Fruitvale Station (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenwriter: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer 
Trailer link
IMDb page

The beginning of the end:

Fruitvale Station, this year's biggest independent hit, is a brilliant film that showcases the real life events of December 31th 2008, where 22-year-old Oscar Grant met his end at the hands of a young police officer, even though he was completely defenceless and unarmed. In a rare move, Ryan Coogler (the director) opens the movie by showing real life cellphone footage taken by people who were on the scene when Oscar was shot, effectively "spoiling" the end of the movie within 2 minutes. Because of this, the experience of watching Fruitvale Station is shrouded in an atmosphere of tragedy and unfairness almost instantly, making it one of the most heartbreaking and emotionally affecting films of 2013.

A star rises from the ashes: 

After the real life footage has played, the movie opens on the morning of December 31th. Oscar Grant has just woken up, completely unaware that he will be dead in less than 24 hours, and when he is done sending his daughter off to school, we get to see how he interacts with friends, family and colleagues on the last day of his life. Grant is portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, who is best known for his role in 2012's "Chronicle", and his performance in this film is nothing short of starmaking. We are shown through flashbacks that his character has been to jail, cheated on his girlfriend and sold drugs in the past, and that these events now trouble him very deeply. He loves his daughter, his mother and his girlfriend very much, and Jordan portrays his desire to become a better person for their sake so convincingly that you become emotionally attached to him within no more than a couple of scenes. The way I see it, everyone might as well get used to the fact that there is a new Michael Jordan in town as quickly as possible, because this talented young man is here to stay.

What about dramatisation and glorification?:

As with every other movie, book, song or article that is based on true events, it is absolutely vital that you, as a member of the audience, approach Fruitvale Station with a certain amount of scepticism. In this case, the media painted Oscar Grant as a helpless victim of a ruthless act of police brutality, and no matter how convincing the cellphone recordings might look, we all know that the media has a tendency to "slightly" bend the facts of reality in cases like these. Fortunately for the film, Ryan Coogler does a very good job of remaining as neutral as possible when recreating Oscar Grant's final hours. As an example, we are shown very early on how Oscar has been selling drugs for several years in order to stay above water, and that he has a tendency to become angry and hostile when things get a little out of hand. He is not portrayed as an innocent angel who happened to be in the line of fire of a heartless killer, as has previously been the case. 

Also, as with every other biographical movie, a few liberties had to be taken in order to turn real life events into a theatrical experience worth paying to see. Thankfully, this does not mean that the actual recreation of the shooting is portrayed as one sided as it previously has been by the press, or as unrealistically as it might have been. In the climax of the movie, it is clearly visible that the crowd and Oscars friends' verbal and physical reactions to his arrest had a huge impact on the cop that ended up shooting him a few minutes later, and instead of painting the officer as a cold hearted bastard, Coogler portrays him as an insecure rookie, who acted on instinct rather than hatred. No one except the cop himself knows what went through his head at that point in time, and Ryan Coogler's ability to portray the ambiguous nature of the shooting, no matter how unfair and brutal the event might seem to the outside world, is the most impressive and admirable aspect of the entire movie. 

The power of knowledge:

Rather than taking the excitement out of the film, the fact that we all know how it is going to end is one of the Fruitvale Station's strongest assets. It really is kind of hard to explain, but as the film moves closer and closer to that inevitable point in time, you start to grow more and more anxious and more and more fearful of what you know is just about to happen. Instead of fearing the unknown, the things that we do know become what we fear the most, which in turn takes the tension and level of emotional investment in the characters to entirely new, gut wrenching heights. Except for Only God Forgives, I personally have not felt as consumed by a movie all year as I was by this one, and watching it felt more like being on an emotional rollercoaster than in a movie theater. 

In conclusion:

No matter how few specifics we know about the things that took place on January 1th 2008, the death of Oscar Grant was eternally tragic and completely unnecessary. This apparent case of police brutality spawned a huge amount of controversy and debate all over America, and Coogler probably decided to adapt the events into a movie in an attempt to raise even more awareness about the subject. The cop that did the shooting was released from jail after serving just 11 months in prison (source), which should seem like a very short amount of time to just about anyone, no matter what you think happened that night. First time director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan did an incredible job at adapting the tragic event into a haunting, memorable and thought provoking movie, and Fruitvale Station is definitely my pick for best independent movie of the year so far. 

Upstream Color (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Shane Carruth

Screenwriter: Shane Carruth

Stars: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thaigo Martins

Trailer link

IMDb page

A weird exposition: 

If David Cronenberg, Terence Mallick and David Lynch had a lovechild, his name would be Shane Carruth. "Upstream Color" is the followup to "Primer", his debut film from 2004, and it is the trippiest, creepiest, weirdest and most strangely captivating movie I have seen all year. Not only does it deal with themes such as identity theft, existential chaos, parasitic infections and the organics of life, but it also juggles with more normal themes like revenge, love, and the joy of pig farming. In other words; this film is as indie as anything is likely to get, but if you are into that kind of stuff, I can almost certainly promise you that it will be right up your alley. 

