i won't give it but i'll give ambivalence
ok, my whole plan to do a serious post kinda failed miserably. i'm happy to post about good things in my life, but when bad shit is happening i have no real urge to commit it to livejournal. i get no benefit out of pouring my heart out and i don't think anyone is particularly interested in reading it - i mean, i can just talk to my good friends anyway. regardless of a few bad occurrences, this week has been pretty good. oh, a random photo i should have posted in my last update:
that's brendan myself and dave elton john brendan again
anyway, in a completely and utterly unrelated note, my current random obsession seems to be (good) movies. after discovering a whole bunch of pretty incredible films through the help of imdb, i made my own short "best of" movies list. i really enjoy writing and/or talking about good films, and determining specifically what it is i enjoy about them (it's not really that hard to identify what i don't like about films). anyway, in order to express this i've decided i'm going to review my top 20 movies, from number 20 to number 1. the list itself is liable to change all the time, as my tastes shift and i see new movies, but i'm going to go with this list for the reviews:
(the fact that i made this list is more indicative of my love of making lists/categorizing things than my love of movies)
1. fight club
2. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
3. american beauty
4. memento
5. apocalypse now
6. batman begins
7. star wars: the empire strikes back
8. once upon a time in america
9. la confidential
10. requiem for a dream
11. chinatown
12. vertigo
13. dr strangelove, or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
14. casablanca
15. taxi driver
16. star wars: a new hope
17. twelve monkeys
18. terminator 2
19. jarhead
20. die hard
This isn't a particularly representative film to begin my reviews with, and indeed the main reason I chose to post my entire top twenty list. Seeing Die Hard first up, you might expect I was a huge action movie fan, and that the list would be dominated by movies by the likes of van Damme and Segal. Fortunately, this is not the case, and as it turns out this should be a comparatively brief review.
It's not difficult to quantify my love of Die Hard - it's simply a vastly enjoyable theme-park ride of a film. I strongly respect films in their role as pieces of art; indeed, I challenge anyone to argue that a film like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not a work of art. But the reason that most people go to the movies, and the reason that this movie slips into my top 20 list, is simple: entertainment. You watch a movie to have some fun, to escape from the drudgery of your life, to walk out of the cinema with a big grin on your face.
Die Hard embraces many action movie clichés: a wisecracking hero, a thoroughly European and arrogant villian, and stereotypically ignorant FBI agents/police chiefs. But it surpasses many of these to stand out from any old action film. Bruce Willis's John McClane may crack jokes, and seem to be having a blast of the time through much of the movie, but he's not invulnerable. We wince with him as he pulls shards of glass from his bare feet, and unlike most action heroes, we actually fear for him when he gets into a fight with a burly German villain.
I was going to say that Willis's performance, a perfect blend of humour, fun and vulnerability makes the film, but in actuality Alan Rickman makes the film. He is an incredible villain - he seems to have so much fun with his scheme (built on the basic principle that he's smarter than the police and FBI) that we almost want him to win - and then he's all cold steel, murdering to further his cause with a daunting severity.
Of course, the action sequences tie the film together. Most action films struggle from setpiece to setpiece, the plot loosely set up to get the main players from one fight to another. Here the scene is set inside a vast but nonetheless claustrophobic office building, and by setting up this restriction the writers have freedom to do interesting things with their characters rather than forcibly push them along to the next fight scene.
Just as Willis and Rickman seem to be having so much fun playing their characters, John McTiernan has a lot of fun with his action scenes. In one of the most memorable action sequences of the film, a terrorist breaks the tension of the incoming police force by stealing a candy bar. This isn't Hitchcock. We don't want to be kept in suspense, we want to have fun. And that pretty much sums up the whole film: fun. Not a work of art, just a great way to kill a couple of hours.
that's brendan myself and dave elton john brendan again
anyway, in a completely and utterly unrelated note, my current random obsession seems to be (good) movies. after discovering a whole bunch of pretty incredible films through the help of imdb, i made my own short "best of" movies list. i really enjoy writing and/or talking about good films, and determining specifically what it is i enjoy about them (it's not really that hard to identify what i don't like about films). anyway, in order to express this i've decided i'm going to review my top 20 movies, from number 20 to number 1. the list itself is liable to change all the time, as my tastes shift and i see new movies, but i'm going to go with this list for the reviews:
(the fact that i made this list is more indicative of my love of making lists/categorizing things than my love of movies)
1. fight club
2. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
3. american beauty
4. memento
5. apocalypse now
6. batman begins
7. star wars: the empire strikes back
8. once upon a time in america
9. la confidential
10. requiem for a dream
11. chinatown
12. vertigo
13. dr strangelove, or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
14. casablanca
15. taxi driver
16. star wars: a new hope
17. twelve monkeys
18. terminator 2
19. jarhead
20. die hard
This isn't a particularly representative film to begin my reviews with, and indeed the main reason I chose to post my entire top twenty list. Seeing Die Hard first up, you might expect I was a huge action movie fan, and that the list would be dominated by movies by the likes of van Damme and Segal. Fortunately, this is not the case, and as it turns out this should be a comparatively brief review.
It's not difficult to quantify my love of Die Hard - it's simply a vastly enjoyable theme-park ride of a film. I strongly respect films in their role as pieces of art; indeed, I challenge anyone to argue that a film like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is not a work of art. But the reason that most people go to the movies, and the reason that this movie slips into my top 20 list, is simple: entertainment. You watch a movie to have some fun, to escape from the drudgery of your life, to walk out of the cinema with a big grin on your face.
Die Hard embraces many action movie clichés: a wisecracking hero, a thoroughly European and arrogant villian, and stereotypically ignorant FBI agents/police chiefs. But it surpasses many of these to stand out from any old action film. Bruce Willis's John McClane may crack jokes, and seem to be having a blast of the time through much of the movie, but he's not invulnerable. We wince with him as he pulls shards of glass from his bare feet, and unlike most action heroes, we actually fear for him when he gets into a fight with a burly German villain.
I was going to say that Willis's performance, a perfect blend of humour, fun and vulnerability makes the film, but in actuality Alan Rickman makes the film. He is an incredible villain - he seems to have so much fun with his scheme (built on the basic principle that he's smarter than the police and FBI) that we almost want him to win - and then he's all cold steel, murdering to further his cause with a daunting severity.
Of course, the action sequences tie the film together. Most action films struggle from setpiece to setpiece, the plot loosely set up to get the main players from one fight to another. Here the scene is set inside a vast but nonetheless claustrophobic office building, and by setting up this restriction the writers have freedom to do interesting things with their characters rather than forcibly push them along to the next fight scene.
Just as Willis and Rickman seem to be having so much fun playing their characters, John McTiernan has a lot of fun with his action scenes. In one of the most memorable action sequences of the film, a terrorist breaks the tension of the incoming police force by stealing a candy bar. This isn't Hitchcock. We don't want to be kept in suspense, we want to have fun. And that pretty much sums up the whole film: fun. Not a work of art, just a great way to kill a couple of hours.