Psycho Alfred Hitchcock 1960

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Psycho

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock 1960

In preparation for the upcoming biopic (Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins 2012) I decided to break out the Psycho Blu-ray that I bought last year and never opened (something I’ve realized I do more often than not). The Psycho Blu-ray is the ultimate edition of the film for any Hitchcock fan. The picture quality has been re-mastered to near perfection and the sound quality of the score and dialogue are amazing and it is packed full of bonus features.

Psycho is a film that can sit in your mind hours after the film is over. The Story is pretty basic, a woman, Marion Crane, steals $40,000 from one of her clients and makes leaves town looking for a fresh start. When a sudden rain storm forces her to check into an out of the way completely vacant motel everything takes a turn. It is at this motel that we meet Norman Bates The owner and manager of the motel who lives in a creepy old house nearby with his mother. Norman tells us that since the new highway was built he doesn’t get a whole lot of business making the perfect secluded horror movie setting. Not even halfway through the film Hitchcock has the “star” killed off in a fairly dramatic fashion (the infamous shower scene). After this killing the film takes a complete turn and becomes an entirely different film, Marion’s sister and boyfriend are determined to track her down and things are revealed about Norman that makes him seem more sinister than originally thought.

I would recommend Psycho to anybody, despite its slow build it’s a very suspenseful and watchable film, and it offers an interesting commentary on mental illness that was radical for the 1960’s.

Across the universe

Across the Universe

2007 Julie  Taymore

                Across the Universe is another one of those films that I put off seeing for years. I had always heard that as a Beatles fan I really owed it to myself to check this movie out though. Those people were not wrong. I found myself completely in from the very start of the film. It’s a visually interesting film with a story driven by Beatles songs, honestly what’s not to like? While my Beatles fandom may have contributed heavily to my enjoyment of the film it’s definitely not essential as the person who showed me the film had never taken the time to really enjoy the music of the band the film definitely has enough going for it to really reach a wider audience.

                The Characters of Jude and Lucy are rich and interesting, they really get developed as the film goes on and we begin to care about them and want things to ultimately go their way. The setting of 1960’s New York City really captures a sense of how things might have been during the 60’s. there are war protests and music all through the streets. The plot and other characters also really lend themselves to the time period The first twenty minutes of the film is essentially getting everybody into New York and establishing who these characters are through song. There’s Max (Maxwell to Beatles fans) who grew up rich and finds himself dissatisfied with life at Princeton so he packs up his bags and moves to New York to have a life that is free from his boring rich kid past.  Prudence is a runaway girl from Ohio who left after she couldn’t deal her own attraction to other women in that environment. Jude is from Liverpool, England (where John Lennon is originally from) and he came to the states to find his father and American who had abandoned his British mother before she even knew she was pregnant. Once Jude accomplished this task he realizes that he likes America and Joins Max on his trip to the city.  Lucy, Max’s sister who joins the boys in the city after receiving the devastating news that her boyfriend was killed in the Vietnam. This gang of characters really becomes a family they all help each other cope with their collective struggles, Max being drafted into the army, Prudence accepting who she is and coming out of the closet, tripping on acid at a party thrown by Bono (playing a character named Dr. Robert but pretty much still Bono). They are a unit and the audience is supposed to care for them all.

                The film is driven by its soundtrack which is comprised entirely of Beatles songs performed by the cast. The plot is really advanced through the songs and because of this listening to the soundtrack on its own is almost as much fun as watching the film.  

Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard 2012

                Cabin in the woods was probably the 2012 film that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. The reason I was anticipating this film was because it was written by Joss Whedon, who is my favorite television writer (the creator of Firefly, Buffy the vampire slayer, and now accomplished director of The Avengers).  Whedon has a massive fan base and is known for his ability to inject humor into a tense situation as well as make an audience care about a large ensemble cast.  This Horror comedy was created as a satire and commentary on every horror movie you’ve ever seen, to the point where the films tag line “you think you know the story” is meant to tease the audience and hint at the fact that there is probably more to the story.

                Cabin in the woods may seem like a generic story, five teens go out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of drinking and debauchery, but what this movie does brilliantly is that it has layers of action going on and the generic horror story is just the base layer. As it turns out there is a government organization in a secret underground base that is pulling the strings of what is happening to the teens on the surface. Everything that happens in the cabin is being controlled by the government and being broadcast to worldwide audiences. You get the sense that they have been doing this for quite some time. The Americans are not the only group doing this either, we see monitors from all over the world, Japan, Mexico, really any country that has ever made a horror film is represented (which allows whedon to make comments about the style of those films).  When the layers of the film break down and the surviving kids find their way into the underground base all hell breaks loose.

                I think the problem that most people had with Cabin in the Woods is that they were expecting just another horror film, which it isn’t though it does do many horror moments very well. I could see how such an expectation would lessen the film for some people but the people who understand what Whedon was going for can really appreciate the film for what it is, a brilliant piece of work.  

The Shining

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The Shining

1980 Stanley Kubrick

                The shining very well could be the most frightening film that I have ever seen. When I saw the film as a kid I always knew that it was terrifying but I never could really process why it was so frightening, but now that I have put time into thinking about the film I know that it has to do with subtle things that are easy to miss if you’re watching the film in a group setting (I’ve screened the film for a large group of people who spent the whole time just making fun of the film because they were more interested in talking over it than processing it.) The Scary thing about the Shining is the tone. Kubrick captures the terrifying silence of an abandoned hotel so well through his slow tracking shots throughout the film. Everything about the film is a slow build to the eventual breakdown at the end of the film.

The Overlook hotel is as much a character as any of the humans in the film. The hotel is decorated in a way that is completely unsettling; when the camera follows Danny around on his “Big Wheel” we really get to see a lot of the details of the overlook. The patterns on the wallpaper and the carpet of the halls are memorable and really stick in one’s head long after the credits have rolled.

The Shining is about a family of three who spend the winter isolated in the Overlook hotel, a hotel with a dark past. Jack, played brilliantly by Jack Nickolson, has taken the job as the care taker in order to support his really career as a writer. Wendy and Danny, Jack’s wife and son, find themselves with less and less to do as the winter progresses. Danny eventually gets flashes of visions of terrible things that have happened in the hotel in the past. As time goes on Jack becomes more distant from his family and slowly loses his mind. It is up to the viewer to determine whether he has gone crazy because of cabin fever, or if the hotel is in his head making him do these things.

Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise

Richard Linklater 1995

               “Before Sunrise” and its sequel “Before sunset” are films that have been sitting on my ever growing list of “Films I need to take time to actually watch someday” for years. Now that I have seen the first film in the series I can definitely say it was worth the wait. This gem of a film charmed me on so many levels. The setting of Vienna, one of my all-time favorite cities, made me want to go back in a big bad way the city is beautiful and the film really did a good job of capturing that beauty.  The score at the beginning and end of the film really set the tone for a European adventure.

           Jesse and Celine are just two strangers who happen to meet on a train headed towards Vienna, Austria. Jesse is an American who is killing time riding the trains after a bad breakup, and Celine is just on her way back to school in Paris. When the two first meet they begin to have these deep stimulating conversations that also make the viewer think abstractly. These often strange, but interesting, conversations are really the driving point of the film. The two decide to get off the train in Vienna and spend the night walking around the city and talking, getting to know each other in the process. Though like all chance encounters they know that their relationship has an expiration date (roughly 12 hours as it happens) and as the film progresses they have to deal with the knowledge that this could be the only time they ever see each other. While this film is definitely a love story it’s one of the most accessible love stories I have ever seen on film.