A mind-bender in disguise:

Despite being weird in a wide variety of ways, the narrative structure of this film is actually quite simple. We have thirty minutes of buildup where we get to know the main characters and where the main plot devices are introduced, followed by thirty minutes of escalation where things start to pick up and become more exiting, and then finally thirty minutes of confrontation where all the things that took place in the first hour of the film come together to form an ending. This setup might seem very simple, but describing what actually takes place during these three half hour parts without making it sound as if Shane Carruth is absolutely insane, is next to impossible. The story is so unique, so odd and so multi layered that you almost have to see the film for yourself in order to decide what it actually is about, but because this is a film review, I am going to try to summarise it shortly in as understandable a format as possible:

Kris is drugged with some sort of parasite that makes her loose control of her body. She basically becomes a zombie that follows any and all orders given to her without question, and whilst she is in this hypnotized state, she is manipulated into handing everything that she owns over to the guy who drugged her. When she finally snaps out of her coma a few days later with no memory of what has happened, her life slowly starts to fall apart. She has no money, no job, no house and almost no possessions, and consequently falls into a deep depression as a result of having her identity stolen. Kris eventually meets another person who seems to be suffering from some of the same mental problems as  herself, and when the two of them fall for each other and start digging into their seemingly identical pasts, a string of very odd yet strangely enchanting events take place.

95 % style and 5 % substance:

As much as people who have seen it tend to talk about some of the more trippy story elements of the plot, I personally believe that the most interesting thing about Upstream Color is its moods and its atmosphere. There is a subplot in the movie about a guy who basically does nothing but walking around in a forest recording the sounds of the world, and even though I have a very hard time figuring out what it meant to the story, this was the single most artistically satisfying segments I have seen in a movie all year. If you are into these dreamy themes and very loosely explained plots, Upstream Color is just the movie that you have been looking for, but if you prefer carefully composed storylines that make perfect sense and leave you feeling as if you understood every perfectly, you are going to hate it with every fiber of your being. I know that I am not doing a very good job of explaining anything specific about this film at all, but trying to do so would be a waste of effort anyway. It simply is way too floaty. 

The bottom line:

Given the flimsy nature of Upstream Color's content, this blog post is not as much a review of the movie as it is a recommendation for you to go see it. The movie benefits from some of the most beautiful camerawork and sound design I have seen/heard in 2013, and its floaty and almost dreamlike chain of events makes for one of the most engrossing film experiences of the year as well. It is a very artsy film with a very niche target audience however, and it is not very hard to tell that Shane Carruth does not give a damn about normal Hollywood rules and stipulations. I would be lying if I said Upstream Color was an easy movie to watch and keep up with, but no matter how you twist and turn it, it is undeniably one of the most fascinating and unique films of the year, and I have a feeling that we will be talking about for many years to come.  

Capote (2005) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Bennett Miller

Screenwriter: Dan Futterman

Stars: Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper

Trailer link

IMDb page

Two great american artists: 
Truman Capote was one of his times most important writers, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of the most gifted actors of our time. Seeing as these two incredible individuals have a lot of visual similarities, it is only fitting that Hoffman got to portray the famous American writer in Bennet Miller's "Capote" from 2005; a portrayal for which he won an Oscar, a golden globe, a Screen Actor's Guild Award, a BAFTA, and pretty much everything else there is to win. 

A new perspective on murder:
Whereas most biopics tend to focus on a large portion of an individual's life, often times even several decades, "Capote" only spans over the couple of years during which Truman Capote did his research for his most famous Novel, "In Cold Blood". The book is based on the brutal murders of an Arkansas family that took place during the late 1940's, but instead of focusing on the actual killings, this film tells the story of how Capote developed a close relationship with one of the murderers during his writing process. This is a very bold approach in my opinion, because as we all know, the easiest thing would have been to tell a story about the brutality of the murderers and the following police investigation that led up to their capture. In this film however, we do not even witness the murderers flee or being captured, but instead get to witness how Capote went about depicting the events in his book. That ladies and gentlemen, is cool.

The main dude: 
One of the many impressive things about this movie is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote, especially considering just how gay the famous writer was. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but he had a very distinctive, high pitch way of talking, as well as a very feminine and flamboyant way of carrying himself. I have not seen footage of the real life Capote, so whether or not Hoffmann got the impression right is not for me decide, but he certainly got the gay mannerisms down to a tee. 

Being the main character from whose perspective all the events in the film are seen from, the experiences and personal journey of Truman Capote is the main storyline in this movie. The actual events that take place are not as important as the ways in which Capote reacts to and deals with them, and as such, it is very unfortunate that the film tended to slip a little during these important scenes. Sure, the "Oh, he's an asshole!"-moments and the "Dude, he's really suffering right now..."-incidents are really convincing and individually strong, but it feels as if the things he goes through do not carry over to the following scenes. Things just kind of happen, Hoffman reacts in a striking way, but then in the next scene, he seems to have either forgotten about the event or disregarded it completely. It is entirely possible that this was done entirely on purpose in order to show how indecisive, bipolar, manipulative and egoistical Capote was, but to me, it just seemed a bit inconsistent and random at times.

The supporting dudes and dude'esses:
Even though they come second in line, Hoffman's conversations with the different supporting characters are all very well done and executed almost perfectly as well. Catherine Keener plays Nelle Harper Lee, another famous writer, who wrote How to Kill a Mockingbird at the same time as Capote did his research for In Cold Blood, and being a big fan of her novel and especially the following movie adaption, I  found it very rewarding to watch all the small intertextual references to ”Mockingbird” during this movie. Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino and Chris Cooper were all very good as well, but the biggest surprise to me was how good Clifton Collins was at portraying the killer that Hoffman’s character develops the strongest emotional connection with. Their conversations were very heartfelt and emotionally convincing, and I found myself making this face during many of their shared scenes, simply because of how riveting both these actors' performances were. 

