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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) in Movies
Oct 3, 2019
Oringal Sci-Fi classic
Close Encounters of the Third Kind- takes elements from the thing from anethor world, the war of the worlds and many other sci-fi movies and mix them all togther and the outcome is a excellent movie, directed by one of the great directors of all time- Steven Spilberg.
The Plot: Science fiction adventure about a group of people who attempt to contact alien intelligence. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) witnesses an unidentified flying object, and even has a "sunburn" from its bright lights to prove it. Roy refuses to accept an explanation for what he saw and is prepared to give up his life to pursue the truth about UFOs.
This is a must watch and must see film.
The Plot: Science fiction adventure about a group of people who attempt to contact alien intelligence. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) witnesses an unidentified flying object, and even has a "sunburn" from its bright lights to prove it. Roy refuses to accept an explanation for what he saw and is prepared to give up his life to pursue the truth about UFOs.
This is a must watch and must see film.
Sonofdel (6291 KP) rated Mr Liverpool: Ronnie Moran: The Official Life Story in Books
Jul 9, 2020
Wonderful Insight
When you think of Liverpool FC through the years you think of people like Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Roy Evans etc. This book tells the brilliant life story of the man who was there through it all. From player to physio, from coach to manager its all there. With contributions from such legends as Kenny Dalglish, Alan Hansen, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard this epitomises what Liverpool FC is about and its told with a lot of humour and recollection. With wonderful insights from his son Paul as well this is the complete story of Ronnie Moran 'Bugsy' 'Mr Liverpool'. A wonderful read :)
M. Night Shyamalan recommended Jaws (1975) in Movies (curated)
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated The Shallows (2016) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
The Deathly Shallows, part 1
Every shark movie is inevitably compared (unfavourably) against Spielberg’s classic 1975 tourist-muncher. And “The Shallows” is no exception. But while not a 5-Fad classic, this flick comes pretty close by being hugely enjoyable and having a lot going for it.
Waxing lyrically. The shapely Blake Liveley.
Waxing lyrically. The shapely Blake Liveley.
Blake Lively (“The Age of Adeline“) plays surfer and trainee doctor Nancy, still grieving the recent death from cancer of her mother and travelling to a remote Mexican surf beach where she has photos of her mother surfing while pregnant with her. While surfing alone, Nancy is attacked a couple of hundred yards from the shore by a Great White and severely injured. She has the choice of refuge of either a low rock or another less palatable floating object. Choosing the rock (at low tide) she is faced with the dilemma of both surviving her injuries and then being rescued before the high tide takes the rock and leaves her to the mercy of the ever circling big-fish.
We're going to need a bigger rock.
We’re going to need a bigger rock.
A big summer blockbuster this is not, with a total cast of eleven (not including a guest appearance of Steven Seagull (as himself)). But the small cast doesn’t make it less gripping, and gripping it most certainly is, with tension building progressively (emphasised periodically by an on-screen clock) with the countdown to high tide.
Blake Lively is an underrated actress and really delivers the goods here. And bearing in mind the problems that Spielberg had with his mechanical shark Bruce (named after Spielberg’s lawyer) the appearance of the shark is limited to where actually needed, with Lively having to fill in the blanks with reaction shots. As your imagination is still far better than any special effects, this is hugely effective for certain sequences.
Pure horror: here Dad had gone down to the video rental and come back with 'Dirty Grandpa'.
Pure horror: her Dad had gone down to the video rental and come back with ‘Dirty Grandpa’.
The film draws similarities to another interesting entry in the “Jaws” genre – “Open Water 2: Adrift” from 2006. In that film there was the same incessant threat of shark attack combined with the audience frustration that safety (in that case, the deck of their yacht, if only they had let a ladder down) being so near. Here the 200 yards to the shore is shoutable to but still 190 yards too far.
The cinematography (by Flavio Martínez Labiano) is also just beautifully done with some stunning surf and underwater shots that not only highlight Ms Lively’s lithely (sic) figure and her Californian surfing skills, but also the beauty of the ‘Mexican coast’ (actually Lord Howe Island in New South Wales, Australia).
“The Shallows” was written by Anthony Jaswinski and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (the director of “Non-Stop“, aka Taken 3.5). It comes with a truly impressive BvS quotient of just 5.9%!
So with all of this going for it, you would think that my rating is heading towards at least a 4.5. But all films like this require a satisfying denouement, and unfortunately this is where this one comes off the rails. It is just plain silly and, together with an unnecessary and irritating epilogue scene, diminishes what was on track to be one of the best films of the summer. So here’s the “One Mann’s Movies” solution:
Using Final Cut X, Adobe Premier or your favourite video editing suite, cut out the scene from 115:00 to 116:00 from “Jaws”;
Photoshop Blake Lively’s face onto Roy Scheider’s body.
