The Film Reporter

“Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of...

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:27:39 -0400

“Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me”

Inspirational words spoken by coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Quaid) before the big game.

The Sport genre is a difficult genre to master, maybe even the hardest. We’ve seen so many underdog stories come true and so many men come up through the ranks to become the best. They have created a formula and producers never dare stray from it, but The Express (2008) seems to differ from that.

The Express is one of the most tragic of American football stories. The film follows Heisman trophy winner Ernie Davis from just a young boy in a prejudice society towards coloureds, to a grown man fighting for his team. Ernie Davis states towards the end of the film,

“football is just a game. What matters is what you play for. Sometimes when the game is close and everything is on the line, that’s when you forget the crowd and the noise.” Indeed he is fighting for what he saw men fighting for him do when he was young, freedom.

Ernie Davis plays for Syracuse NY. He is a running back of the highest order and is desperate to win a Heisman trophy. As it always does, this film falls to the last game, against their bitter rivals, and against all odds he prevails and beats them. Whats interesting is the film would usually end as the team celebrate on the field, but Ernies story has not finished yet.

Ernie Davis was a typical black boy who had to peer over his shoulder all the time, but after gaining a place in Syracuse’ roster he fights to the top. What I enjoyed about this film is the theme of racism runs throughout the whole film, but they don’t rub it in our faces constantly so all we see is a film about race, we also see a film about the wonderful game of football. How one man prevails against all odds to play for his team, and to win the national championship.

People said that Davis was destined for greatness, that he would become the best running back to have ever played in the NFL. But it wasn’t to turn out that way. At the tender age of 23, without ever playing a game in the NFL, Ernie Davis died of Leukaemia. To this day, his number for the Cleveland Browns has never been used in mark of respect.

“I would say he’s the next Ernie Davis (talking about upcoming RB Floyd Little), but they’ll never be another Ernie Davis” - Coach Schwartzwalder

The Express 7/10

Will and Jaden Smith take a break from press at the Virgin...

Mon, 20 May 2013 05:36:42 -0400

Will and Jaden Smith take a break from press at the Virgin Galactic Spaceport.

The zombie sub-genre is a genre that was first created in the...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:46:48 -0400

The zombie sub-genre is a genre that was first created in the 60’s and it has grown and grown and after 50 years is still a genre that attracts a wide audience. World War Z is originally an award winning novel written by Max Brooks but has been adapted into a feature film. The trailer is already here and it looks to be one of the films of the summer and with writers behind with credentials such as Star Trek Into Darkness, The Kingdom, Prometheus and many more, it’s something worth getting excited about.

Click the image for the newest trailer.

One of the things people most cherish about film is how we get...

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:50:00 -0400

One of the things people most cherish about film is how we get to see parts of the world we’ve never seen before in a narrative we’ve been following. It got me thinking, what is the best location to set a film in? Where have the best films been located? Hollywood right? Well wrong, so many locations around the world have been utilised and above is just a very small collection of locations where films have been shot.

1. Boston
2. Paris
3. London
4. Arizona
5. New York

Which is your favourite and which do you think should be included?

Mike Mitchell’s Tarantino Art

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:16:26 -0400

Mike Mitchell’s Tarantino Art

Jack Reacher is a crime thriller feature film starring Tom...

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:17:05 -0400

Jack Reacher is a crime thriller feature film starring Tom Cruise and Richard Jenkins. Unfortunately Paramount gave themselves a harder fight than was needed by releasing this just before Christmas, so it’s by no surprise that Jack Reacher is a film that has gone under the radar.

Jack Reacher is a veteran who keeps himself quiet by moving around all the time and taking precautions. The film kicks off by a terrorist shooting where 5 people are shot and killed, the shooter who gets caught pleads for a man by the name Jack Reacher.

This is first and foremost an investigative film where Jack Reacher moves forward step by step (often illegally) into the investigation coming across peripeteias that well, aren’t that surprising or just lazy. By lazy I mean you can picture a producer sitting the writers down and pleading to them that they make a twist to keep the story interesting when in fact it actually gives the audience nothing.