In conclusion:
All in all, Capote is a very good film with a lot of truly impressive character moments and emotional weight. It is a talking movie in every sense of the word however, so if you decide to watch it in hopes of getting to see the actual Clutter family murders and the ins and outs of the following police investigation, you are going to be in for one hell of a disappointment. The thematical elements are very well handled however, the acting is incredible across the board, the stand out being Philip Seymour Hoffman, and if you go into Capote with curiosity and an open mind, I am almost certain that you are going to enjoy it just as much as I did. 

Update #6 - The Start of Something New, or Just the Continuation of Something Rather Old?

Hi!

As my two regular readers will have noticed, I have not been blogging very regularly in the past few months, and there are several reasons as to why that is. Since I really enjoy writing about movies and want to keep on doing it, I have decided to implement a few changes in order to get back into the swing of things again.

1) From now on, my reviews will be shorter, more precise and therefore also more accessable. I have literally been writing novels instead of movie reviews as of late, and even though this has allowed me to go really in-depth with the movies I really enjoy writing about, it also means that writing about those movies that are not that interesting get very tedious very quickly. Also, no matter how hardcore you are, Reading a 2000-word review is not a pleasant thing to do, so this shorter format should allow me to catch the attention of a larger audience and make me able to write more often as well. #DemPageviews.

2) I will not be rating movies any longer. This is the big one. I have honestly come to hate the process of comparing movies to each other in order to find out how many stars X movie "deserves", because as most people who has tried doing this for a long period of time will know, the process ends up completely ruining the fun of watching movies. It has gotten to the point where I start considering what rating I want to give to a film while I am in the process of watching it instead of just enjoying the experience, which in turn makes this whole blogging thing feel more like a job than a hobby. Ratings are a thing of the past now, and that is just how it is going to be. It is for the best. 

3) There will be no more review-subcategories. No more "Classic Movie Reviews" or "Foreign Movie Reviews". A movie is a movie, and a review is a review. 

4) By adding the "Uncut" category, I am going to be expanding my territory a bit. I have often found myself wanting to write about movie related stuff that did not fit into the my two main categories ("Update" or "Film Review"), such as a specific genre, an actor, a director, awards, and so on and so forth. With the "Uncut" segment, I will be free to rant, rave, speculate and ramble as much as want to. Yay. 

Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up this time around. I thank you for taking the time to read this update, and if you liked it and feel a deep desire to stay on top of new reviews, updates and rants about everything else film-related, please feel free to add this site to your RSS feed. 

Cheers 

/Andrew

Primal Fear - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I don't have to believe you. I don't care if you are innocent. I'm your mother, your father, your priest."

Enduring Genres and an Awkward Confession:
The courtroom drama is one of the oldest film genres in Hollywood, and if done well, it has the potential to force its audience onto the edge of their seats using only snappy dialogue and passionate acting. Safe for westerns and courtroom dramas, I personally have a hard time enjoying old movies that are generally considered all time master pieces, such as the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. I do realise how technically groundbreaking films like Citizen Kane and Rear Window were and how atmospheric and gripping Vertigo and The Third Man must have been back then, but being an 18-year-old kid from the instant-living social media age who grew up with nothing but cartoons and reality TV, most of these older classics just don't appeal to me from an entertainment standpoint. However, there are some old films that do manage to reel me in, especially courtroom dramas such as 12 Angry men and To Kill a Mockingbird, and having just realized this a few months ago, I decided to embark on a one-genre-marathon, and last night that lead me down the road of Primal Fear, a 1996 thriller starring Richard Gere, Edward Norton, Laura Linney and Frances McDormand. 

A Shady City Inhabited by Even Shadier People:

Primal Fear is a bleak and chilly movie that takes place in a murky Chicago littered with crime and corruption; a place where radical hot shot defence attorneys like Martin Vail (Richard Gere) are generally considered to be the dirtiest criminals of them all. Vail is a very smooth and very handsome lawyer with a big talent for making powerful friends and an even bigger talent for getting criminals off the hook, and as such, he is one hell an arrogant and immoral bastard. Vail is always on the border of breaking the confines of the law himself, and the only set of rules he seems to respect is one that he has came of with himself; one that allows him to live with the things he has done in the past as well as the present. Vail is so fond of public attention that he decides to defend a dimwitted 19-year-old boy with a stammer by the name of Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) in a case about the murder of a beloved archbishop pro bono, simply because the case is as high profile and media influenced as it happens to be. What our arrogant main character fails to realize is that the upcoming trial might not be as simple and straight forward as he initially though it was, and when the disturbing truth slowly starts to show its ugly face, Vail is caught in a sticky web of lies, deceit, money and murder that he can't seem to wrestle himself out of.

The Impressive Ensemble:

This film succeeds in most of the things that it set out to do in my opinion, but it also has a fair amount of minor flaws and obvious conveniences as well. The thing that I liked the most about it also just happens to be the films strongest asset by far, and that is the well rounded and brilliantly acted characters portrayed by Gere, Linney, McDormand and Edward Norton especially. Richard Gere plays the main character in the film, and his turn as Martin Vail is one of the best performances I've ever seen him deliver, mainly because of how many different mindsets he has to master over the course of this movie. This man goes through a wide variety of ups and downs both professionally, personally and morally, and the fact that I was so invested in him as a character, in spite of all his arrogance and pretentiousness, is a testimony not only to Gere's brilliance but to Steve Shagan and Ann Bidermann's fine characterwriting as well. Watching this sleazy lawyer twist his way in and out of Chicago's social layers both figuratively and literally was a real joy to watch, and when he has his big moments of revelation and personal realization, Gere underplays his character's emotions in such way that I found myself feeling both sorry and resentful towards him at the same time. However, as much as the film benefits from Gere's subtle slimeball performance, it is Edward Norton who ends up completely stealing the show in the end. 