Insert the finished clip into “The Shallows” at about 82 minutes in.
Enjoy a 5-Fad classic!
This limitation aside, it’s still worth your while hunting it out at a cinema near you, since the fantastic cinematography is best suited to a big screen.
Waxing lyrically. The shapely Blake Liveley.
Waxing lyrically. The shapely Blake Liveley.
Blake Lively (“The Age of Adeline“) plays surfer and trainee doctor Nancy, still grieving the recent death from cancer of her mother and travelling to a remote Mexican surf beach where she has photos of her mother surfing while pregnant with her. While surfing alone, Nancy is attacked a couple of hundred yards from the shore by a Great White and severely injured. She has the choice of refuge of either a low rock or another less palatable floating object. Choosing the rock (at low tide) she is faced with the dilemma of both surviving her injuries and then being rescued before the high tide takes the rock and leaves her to the mercy of the ever circling big-fish.
We're going to need a bigger rock.
We’re going to need a bigger rock.
A big summer blockbuster this is not, with a total cast of eleven (not including a guest appearance of Steven Seagull (as himself)). But the small cast doesn’t make it less gripping, and gripping it most certainly is, with tension building progressively (emphasised periodically by an on-screen clock) with the countdown to high tide.
Blake Lively is an underrated actress and really delivers the goods here. And bearing in mind the problems that Spielberg had with his mechanical shark Bruce (named after Spielberg’s lawyer) the appearance of the shark is limited to where actually needed, with Lively having to fill in the blanks with reaction shots. As your imagination is still far better than any special effects, this is hugely effective for certain sequences.
Pure horror: here Dad had gone down to the video rental and come back with 'Dirty Grandpa'.
Pure horror: her Dad had gone down to the video rental and come back with ‘Dirty Grandpa’.
The film draws similarities to another interesting entry in the “Jaws” genre – “Open Water 2: Adrift” from 2006. In that film there was the same incessant threat of shark attack combined with the audience frustration that safety (in that case, the deck of their yacht, if only they had let a ladder down) being so near. Here the 200 yards to the shore is shoutable to but still 190 yards too far.
The cinematography (by Flavio Martínez Labiano) is also just beautifully done with some stunning surf and underwater shots that not only highlight Ms Lively’s lithely (sic) figure and her Californian surfing skills, but also the beauty of the ‘Mexican coast’ (actually Lord Howe Island in New South Wales, Australia).
“The Shallows” was written by Anthony Jaswinski and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (the director of “Non-Stop“, aka Taken 3.5). It comes with a truly impressive BvS quotient of just 5.9%!
So with all of this going for it, you would think that my rating is heading towards at least a 4.5. But all films like this require a satisfying denouement, and unfortunately this is where this one comes off the rails. It is just plain silly and, together with an unnecessary and irritating epilogue scene, diminishes what was on track to be one of the best films of the summer. So here’s the “One Mann’s Movies” solution:
Using Final Cut X, Adobe Premier or your favourite video editing suite, cut out the scene from 115:00 to 116:00 from “Jaws”;
Photoshop Blake Lively’s face onto Roy Scheider’s body.
Insert the finished clip into “The Shallows” at about 82 minutes in.
Enjoy a 5-Fad classic!
This limitation aside, it’s still worth your while hunting it out at a cinema near you, since the fantastic cinematography is best suited to a big screen.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Arrival (2016) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
Wow – what a surprise.
Sometimes I can get very irritated by a trailer for giving too much away (case in point, “Room” – which I recut – and more recently “Passengers”). Sometimes I can get very excited by a really good teaser trailer (case in point, “10 Cloverfield Lane”). But most of the time a “ho hum” trailer typically drives the expectation of a “ho hum” film: “Jack Reacher: Never Look Back” being a good recent example. Then there is “Arrival”…
Because the trailer for “Arrival” belies absolutely nothing about the depth and complexity of the film. At face value, it looks like a dubious “Close Encounters” wannabe, with a threat of movement towards the likes of “Independence Day” and “The 5th Wave”. Actually what you get is a film that approaches the grandeur of “Close Encounters” but interlaces it with the intellectual depth of “Inception”, the mystery of “Intersteller” and a heavy emotional jolt or two of “Up”.
Amy Adams (“Batman vs Superman”) plays Dr Louise Banks, a language teacher at a US university facing a bunch of particularly disengaged students one morning. For good reason since world news is afoot. Twelve alien craft have positioned themselves strategically around the world, hanging a few feet from the ground in just the sort of way that bricks don’t. Banks is approached by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and offered the job of trying to communicate with the aliens: where did they come from? why are they here? Banks faces the biggest challenge of her academic career in trying to devise a strategy for communication without any foundation of knowledge on what level communication even works at for them. Assisted by Ian Donelly (Jeremy Renner, “Mission Impossible IV/V”, “Avengers”), a theoretical physicist, the pair try to crack the code against a deadline set by the inexorable rise of international tensions – driven by China’s General Chang (Tzi Ma, “Veep”; “24”).