So on that point lets take a look at where I think the film has lowered it’s quality. It’s evident from the first twenty minutes of this feature that we really know nothing about any of these characters in the film and never do, but worse than that, they never take any actions that provoke them into really expressing themselves so the audience can understand them and side with him on their journeys through the story. Therefore when they are faced with eminent danger, I honestly don’t care.

When watching this film it periodically loses it’s pace and seems to drift and there’s nothing worse than when a film does this because we lose our interest. Nothing proves this point better than when a group of nobody’s start a fight with Reacher who he deems to be hired by somebody to keep him quiet, but they have to be the worst ‘tough guys’ in the history of film. Baring in mind I’m not mentioning the fact that Reacher hunts these pathetic tough guys down through finding a woman who works at a repair shop for half an hour.

In short guys, Jack Reacher fails at the most basic levels which in turn produces a flat, meaningless feature that flopped at the box office.

You can see my decision as either a distinctive factor or as a...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:27:29 -0400

You can see my decision as either a distinctive factor or as a limitation. I don’t feel it is a limitation. - Ennio Morricone

Composer of ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ ‘The Good the Bad the Ugly’ ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’.

Over the past decade franchises has risen dramatically as...

Sun, 12 May 2013 18:18:00 -0400

Over the past decade franchises has risen dramatically as filmgoers who are are low on money (thanks recession) want to know what they’re getting when they pay £10 for a ticket. Iron Man fits that bracket, and I didn’t dare set my hopes up for this film because they often disappoint and after Iron Man 2, I had right to.

Iron Man 3 is set shortly after The Avengers when Tony Stark saved the planet by retuning the missile into the ‘wormhole’ shall we say to defeat the aliens. However Tony has now started to go through anxiety attacks. You may squint but I was happy to see that Shane Black had written this into a mental flaw for Tony after taking the reigns as director from Favreau. Iron Man has utilised one liners to attract a bigger audience and it does so in this film far too often, but for once we really see that Tony has suffered from his battle scars, it was just a shame the comedy undermined it.

So in this sequel to the franchise, a mysterious man who seems to be hidden away in the Middle East under the name ‘Mandarin’ has been the culprit for many untraceable explosions that has been set off in the Middle East itself as well as the U.S. The Mandarin calls himself the teacher and wants to teach the U.S a lesson, one of which infuriates Tony into provoking the Mandarin to which he complies and destroys Tony’s house which we so kindly revel in in the trailers.

Iron Man 3 does touch on sensitive issues, including terrorism threats from the Middle East and loss of Fatherhood but once again manages to undermine them. This is where I felt they really lost their way, the film had a lot of potential, and it’s worth mentioning most of us all love to see the one liners Tony pulls out the bag as they’re often very funny, which not to mention are in this movie, but are used way too often making him look, well, a bit of a dick and undermining almost every serious situation in the film to the point where I was like, you know what, who gives a crap?

However the main antagonist in this film is that hidden treasure, Guy Pearce who plays Aldrich Killigan, a hugely talented man who works for ‘AIM’. We see him in a prologue where Tony revisits a memory from 1999 where he teased Aldrich when he was a cripple creap, but has now become the founder of a hugely powerful organisation as well as reaped the rewards of physical therapy.

Aldrich has developed a physically changing process called ‘Extermis’ which somehow makes the body reach temperatures of 3,000 degrees on and off, but when it doesn’t work on certain subjects, develops into these ‘untraceable explosions’.

I’ll leave it there for you guys as many of you would not have seen this movie yet, especially over in the U.S. But don’t be fooled, this is still a good movie to watch with twists and turns that will keep an audience excited.

Iron Man 3 is in theatres everywhere.

Star Trek is looked upon as one of the best Sci-Fi T.V series to...

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:30:33 -0400

Star Trek is looked upon as one of the best Sci-Fi T.V series to have ever graced the small screen and J.J Abrams re-boot as a feature film back in 2008 was a huge success pleasing Critics and filmgoers alike. However sequels are another thing all together.

