The Shawshank Redemption
Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption is possibly one of the greatest films ever made – a stunning tale of redemption, humanity and perseverance, I simply can’t recommend it enough. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman’s central performances are incredible, but they’re also bolstered by a very strong supporting case (Gil Bellows, Jeff DeMunn, and others) who flesh out the complex life of this prison and the small mini-society that is built up there.
Darabont’s stately direction turns what could be a nasty, brutish prison film into an elegant statement on the power of the human will to endure even the toughest conditions. Andy Dufresne’s tale is told almost like a fairy tale through Morgan Freeman’s narration, everything being uplifted to almost cosmic importance; a simple jailbreak becomes a fight for a man’s very soul. I’ll remember such cathartic moments as Andy’s triumphant standing in the rain, the still crowd of prisoners listening to music through the loudspeaker, and the almost silent coda of Brooks’ empty life after prison. Truly one of the great films of all time, and it will stick with me for quite some time.
Frida
I am a huge fan of Julie Taymor from her brilliant work on Titus, and her biopic of Frida Kahlo inspires similar feelings in me. Selma Hayek is great in the role, and Taymor’s signature, painterly style is found here. Some of the most beautiful scenes include the reenactments of some of Kahlo’s most famous paintings, with Hayek’s unibrow as Frida cutting through the canvas and bringing the paintings to life. These visual elements, along with Elliot Goldenthal’s sensitive score, are probably the things I admire most about it.
The only real hiccups for the film are when it focuses too much on the interpersonal drama that Frida goes through, which is perfunctory but not nearly up to the level of the visual brilliance of the more artistic sequences of the film. It is those sequences that will stick for me a year from now, as Frida and Taymor teach me that film’s greatest asset is its sense of visual storytelling.
Food, Inc.
This documentary about the cruelty and systematic nature of the food industry is scathing and effective in all the right ways, and is one of the more fascinating documentaries I have seen. By taking on such a ubiquitous subject, the film managed to teach me a lot of things about the way food companies operate, which makes me think twice about the kind of food I order. The visual realities of factory farming, with helicopter shots of massive fields of cows stuffed into crowded fields, is chilling, as are the stylized statistics that showcase the exploitative and unethical nature of the practice.
As a documentary, it does not get as much of a chance to tell a straightforward story, but the themes and points it raises are incredibly poignant. The way companies like Monsanto establish a monopoly on major sources of food is borderline criminal, and the film rightly points out how nonsensical it is to allow a company to patent a product. The film works wonderfully as a call to action, advocating for the use of more ethical, organic and local produce and sourced meat, which is the thing I will most take away from it.
The Visitor
This film is confusing and perplexing and entertaining as I could possibly imagine. This film is a strange Italian mashup of things like Star Wars, The Room, and Godspell, as a Space Jesus tells John Huston to go to Earth to find a child who is also secretly the spawn of Space Satan, and the insanity only grows from there. The movie is a great ‘bad’ movie, being just incoherent enough to make the crazier things that happen in the film that much more incredible (the girl shoots her mother in the back!).
Add in crazy subplots with police officers trying to solve the crime, the father being part of a global conspiracy that seemingly has all of their meetings in the same ornate dining hall, and extended scenes of John Huston staring at a group of strange lights gathering over a rooftop, only for nothing to happen, and you have an awesome bad movie. No good filmmaking move was made in the making of this film, but that itself has its own tremendous charm. I’d love to watch it again; it’s a real so-bad-it’s-good film.
Once
This movie is a fairly charming film in and of itself, though its genre is not normally my cup of tea (being a romantic drama). However, there are some fun twists and a sense of artistic intent that make it worthwhile and elevates it above the normal trappings of its genre. Perhaps the most important of these is the use of music, in which the Guy and Girl find a way to relate to each other using the power of music.
There is a sense of realism throughout the film that I rather liked, with the actors clearly having a greater focus on their musicianship before their acting careers. The songs themselves provide a great backdrop to the romance of the film, and I also rather enjoyed the intimate, fascinating look at modern Dublin. The film seems just as much about a culture as it is about a couple, and that really saves it from falling into the ordinariness of romantic movies.
