Category Archives: Thriller

Movie Review: 127 Hours

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Once again, a Danny Boyle film begins with the simple act of running. This time, it is not one person running, or even anyone running for some sort of purpose. It is just people running. Running because they can. Rushing because they want to.

Why open the movie this way, when the hero isn’t even present? It’s because understanding the adrenaline rush all humans search for is the only way to make sense of the strange, infuriating, and painful journey the hero of “127 Hours” will endure.
“127 Hours,” takes the idea of Realism to an almost unseen level. It is based on the true story of Aron Ralston (James Franco), a mountain climber with a reckless need for adventure. One day, Ralston leaves his comfy Los Angeles apartment for a trip into the American desert, and ends up at the bottom of a canyon with his arm stuck under a rock. And this all happens while he is completely alone.
“127 Hours” is basically a one man show. That doesn’t mean there are no other good performances, it just means that Franco’s performance is the only one that really matters. Had he failed in his role, “127 Hours” also would’ve failed. However, Franco is better than that. I’ve usually found Franco’s best performances to be in comedy, but with “127 Hours,” he proved he is just as good (if even better) in drama.
What is so perfect about Franco’s performance is that it doesn’t even feel like he’s acting; he’s reacting. He does exactly what anyone would actually do if stuck in Aron’s situation. What is eventually so haunting and memorable is how much he acts through facial expressions rather than words. It’s a rare talent to show such emotions as desperation and intensity without saying anything. Usually, it’s the filmmaker, not the actor, who is told to show, not tell. Franco proves that actors should begin to take on this burden as well.
Everyone else who worked on this film is as meticulous in their field as Franco is. Those quick, narrow cuts so perfectly serve the claustrophobia of the location. The cinematography also captures the dramatic American landscape so flawlessly.
Most of all, Boyle has impressed me more and more with each film he makes. Boyle could be accused of being one of the worst offenders of over filmmaking. “127 Hours” randomly contains shots ranging from the inside of a water bottle to the inside of a bone in someone’s arm. Usually, these would just be detours in a film. But in “127 Hours,” they are the tiny details that truly emphasize this man’s incredible quest for survival.
It is funny with all of the over filming how much at times “127 Hours” doesn’t even feel like a movie. At times, it doesn’t even feel like a pseudo-documentary. It feels just like a slice of reality.
Boyle’s most amazing talent is his ability to see that it’s not just about what’s being filmed, but how it’s being filmed. “127 Hours” might have been a preachy, cliche story in another’s director’s hands. With Boyle, it is a nail-biting adventure, even if the ending is already known. One of the best examples of this is during the rain scene. There is nothing interesting about a rain storm. However, there is a lot interesting about it if you slow it down and turn it into a frightening, unstoppable force of nature.
Boyle also has such a way of connecting with the locations he shoots in, inhabiting them as if he had lived there his whole life. He can connect places with a variety of emotions. The film nails suburban American sprawl in the first five minutes by connecting Los Angeles to various icons of consumerism. He makes this place seem as empty as he made the slums of Mumbai beautiful in “Slumdog Millionare” and the streets of Edinburgh exhilarating in “Trainspotting.”
Boyle has always been a highly stylized director, and “127 Hours” is certainly a highly stylized film. Boyle has the rare gift of turning style into substance. Not only does he make such an interesting adventure, he also makes such an interesting character. Aron reminds me of a modern day Christopher McCandless, but with more knowledge of how to survive in nature. Like McCandless, Aron is a people person who doesn’t act like one. He seems to only be able to connect to the world by foolishly isolating himself from the people he loves.
This could also be because he defines the McCandless mentality: one has to prove themselves worthy by doing it alone. Maybe it’s because men feel they have a special one-on-one connection with nature or they feel nature must be tamed. The lesson Hollywood seems to be teaching us is if you’re trying to go on a dangerous trek through nature alone: always leave a note.
In the end, “127 Hours” shows a new Boyle who is more emotionally effected by tragedy. It contains an ending that could’ve bordered on base sentimentality but is instead truly moving and deserving of a good tear or two. Aron Ralston, despite being selfish and aloof of reality, really deserves a hero’s welcome simply for his amazing will to survive and thrive.
One more note before I leave will be of the scene everyone is talking about. If you know the true story or have read the articles, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Yes, it’s shocking, gruesome, and hard to watch. However, don’t let those few very negative reactions of one scene shape your entire opinion of the film. “127 Hours” is a film too big, and too meaningful, to be judged on one scene alone.

