David Vining's Blog, page 188

Two-Lane Blacktop

The people who love this movie seem to love it for that certain feeling that it gives them. Reminiscent of an era they lived personally, the film evokes their own past experiences, or at least past experiences they wish they had had, that enhances the craft and lax storytelling of the picture into something else entirely. I do like the film. I think its an interesting film with a worthwhile story to tell and that it does it well, but there does seem to be that sort of disconnect because I...

Juno and the Paycock

This has to be Hitchcocks least cinematic film he ever made. Its a filmed play with almost nothing cinematic to add to the mix. Its a miscalculation of the early sound era that equated theater and film because they shared a lot of the same parts. There are actors, sets, lights, and dialogue, and yet the mediums are actually really different because of the camera and the edit inherent in film.

The story itself is nothing that special. Its the counterfeit rise and then real fall of a poor...

Son of Saul

Well, that was cheery.

Alright, its hard to imagine many Holocaust movies being fun, but this one so effectively creates the subjective reality of one mans to do one thing right in the middle of a near literal Hell on Earth. Every piece of the film is designed to enhance the audiences immersion into this world, and its almost entirely done in closeup without seeing much of the horrors of the death camp directly.

In Nazi death camps there were a group of prisoners called the Sonderkommando...

Die Hard

Ive always wondered why Ive liked this movie than what seems like the rest of the population, so going into this watching, I was determined to figure out why. I definitely figured it out, and its a solid thirty-minute chunk in the middle of the film. Everything around it is top notch entertainment, but that block of the movies runtime is kind of painful.

The main reason the movie works so well beyond that chunk is really Bruce Willis as John McClane. Hes the everyman (but also a cop). He...

Predator

What I find most interesting about Predator from a narrative perspective is the fact that it changes genres after half an hour. It quickly runs through the conventions of a big budget 80s action movie with a huge action set piece led by the muscle bound lead Arnold Schwarzenegger, the plot essentially resolves, and then it becomes another movie for the next hour or so.

The action movie of the first half hour is quick and dirty. We get a group of elite mercenaries who are given a mission by a...

The Rock

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One of the reasons this movie works so well is the complete commitment to the reality of the film from the actors. From the main three actors to every marine, SEAL, and FBI agent, every actor is 100% committed to the story of a deranged marine general stealing chemical weapons and threatening San Francisco. The style is hyperactive, the music is pounding and propulsive, and the action moves at a high paced clip from beginning to end, almost never slowing down to breathe, but through it all,...

Blackmail

This was Britains first sound picture, immediately on the heels of the technical marvel that was The Jazz Singer, and it shows. Hitchcock did manage to do some interesting things with his first foray into sound design, but the bulk of the sound, especially in the films first half, is laborious and almost pointless, an excuse to use sound rather than a way to extend the story.

This movie takes forever to get to the point. Alice is in a relationship with a young police officer, Frank. Shes not...

The Night of the Generals

In the middle of war, with death everywhere, the loss of a single life should still matter. Thats pretty much the message of the film, though it does try to become a sort of mini-epic that includes the July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler that does tie in a bit thematically with the main plot. Its chock full of great actors doing their duty as actors and is all handsomely presented. Its one of those interesting little World War II movies that largely sidesteps and ignores the bigger...

The Manxman

Heres a weird little movie that leaves out all of the legwork needed to make dramatic moments work but still manages to raise an interesting moral question at its center. Its based on a novel by Hall Caine, and it feels like many subpar adaptations of novels that are more interested in getting the great moments into the movie rather than building a cohesive narrative that can stand on its own.

It begins with two lifelong friends, Pete, a working class fisherman, and Philip, an up and coming...

Champagne

This is an odd little movie that wants to be a comedy but takes its main character to a very, very dark place and doesnt seem to realize it. The comedic bits are broad, but theyre surprisingly far apart. Its a weird little movie.

So, The Girl (these characters dont actually have names) flies her airplane out into the middle of the Atlantic where she intentionally crashes the plane near a steam ship to Europe where her beau is. Shes in open defiance of her father whos very against the...