Colin Parton's Blog, page 2

The Oscars 2005

The Oscars - 2005 Did They Get It Right?

The nominees for Best Picture this year were: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Munich. There were two excellent films; one good but not great; and two poor films.

Crash won Best Picture but it really shouldn’t have. I don’t think it was even second best among these.

My ratings, out of ten, for these films were: Brokeback Mountain (5); Capote (4); Crash (7); Good Night, and Good Luck (10); and Munich (9).

To be honest I can hardly remember Crash at all that is how little impact it had on me. Looking over synopses of the film it sounds like my issues would have been that none of the stories could have had the time required on the screen to have the full impact.

Coupled with this is the fact that the film attempted to look at the very real and complex issue of race in the US. Without giving the stories the time required to analyse this topic I would have found it very shallow. Let’s leave Crash there until I find my notes.

Capote is more problematic for me. Mainly because it had the potential to be so much better. Philip does a brilliant job of portraying this arrogant and unlikable character.

But Capote is also brilliant and captivating. Perhaps it is the researching a novel that isn’t interesting – but that isn’t true. You just need to look at films like Spotlight to see how research can be exciting on film.

This just wasn’t for me despite all the pieces being great.

Brokeback Mountain, where to start. A relatively simple story. The performances of the leads were fine but you just felt that they weren’t given enough to work with.

As we saw later on in both their careers they are brilliant actors. The film rested too much on its laurels of being a controversial film – for the time. Or for telling a controversial story.

Munich is another kettle of fish altogether. We see the Israeli spy agency Mousad portrayed in the grey world they exist in. 

Eric Bana (Black Hawk Down, The Castle) gives one of the best performances of his career. The power in this story is that it has such a clear right and wrong beginning which quickly ends up in the grey outside the law.

What is great about this is the leads are not confident in the rightness of their actions and very quickly begin questioning their orders. Everything that happens, all the assassination plots are very interesting and exciting. A brilliant film.

Good Night, and Good Luck was such a stand-out film this year I don’t understand how it didn’t win. 

It was an important film about how the media responded, or didn’t to McCarthyism during the hunt for communists.

It was originally shot, capturing the news TV aesthetic of the time, yet keeping the story feeling modern, even though it is in black and white.

We get a real inside view of how the news shows of this period were constructed and the effort involved in developing them. David Strathairn (Sneakers, L.A. Confidential) is great as the lead and his relationship with his producer, George Clooney (Three Kings, Burn After Reading), is portrayed superbly. They are on the same page about wanting to stick it to McCarthy and have an understated way of communicating.

This means that when they do have a fight it is huge. A truly fantastic film heads and shoulders above the film that won this year. Either it or Munich should have won.

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The Oscars 1997

The Oscars 1997 Did They Get It Right?

The films nominated this year were: As Good As It Gets; The Full Monty; Good Will Hunting; L.A. Confidential; and Titanic. Titanic won and looking back I don’t know how they made such a bad decision.

Good Will Hunting, As Good As It Gets and L.A. Confidential were all better. Not only that but we saw some of the best performances from some of the greats of the time in these other films.

Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed, Don’t Look Up) was good but he wasn’t the great actor that he was to become yet.

My ratings for the films (out of ten) are: As Good As It Gets (8); The Full Monty (5); Good Will Hunting (9); L.A. Confidential (8); and Titanic (6).

Good Will Hunting (Aladdin, Death To Smoochy) gave us Robin Williams in an iconic role that echoed some other roles we would see him in throughout his career. There was some Dead Poet’s Society here but more than the mentor and father figure he was to the boys in that masterpiece.

Here we see him and Matt bounce off each other as equals.  Matt has a brilliant mind and has a chance to escape the slums with his genius in this would-be rags-to-riches story. Both performances are great.

The supporting cast is also fantastic: Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy, Gone Girl) & Stellan Skarsgard. Robin went on to win Best Supporting Actor for this role.

The film also won Best Screenplay Direct for the screen (written by the writing duo Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). This would have been my choice.

Titanic was a great story but we all kind of knew it before we saw it. The joke at the time was: I’ll spoil the ending – the boat sinks.

This was funny and not. Because that was exactly what the film was about. We all knew the ending so the question was: who is going to survive?

It also could have been: how will they survive? But we already knew that as well. This is the problem when you make a film about a known historical event.

Having said that the class struggle story that Leo and Kate’s characters look at was interesting. This would have been so much more so if we did not know that one or both of them were likely to die. 

This took away from the story any cost that Kate may have to pay for her indiscretions with Leo’s character.