Steven Spielberg made a rare error of judgement by adding scenes in his “Special Edition” of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” showing everyman power guy Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) entering the alien spacecraft. Some things are best left to the imagination. Here, a reprise of that mistake seems inevitable, but – perversely – seems to be pulled off with mastery and aplomb. The aliens are well rendered, and the small scale nature of the set (I’m sure I’ve been in similar dingy waiting rooms in UK railway stations!) is cleverly handled by the environmental conditions.
But where the screenplay really kills it is in the emergence of the real power unleashed by the translation work. To say any more would deliver spoilers, which I won’t do. But this is a masterly piece of science-fiction writing. The screenplay was by Eric Heisserer – someone with a limited scriptwriting CV of horror film reboots/sequels such as “Final Destination 5”, “The Thing” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” – so the portents were not good, which just adds to the surprise. If I were to be critical, some of the dialogue at times is a little TOO clever for its own good and smacks of Aaron Sorkin over-exposition: the comment about “They have a word for it in Hungary” for example went right over my head.
Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”) deftly directs, leaving the pace of the story glacially slow in places to let the audience deduce what is going on at their own speed. This will NOT be to the liking of movie fans who like their films in a wham-bam of CGI, but was very much to my liking. The film in fact has very little exposition, giving you lots to think about after the credits roll: there were elements of the story (such as her book) that still generated debate with my better half on the drive home.
Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are first rate and an effectively moody score by Jóhann Jóhannsson (“Sicario”; “The Theory of Everything”) round off the other high-point credits for me.
An extraordinary film, this is a must see for sci-fi fans but also for lovers of good cinema and well-crafted stories.
Because the trailer for “Arrival” belies absolutely nothing about the depth and complexity of the film. At face value, it looks like a dubious “Close Encounters” wannabe, with a threat of movement towards the likes of “Independence Day” and “The 5th Wave”. Actually what you get is a film that approaches the grandeur of “Close Encounters” but interlaces it with the intellectual depth of “Inception”, the mystery of “Intersteller” and a heavy emotional jolt or two of “Up”.
Amy Adams (“Batman vs Superman”) plays Dr Louise Banks, a language teacher at a US university facing a bunch of particularly disengaged students one morning. For good reason since world news is afoot. Twelve alien craft have positioned themselves strategically around the world, hanging a few feet from the ground in just the sort of way that bricks don’t. Banks is approached by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and offered the job of trying to communicate with the aliens: where did they come from? why are they here? Banks faces the biggest challenge of her academic career in trying to devise a strategy for communication without any foundation of knowledge on what level communication even works at for them. Assisted by Ian Donelly (Jeremy Renner, “Mission Impossible IV/V”, “Avengers”), a theoretical physicist, the pair try to crack the code against a deadline set by the inexorable rise of international tensions – driven by China’s General Chang (Tzi Ma, “Veep”; “24”).
Steven Spielberg made a rare error of judgement by adding scenes in his “Special Edition” of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” showing everyman power guy Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) entering the alien spacecraft. Some things are best left to the imagination. Here, a reprise of that mistake seems inevitable, but – perversely – seems to be pulled off with mastery and aplomb. The aliens are well rendered, and the small scale nature of the set (I’m sure I’ve been in similar dingy waiting rooms in UK railway stations!) is cleverly handled by the environmental conditions.
But where the screenplay really kills it is in the emergence of the real power unleashed by the translation work. To say any more would deliver spoilers, which I won’t do. But this is a masterly piece of science-fiction writing. The screenplay was by Eric Heisserer – someone with a limited scriptwriting CV of horror film reboots/sequels such as “Final Destination 5”, “The Thing” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” – so the portents were not good, which just adds to the surprise. If I were to be critical, some of the dialogue at times is a little TOO clever for its own good and smacks of Aaron Sorkin over-exposition: the comment about “They have a word for it in Hungary” for example went right over my head.
Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”) deftly directs, leaving the pace of the story glacially slow in places to let the audience deduce what is going on at their own speed. This will NOT be to the liking of movie fans who like their films in a wham-bam of CGI, but was very much to my liking. The film in fact has very little exposition, giving you lots to think about after the credits roll: there were elements of the story (such as her book) that still generated debate with my better half on the drive home.
Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are first rate and an effectively moody score by Jóhann Jóhannsson (“Sicario”; “The Theory of Everything”) round off the other high-point credits for me.
An extraordinary film, this is a must see for sci-fi fans but also for lovers of good cinema and well-crafted stories.