#filmathon 2011

[filmathon2011-blog]

Silence of the Lambs - More Hannibal!

So.... I really like Hannibal Lecter as a character and well... I think I might watch all of the movies (although I'm not sure about Hannibal Rising as it doesn't have Anthony Hopkins).

So this film takes place soon after Red Dragon and Hannibal Lecter is helping another police officer find another killer. The police officer is rookie Clarice and she is tracking down Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill has been going around the country kidnapping young women who are on the larger side and is skinning them.

Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster really did a great job in this film. Hopkins has a real intensity about him in some of the scenes.

Really this was a great film with awesome characters and an awesome story.

-Sean!

P.S.

Hey I'm sorry that this post is a bit spacey and not very long but I have a paper due tomorrow and well I still have like two pages to write.

[filmathon2011-blog]

A.I. Artificial Intelligence - Can a Robot have emotions?

In the not too distant future after the polar ice caps have melted human kind is still advancing. The human race now has robots that look almost completely human. The one difference is that these robots lack human emotions (the idea of love to them is a set of physical changes that must be made). That is until David. David is a little robot boy who loves the woman he is programmed to think is his mother. There are some difficulty with David loving his mother so deeply, such as her rejecting him, the humans who like to kill robots and the fact that he doesn't age.

This film was really well made and for its time, it had some really great special effects. It really calls into question just what makes a human human. The answer use to be emotions but look this little robot boy loves this woman more than anything else in the world. Now you may say this is just a movie but they have made robots that can carry on conversations better than most nerd and still get your jokes.

I dunno, I kinda' went off on a tangent there. If you haven't seen this film already I do recommend it.

-Sean

[filmathon2011-blog]

I Love You Phillip Morris - A "Love Concurs All" Story

A film based on true events, I Love You Phillip Morris is a film about a man named Steven. Steven starts off as a closet homosexual with a wife and kids, after an accident he decides that he is through living a lie and from now on is going to get what he wants. To fund this lifestyle he commits fraud (of all types) and gets thrown in jail. In jail Steven meets Phillip Morris and the two fall in love. Steven and Phillip get out of prison and Steven falls right back into old habits. From then it is Steven getting thrown into and escaping prison just to be with Phillip. The real Steven in now serving a life sentence and is under complete lock down for escaping prison so many times.

This was a really entertaining movie. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as Steven and Phillip, respectively and the two of them work great together. As well as being entertaining it also got me thinking about how a Georgia boy like Steven could escape from prison somewhere around ten times.

-Sean 

[filmathon2011-blog]

Rio Bravo

So Ellie has often mentioned her enjoyment of John Wayne, and come to think of it so has my grandfather. I have been meaning for a while to watch more westerns and well something with John Wayne just felt right.

The story of the film was pretty straight forward. The somewhat rag tag group of good guys wearing white hats defend the jail from the brother of one of the prisoners. The good guys are made up of the Sheriff, his cripple friend, a drunk and this young fella. All in all it is very entertaining.

You know even though I haven't seen too many westerns I like their stories, I mean after all the original Star Wars is technically a western... just in a galaxy far far away.

I guess this is where I give my view on John Wayne. I like him. He has the classic masculine stoic attitude and a pretty sharp wit... kinda' like if James Bond was a cowboy (sorry if the comparison offends any of John Wayne's fans, it's just I've seen a lot more 007 movies than I have westerns).

I'm glad that I decided to watch this film, it was really good and I plan on watching many more westerns.

-Sean

[filmathon2011-blog]

Pandorum

Pandorum is a sci-fi horror about the last of humanity traveling through space to find a new home on a planet far away because Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. A tech support guy named Bower wakes up from hyper sleep with little memory of what is going on. He soon meets up with his commanding officer and they find that the ship they're in is malfunctioning and Bower has to fix it if they want to live. This is made more difficult because some of the passengers have awoken and turned into monsters, also there is some psychological problems with long term space travel called pandorum that causes you to go crazy... oh and there is a an okay twist at the end.

As far as sci-fi horrors go, this one isn't all that bad. It isn't amazing but hey I've seen worse. The filmmakers went a little overboard with the dark look of things so it gets a bit hard to see at times. Along with not being able to see some times, the film moves very fast. They are trying to get so much information across to you in the beginning that it feels like you're playing a game of catch up until about the middle of the film where things reach a more comfortable pace.

On the plus side when you could see the lighting was very effective the flashing blues and reds really helped increase the feelings of panic that the crew members felt. Also, I really liked how the film touched so many common fears. The small areas of the ship showed claustrophobia and there were themes of being stranded among others.

All in all it was a decent movie.

-Sean

[filmathon2011-blog]

Primer - Real Time Travel

Primer is a very low budget film... but it's still pretty good. It is about four guys who spend their nights and weekends in a garage making error checking programs. Now this may sound like a rip roaring good time but they get bored with it and try to make something better. Two of them, Arron and Abe get to work on a contraption that ends up leading them to discovering time travel.

The amazing thing about this film is just how... right... their explanation of time travel feels. They are no world ending paradoxes or anything like that, just a big headache trying to figure out what's happening. There is causality and things change but, nothing so much as Back to the Future Part II. 

As I mentioned this film is very low budget. According to IMDb the movie was made on a budget around $7,000. So, while the sound isn't great and the cinematography and picture quality isn't the best but it is better than some of the stuff Hollywood ships out to the masses.

Anyway I thought the movie was pretty good... I'd watch it again.

-Sean

[filmathon2011-blog]

I Am Legend

First things first, I love movies!  So picking just one to review was really hard!  So I chose I Am Legend.

This movie is perhaps one of the greatest movies that Will Smith has ever been in, besides The Pursuit of Happiness.  I can say confidently that this is one of the best zombie movies ever.  The story is compelling and well thought out.  My only issue is how they choose to end it.  But I guess that makes the whole story seem all the more surreal.

I liked how they chose to follow the main character Robert Neville who is a scientist trying to figure out a cure.  It goes into detail what he does on a daily basis, and on top of that they show him going through the process a couple days in a row in order to give a feel for what he’s going through.  His pet dog Sam becomes his only friend and they form a strong bond throughout the movie.  He ends up talking to mannequins just to stay sane.  

But all in all the movie is well executed and the important/climatic moments in the movie are well directed.  I would definitely recommend that you see it if you haven’t already!

-Tyler Rood (Guest Blogger)

[filmathon2011-blog]

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia - 'MERICA!

The wild and wonderful Whites of West Virgina willfully and wistfully do whatever they wish without caution, reason or what have you... isn't alliteration fun?

In all seriousness this family is crazy, some of them even have paperwork backing up this claim. Up in West Virgina the White name is like Voldemort, everyone automatically thinks that you're trouble. The folks you think this have good reasons though seeing as the Whites are the most backwater people out there.

These people were crazy and that's why they got a documentary made about them. They have relatives in jail for shooting other relatives in the face... twice. there was a woman who just had a baby, she's in the hospital with the baby in the room and she is smoking a joint and blowing the smoke out of the window.

The documentary got a little confusing at times and it was hard to keep up with who is who but with a family this size and one girls husband going off and sleeping with her cousin and this guy and that who can really fault the people making the documentary for this.

The Whites are one of the craziest families out there and while most of me hope I never cross paths with them another part really wants to see if these people really exist.

-Sean