His role as Aaron Stampler in Primal Fear is Edward Norton's feature film debut, and it landed him a golden globe statuette and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He was 27 back then. Norton has always been one of my personal favourites, but no matter how many great things I had heard prior to witnessing it myself, I had no idea just how incredible this man already was at such a young age. The character that he portrays in this film is a very disturbed and emotionally scarred young individual who appears to have been caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and even though the character does suffer from a few script related issues, Norton does an awe-inspiring job with the material that he has been given. I mentioned that Gere’s performance was great because of his ability to display a wide variety of different emotions, but when compared to Norton’s incredible range of facial expressions, voices, body postures and characteristics, Gere looks like a stoned cartoon cardboard cut-out. Aaron Stampler has a condition that forces Norton to play several different roles in the same movie, pretty much identical to the way he went on to do it in Leaves of Grass in 2009, and it is almost surreal how good he is at flipping his character 180 degrees in a matter of seconds in this film. Gere, McDormand and Linney all play vital and well portrayed characters that helped mold this movie into what it is, but none of them come even close to matching the sheer amount of raw talent and range displayed by Edward Norton in his debut role as Aaron Stampler.

Six Star Characters in a Three Star Movie:

In terms of the actual world that Norton, Gere and the rest of cast find themselves in, there sadly is not that much to write home about. In spite of its very well realized characters and some very snappy and occasionally hilarious dialogue, Primal Fear ends up becoming a picture perfect example of how the sum of a lot of great individual things sometimes turn out to be worth a whole lot less than first anticipated. We have all seen the basic premise of the plot done a thousand times before: A shady lawyer/cop/journalist/private investigator takes a job that doesn’t seem that interesting or difficult in the beginning, only to find out that there is a much more sinister reality lurking just beneath the surface, which ends up making him question his own morals and integrity. The way in which Gere’s character shows these inner demons is also rather wooden and uninspired to put it mildly, because instead of coming up with a smart or innovative way of displaying Vail’s declining trust in himself and his methods, someone decided to go the cheap route and add a sub plot about this journalist who is in the middle of writing an article about defence attorneys. The way I see it, this is a blatant excuse to have Vail specifically say the things that the director and the writers wants the audience to think, without having to come up with something that will display it instead. The journalist doesn’t even have more than four or three lines in the entire 130-minute movie, and the sole purpose of his character was to pop up whenever Gere’s character needed a wall to talk to, so that the audience could get to know how he is feeling at specific point in time. This is extremely lazy writing in my opinion, and these specific scenes ended up reducing my over all impression of the movie quite a lot.

Another thing that turned me off about this movie, is the way in which it handles the whole mystery aspect of the thriller genre. I do not mind it when courtroom have a twist or a revelation near the end of the plot in order to throw the audience for a loop, but I do not always think that it is the right way to go either. The shocker in this film actually worked quite effectively and initially had me grinning like a 12-year-old who had just found his first playboy magazine, but the credits had not even started rolling before I was beginning to find several things about it that did not make sense. We are not talking about major things that ruined the entire film or anything of that magnitude, but if I was to watch the movie again, I am pretty sure that I would be able to find several “Well, that just doesn’t make any sense at all!”-moments, especially concerning the character of Aaron Stampler. Some of those do not even require repeat viewings, and there is at least two other rather iffy details about some other characters that I can think of right now, one of them being the alcoholic judge played by Alfre Woodard. The film spends a lot of time specifically showing us how she always has a drink in her hand, both during and in between trials, but it never has any effect on the plot whatsoever. She does not seem the least bit drunk in her behaviour or in her decision making even once throughout the film, and I was left quite puzzled as to why this completely irrelevant detail was added to her character.

The One-man Jury's Final Verdict: 

Even though its story is somewhat campy and unremarkable, Primal Fear is an extremely well acted film that benefits from a whole bunch of trustworthy main characters and a virtual heap of clever and sometimes funny dialogue. It is a great film in terms of pure entertainment value, and even though it hits a few glaring misses and fails to revolutionize its genre in even the slightest way possible, I would recommend anyone who likes a good courtroom drama with great characters and an easily digestible plot to check it out. Norton’s performance alone makes it completely worth it, and as a whole, Primal Fear has earned my seal of approval. (4/6)

Primal Fear IMDb page here

Primal Fear trailer here

Gravity - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I hate space.."

In Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski have to work together in order to survive in the wast nothingness of space, after a heap of satellite debris has destroyed their shuttle. Dr. Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) has only been an astronaut for a couple of weeks, so its up to Matt (played by George Clooney), a much more seasoned space veteran, to calm her down and guide her through the chaotic situation that they find themselves in. The movie is written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the man that brought us films like Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Gravity is likely going to be the film that he'll be remembered for in the decades to come. It took him more than four years and 120 million dollars to create this piece of cinema, and if you were to trust the critics, the result of his tireless work is one of the greatest and most visually groundbreaking space film ever made. 

The Visuals:

Alfonso Cuarón's and Terrence Malick's go to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot this film, and as of November 2013, his camera work in Gravity marks the absolute pinnacle of cinematic photography, and the film's editor and visual effects specialists deserve the same kind of praise. This film consists of nothing but long, uninterrupted shots of the most marvelous scenery I've seen in my short life, and the fact that 95 % of it is created on a computer is mind boggling to say the least. I've never been a huge fan of 3D and extravagant CGI special effects, but the way in which this film pushes the boundaries of visual cinema is unheard of and incomparable to anything ever created before it, and I'd be shocked if the academy doesn't reward this film with every single technical honor available to them. With Gravity, Cuarón and Lubezki does to 3D what Paul Greengrass  and his cinematographer did to shaky-cam back in the Bourne days, which is to take an irritating, redundant and overused camera technique and turn it into a respectable art form that serves as a way to enhance the stuff that's already there, rather than as a vehicle that everything else relies upon.   

