Sunday 6 April 2014
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Red: [narrating]
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about.
Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to
think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in
words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared
higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like
some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls
dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank
felt free.
This week I want to talk about how even in the midst of darkness, hope
and freedom can still spring eternal. The film shows that even in the face of
terrible abuse, a person can still keep their humanity and be an inspiration to
those around them.
Andy
Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife and
her lover, and is sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious Shawshank
prison. Although not initially suited to his new environment, he becomes
friends with Red (Morgan Freeman) and slowly over the next two decades builds a
life for himself within the prison walls.
Andy brings a measure of freedom
to those around him by building a library, and through that a whole community, which
brings light to the whole prison. He helps his fellow inmates become better
people through his modelling of what true, inner freedom is and shows that
true freedom isn't a matter of walls or chains, or the lack of, but a matter of
how someone deals with nearly overwhelming odds.
All
references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Click
here to buy The Shawshank Redemption: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Shawshank-Redemption-DVD-Robbins/dp/B001CWLFKE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1396796632&sr=8-2&keywords=the+shawshank+redemption+dvd
Friday 14 March 2014
Thank you for smoking (2005)
Nick Naylor: Few people on this planet know what it is to be
truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organization
that kills 1200 people a day. Twelve hundred people. We're talking two jumbo
jet plane loads of men, women and children. I mean, there's Attila, Genghis...
and me, Nick Naylor. The face of cigarettes, the Colonel Sanders of nicotine.
Nick Naylor is a man who loves his job and doesn’t care who
knows it. Nick is the Tobacco lobby’s top spokesperson in Washington and even
though he is completely aware of the harm he is doing, he is perfectly willing
to carry on cheerfully in order to “pay the mortgage”.
Nick desperately wants to build a relationship with his son,
in spite of his ex-wife’s hostility to his job and it’s only when his son
manages to use Nicks lobbying skill to convince his mother to allow him to go on
a business trip with him that we see a softer side to the supposedly
hard-hearted face of Big Tobacco. As the
film progresses, Nick is double-crossed by a journalist and invited to testify
in front of the Senate before finally leaving tobacco and lobbying for less
toxic clients.
What kind of person would consciously and voluntarily make
themselves so hated by the general population at large? Another question would
be why would the general population hate someone just because of their chosen career?
We make assumptions about people because of their job which surely can’t stand
up. What if Nick left tobacco and worked as a lobbyist for a charity? He would
not have changed but our perception of him would have.
All references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Click here to buy Thank you for smoking: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Smoking-Aaron-Eckhart/dp/B000KF0WKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1394803733&sr=1-1&keywords=thank+you+for+smoking
Il Divo (2008)
Giulio Andreotti: Thinking ill of your fellow man is a sin,
but you have guessed right
Giulio Andreotti is a respected seven-time Prime Minister,
an international statesman, a survivor of countess Machiavellian battles. He seems
unstoppable, until his downfall comes quickly as one after the other, a
sequence of Mafia turncoats name him as being the Mafia’s man in Rome.
Andreotti as a character is likeable and charmingly self-deprecating,
but there is a reason why he has survived when so many others have died or
fallen in disgrace. He is a strange character with many sides to him. We see
him confessing to his priest regularly, helping his poor constituents with
paying their bills and buying presents for their children. He knows his
constituents intimately, he knows their troubles and the hardships they face
and he does try and help them. On the other hand it seems pretty certain (they weren’t
able to say definitely because of legal reasons) that he had links to the top
leadership of the Mafia and that he was aware of, if not actively ordered, the
murder of several of his political enemies.
The message of the film, the strapline on the English version
of the DVD box, is that to do good, sometimes you have to do evil. The people
he has surrounded himself with are obviously corrupt and out for themselves,
but with regards to Andreotti the actions and decisions he took were done to
keep Italy safe against the threat (real or imagined) of a Communist rebellion.
That is what makes the character so
difficult to fathom out, we believe him to have done evil things but we find it
hard to see him as evil.
