In Bruges (Brugge) review

So sitting quiet happily in lecture as you do and the lecturer pops in a DVD... instantly my eyes looked away from my MacBook Pro and facebook to see the DVD menu for In Bruges.

Basically we were watching it from a scriptwriting point of view to analyse structure of narrative and to pick up ln particular themes running the film as you do as a student! 

What hit me at first that it was a Film 4 motion picture and to say that the British Film Industry has now become an export of skilled professionals in the art of film production it was refreshing to see a film that was made and produced by a British team. 

The film itself was set in the lovely, picturesque city of Brugge Belgium (spelling it the Flemish way), with it's medieval architecture and canals which is why the city is famous.  The film is about 2 hit men who are sent to Brugge to carry out a contracted hit for the main villain Harry (Played by Lord Voldemort and M himself Ralf Fiennes). What they don't realise is after a series of events leading up to this trip to Belgium will lead one hit-man to commit suicide to save the other.

What struck me from the offset is how the narrative is dictated by the dialogue which is unusual for any type of film. When looking at the narrative it's the characters stand out the most. The characters are important and it's their underlying story lines that make this film what it is.

Colin Farrell's character Ryan is our main protagonist and in the film we find out what events have lead him to be in Brugge. Ryan is characteristically child like which can be seen through his dialogue. He is very childlike, repeating sentences and asking numerous amounts on questions that have been explained to him time and time again.  He realises on another Hit- Man who is in a way a father figure to him and this relationship is tested in the film from start to finish.
I must say nothing is plain sailing and as the film progresses there is more and more reveals that makes example of the theme.

The theme is of Religion and focuses on the Catholic Faith, there are many signatures in the film and Brugge is used a separate and important character in this to show this theme. It is not made obvious why Brugge is linked to this theme, but uses the beautiful churches in the city as a focus.


I did love this film but this was from my experiences in Brugge and taking a trip down memory lane.
I loved the narrative and the characterisation of this film and would recommend that people should watch it.

Review on the way

Watching In Bruges in Lecture so there will be a blog post up later on with a review.
But in the meantime heres the trailer:

The End is Neigh - Ronald Emmerick's Masterpiece

Not many directors can boast that they have distroyed the world in a movie but the king of the disaster movie can.

 We all know Ronald Emmerick the German who likes to pack a punch when it comes to natural disasters and the end of the world as we know it. So when the opportunity arose to make a film about the prediction made by the Mayans 1000's of years ago that the world would end on the 21st of December 2012 there was only one man for the job. 

Although the irony of this post is the fact that we did survive and are now  in the last few months of 2013 (It's been a year since good old London town hosted the Olympics Games and Andy Murray won Wimbledon!),Emmerick gave us a terrifying look of what we could've expected if on the fateful day or in this case earlier to be expected the course of events would lead to the complete distruction of the Earth and everything that inhabits it.. so basically we were screwed from the outset. 

So what could of we expected? 

Where do I begin: 

. Tsunamis

. Earth Quakes 

. Super Volcanos 

. Fault Lines Shifting 

And thats just to name a few things that went on in this movie, unleashing Hell on Earth was Emmerick's plan and he succeeded! 

The plot line is simple, Scientist discovers that the end of the world is coming, tells his American college.... who tells his boss... who rings the President and then he holds a meeting with other world leaders and then they agree to save their own arses and give out opportunities for the mega rich to buy themeselves tickets to save their skins from the end of the world to the wonderful and god awful disgusting tune of €1BILLION to board specially built archs that will survive the eventual Mega-Tsunami that will engulf the the earth and they'll sail away happily aboard making a new civilisation for themselves once they hit dry land whilst waiting for the water to recede. 

So what about the rest of the world.. you and I ??? 

             

                 WE DIE!!!! 

Yep again Emmerick can show you the cruelty humanity can go through when facing a massive crisis but surprisingly our main character played by the lovely John Cusack who plays a normal guy who is a struggling author, divorced parent of two beautiful children and a limmo driver for the mega rich russian buisness man. He discovers after getting caught going over a high security government fence in Yellowstone national park that all is not well and something is going on for the Government to keep something a huge secret, he meets a crazy man who tells him that hey you're going to die. With this events lead to the complete destruction of the Californian coast... LA literally gets taken back by the Pacific Ocean and that sets the wheels into motion. He takes action getting his ex wife, two children and ex wives boyfriend and in the midst of complete and total carnage drives them to the airport when he hires a plane and hopefully gets them out of dodge. 

