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**** 180+ New Stories Added **** Story time is learning time with 'Stories For Children: Bedtime...
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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.
Piper (13 KP) rated Halloween (2018) in Movies
Nov 27, 2019
Strong Characters (3 more)
Clever Camerawork
Myers is Finally Threatening Again
Callbacks and Subversions
"You're The New Doctor Loomis" (3 more)
Plot Holes
Predictable
Too Much Off-Screen Action
Halloween: Predictably Unpredictable
Contains spoilers, click to show
After the nightmare of a film that was Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake, I refused to bother seeing the new Halloween on its release, choosing instead to pick up a DVD when the price got knocked down significantly enough - after all, we’ve had sixty-three Halloween films now and only half of them were worth watching (really, Season of the Witch?) and this looked, in all honesty, like just another slasher-film-reboot that wasn’t worth the time. Now don’t get me wrong, it absolutely was just another slasher film, but I wish I’d seen it in the cinema. And a year earlier than I did, too, because I missed out big-time with this one.
The plot is predictable, because of course it is. It’s Michael Myers, what’s he going to do except escape from a mental institution and murder some people? But it’s beautifully subverted; some of the characters you might expect to last till the end die before the halfway mark, and while there are a fair amount who are clearly written in just to be killed minutes later, they contribute to some fine, gory moments, so it’s kind of okay. There’s no real heartbreaker here - everyone you really rooted for just about makes it, and everyone that was kind of a dick is killed. And that’s fine, because in a way this isn’t the kind of slasher where it matters who lives or dies. This is a film about preserving a legacy, or perhaps just making one, and it works. We’re told fairly early on that this is a direct sequel to the original Halloween (Myers’ death toll at the start of this version, apparently, is five, which matches the amount of kills he made in the first movie - as far as I’m aware, Myers has actually killed over 100 people in all the films combined, so this is a nice subtle way of telling us what to remember and what to ignore completely). Having said that, references are made throughout to previous films, the best of which is of course a callback to the infamous scene where Myers tumbles out of a window only for his body to completely disappear - this time it’s Laurie Strode who does the tumbling, and she very much intends to do a little vanishing act of her own, Michael, so keep an eye on - oh, no, you looked away, I wonder what’s happening down there!
Focusing on Laurie for a moment, Jamie Lee Curtis does an absolutely excellent job here. Age has given her character wisdom, paranoia, and a whole lot of guns, and the acting carries a huge amount of weight and strength with it. Having said that, there are a couple of moments where all of Laurie’s fear-induced calculations don’t seem to have quite worked out - why bother going to such extreme measures to protect your house, if the front door you’re standing behind is half glass? But that’s the thing about this movie - whatever you plan for, whatever you think Michael Myers is capable of, he’s stronger than you think, he’s far more terrifying than you remember, and right until the end, he’s here to remind you that nothing you can plan for will ever be enough. Of course, we never actually see him die (again) so here’s looking forward to the next sequel…
The cinematography is something to at least wonder over - settings and locations are used well and established with some wonderful wide shots, and some of the best scenes are those where the camera just stays in one place, at a very carefully-selected window for example, and watches. Two scenes are worth a particular mention; the first, in which we follow our two podcast-host characters to a gas station, seems fairly dull until Myers catches up to them, but if you watch the background carefully enough you’ll see he’s there all along, beating people up and murdering quite happily (swapping his prison jumpsuit for those traditional blues in the process). The second seems a little superficial, in the grand scheme of the movie, but it’s well-shot nonetheless - we watch, from that aforementioned window, as a woman hears about all the nasty things Michael might do, and of course we can see him through another window, heading for her front door, and when he finally appears inside the house he’s all the way across the room, somehow, and he calmly wanders on over and stabs the woman quite coolly through the throat, in a scene which I think is most reminiscent of the original films.
However, there are moments when you don’t see Michael at all, just the aftermath, or where we watch him enter a room and are forced to linger in the corridor while he does the dirty work. A couple of times that’s just fine, but considering the nature of the film it would be nice to watch the magic happen a couple more times. And while we’re on the negatives, I might mention that the reveal that the Doctor Loomis-type character who looked, felt, and sounded like a rip-off of Doctor Loomis, and was even referred to as “The New Doctor Loomis” did EXACTLY the same thing that Doctor Loomis did, surprise, and we were somehow expected to not see that coming like it was all one big, obvious, heavy-handed bluff. A couple of the other characters, too, felt like they were purely rammed in there to be irritating - there were a couple of strong scenes with our podcast hosts, but ultimately they were rude, on-the-nose and annoyingly egotistical, and I was happy to see them go, just like Alison’s friend Foggy Nelson.