As Good As It Gets was as simple a story as possible. Jack Nicholson’s (Batman, The Departed) character is an eccentric writer with OCD. His relationship with the local waitress, played by Helen Hunt (Twister, Pay It Forward), understands him enough to allow him to eat breakfast every day.

Jack’s neighbour has an injury that requires Jack to look after his dog – which causes chaos for Jack’s character. Helen’s character has to quit her job to look after her son making Jack’s life even harder.

The performances from Helen and Jack won them Oscars for Best Actress and Actor which they both deserved. 

L.A. Confidential brings us an all-star cast in a crime thriller. There is a murder case that has three detectives on it. 

All three detectives have very different styles and motives and all provided us with very different insights into the case. The three detectives fill their roles well. Kevin Spacey (American Beauty, Se7en) gives us a cop eager for the accolades and the limelight.

Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) plays a hard-hitting cop who will do anything to ensure the bad guys face justice. Guy Pearce (The Hurt Locker, The Road) plays a by-the-book cop regardless of the outcome.

As a cop thriller, this is one of the best, a great adaptation with an excellent supporting cast.

My issue with the film is that there is just too much happening for us to interrogate effectively. This would make an excellent mini-series.

This cannot stand next to the other films here. While the underlying story of desperation in a declining England is poignant it has been done better elsewhere. Brassed Off with Pete Postelthwaite (The Last of the Mohicans, Romeo + Juliet) springs to mind.

Rather than being a serious look at what would have been a very depressing story the way out of their poverty is to become strippers. This is hilarious, especially given that none of them have any relevant experience. 

At least that decision was right. This allows us to look at the individuals situations. The performances were fine but the material was just too jarring for them to do much with.

When you juxtapose the seriousness of unemployment and custody battles with male strippers who have almost zero attraction – apart from those typing amateur into the search engine – it becomes very difficult for the actors to deliver anything more than caricatures.

This is especially true when you have six characters. Some of the moments were moving but there just wasn’t enough for the cast to work with.

The film won a single Oscar for Best Music in a Musical or Comedy. Apart from this, it was a fantastic year at the Oscars.

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The Oscars 1927/28

The Oscars 1927/28 Did They Get It Right?

The Academy Awards (Oscars) covered two years of releases when they first began. 1932/33 was the last two-year awards ceremony.

The films nominated this year were: The Racket, 7th Heaven, and Wings. Wings was the winner and it also won Best Effects, Engineering Effects; which it most certainly deserved.

 

The Racket received no other nominations. 7th Heaven was nominated for Best Actress, Janet Gaynor (Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ).

Frank Borzage (The Mortal Storm, Lucky Star), won Best Director. Benjamin Glazier (The Budoir Diplomat, Flesh & The Devil) won Best Writer.

Harry Oliver was nominated for Best Art Direction. Not a small number of nominations and wins.

The Best Picture in my opinion should have also gone to 7th Heaven which was by far the better film. Out of ten, I rank the films as follows: 7th Heaven – 8; Wings – 6; The Racket – 2.

7th Heaven was such a well-told story of a sewer cleaner wanting to make his way up in the world. He falls for Diane and saves her from arrest by claiming to be her husband.

They then have to keep up the pretence, but both affections grow until they fall in love properly.

The subtly required to show us this complex story when there is virtually no dialogue (silent film of course) is no mean feat.

Great story well shot and well acted.

Wings was a story about two men, David and Jack, fighting over Sylvia’s affection. They both go off to war and are fighter pilots. One of the men, Jack, is loved by another woman, Mary. 

Jack and David become fast friends during pilot training. David is shot down and Jack is distraught.

David steals a German plane and flies home. Jack attacks him desperate for vengeance.

After shooting down David he lands to take a trophy from the victory only to realise it was his friend.

A lot has been made of this kiss but you cannot label this kiss as homosexual in any way. They are great friends and Jack has just gone through a rollercoaster of emotions.

He has watched his friend die. Then he has had another harrowing fight for vengeance – only to realise that he now has killed his friend.

He returns home and is forgiven. Realises that he indeed loves Mary – who was looking out for him in Paris while he was on leave.

What made this film stand out was the spectacular dog fights. The filming was amazing and I cannot think of a way it could have been filmed without them shooting down planes in some cases.

This is the reason that it won. The plot itself was rather benign and some non-war scenes – especially those in Paris – went on and on.

So, an average story with a nice ending and spectacular action sequences.

The third film The Racket was not very good. It follows a gang war but it is the war between a police captain, Quiggly, and one of the mob bosses, Nick.

There is a lot wrong with this film. The story is just an unconnected series of events that happen around the main characters.

There is no inciting incident. The entire film is Quiggly’s ordinary world. Quiggly takes no action in either the Crisis or the Climax of the movie.

