectly for telling the audience (who may not know of the events) essentially what's happening.

This film uses a very unique structure, not unlike Pulp Fiction, where Nolan shows a number of scenes that are happening at different times, and over the course of different periods. This structure has unfortunately threw some people off, who found it distracting and/or didn't see the need for it. There is a simple answer to this of course, and it is answered in the film. Everything on the beach happens over the course of a week, everything in the civilian boats happens over the course of a day, and everything in the air happens over the course of an hour. I don't quite understand how people misunderstood this or found it distracting, and I do not believe it's the film, or the director's fault for this misunderstanding, as most people, including myself, understood it perfectly.

Another criticism this film has unfairly been given is it's lack of interesting characters. Unfortunately, not every soldier has an investing backstory to sob over, and spend an unnecessary amount of screen time addressing, as a very large majority of these soldiers were just men, men trying to survive and get home safe. Which is all I think was actually needed to care about the characters in the film.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Dr. Strangelove: A Masterpiece of Satire and Drama

[10/10 · 7 September 2017]

Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" is cited as one of the director's best films, and one of, if not the best satirical comedy in cinema history, and with very good reason.

Dr. Strangelove exceeds exponentially in many ways, the three main being the direction, writing and the unforgettable performances from George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and of course, Peter Sellers.

Kubrick's direction is perfect, the film is perfectly paced, no scene overstays it's welcome and the editing and camera angles do their jobs greatly at conveying a time of nuclear crisis but at the same time remaining darkly humorous. One of the more obvious factors of the film is that it is shot and presented in black and white which works perfectly with the film, the dark representing the terror of the situation and the white representing the comedic side of the film. Kubrick also manages to assist in the comedic side of the film, he achieved this through using 'rehearsal' takes and allowing Peter Sellers to improvise. The level of film making is exquisite, Kubrick uses mostly steady camera shots when in the War Room, and hand-held camera shots when inside the B-52 bomber, he also frames each image with perfection and creates incredible compositions. He never cuts too often or ever drastically changes the angle, thus never confusing the viewer and allowing the scenes to flow. The B- 52 models on real life footage backgrounds may look dated, but oddly enough it still works well with the overall tone of the film, in fact it could be argued that it even adds a small comedic aspect to the film.

In my opinion, this film's writing was quite underrated, many people remember the genius unforgettable lines that were likely ad-libbed by Peter Sellers, but overall the film's dialogue and plot is incredibly well written. The plot goes that the general of an air force base goes mad and without-authority, commands a large number of B-52 bombers to attack their targets in Russia, and the men and President in the War Room, desperately attempt to prevent this from happening. This plot is outright brilliant and is executed brilliantly, there is no outright exposition in the dialogue, and any exposition there is, is not jarring or comes of as lazy at all. The film does an incredible job at creating an environment of sheer crisis, with George C. Scott's character explaining that there are very few options in resolving the matter, and the reveal of Russia's top secret 'Doomsday Machine' which adds an almost unbearable amount of tension to the film. The film reaches it's inevitable end of Nuclear Annihilation, after one of the B-52 bombers manages to hit one of it's targets, thus triggering the Doomsday Machine and ending all life on Earth. I found this ending not only to make sense, but also to fit perfectly into the film's tone, there is also a great comedic value to the end, with it coming so suddenly and playing classic music over the footage of many nuclear bombs detonating.

Overall, I hope it is clear that I see this as simply one of the best comedies ever made, or even perhaps one of the best films ever made. The film is incredibly unique and although the more satirical points of the film may not be quite as relevant now, they are still hilarious to experience. The film holds up incredibly well even with it's clearly dated visual effects and somewhat dated humour, but Peter Seller's performance alone will allow for this film to be seen as one of the funniest satires ever made even long after the events the film is poking fun at have ended. And even if you don't find the film particularly funny, you can still be in awe of the genius film making and incredibly suspenseful plot.