Movie Review: The Ghost Writer

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During the preceding months, much of the buzz about Roman Polanski has been focused more on his twisted personal life, rather than his twisted new film, “The Ghost Writer.”

“The Ghost Writer” combines contemporary political intrigue with the two things Polanski does best: mysterious thriller, and the utter darkness that humanity is capable of. It begins with a struggling British writer (Ewan McGregor). He’s never given a name, he’s simply referred to as “The Ghost.” It’s fitting, as his character seems more like a spirit than an actual human beings to the rest of the characters.
Anyway, McGregor’s writer accepts a high paying job to be a ghost writer on the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). Lang is forced to live in the United States after being convicted of war crimes for ordering the torture of several terror suspects. The Ghost is brought in after Lang’s previous ghost writer is found dead on the beach. As The Ghost finds out more about Lang’s strange life and personality, he unravels a shocking and dangerous mystery.
“The Ghost Writer” comes out at the heals of another fascinating psychological thriller from a legendary director: “Shutter Island.” “The Ghost Writer,” however, is one that exists much more in reality. Yet, they both deal with characters we would’ve seen in films by these directors during their finest hours. The Ghost is the typical Polanski lead: he is the good guy who tries to do good in a world filled with wrong. However, his good intentions always go awry.
Polanski is the rare director who fully incorporates both his life experience and world views into his work. Over 40 years on, and he is still capable of producing some of the darkest visions that will ever hit your local cinema.
“The Ghost Writer” is raised up by a trifecta of brilliant male leads. McGregor not only plays The Ghost, but he transforms himself into a true ghost of a man. He never seems content with his situation as he quite simply floats through life. He always contains the restless, red-eyed look of a disheveled insomniac.
Meanwhile, two of the films character whom can be classified as villains fit into the Polanski category of the “genial villain”: that bad guy who hides their evil under a mask of false kindness. In just a few scenes, Brosnan stole the show and totally erased his Bond image. You may be tricked by his humor and good personality, but he never lets you forget why he’s on trial in the first place.
The other scene stealer is the always dependable Tom Wilkinson. He also has a talent for obscuring what may be bad intentions. The scenes in which The Ghost converses with Lang and Paul Emmett (Wilkinson) gave me a strong vibe of Polanski’s masterpiece “Chinatown,” specifically the scene where Jake questions Noah Cross. In that scene, we all know Cross is a guilty, despicable human being; but Polanski chooses not to show him behave that way. In this way, both Wilkinson and Brosnon channel John Huston fully. It also brings out Polanski’s theme that most times, evil prevails because evil can disguise itself.
Despite the great performances, this is entirely Polanski’s film. He turns what could’ve been a trashy thriller into intriguing film noir. The mystery is great because we never give up on it, we want to know what the answer is up to the film’s very final frame.
Polanski’s voice is ever present. He uses both sight and sound perfectly to emphasize mood. Dark shadows mixed with a creepy score heighten the mystery, while the film’s often oddly cheery musical beats will mislead you into thinking things might just be going right for once. Don’t believe that. The film also takes full advantage of the camera, as it heightens tension with the use of longshots. The longshot is key turning an edge-of-your-seat chase scene as well as one pivotal scene at the film’s end.
“The Ghost Writer” is one of those films that doesn’t leave you after you’ve finished it. You’ll talk about the twist, and you’ll likely talk about the modern political worldview the film opens up. You’ll see that things just might work in ways you never even imagined.
After this film was released, many have been harsh toward it because of Polanski’s personal struggles with the law. While his actions in real life may be deplorable, they must remain separate from the artist. Art should not be judged on morality. However, it does seem to be that personal conflict is often what inspires people most in their art. Polanski’s dark films are likely inspired from the unimaginably dark events that have shaped his life. Perhaps without this struggle, without this intrigue, without Polanski, “The Ghost Writer” would not have been the great film that it truly is.