He does take some small steps throughout the film but mostly he is just reacting to outside events. This is so bizarre for a hero not to be instigating the action.

There are some well-constructed scenes and some very funny things happen but the central story is bad.

I can see why Wings won and it isn’t terrible but 7th Heaven would have been my pick for sure.

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Blue Planet 2

Blue Planet 2 - David Attenborough

Unlike the first Blue Planet, the episodes here are more separated by the depth of the ocean. The final episode looks at our impact on the ocean: good and bad.

The quality of the footage is breathtaking, a huge leap forward from the first Blue Planet. The series focused a lot more on the volume of life and how much is in the darkness.

There is a lot of focus on the unknown and recently discovered.

There is an incredible section in the deepest part of the ocean where a probe is dropped into the Mariana Trench. A fish can be seen moving around in the depths a thing that was thought to be impossible at such pressure.

The hydrothermal vents were amazing—especially the fact that the variety of life around these dwarfs that of rainforests.

The footage of the lost city vents was eerie especially as they were talking about it being the origin of life on the planet. This is because hydro-carbons spontaneously form because of the intense heat and pressure.

The focus on the new and unknown was a highlight for me, setting this series apart from the previous one. It looks like (as of 2024) we are still looking for where whale sharks give birth.

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The Whale

The Whale - Darren Aronofsky

You will be drawn into the utter slovenliness of his life. Impressive and very off-putting.

It’s just depressing and doesn’t say much. The performances are good but the material is droll.

We follow the final days of Charlie’s (Brendan Fraser (Crash, The Mummy), life after he is reunited with his daughter. Charlie is extremely overweight and we are introduced to the danger he is in when he almost dies from a heart attack while masturbating.

He has a nurse friend, Liz (Hong Chau (Inherent Vice, Asteroid City), who seems to have a very strange relationship with him. She cares but brings him the food that is killing him.

We get the back story about why Charlie is doing this to himself through his and Liz’s interactions with a door-to-door faith peddler from ‘New Life’.

Charlie’s ex-partner and family were from New Life and he killed himself because of the religion’s views on homosexuality.

Liz is brutal with the guy but he bonds with Charlie’s estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, The Americans). This novel way of storytelling through secondary characters is interesting.

There is a re-occurring motif in a book review of Moby Dick. We first hear it early on but it is read several times. It is simplistic but Charlie is right – it nails the character of Ahab.

Charlie uses the story throughout the film. It calms him down when he is having a cardiac episode. He uses it to try and teach his online class about being honest about their opinions about the subject matter.

Charlie’s relationship with food is tragic and we go on the full roller coaster with him. We are disgusted by the volume of the greasy food but are also enticed to want it.

I found it very disturbing to find that I was craving all the food pictured in the film after watching it – despite never eating things like that and not being hungry. This is impressive filmmaking.

Charlie sees his only role in life is to earn now enough money to leave to Ellie who he left with his wife to be with his new partner.

When Ellie arrives he is open about desperately wanting to spend time with her – because he knows it is near the end.

Charlie’s relationships with everyone are troubled and difficult. Liz resents him because of what he is doing to himself. Even more so when she finds out he can afford medical treatment.

In the end, Charlie finally convinces Ellie that she has some worth – how long this feeling will continue is questionable. She reads out the Moby Dick review – which is hers – and he dies.

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Mud

Mud - Jeff Nichols

A fugitive living on an island is discovered by two boys. The story is told through the eyes of one of the boys and this allows so really interesting narrative things to be done.

All of the normal story elements are a bit out of whack here, especially the prize and the price. Ellis, Tye Sheridan (Deadpool 2, Ready Player One), is the lead and we see the story through his young eyes.

Because the story is his the stakes in it are his as well. So the cost of the family home for a chance at love and new friends is a fair balance.

Mud, Matthew McConaughey (Amistad, A Time To Kill) plays the eccentric fugitive the boys find. He talks in riddles and sayings.

He believes in superstitions and his actions support what he says. What is so interesting about Mud is that what he says could actually all be true.

The supporting cast is superb as well. Reece Witherspoon (Walk The Line, Inherent Vice) is Juniper, the object of Mud’s story and the reason he is on the island.

Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story, Serenity) is fantastic as Ellis’ mum.

What I like about the cast is that they all fit their roles well. And despite some of these actors being big names – none of them overstay their welcome on screen. 

The setup for the events in the story is well-handled. We are warned that someone is going to get bitten by a snake as Mud recounts when he was when he was a child.

There is more than one occurrence of this sort of foreshadowing and it is great each time. The use of Ellis growing up and getting his first girlfriend is a great parallel and reflection of Mud’s story and life.