All references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023490/
Monday 10 March 2014
Gettysburg (1993)
Lieutenant General James Longstreet: I don't know. I sometimes feel
troubled. Those fellas - those boys in blue - they never quite seem the enemy.
Lieutenant General James Longstreet: I used to command some of those
boys. Swore an oath too. Ah... I - I couldn't fight against Georgia, South
Carolina. Not against my own family...
General Robert E. Lee: No Sir. There was always a higher duty to Virginia.
That was our first duty. There was never any question or doubt about that.
Superbly
acted with epic battle scenes and inspiring speeches, Gettysburg tells the
story of the defining battle of the American Civil War, a battle that took place
over three days in Pennsylvania.
The
story moves from the Union to the Confederate forces with ease and gives us a
clear view of the characters in an incredibly detailed way which is unusual in
films, especially those concerned with war. The subject of slavery is only
brought up once, and because of the storyline we find it impossible to see
either side in the role of “good” versus “bad”. That would too simplistic a way
to show the reality of the Civil War.
The
film does a great job of showing the tragedy of broken friendships and
conflicted loyalties at the heart of the Civil War. The central themes of the
film are twofold. Firstly, it shows the way that the Civil War ripped the
country apart, especially in the pre-war officer corps. All the generals know
each other intimately and grieve for friends that are now fighting against
them. Secondly, the film makes the point that for many, loyalty to their home
State trumped loyalty to their country and even to their friends.
All references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107007/
Sunday 2 March 2014
Grosse Point Blank (1997)
Debi: You're a psychopath.
Marty: No, no. Psychopaths kill for no reason. I kill for
*money*. It's a *job*. That didn't come out right.
Martin Blank (John
Cusack) is tired of his job and
feels he had made a huge mistake in both his chosen career and his decision
years before to run away from home and leave his girlfriend waiting for him on
the night of the prom. When he gets an invitation for his 10-year high school
reunion he is initially conflicted about going. He feels, like many of us, that
he is defined in the eyes of others by his job. He worries how he will stack up
compared to his classmates as he has no wife and no kids. Martin Blank, by the
way, is an international assassin for hire.
Martin does go back home where he meets up
with old friends, including his old sweetheart Debi (Minnie
Driver), who he hopes to win back, all the while
dealing rival hitmen, government spies and a contract that he keeps putting off.
Filled with great eighties music, funny jokes and cool shootouts, Grosse Point
Blank is definitely fun for all the family.
The main point the movie tries to make is
that people are not defined by jobs or by past mistakes, however it doesn’t really
tell us what people exactly are defined by. Martin is tired by his job because
there is no excitement anymore. He isn’t particularly bothered by the fact that
he kills people, remarking that if he gets a job it must be because they did something.
He’s not even that interested in relationships (Debi not withstanding); he is
just unhappy and wants a change.
All references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119229/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Click
here to buy Grosse Point Blank: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grosse-Pointe-Blank-John-Cusack/dp/B00004CXYL/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1393784457&sr=1-1&keywords=grosse+pointe+blank
Sunday 23 February 2014
Private Ryan:
Yes, sir. Paton, Iowa, that's correct. What is this about?
Captain Miller: Your brothers were killed in combat.
Private Ryan: Which - Which ones?
Captain Miller: All of them.
Captain Miller: Your brothers were killed in combat.
Private Ryan: Which - Which ones?
Captain Miller: All of them.
Saving
Private Ryan is one of those films that will leave you in awe at that
generation who spent their youth fighting far away from home for our freedom.
Nobody can watch the first few minutes of the film when the Normandy landings
are underway and not come back with a lump in their throat.
The
film tells the story of a small number of elite US Army Rangers who are ordered
to journey deep into occupied Normandy, only a few days after the invasion, and
retrieve a paratrooper who is the last surviving son in his family, as all his
brothers recently died in combat. The Rangers are, perhaps understandably, not
best pleased at the fact that they have to risk their lives, for the sake of
one person.