Because of its beauty and astounding impact, I'm having a hard time putting into words what these visuals actually look like. I'm just now realizing that this is exactly what the man who discovered fire must have felt like when he first tried to explain to his friends what it actually was he'd seen, and in the same way that fire ended up revolutionizing the way in which humans lived back then, I wouldn't be surprised if Gravity ends up doing something similarly unexpected to the world of visual cinema. The first scene in the film lasts for 17 almighty minutes, in which the characters just flow around in space doing their astronaut thing as usual. The camera slowly floats in and around the astronauts as they work on the outside of the Hubble telescope in this tour de force of an opening sequence, and it manages to capture the essence of space and the cold, desolate vastness of it in a way that makes it look and feel utterly beautiful and nail-bitingly scary at the same time. The devastating silence of outer space is depicted to perfection in this film as well, and watching space stations and satellites get absolutely ripped to shreds without making a sound is nothing short of terrifying. 

The Story:

Gravity's aesthetic values is its strongest asset by far, and even though they go a very long way, visual appeal alone isn't enough to make a movie truly fantastic. A fully fleshed survival thriller like Gravity has to have an actual story and some actual characters in order build up some real emotional weight, and unfortunately, this is where Gravity looses a bit of its huge initial impact. To put it frankly, Cuarón's latest movie isn't anything more than a meat and potatoes survival thriller with a couple of familiar characters with cut and dry character traits, that just happens to benefit from the most astounding visuals ever put on a movie screen. Some of the more emotional character development moments just don't carry the emotional weight behind them that they were intended to, and I never truly felt as if I connected to any of the characters and cared about what happened to them. The overall story did serve as an effective survival thriller that reminded me of films like 127 Hours and Rescue Dawn, and I've got nothing down right negative to say about the plot and the way it developed, but it just doesn't reach the same level of spectacularness as the visuals.

The Characters:

In terms of characters, Dr. Stone and Matt Kowalski are the only ones in the entire film. Ed Harris does make an appearance in the beginning of the film as a voice being heard over a radio, but other than that, the entire weight of the narrative rests on the shoulders of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and as far as I'm able to tell, both of them do a good job with what they have available to them. Clooney plays an experienced veteran astronaut who's on his last mission before retiring, and as such, there really aren't that many directions for his character to go in. It wasn't that hard to predict where his character was going in terms of plot progression for me, and even though he's funny and well portrayed by Clooney, Matt Kowalski ended up feeling like a wooden character without any real tricks up his sleeve. Bullock's character suffered from the same problem in my opinion,  because even though her performance as Dr. Stone is the better of the two, the character itself feels like a cardboard cutout of the same "rookie that finds herself in a tight spot and has to find a way out there with the help of a veteran colleague"-character that we've all seen a million times before. 

The Verdict:

When it's all said and done, Gravity is one of the most overwhelming visual experiences I've had in my entire life. Grasping the magnitude of the achievement that the guys who created this world have achieved without actually watching the movie is next to impossible, and that's why I think that anyone with a set of functioning eyes should go ahead and watch Gravity  for themselves. Its story and its characters might not be more than just above average, but the sheer amount of goosebumps and heart attacks that Alfonso Cuarón's latest picture will inflict upon you anyway, almost manages to make up for that in my opinion. In the and, I think that any movie that is as certain to win every single technical Academy Award as Gravity is, deserves to be bough and enjoyed on BluRay. This is also the absolute only way you should go about watching it if you didn't get a chance to catch it in you local cinema, because without proper sound, picture quality and screen size, Gravity isn't more than a regular survival thriller, that just happens to take place in space. (5/6)

Gravity IMDb page here

Gravity trailer here

Unforgiven - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Yeah, well, Uncle Pete says you was the meanest goddamn son-of-a-bitch alive, and if I ever wanted a partner for a killin', you were the worst one. Meaning the best, on account as your's as cold as the snow and you don't have no weak nerve nor fear."

Unforgiven is written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Clint Eastwood, and it stars Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett and Eastwood himself in the leading roles. It won four Academy Awards back in 1992 including best picture and best director, and it's generally considered to be one Eastwood's best films to date, and one of the greatest westerns ever made as well. 

I'm pretty inexperienced in terms of westerns, but just like anyone else with ears and eyes, I've come to know for a fact that Clint Eastwood is the biggest star from this particular genre to have ever walked the face of the earth. I've enjoyed a lot of this talented film maker's directorial work from the 90's and the 00's, but for some odd reason, the fact that his unofficial masterpiece is a western has always made me shy away from watching it when I had the chance. I haven't really seen enough westerns to decide whether or not I like the genre in general, but because of man kind's age old fear of the unknown, I've never given this chapter of film legacy an honest attempt to win me over. I finally decided to break that bad habit last night though, and I'm happy to admit that this proved to be the best choice I've made in months. 