Movie Review: The Conversation

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The next time somebody says to you, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to,” know that they’re likely talking about “The Conversation.” Nobody observes time and space while fully exploiting all the great elements of film quite like Francis Ford Coppola did.

“The Conversation” deserves to be known as one of the great, defining films in the greatest era of filmmaking: The 1970s. “The Conversation” is set in San Francisco and, like any captivating film, captures the life of a person we never wanted to see.
Coppola follows the life of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman). Caul is an expert private surveillance technician. Despite making a living off spying on others, he is extremely protective of his own privacy. Caul has been hired by a mysterious and very wealthy man to spy on what we presume is a very happy couple. This case mirrors one that has haunted Caul and he believes what he has seen is a recipe for disaster, and that he can stop it.
“The Conversation” prevails because it is top-notch at everything it tries to do: it has superb performances, a nail-biting story, and thrills that are actually thrilling. It’s hard to expect anything less from Francis Ford Coppola who also pioneered such other masterworks as “The Godfather” series and “Apocalypse Now.”
Despite the fact that the running time of “The Conversation” is significantly shorter than the running times of his other aforementioned masterpieces, it feels just as lengthy. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
While any other director would normally try and cram as many events as possible into under two hours, “The Conversation” basically only has a few scenes that go on for long amounts of time. In fact, nothing extremely thrilling happens in the film until its last half hour. The rest of the film serves as character buildup. We are given an understanding of Caul’s twisted psyche. Coppola allows the viewer to view him the way a detective would view someone he’s secretly listening to. In this manner, the detective here’s candid conversation up close and thinks he can figure everything out from there. However, the detective is not that person, and doesn’t know the full truth. This is both how Caul seems to view other people and a pretty brilliant mind trick that leaves us totally unprepared for the shocking finale.
Despite the fascination around the central mystery, this is not just a film about a story, but about a person. Hackman, always the dependable performer, brings even more life to Harry Caul. His performance here reminds me of his performance as Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection.” Caul and Doyle are very similar; they both seem to believe they’ve been put on this earth to rid evil in anyway they can.
Caul also has the added dimension of being a walking contradiction: he spies on people, yet will barely share anything of his own life with others. This may be a byproduct of having to remain in hiding for a living. Or, it could just be the work of a raging sociopath. Hackman plays Caul as being a mixture of both of these. This adds to one of the film’s eventual themes of how the world of work often spills over into the world of pleasure and that in the end, every person is vulnerable to being consumed by their job.
This film mainly showcases why Coppola, despite a less prominent future career, deserves to be known as one of the great auteurs of all time. He understands how time and place can be used to forward a story. He understands what type of music to use to jolt the viewer out of their seat. He knows when to place the light in one place and when to place it in another. Most importantly, he knows how to take a story that anybody else could’ve told wrong and figures out how to tell it right.
“The Conversation” is such an exemplary American thriller of the 1970s for many reasons. The film often reminded me of “Chinatown,” “Taxi Driver,” and “The French Connection” for its use of taut camera angles and brilliant use of light and shadows. Also, its musical score is both classical and jazzy, suggesting the great era of Film Noir. The hero of “The Conversation,” like in these other two films, also contains the characteristics of an anti-hero. Basically, the lives of others are being put in the hands of someone with a past too haunted to ever be trusted in a conventional Hollywood thriller.
All of the tense buildup of “The Conversation” is worth it. We get a mystery well worth the wait and a few scenes that simply remind us of the pure magic of good filmmaking. I guarantee the final scene of this film is one that will stay with you. It is a scene that fully respects the idea of image being more powerful then word as Caul rips apart the very floor he stands on and then smashes a statue of the Virgin Mary, suggesting a world that is not only empty of morality, but too paranoid to even care what morality is.