As a Brit I was lucky enough to see it a week before fans in the US as I went on the opening day. So how did it stand up? in my opinion this sequel doesn’t come close to the first film in the franchise. I found myself confused in terms of the antagonist played very well by Benedict Cumberbatch. One thing that can be said is his character ‘Khan’ is a very smart super human who iced himself and slept for 300 years in hope that after his wake, a better world would await him and his people, but there wasn’t. The head of the Starfleet had used his superbrain to create weapons and to improve transportation for their ships to which he threatened him and his people if he didn’t comply. Therefore he rebelled and drew up war against the Starfleet.

With that being said, after the capture of Khan by James T. Kirk and his men they join together to fight the head of the starfleet. Therefore I didn’t really know who to side with and who I wanted to lose, and because of that I couldn’t really enjoy it like the first film.

However, nevertheless there is great acting all around from the cast as expected and the special effects are jaw widening. If your wondering whether you would like to see this film, I would definitely recommend it.

In my humble opinion, after years of studying film and loving...

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:39:39 -0400

In my humble opinion, after years of studying film and loving the music scores that accompany them, I have come to the conclusion that this is one of my favourites. This item is from Raging Bull (1980)

Photo

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:12:09 -0400

Just finished my portrait of Walter White

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:59:58 -0400

Just finished my portrait of Walter White

Orson Wells, looked upon as one of the most recognised directors...

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:04:37 -0400

Orson Wells, looked upon as one of the most recognised directors of film history celebrates his birthday posthumously today.

What’s your favourite Wells film?

Well believe it or not folks, Clooney turns 52 today. What is...

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:00:45 -0400

Well believe it or not folks, Clooney turns 52 today. What is your favourite Clooney film?

Anyone who knows anything about films has heard of the original...

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:51:56 -0400

Anyone who knows anything about films has heard of the original The Evil Dead (1981) directed by Sam Raimi. The idea was thought about by him and his friends in college who decided that filming a movie about five college students who unknowingly release demons would be a great idea to film and in a unique way, but they need funding. So they got it, all $375K (which if you didn’t know, is desperately low).

Re-makes are in fashion and it was decided that a re-make of the horror classic would be attractive to audiences. The re-make was one of he most hyped for horror’s I’ve ever seen and considering I’m not a fan of Horror, I thought what the hell, let’s go. The Cabin in the Woods (2011) showed me you can do a lot with Horror.

The main argument that seems to blockade the genre of Horror is the fact that the story is most often very weak as well as the characters who seem to fall in the same holes as every other film. The main fall is that as an audience we don’t really care if they die or not, and I hate to say it but thats the case with Evil Dead (2013).

Throughout the exhausting 90 minutes the characters seem to be, well, stupid. 5 characters go to a cabin they unleash the evil demon and it starts turning them, but I guess I was hoping for more, maybe more focus on where this book came from, or who these characters really are rather than giving the audience a flimsy background.

The Evil Dead (1981) is a classic because it created conventions that Horror would follow for the next 30-plus years but in an interesting and generally frightening way, but people seem to be lazy, there seems to be a great opportunity in the Horror genre but people never take it to the next level. The films rely on the same conventions we’ve seen since we can recollect and Evil Dead (2013) does the same, people die in a stupid way that holds suspense for a minute or so.

So in a nutshell people, Evil Dead is your same old same old Horror, the only thing different is the film is way more gory than any other horror I have seen or anyone for that matter.

So for my final word on Evil Dead, ‘can people start creating characters we give a shit about so that when they die its that more frightening and rewarding for an audience’!

Evil Dead (2013) 6/10

Dustin Hoffman photographed in Central Park by JP Laffont, 1972

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:23:45 -0400

Dustin Hoffman photographed in Central Park by JP Laffont, 1972

Dexter Season 8 is on the horizon. Excited much?

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:52:28 -0400

Dexter Season 8 is on the horizon.

Excited much?

Commentator: Scott I seemed to have wet my pants

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:31:25 -0400

Commentator: Scott I seemed to have wet my pants

Father and son playing around on promotion for After Earth Click...

Fri, 03 May 2013 05:39:00 -0400

Father and son playing around on promotion for After Earth

Click the image for further information on the feature.

Russell Crowe playing around with Ty Simpkins on the premiere of...

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:57:06 -0400

Russell Crowe playing around with Ty Simpkins on the premiere of ‘The Next Three Days’ (2010)