Anyway thats all you're going to know about the narrative otherwise i'm spoiling a complete and total Masterpiece. 

2012 is for all those who love a good disaster movie, it's literally just a film that uses every scenario known to man of how the world could end by using Mother Nature herself or complete countries or even continents could be wiped out and combines them all in a feast for the senses! Forget everything you've seen before, throw The Day After Tomorrow out of the window that was just the eastern sea board of America and New York in particular, in this film you get to see California go, Yellowstone errupt, The Vatincan fall to pieces and even the White House being completely crushed by a wave so huge it would distroy everything in it's path. It is just complete and utter carnage, with masses of people being CGI'd to their deaths and countries just gone. 

It is like Disaster Movie Porn in a way it's so over the top, hit you in the face ... This is the end of the world! But god is it worth it!! 

I love this film from start to finish , it does have moments in the narrative where you are nearly in tears as it focuses on humanity in this extreme situation and how it adapts to these new conditions and shows just how cruel and fickle we are as a race. And how an everyday person can defy the odds and end up a hero. 

I am rating this a 4 out of 5! 

The Fifth Estate- Not What I Expected

Walking into the cinema I expected a film that would highlight Julian Assange as a Protagonist, the hero of this film rather than it's villain. But like most things my thoughts were further from the truth. The film doesn't in my view follow Julian Assange's fight and plight against bringing out a website that reveals secrets without revealing their sources, a Revolutionary of his time.

The film however is based on the book by Daniel Berg, Assange's right hand man, the film highlights Assange's past and how this effected his decisions and this is vital to how he is portrayed on screen. I'm still confused what the message was with Assange as a character, to me the way he is made out to be is a mentally unstable man who is obsessive and controlling and most importantly Damaged.

Thrown into the narrative was the relationship with the Guardian News Paper, who in the end made a deal with Assange to publish information about the war in Afghanistan. This also lead to the sub plot with the US government and how Wiki Leaks could've brought down the whole US government. It was in the sense the biggest Storm they were facing on both sides of the argument.

Regardless of the narrative which I have some major issues with, the film itself is well rounded and produced. It has the edge of a spy thriller to it from the outset, with the sub plot of government agencies and information that was so top secret that having it in the hands of someone like Wiki Leaks could be disastrous. Wiki Leaks is made out to be a new form of espionage for the 21st century, providing confidential information to be leaked without revealing it's sources to bring Truth and Justice to the masses.
 Benedict Cumberbatch's performance was brilliant, after a while you were swept up in the way he had even mastered Assange's Australian accent, the bleached blonde hair(which I still don't know is a wig) and even mannerisms were perfection. I can see him earning a Oscar for that performance next year.
Daniel Burhl is our lead, although it Cumberbatch has been given the limelight due to his character being who he is, but the way in which Burhl plays Daniel Berg with this sense that somehow he is the victim and really our protagonist rather than the less important character or supporting character was interesting. In truth this might be because this film is Daniel Berg's story rather than Assange's story and this is felt as the film progress.


So here is the thing I want to address.... THE NARRATIVE!!!! 

The narrative to me didn't have a clear resolution to it, the film didn't really tie up anything with the climax not even being pointed out to the audience which is sometimes a good tactic to have as a script writer but it seemed that the resolution was in a way was changed to fit a purpose that I could guess. I have nothing against the narrative, I think it's brilliantly written but something doesn't add up to me and this is just my opinion.  In the second act Assange is made out to be the villain of the piece or maybe the false hero of the piece. As an audience you can't really decide who you want to back and in a way you leave confused to who you should've felt empathy for. And this is still puzzling me right now and it will do until I watch it again or read the source information of this film. It's hard to put fact into fiction and transfer it to screen and in that respect I would recommend that you research up on the backstory to the film and more importantly the narrative.


Overall I thought that the film will provoke conversations on the issues that it addresses depending what your view is on the subject matter and whether you are in favour of what Assange has done. It was well edited and used real footage as well as film and had a lot of jokes which Media Students will get in an instant. I think that you have to watch this film with an open mind and not be sucked into it emotionally or view it in great detail and watch it as a drama rather than a documentary.
I would recommend watching this and really did enjoy it and loved Cumberbatch's performance in particular ... also look out for the new Doctor Who and Professor Lupin from Harry Potter making an appearance!!!

Review on the way... The Fifth Estate

The new film that everyone is talking about, the film about Wiki Leaks creator and journalist Julian Assange is out now in cinemas.

