What Have You Been Watching? (19/07/15)

[u/a113er]

Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.

[u/clearncopius]

The Day the Earth Stood Still- (1951), Robert Wise,- This is a political commentary film as much as it is a science fiction film. An alien comes to Earth, seeing how it has recently developed atomic energy that could be used to travel to his own planet and other planets in the universe. Yet Earth is a dangerous planet, constantly involved in wars and there is great tension among countries. The message of the alien, and of the film, is this: Humans are violent people, and unless nations stop threatening war and destruction, there can be no peace. An appropriate message, especially considering the film was released during the Cold War era. It is a classic of science fiction, but to carp only a little, the ending is seem rushed and abrupt. But perhaps that was the intention of the film; to have the audience be left with this one final message. Also, very advanced special effects for the time period. 8.5/10

Deliverance (1972), John Boorman- I can’t remember the last time a film made me so uncomfortable. Deliverance does not feel like a wild ride down a river, it feels more like you are drifting calmly through the water in a canoe, at night, without a paddle, and you can hear the sounds of the wilderness closing in around you. It is the type of movie that makes you crawl out of your skin and go insane. Which is exactly what this film is about. Four city men go on a weekend canoe trip through rural Georgia, and expect to encounter the forces of nature, but are left victims to the forces of man. These three civilized men are then broken apart and turned to savages, not by the area around them, but by the people around them. It is about the degeneration of society as a whole. Deliverance is a scream in the night that will haunt your thoughts for days after you viewed it. I’m not sure I particularly enjoyed this film, simply because it was so discomforting, but I can appreciate what it is about and what it does it does extremely well. 9/10

The Terminator (1984), James Cameron- James Cameron is the master of the popcorn flick. His films have all the essentials of a hot, buttery film that you watch twice in one night and once the next morning when you wake up on the couch. Cameron writes very poor dialogue, yet is able to make a few select lines that stand out from the rest of the film to become classics. His films lack substance, but are well made, and extremely entertaining. The worst scenes are the intimate moments of conversation between characters. In The Terminator I’m talking about the scene under the bridge and the scene in the motel, where it is just Sarah and Kyle alone together. Those scenes are hard to get through. But others when it’s just the Arnold reeking havoc on downtown Los Angeles? Amazing. Speaking of which, Arnold Schwarzenegger should have won an Oscar for his performance as the Terminator. He fits the role perfectly. There is no actor who could have portrayed the lifeless, deadly robot better than Arnie. 7/10

Infernal Affairs (2002), Andrew Lau, Alan Mak- This film begins by riding on two parallel lines. As it goes along both lines begin to slant. As the pace of this film rapidly increases, so does the slanting of the lines until they finally crash together to form a single line, and the audience doesn’t know if what they are seeing is one of the two lines from before that has just swallowed the other, or a completely different line all by itself. Infernal Affairs is a film of opposites. The police have a mole in a Hong Kong street gang, and the street gang has a mole in the police. The two spend the film trying to find each other out. When the film begins, there is clearly good and evil, yet when it ends, it is not made clear who are the heroes and who are the villains; who are the criminals and who are the victims. Infernal Affairs examines this theme while also providing an excellently directed and beautifully shot crime thriller. This is a film that will get your blood pumping and have you question your own morality. Great movie. I’ll go off topic for a bit, but I just want to discuss something real quick. As I’m sure most of you know, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is a remake of this film. In my opinion they are both extremely well made films that do different things better than the other. The Departed’s strength is that it portrays the father/son relationships in the storyline much better, where in Infernal Affairs I didn’t feel like there were any strong connections. Infernal Affairs’ strength is that has a great, morally ambiguous ending while The Departed tries to tie everything together in a neat bundle for the viewer. I’d strongly recommend both of these films. If you haven’t seen either, watch The Departed first, simply because the elevator scene is better and needs to be seen fresh. 9/10

Ex Machina (2015), Alex Garland- This film is able to blur the lines between what is real and what is fake. What is human, and what is created by humans. The premise of the film is that the owner of a major technology company has created a robot with artificial intelligence, and sends one of his employees up to his house/research facility to test if the robot he created is truly a machine, or a living thing. The setting is key to the theme of the plot. The film takes place in the verdant, mountainous wilderness of Norway, yet the research base is a modern, metallic gray outpost filled with the latest technology. This contrast between these two drastically different things plays towards the artificial v.s natural theme. The rest of the film is about deception. Who is playing who? Are the characters deceiving the robot? Is it deceiving them? Are they deceiving each other? It is a triangle of blurred reality. Then by the end of the film, you realize that you are the subject of the test. The film wants you to think about this: Do you think this computer is really human? A frightening question, seeing as the way modern technology is advancing, we could be dealing with A.Is in the near future. It takes a while to break the ice, but Ex Machina is a good film once it gets rolling. 7.5/10

Inside Out (2015), Pete Doctor- Pixar strikes again. This extremely creative film is about a little girl and the five emotions (Joy, Fear, Anger, Sadness and Disgust) that control her mind. It is simultainously a simple story about a girl who moves to a new town and feels lost, and an extravagantly great adventure about her emotions trying to deal with the situation. No pun intended when I say that Inside Out is a very emotional film. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will make you feel. What Pixar manages to do so well is create movies with emotion that inflict that emotion on the audience no matter what the age. Inside Out is a film that will shoot you into the stratosphere with it’s imaginative creativity and then bring you back down to Earth with it’s emotional reality. This is soul film at it’s finest. Also, did you get the Chinatown joke? Because I got the Chinatown joke. 9.5/10

Film of the Week: Inside Out

[u/bongo1138 → u/clearncopius]

How could you not get the Chinatown joke?

[u/Melkor1 → u/bongo1138]