Ultimately this is a love story. The crisis for Ellis is when he sees Mud and Juniper’s love fail.

Ellis learns that he should pursue failed love and that perhaps this wasn’t love in the first place. It allows him to move on from his failed relationship and also to see his mum and dad’s failed marriage more clearly

I enjoyed the performances and the almost allegorical way that mud speaks. The foreshadowing way of storytelling is also a favourite. I wouldn’t say I liked how the film ended with a big shootout. Not sure how I wanted it to end but it felt counter to the rest of the film.

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The Game

The Game - Toby Whithouse

This is an intriguing spy thriller set in Cold War Britain. From the word go we are given examples of how the lead may be a mole.

But then he is honest about what happened so we are not sure. The main plot starts when a soviet spy turns a traitor and warns MI5 of a major operation about to take place in England.

The team always appears to be one step behind the Russians and everything is believable and isn’t contrived.

The Russians feed them false leads meaning that they are on to the turncoat. All MI5 can consider now is that there is a mole in their midst. 

We follow Joe, Tom Hughes (Derek, Victoria), as the main contact for the KGB double agent and then as he tries to uncover the mole – which might be him.

There is also a good amount of office drama and relationships woven in to colour the story and show the period.

The period is captured fantastically. The sets are great and the locations are excellent. The costumes are the final touch and place you in the time.

The acting is excellent and from very early on we are left to guess who is the mole. Very exciting writing where we can follow and choose who we like.

All the characters have reason and are believable to be the mole – so good.

The end of the final episode is well shot so that we have no idea if they will even do anything with the shocking revelation they have uncovered.

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Fury

Fury - David Ayer

The brutality of war is realised here in a way I have never seen and it keeps humanity as well. This is such a well-told story.

It is so simple as well – just one tank and its crew. The overall battle and ever the tank’s orders are almost irrelevant as this perfectly puts us in Norman’s, Logan Lerman (Bullet Train, The Patriot), shoes.

At its heart, this is a story about the relationship between the crew members and their struggle to survive the war.

Norman is the hero that we follow. He is assigned to the tank after we meet the rest of the crew having survived a disastrous battle.

We follow them as they inculcate him into life in the tank. The crew have their ups and downs.

The might of the Nazi tanks is by far the most terrifying and this is exemplified by the crisis when a single Tiger Tank destroys three of the four American tanks.

In the end, they are a single tank sent to hold a crossroads to prevent a group of SS from reaching the Allies supply train. But only their captain, Don (Brad Pitt – The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Snatch) knows what’s at stake.

The only other film that comes close to this in terms of capturing the brutality of war is Saving Private Ryan. The reason that this is better is because it better realises what it would have been like for the individual.

Every one of the characters in the tanks is losing their grip on sanity. They are trying to hold it together for themselves and each other. There is little talk of home or what came before or what is to come.

They all exist in the moment and the moment they are all likely to die horrifically. So they lighten the mood by hazing the new guy – getting and getting on with each other.

All we are told at the start of the film is that the Nazi tanks are better and that Hitler has ordered all Germans to fight.

The decision not to give us anything else to go on is fantastic. It allows us to live in the moment with the rest of the crew.

It’s great that all the characters are completely messed up by this horrific experience – it’s believable. Even Don is losing his mind.

The banter between the crew is brilliant. It rings true and sounds like something these characters would say to each other in real life.

The battle sequences are fantastically shot. Easy to see what is happening and well choreographed. This is what great war cinematography should look like.

They are terrifying and fast passed. But that is because of what we are watching not because of how it is shot.

All the characters are terrible. They have done some horrific things to survive. We don’t know this but it feels like it.

Normally this would be something the creative team would use to make us dislike the characters. But it is juxtaposed so well with good intentions that once again it rings true.

A great example of this is when Don forces Norman to kill a prisoner of war. Norman had caused the loss of another tank after not shooting a child soldier with a rocket launcher.

Don is doing something terrible but it is to protect Norman and the rest of the crew. Norman needs to be able to follow Don’s orders and kill whoever needs to be killed for them to survive.

Immediately after this Don is concerned that Norman hasn’t eaten anything all day and tells him to find some food. It is this juxtaposition that puts this film on another level.

The best scene in the film is shortly after they have taken the town—Don and Norman set up to have breakfast with two German women that they have found.

It is beautiful and heartwarming but is also on edge because you are not sure what Don might do – he makes it clear he will rape the girl.

But everything is coming along nicely until the rest of the group arrives and then it is super aggressive and tension-building. Don breaks it by saying that no one will ruin his meal – even though this isn’t true.