So with this in mind tonight i'll be going to see it.

Check the Blog tomorrow for the review , but in the meantime here is the trailer:

Armageddon- Michael Bay Masterpiece

To date I haven't really enjoyed Michael Bay films ... Transformers was one of those films that for me didn't really hit the nail on the head for narrative but visually was mind blowing. 

Rewind to 1997 and to Armageddon, an end of the world epic that consists of a massive astriod and oil drillers going into space, now that is a film.

So when it popped on BBC 1 last night , I really wanted to watch it but it was bed time , fast forward to 20 minutes later, I opened Netflixs and decided I had to watch it! 

From the outset you cannot tell it is stylistically a Michael Bay Film! No way it'a more in the style of the disaster movie king Ronald Emerich which for years I was under the impression it was a Emerich film rather than Bay. 

Throw in lead characters being played by the hunky Ben Afleck (now an award winning director), The Veteran of action Bruce Willis and the daughter of a rock star Liv Tyler and you're onto a winner! 

What this film managed to do was add not only the edge of your seat thrill to a film but also a comedy element throughtout with main characters and also not so important characters throwing in comedy elements such as Space Dementia - in NASA speak when you go looney in space and a few comical happenings when the first astroid hits New York City with a pun directed at Godzilla  and Bruce Willis shooting Afleck in the leg for sleeping with his onscreen daughter Liv Tyler it's not just another Disaster Flick no no.

The narrative follows the simple plot line of a huge bad ass astriod is going to collide with Earth and when it hits it'll cause the damage it did when the Dinos were wiped out all those Billions of years ago. 

Cut to NASA and the whole of the American government freaking out and some of the greatest minds in the world stuck on ideas to actually get rid of the thing before it has chance to wipe out Earth and come up with the idea to blow it up with a nuclear weapon from the inside! sounds so simple. 

But you might have a problem ... an MIT degree is not going to help you when you don't know how to drill! 

Call in Bruce Willis... Our Hero of the piece, who from the outset thinks it's all some big joke... until he gets to Huston and realises that this is real and only he can save the earth! 

What follows is a rollocoaster of events that you need in your second act cos lets face it the film would be boring otherwise.... and so it begins... days of NASA training and development of a drill powerful enough to cut through the unknown rock and a team of well to put it politely crooks and idiots. 

Brilliant!! 

The real underlying story is the narrative of  love, which is more James Cameron esque but Bay did do it with Transformers.  It was heart breaking and emotional ... Liv Tyler knows how to turn on the water works and you're there with her ... crying floods of tears! 

Knowing that her father and fiancee are in space and that they may never come back ... is to some degree the worst. 

Overall this film is a great film for both men and women ... it appeals with it's sci-fi disaster action and fast paced narrative for the men, but for a woman this film has the all important love story and all the emotional themes that we (that is a royal 'we') need to actually  maybe enjoy a film like this rather than loads of action which in the end will bore you. 

I actually love this film and more importantly it's soundtrack performed by Liv Tyler's Daddy with the band Areosmith! If you weren't crying at the start of this you will by the end! 

The Iron Lady- Maggie Thatcher's bio pic

When I first saw this on Netflix I was a little bit wary about watching a film that gained it's lead actress an academy award for playing the role of Britain's longest serving Prime Minster and the most controversial Prime Minister of the 20th century. 

On the surface it looks like you will get to see the portrayal of the Margret Thatcher Britain remembers, the strong willed, ruthless and some times cold hearted woman that put the miners out of work and broke Britain's back. But in this film we see Margret at the end of her life as a lonely old woman clinging onto the memory of  her late husband. I think that sometimes the auidence are drawn into looking at her as a very old lonely old woman and to almost feel sorry for her but be that as it may as the film progresses we see Margret's flash backs from when she was a teenager to the resigning as Prime Minister. It looks over all aspects of her time including the miners strike and more interestingly The Falklands War. 

Overall I did enjoy the film due down to the acting... Meryl Streep  played Margret Thatcher beautifully even mimicking her voice. When watching her you felt that you were infact watching Maggie athatcher after a while and the star of this film has to be Jim Broadbent as Dennis Thatcher, he was a joy to watch from start to finish... where was his Oscar??? I think that if you are going to watch this film, watch it with an open mind. Maybe as someone who never experienced life under Thatcher's rule I went into this film with no prior emotions, although I have heard nightmare stories about the great handbag herself! 

I would recommend watching this film amd so would give it 3 stars out of 5.