a little film blog

[alittlefilmblog]

The Big Short  ★★★★

I finally got round to watching the Oscar nominated film 'The Big Short' by Adam McKay.

I think it is a very influential film and I advise everyone to watch it. It's a story about the economic meltdown in 2007, aka the recession. The film looks at this disaster through the eyes of people in the business of Wall Street. There are about four different groups of people that attempt to take on these banks because of their greed and exploitation of the lower/middle class in America.

I'm really interested in these sort of issues, but I know other audience members aren’t aware of why the recession happened and this film aims to tackle this. Of course, it's a very complex story, but I think director Adam McKay did very well to explain this. He incorporates comedy into the narrative, which eases off the continuous attack on the corporate elite, which this film so obviously does. I felt that this film is a very clever move on Mckay's behalf, it allows us to be entertained by a film that is about a very tragic disaster.

There's a sense of informality which is spot on with the comedy in this film. The actors break the fourth wall (talking to the audience directly) which makes us very familiar with them. Jarred Vennett (Ryan Gosling) in particular talks to the camera a lot, "this didn't really happen" or "he actually did this, can you believe it?". This personally built a lot more trust for me that the film, something I lack with other "based on a true story" films.

When I go to watch a movie, I'm usually always on the look out for superb cinematography which The Big Short clearly lacked. The cameras are all hand-held style, many times going in and out of focus. This bothered me for about one minute until I realised that this adds a lot more to how you view the film. The cinematography isn't typical out-of-this-world Hollywood style and therefore it makes you concentrate on the message that it is trying to put across, in a way that Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street did not.

I was really excited to see Finn Wittrock (above) outside of his American Horror Story role, who plays Jamie Shipley. He and his partner are two young men that clock on that the housing market is inevitably going to crash soon. Without giving too much away,  these young men start off trying to prove that the economic housing disaster is coming but learn that they can profit from it, losing sight of what they originally set out to do. Their characters serve to represent how easily people can get excited by the prospect of making money, even if you are exploiting others.

Do I think it should have won an Oscar?

I'm not sure really. I'm so happy that this film has exposed the corporate elite for the greedy assholes that they are, as there are so many misconceptions about the 2008 recession. I don't think anyone that watches this could ever try and claim that Labour in the UK caused the recession, that's for sure. A film for the average person - it invites us to educate ourselves on the reality of our financial world.

The Big Short says loud and clear that none of us really understood what was happening with the economic crisis, or who was to blame. It says that we all started to scapegoat the easiest targets in society, we blamed immigrants and poor people. The banks completely screwed us over, give themselves millions in bonuses, and the taxpayers were forced to bail them out of debt. It's almost unbelievable that this is how it went down until you watch this film.

At the end of this film, we are encouraged to think for ourselves when we are told that the evil and fraudulent activity that caused the 2008 recession is happening again. It definitely provoked an emotional response in me, and that ultimately is what a film should aim to be doing. One thing I took away from this was the fact that money can't buy happiness or love.

I do think that this film deserves a lot of recognition and accolades, however, I wouldn't say it deserved an Oscar, purely because I think more effort went into creating The Revenant and this film lacked good cinematography. Throughout this film, you don't really know exactly what is going on, but you get the jist through the mise-en-scene. The characters pretty much explain the plot in detail throughout the whole film which slightly takes away the experience of watching a film for enjoyment as you really have to keep up to understand this. You can't go to the toilet at any point in this film, or you'll miss some explanation.

 It was one of the most important films of 2015 and said a lot about the rich exploiting the poor. Aside from that, it makes very a very entertaining watch and I would recommend everyone to watch it. 

[alittlefilmblog]

The Witch “A truly terrifying depiction of Schizophrenia” ★★★★

When being interviewed by Vice magazine, direcor Robert Eggers described ‘The Witch’ as a puritan’s nightmare. As soon as I walked out of the theatre I understood what Robert meant. This is a breath of fresh air for a genre that is completely clustered with conventional bore.

With this being Robert Eggers directorial debut I can say with much excitement what we have a lot to expect from this young and specially gifted talent. Some people have described this film as being completely terrifying which I don’t completely agree with. Rather than being terrified and I felt more disjointed and unhinged with the very hairs on the back of my neck sticking up in particular scenes of rather disturbing imagery. The film focuses on a puritan family as they’ve been exiled from their hometown and have to live independently on a small farm they’ve created. What I found interesting was how heavily anti sinuous the family. They are so afraid of sin that it ultimately consumes them to the point of madness by that would be giving away spoilers. The outline of the plot focuses on the family struggles as they try to adapt to a new life, all seems to be okay until the disappearance of the youngest child, which they suspect was taken by a wicked Witch. The film takes the audience on a physiological journey that makes them question who to trust.

One of the many things I liked was the wonderful performances given from the cast. Ralph Ineson plays the father of the family whose heavily religious influence on his children is very apparent as he constantly reminds them that to sin is an insult to God. It was interesting to see the persistent questioning of his children through their physical performances. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Thomasin, who’s in constant conflict with the rest of the family after she is blamed for the loss of the youngest child after it was stolen from her by the suspicious entity living in the woods. Kate Dickie also gives an incredible performance as a grieving mother who morns of the loss of her child and also for the loss of a happy life.

I loved the way that the aspect ratio was unbalanced and made you feel thrown off in the film. I loved the interesting elements of camera work, such as when they would have locked off shots that focused on a character’s face - it would give a very unnerving feel and helped focus on that one characters facial performance, which I found very interesting. How wonderfully bleak and creepy the soundtrack was. It helped establish a feeling of ever impending doom. There’s so much to talk about in this film but all I can really say is to go watch it and experience for yourself. It’s an interesting film which will require multiple viewings for me to truly wrap my head around it. I would highly advise any fan of the horror genre to give it a watch.

[hetediksor]

[alittlefilmblog]

Well done Leonardo for winning an Oscar! He is my all-time favourite actor, this was well deserved.