I love this film and think it is one of the best war films ever made. I highly recommend it

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Circadians: First Light

Circadians: First Light - S J Macdonald

‘Worker’ placement game where the workers are the dice you roll each turn. What you roll changes what options are available to you on the board.

This makes long term planning very difficult – which is fairly original for a worker placement game.

You can have a loose plan. If I roll x I will do y. You can slo mitigate this variance through the upgrades you choose.

There are lots of aspects of this game that I didn’t get a chance to properly explore. The compitition or lack thereof based on what each player has rolled is very interesting.

It forces you to be dynamic based on what is available to you on any given turn. The heroes allow you to focus on very different objectives. 

There is a lot of choice available in terms of what to do with your dice. Because of this and the different heroes that can change you overall objective there is a lot of replay value.

I do enjoy when a new concept is tried. The dice bring something fresh to the genre.

The pieces are lovely as well and the board looks very complicated but it really isn’t. It is well designed to quickly be able to see what you options are each turn.

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Touching The Void

Touching The Void - Kevin Macdonald

This docu-drama follows Simon Yates and Joe Simpson’s attempt at the unclimbable face of a mountain in Peru. Going into this knowing nothing about them was a really good way to experience the film.

This climb is famous so the way it is filmed will be great for everyone who knows about it already. The film opens with climbs talking about snow types and climbing techniques.

It cuts back and forth between shots of climbing and two talking heads: Joe and Simon.

Every line in the opening makes you feel more and more worried about how crazy these two guys are. They are young twenty-five and twenty-one.

Simon had been moving towards climbing mountains or routes that had never been climbed before. Joe was much keener to climb this slope than Simon was but they had been a team for ages.

They then talk about their style of climbing – Alpine Style.

In this style of climbing you don’t set up different camps along the way so you have a line of retreat with supplies. 

You carry everything with you from base camp so you have to do it all in one go. They are tied together so are completely reliant on each other.

As you get higher getting water required by boiling snow means you have to carry fuel with you to melt it. The climb up wasn’t too bad until they got near the summit and then we see why no one has done this.

They are called Peruvian Flutings. It’s where the powder sits on the ridges and overhangs causing incredibly unstable footing.

The climbers were amazed that the powder didn’t avalanche like it does in the Alps. But here it just builds up at the top and is sculpted by the wind but remains powder.

Once they make it to the ridge through this stuff they are exhausted and out of fuel to make water and almost can’t be bothered to climb to the top – but they do.

Then the climb down is almost worse than up because they cannot see where they are on the ridge and if they are on top of one of the unstable flutings or not.

Climbing down also had several ice walls that they needed to climb down and up to regain the ridge.

As Joe climbs down one of these the ice cracks and he plummets to the bottom of the wall, breaking his leg. The cloud cover breaks and he can see how high they still are and he knows he is going to die.

Simon gets to him but refuses to leave him – meaning that they are both likely to die. This discussion doesn’t happen but he immediately moves into setting up to lower Joe down.

They set up all of their rope into a single length which meant that when they reached the point where it was tied together Joe needed to put slack in the rope so that the knot could be fed through the equipment and Simon could keep lowering him.

Photo by Carl H. McBublo

Everything is going remarkably well despite the agony you can see Joe is in. Then Joe is lowered over the edge of an overhang. 

Simon has no idea as he is much further up the mountain. He is sitting there waiting for Joe to take his weight off the rope which he also, obviously cannot do.

Joe looks down and sees that he is hanging over a crevasse. So he starts screaming at Simon to stop.

Simon cannot hear anything and sits there holding the rope in the unstable powder knowing that soon he is going to be pulled off the mountain and they will both die.

So Simon cuts the rope. Joe falls into the crevasse. Simon continues climbing down and reaches the crevasse and is horrified to see that this is where he would have dropped Joe.

He can see no sign of him so continues towards base camp – still fairly certain that he will die as well.

But Joe has survived. He cannot climb up so he decides to climb down. It is precarious in the dark but he manages to climb out of the crevasse but still has days of travel left to go to base camp on his broken leg.

I found the rest of the movie from here too intense.

There is just too much footage of delirious Joe pulling himself through the snow and then stumbling through the rocks towards base camp in utter pain.

There is some nice editing between what is happening at base camp and what is happening with Joe which leads us to believe that they may have left when Joe arrives.

They are still there. Everyone survives. Joe never questions Simon’s decision to cut the rope and says it is exactly what he would have done.

I find it truly amazing that they both still climb. It is also unfortunate that Simon was maligned after his impossible decision.

It’s a fascinating film up until Joe gets out of the crevasse.

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