Unforgiven takes place near the end of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century, where a former renowned thief and murderer turned hog farmer by the name of William Munny (Eastwood), lives a humble and assimilated life with his two children. Munny used to be the baddest, meanest, coldest and drunkest bastard in all of the old Wild West, until Claudia, the woman of his life and eventual wife, came around and straightened him out. William hasn't killed a man or had a drink in over 11 years when our story picks up, but since his wife passed away a few years earlier, he's been struggling to support his two children financially by just farming hogs. Because of his wish to secure a better future for his kids, William reluctantly takes on one last job along with his old partner Ned (Freeman) and a spirited young man called The Schofield Kid; A job that accidentally puts him on a collision course with Little Bill Dagget (Hackman), a tough-as-nails sherif who isn't afraid to stare death right in the eyes.

Alright, so I want to talk about the main thing that I love about this film right off the bat, and that's the way in which the different characters in it are written and constructed. I know that changing up the recipe is hard to when your'e working with a genre that is as old as cinema itself, but I genuinely believe that that's exactly what David Peoples did with the screenplay for Unforgiven, and all the characters in the film become thrillingly alive as a direct result of it. It's as if Peoples completely ignored all the different rules of stereotypical character creation when he came up with William Munny's, Ned's and Little Bill Dagget's personal traits and ways of thinking; a fact that makes the film much more rewarding, engaging and original in the end, because of the way it keeps you guessing and wondering what they'll do next. The most noticeable example of this is the character of William Munny, and Eastwood's legacy as a western actor made him nothing short of perfect for the role. 

When it comes to Clint Eastwood, most people think of him as one of the biggest badasses in film history, and rightfully so. He spent his entire youth playing the same tough, unflinching, mythical antihero who never missed a single shot and who always ends up killing all the bad guys within a matter of seconds, but in this movie, his character is the exact opposite of that. William Munny used to be feared and undefeatable, but as he's grown older, he's become slower, more fragile, prone to sickness and very remorseful of what he did in his youth. Watching Clint Eastwood struggle to mount his horse and miss several easy shots up close is very uncommon indeed, but to witness him have an emotional breakdown after having had his ass handed to him in a fistfight is straight up mind blowing. He's nothing like the Clint Eastwood stereotype we're so used to seeing in westerns, and as it turn out, his performance in Unforgiven is the best one he's ever given in my opinion. The fact that he The Man With no Name turned into The Man With an Actual Story kind of says it all to me, and I'm pretty sure that Eastwood chose to direct and star in this film because of the real life similarities he shares with the character of William Munny, albeit in a slightly different way of cause.

Apart from these character elements, some of the main themes in Unforgiven is reputation, legacy and honor. Saul Rubinek plays a small but crucial role as an aspiring writer in the movie, who's in the process of writing a biography about English Bob, another ageing gunslinger, who unlike Munny hasn't shelfed the cocky attitude of his youth just yet. Bob lies and cheats his way to fame, riches, woman and respect, but as soon as his fraud is revealed and Mr Beauchamp (Rubinek) realizes that he isn't worth writing a biography about any longer, he jumps ship and decides to write about Little Bill Dagget instead. He doesn't care about truth or lies, fact or fiction; All he wants is a good story that sells. My theory is that this character symbolizes the way in which the old stories of the Wild West came about back in the day, and based on what we hear Mr. Beauchamp read out loud, the stories that he's writing don't sound too unfamiliar from the westerns that Sergio Leone and Don Siegel made back in the 60's. Eastwood probably didn't mean to mock the westerns of old by including this little piece of meta bait in his film, and it doesn't come off as ironic or preachy or anything like at all. It symbolizes that things, people, traditions and the perception of history has changed over the decades, and the way that Mr. Eastwood pulled it off is very impressive if you ask me. 

All these metaphorical themes and selfaware directorial realisations aside though, Unforgiven is blessed to have what every great western has to have; A solid, superbly written and engaging plot. The story about the rusty oldtimer who has to get get back into the swing of things in order to obtain some sort of redemption might be just as old and worn out as Eastwood himself, but in the same way that the characters in the film avoid being boring and clichéd, the story manages to mean ten different things in ten different ways at the same time, without getting even the slightest bit complicated, pretentious or predictable. Richard Harris and Gene hackman might serve as supporting actors in this picture, but I've rarely witnessed a secondary storyline as engaging, important and well utilized as the one these two phenomenal actors share, which is a testimony to how well rounded the script for this film is. Hackman won an oscar for his performance as Little Bill Dagget, but Harris would have been just as worthy of the honor if you ask me. Both of them symbolize one of the many stereotypical western characters that have existed over the years, but they also manage to depict and emphasize the meanings and importance of these characters in a very impressive and strangely poetic way, and they serve as a shining example of just how important great supporting characters are to the over all success of a movie. 

When I watched Unforgiven for the very first time, the 131 minute runtime whizzed by in what felt like 85 minutes. There's not a single bad thing to say about the direction, the writing, the acting, the phasing, the editing, the cinematography or the symbolism in this masterpiece of a film, and I find it hard to believe that the world will ever see a movie change everything we thought we knew about a genre and turn it on its head in the same way that this one did. Unforgiven isn't just Clint Eastwood's masterpiece in my opinion, it's his legacy as a film maker, and his contribution to the world of cinema and the generation of movies he grew up with. There's no two ways about it; Unforgiven is movie magic at its very finest. (6/6)

Unforgiven IMDb page here

Unforgiven trailer link here

In Bruges - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I don't know any Belgium jokes, and if I did I think I'd have the good sense not to... hang on. Isn't it Belgium with all those child abuse murders lately? I do know a Belgium joke. What's Belgium famous for? Chocolates and child abuse, and they only invented the chocolates to get to the kids."