Just
how much is a person’s life worth? The film isn’t glorifying war or the US
Army, quite the opposite in fact. During the Normandy landings we see numerous
American soldiers commit war crimes, and in the middle of the film our group of
Rangers also come close to murdering a German POW. These Rangers are not carrying out a mission
that will end the war or save thousands of their comrades; they are simply
carrying out a Public Relations exercise. At the end of the film, with most of
the Rangers dead, we are left in no doubt that Private Ryan has spent the rest
of his life trying to earn that salvation.
Click
here to buy Saving Private Ryan: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saving-Private-Ryan-DVD-Hanks/dp/B00004Y3NM
Monday 17 February 2014
Lincoln
2012
Thaddeus Stevens: Trust? Gentlemen, you seem to have
forgotten that our chosen career is politics.
Robert Latham: It's not illegal to bribe congressmen.
They starve otherwise.
Abraham Lincoln: I am the President of the United
States of America, clothed in immense power! You will procure me those votes!
Along with
Amazing Grace, Lincoln is one of the few films which show the contradictions inherent
in political life. Both tell the stories of righteous men battling to defeat
the evil of slavery through peaceful, democratic and sometimes boring means. Where
these two films differ is on the means used by the protagonists to achieve the
death of slavery.
Lincoln,
brought to life splendidly by Daniel Day Lewis, knows that he only has a very
short time to bring the amendment to abolish slavery to the House of
Representatives in the dying days of the war. I won’t go through the intimate
details of the American political system with its Federal and State level legislatures
and executive offices. He knows he needs 20 votes from the opposing Democratic
Party in order to pass the amendment and he also knows that a large number of
democrats have been voted out of power and are spending their last few months
as members of Congress. He proceeds to buy these votes for the amendment.
The major
theme of the film is: does the end justify the means? Lincoln bribes
politicians, deceives the House of Representatives (an impeachable offense) and
even seems willing to prolong the Civil War to guarantee the passage of the amendment.
It is up to the individual viewer to decide if his dishonest, and illegal, actions
were justified in order to abolish the evil of slavery in America.
All
references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/?ref_=nv_sr_5b
Click here to buy Lincoln:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lincoln-DVD-Daniel-Day-Lewis/dp/B008OHCO1E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392632287&sr=8-1&keywords=lincoln
Sunday 9 February 2014
Ronin, 1998
Spence: You ever kill anybody?
Sam: I hurt somebody's feelings once.
If you haven’t seen Ronin, you have genuinely missed out. This
action-thriller directed by John Frankenheimer boasts a star-studded cast,
great action scenes (including the best car chase I have ever seen) and a genuinely
interesting storyline.
A gang of Cold War warriors,
Ex-CIA Sam ( Robert De Niro), French Gangster Vincent (Jean
Reno), SAS veteran Spence (Sean
Bean), getaway driver Larry (Skipp
Sudduth) and, finally, former Stasi/KGB operative Gregor
(Stellan Skarsgård) are hired
by Deirdre
(Natascha McElhone) to get a
suitcase from the Russian Mafia . Retrieving the case is pretty easy; however,
it all goes downhill when Gregor steals the suitcase, forcing Deirdre
to leave the team and join with IRA enforcer Seamus
O'Rourke (Jonathan Pryce). Sam and
Vincent decide to get the case for themselves, competing with Seamus and
Deirdre to track down Gregor before he sells it back to the Russians.
The main theme in the film is the effect of past mistakes
and choices on the present. When Deirdre is asked why she joined the IRA, she
retorts “a wealthy scoundrel seduced and betrayed me.” Sam agrees with her and
we are left wondering who exactly has seduced these people, be it Terrorist
groups committed to a cause, or even Governments. These are all individuals who
have made choices in the past which have rebounded on them. They joined causes
that they believed in during the Cold War, but which in the 90’s have left them
living in a dangerous and dark world. These people are not young patriotic
James Bonds. These are tired, cynical and middle-aged veterans of past shadow
wars who now have to live with their past.
All references come from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122690/?ref_=nv_sr_2
Click here to buy Ronin: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ronin-DVD-Robert-De-Niro/dp/B00004CYL5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391967407&sr=8-1&keywords=ronin
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