The score, incidentally, is worth mentioning, from a haunting retune of the original Myers theme to darker and more dramatic variations on it later on that really would have been quite something to hear in surround-sound. I’m never usually one to appreciate the music of a film quite fully enough, so it was nice to have this grab my attention in quite the way it did. Overall, it’s a genuinely good follow-on that takes the best of the films before and makes the best use of the worst of them. Some of the characters might be a little annoying, some of the action could have translated better on-screen than off, but it was an honest and straight-up slasher film and it just wasn’t that bad at all.
The plot is predictable, because of course it is. It’s Michael Myers, what’s he going to do except escape from a mental institution and murder some people? But it’s beautifully subverted; some of the characters you might expect to last till the end die before the halfway mark, and while there are a fair amount who are clearly written in just to be killed minutes later, they contribute to some fine, gory moments, so it’s kind of okay. There’s no real heartbreaker here - everyone you really rooted for just about makes it, and everyone that was kind of a dick is killed. And that’s fine, because in a way this isn’t the kind of slasher where it matters who lives or dies. This is a film about preserving a legacy, or perhaps just making one, and it works. We’re told fairly early on that this is a direct sequel to the original Halloween (Myers’ death toll at the start of this version, apparently, is five, which matches the amount of kills he made in the first movie - as far as I’m aware, Myers has actually killed over 100 people in all the films combined, so this is a nice subtle way of telling us what to remember and what to ignore completely). Having said that, references are made throughout to previous films, the best of which is of course a callback to the infamous scene where Myers tumbles out of a window only for his body to completely disappear - this time it’s Laurie Strode who does the tumbling, and she very much intends to do a little vanishing act of her own, Michael, so keep an eye on - oh, no, you looked away, I wonder what’s happening down there!
Focusing on Laurie for a moment, Jamie Lee Curtis does an absolutely excellent job here. Age has given her character wisdom, paranoia, and a whole lot of guns, and the acting carries a huge amount of weight and strength with it. Having said that, there are a couple of moments where all of Laurie’s fear-induced calculations don’t seem to have quite worked out - why bother going to such extreme measures to protect your house, if the front door you’re standing behind is half glass? But that’s the thing about this movie - whatever you plan for, whatever you think Michael Myers is capable of, he’s stronger than you think, he’s far more terrifying than you remember, and right until the end, he’s here to remind you that nothing you can plan for will ever be enough. Of course, we never actually see him die (again) so here’s looking forward to the next sequel…
The cinematography is something to at least wonder over - settings and locations are used well and established with some wonderful wide shots, and some of the best scenes are those where the camera just stays in one place, at a very carefully-selected window for example, and watches. Two scenes are worth a particular mention; the first, in which we follow our two podcast-host characters to a gas station, seems fairly dull until Myers catches up to them, but if you watch the background carefully enough you’ll see he’s there all along, beating people up and murdering quite happily (swapping his prison jumpsuit for those traditional blues in the process). The second seems a little superficial, in the grand scheme of the movie, but it’s well-shot nonetheless - we watch, from that aforementioned window, as a woman hears about all the nasty things Michael might do, and of course we can see him through another window, heading for her front door, and when he finally appears inside the house he’s all the way across the room, somehow, and he calmly wanders on over and stabs the woman quite coolly through the throat, in a scene which I think is most reminiscent of the original films.
However, there are moments when you don’t see Michael at all, just the aftermath, or where we watch him enter a room and are forced to linger in the corridor while he does the dirty work. A couple of times that’s just fine, but considering the nature of the film it would be nice to watch the magic happen a couple more times. And while we’re on the negatives, I might mention that the reveal that the Doctor Loomis-type character who looked, felt, and sounded like a rip-off of Doctor Loomis, and was even referred to as “The New Doctor Loomis” did EXACTLY the same thing that Doctor Loomis did, surprise, and we were somehow expected to not see that coming like it was all one big, obvious, heavy-handed bluff. A couple of the other characters, too, felt like they were purely rammed in there to be irritating - there were a couple of strong scenes with our podcast hosts, but ultimately they were rude, on-the-nose and annoyingly egotistical, and I was happy to see them go, just like Alison’s friend Foggy Nelson.
The score, incidentally, is worth mentioning, from a haunting retune of the original Myers theme to darker and more dramatic variations on it later on that really would have been quite something to hear in surround-sound. I’m never usually one to appreciate the music of a film quite fully enough, so it was nice to have this grab my attention in quite the way it did. Overall, it’s a genuinely good follow-on that takes the best of the films before and makes the best use of the worst of them. Some of the characters might be a little annoying, some of the action could have translated better on-screen than off, but it was an honest and straight-up slasher film and it just wasn’t that bad at all.