As far as comedies go, I tend to prefer the darker ones with dry humour and an ironic sense of self awareness, such as Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I love the way in which these types of movies encapsulate the human condition much more accurately than most lighthearted and audience friendly comedies do it, and I tend to find them very honest and believable in their approach to character creation and development. I decided to watch In Bruges last night because I'd heard a lot of people with a similar opinion on comedies hold it in high esteem, and even though I do have a problem with some of the things that took place in the story, I'm happy to confirm that writer/director Martin McDonaugh's feature film debut is one of the funniest pitch black comedies I've seen since The Coen Brothers' Fargo.

In Bruges takes place in a Belgian city by the name of Bruges. Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are a pair of Irish assassins who's been given orders to go to the city after they've completed a job back an London, and as they await further instructions from their boss, the audience gets to witness how the two blokes navigate the small romantic streets of this old, almost medieval type of city. Farrell plays the main character, and he hates Bruges with a burning passion, whereas his more experienced partner, who's played by Gleeson, enjoys their stay very much. The two characters' countless discussions about the city and all its old buildings are one of the biggest sources of laugh out loud moments in the entire film, which partly is due to the very intelligently written lines of Tarantino'esque dialogue, and partly is because of the superb performances delivered by the lead actors. Colin Farrell did an especially good job in my opinion, and he won a golden globe for his performance. 

Whereas the dialogue is snappy, witty and very well timed, the actual narrative aspects of the film are less remarkable in some cases. Some of the plot details were a little iffy at times, and especially one storyline about a dwarf actor was somewhat inappropriate in my opinion. The film doesn't ridicule or discriminate against midgets or anything like that, but I just don't think that the character fit into the story, and the way he's used as a catalyst for something monumental at one point in the plot felt very circumstantial to say the least. He does have several very funny scenes with Farrell's character though, which somewhat redeems these flaws. Fleur Delacour is also in this movie, and she plays Colin Farrell's love interest, because hey, the main character's got to have a love interest in order for the movie to have emotional weight, right? Well, not exactly. Even though she's a decently funny and well portrayed character, there was absolutely no reason for her to exist whatsoever, and the way she affected Farrell's character seemed very flimsy and inconsistent in terms of reasoning and plot decisiveness. 

When I say that In Bruges is a pitch black comedy, I really mean pitch black. People get killed regularly throughout the film, the main characters are depressed and suicidal, and there's a couple of very gory scenes in the movie that a lot of audiences will find sort of disturbing. In spite of all that though, I was consistently laughing from start to finish because of the actors' and the script's impeccable sense of comedic timing, and it's very cool to me that a movie as dark as this one ended up making me feel as uplifted as it did. There are a few times where the roughness and the grittiness gets a little too over exaggerated though, and I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry on at least two separate occasions. I don't know if that's how Martin McDonaugh intended to make me feel, but it felt awkward and a little estranging in any case. It's not a big problem though, and over all I'd say that the story of In Bruges was well conceived, brilliantly written and well executed. 

Apart from the dialogue, the main characters and the actors who portray them are the stars of this movie. Farrell's and Gleeson's characters both have a lot of inner demons to deal with, and although In Bruges is primarily a comedy, these two brilliant actors' performances made some of the more emotional scenes surprisingly harrowing and emotionally conflicting. Ralph Fiennes has a role in this film as well, and even though he's only in it for about 40-45 minutes, he manages to make a detrimental impact on the story in a very short amount of time, because of how indecent and profoundly unlikable he is. He's part of some of the funniest and most captivating scenes in the movie too, and even though it's not very likable that things would have gone down the way they did in them, his scene in on the stairs with Gleeson and his scene in the hotel with Farrell are my favourite ones in the whole film. Fiennes' character is a slimeball and a crook if ever there was one, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't very entertaining to look at. 

When it comes down to it, In Bruges is one of the funniest films I've seen all year, and quite possibly the darkest one as well. Most of the characters are very well written and acted, and even those who weren't were almost just as funny as those who were. The story does have a few slightly visible bumps in the road though, and even though they aren't nearly problematic enough to ruin the film, they do drag its over all rating down a bit. In Bruges is a witty, clever and compelling cinematic experience anyway though, and it deserves my seal of approval as much as any other comedy I've ever reviewed, and a tad bit more than that as well. (4,5/6)

In Bruges IMDb page here

In Bruges trailer here

The Hunt - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"I want a word with Theo. Look into my eyes. Look me in the eyes. What do you see? Do you see anything? Nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. You leave me alone now. You leave me alone now, Theo. Then I'll go. Thank you."

Thomas Vinterberg bursted onto the European film scene back in 1998 with his directorial debut "The Celebration", a Dogma 95 movie about child abuse and family corruption that has gone down in history as one of Danish film's greatest achievements ever. Vinterberg helped put the small Scandinavian country of Denmark on the map as one of the countries to look out for in terms of cinema, but he never really managed to duplicate that initial success he achieved with The Celebration. Not until 2012 anyway. His newest movie "The Hunt" takes place in a small Danish town with a tight local community, where Lucas, a former school teacher played by Mads Mikkelsen, is forced to work in the local kindergarden after his wife leaves him. Lucas is a friendly and likable guy, and he has a lot of family, colleagues and friends who enjoy his company very much. Seeing as he recently lost custody of his only son though, Lucas feels very lonely and assimilated from the rest of the people around him, and it's clear from the very beginning that he's a very broken man at the moment. However, as if the world wasn't tough enough on this poor individual already, one innocent little lie is about to start a chain reaction of tragic events that threatens to push him completely off of the edge of society. 

Every movie enthusiast has their own personal favourite genre, whether it be horror, rom-com, action, comedy, thriller etc. I personally love dark dramas with damaged and interesting characters such as A Single Man, Drive and Take Shelter, and Thomas Vinterberg's latest directorial success fits that mold incredibly well, which automatically scores it a few extra points in my book. That being said though, these kinds of movies tend to have  a very niche target audience because of their serious and often terribly depressing subject matter, and The Hunt doesn't do a very good job of changing that statistic. It actually strengthens it. I personally haven't seen a movies as joyless or as heartbreaking as this one for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people end up hating The Hunt because of the melancholic way it leaves most of it's audience feeling. No matter how you twist and turn it though, this movie is a phenomenal piece of film making on every single taxonomic level, and it had me engaged from the very first shot of Mads Mikkelsen walking around in the woods all by himself.

The main plot device in The Celebration was sexual child abuse, and that goes for The Hunt as well. The difference is that it actually didn't happen this time around, but unfortunately for Lucas, everyone thinks it did, and that's the main essence of the entire movie. The concept of one little lie that transform into a false rumour that then proceeds to spread across an entire town like wildfire is both fascinating and horrifying to behold, and the way in which Thomas Vinterberg puts these suburban group dynamics on display is incredibly impressive. No matter how great Mads Mikkelsen's performance is and no matter how effectively this film manages to make it's audience physically shake in despair, the real star of The Hunt is its superbly written script and the way in which it emphasizes the tremendous powers of rumours and hedge talk in  rural environments. Vinterberg and his co. writer Tobias Lindholm deserve to be given something very expensive and flashy for the incredible job they did with this screenplay in my opinion, and if The Hunt doesn't get nominated for best movie in the foreign language category come Oscar season, I'll be fully convinced that this world has lost it's sense of justice completely. 

Even though its way more unlikely, I'd also love to see Mads Mikkelsen get an Oscar nod for best actor in a leading role. I don't know if a movie in a foreign language has ever been nominated in this category before, but Mikkelsen's performance is every bit as worthy of that golden statue as any other male performance I've seen all year, if not even more deserving. The way in which he manages to look as if his entire life has been taken away from him is just unheard of, and even though I've seen the guy in countless amounts of other Danish movies, his character is one of the single most relatable ones I've come across all year. You truly believe that this man you're looking at is broken all the way to his core, which is very impressive considering how little actual dialogue the character actually has. Mikkelsen doesn't need those epic monologues about how much he's suffering on the inside to convince people that he's hurting though, and there's one scene in particular where this really goes to show, and it's stunningly to witness. His character progression reminded a lot of the arch that Michael Shannon's character experienced in Take Shelter, a movie that has become one of my all time favourites since I reviewed it about six months ago, so if you liked that movie, consider giving The Hunt a go as well. 

Every single globally famous actor/actress comes to a place in his/her career, at which it becomes impossible for people to recognize them as anyone but their real world persona. As an example, it's been a very long time since I've seen a Bruce Willis movie where I didn't look at his character and just saw Bruce Willis. Apart from in Twelve Monkeys, that's actually never happened. The point I'm trying to make is that Mads Mikkelsen is Denmark's answer to stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, who are two of the guys that suffer from this celebrity-phenomenon the most, and to have him convince me that he actually was the character that he was portraying and not the famous actor that I see on the front of magazines every day as effectively as he did, is a testimony to how enchantingly magnificent his performance in The Hunt is. I've never seen an actor break the "real life spell" as effectively as Mads Mikkelsen does in this movie, and that's very impressive to say the least. 

Another character that I'd like to talk about in this review is Klara, the little girl who starts the rumor about Lucas being a child molester. She's a very important part of the movie and its story in a lot different ways, and the methods that her parents and other adults use to to try and find out what happened between her and Lucas are a big part of the moral lesson that Vinterberg wants to get across. The adults actively force this poor little girl to describe scenarios that never even took place, and even though it's a very effective and thought provoking way of propelling the moral dilemma along, it did feel kind of unrealistic and forced at times. I've heard other people speculate about the suspiciously high amount of very poor parents and nannies that seem to be inhabiting the town that The Hunt takes place in, but because I'm not a parent who's had to deal with a situation like this myself, I'm not quite capable of judging whether such behaviour is truthful or if it isn't. All I'm saying is that it seems a bit fishy, and the child that played Klara didn't do a very good at portraying the feelings a child in that situation must have felt either. 

All in all though, I have to say that The Hunt is one of the best cinematic experiences I've had in a long time. It's easily the best Danish movie I've seen since 2008 at least, and Mads Mikkelsen has never been better in his entire career. The story about Lucas being accused of a crime he didn't commit was very thought provoking and eye opening to me, and seeing his life collapse as a result of the talk and the rumours that went all over town was equally powerful and engrossing. Another important thing I almost always forgot to talk about is the movie's musical score, because even though there's only about 20 seconds of it in the entire film, it's still one of the most important elements in it. I was very much aware that there was no background music or sound effect at all in any of the most important and climatic scenes, and it almost allowed me to reach out and physically touch the emotion much more than I would have been if some cheesy violin had been weeping for attention in the background. Less definitely was more in this situation, and I applaud Thomas Vinterberg for realizing this and for sticking with that one mood throughout the entire two hours of the movie. 

What it comes down to it, The Hunt really is writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's, his cowriter's and Mads Mikkelsen's shared masterpiece, and had those scenes with the parents and the child actor that I talked about earlier been more convincing, it probably would have ended up surpassing the rating of worth buying on BluRay. As it stands though, The Hunt gets a very solid 5/6 from me. 

The Hunt IMDb page here

The Hunt trailer here