GET HIM TO THE GREEK (2010)
★★★
Get Him to the Greek is the story of an executive at a record company called Aaron Hill, played by Jonah Hill, who gets given an assignment to escort rock legend Andlous Snow, played by Russell Brand, to L.A's Greek Theatre for the first stop on his comeback tour. However, Andlous is constantly off his face on drugs and is being a generally irritating rock star making the whole procedure rather bothersome, as well as trying to win back his ex. The film generally follows Andlous making Aaron's life a lot more difficult.
Me and my friends watched this in the middle of a break from history revision because we all quite like Russell Brand and were in the mood for a comedy. It's definitely enjoyable, Russell Brand and Jonah Hill was never going to be a bad combination so it was inevitably going to be enjoyable. It was a light comedy, a bit of film fluff if you will, so it was enjoyable but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again and it's not one of those must-see films, but there were a few laugh out loud moments - my favourite being 'this is not an appropriate time to say namaste', which I had seen on Tumblr and Twitter a few times but I didn't know it was from this so it was nice to have the connection made!
RENT (2005)
★★★★
Rent is a musical set in the 90s about a group of friends in New York who are experiencing issues to do with their love life, careers and AIDs. Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger, an HIV-positive musician, are struggling to make ends meet and pay the rent. Meanwhile, their friend Tom has fallen for Angel who's slowly dying of aids. So the film is essentially a musical focusing around the effects of HIV, struggling to make ends meets, and general love life issues.
I really liked this film! I wasn't expecting to because when I first got it and looked up reviews of it I saw a lot of bad ones, but I really liked it. I'm not sure if that's because I love musicals and 100% of the time I wish my life were a musical or at the very least an episode of glee, but it was very enjoyable. The songs were enjoyable, the cast was great - I have to congratulate them on the amazing POC representation, I know that won't mean much to some people but as a POC it's always great to see a lot of representation in a film. Also, Indina Menzel was in it and I love love love her. The songs were great and I reckon I'm going to have them stuck in my head for a week, and the storyline was really touching. If you don't like musicals, you won't like this, but if you do, I reckon you'll really like this - definitely think I'll be returning to this at some point in the future!
TAXI DRIVER (1976)
★★★★
Travis Bickle is a veteran living in New York City who suffers from insomnia so he takes up night shifts as a taxi driver. He drifts from society and becomes somewhat of a loner. When Travis meets a campaign worker called Betsy, he becomes obsessed with this idea of saving the world and cleaning up the city. The story follows his trials in trying to clean up New York City in as violent a way as possible.
I quite liked this film, the plot was quite interesting and it was pretty fast moving but there was also enough time for development in the storyline. I'm going to say right now, if you don't like blood - do not watch this. There is a lot of mindless violence in this, but if you can get past that the storyline is really interesting and I think it's probably one of those must-see films. It reminded me a lot of the book (and the BBC adaptation made for schools, so virtually impossible to get your hands on) Stone Cold by Robert Swindells, which came after so I'm not sure if there was any sort of inspiration there but Stone Cold is a lot like Taxi Driver. Essentially, a pretty good film and probably one that any film enthusiast should've seen - plus Betsy's theme is a really beautiful piece of music, so it's probably worth watching it just for that.
MOULIN ROUGE (2001)
★★★★
Moulin Rouge is story about a poet called Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, who comes to Paris to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He soon meets a group of Bohemians who convince him that he should write a musical show for them to be performed at the Moulin Rouge, which is a pretty popular night club. On the night Christian first goes to the Moulin Rouge, he meets a courtesan called Satine and falls for her, and she eventually falls for him too (after a bit of convincing). However, problems occur when the club owner invests in a wealthy Duke to help pay for the club, but the Duke will only pay if Satine is his. The story follows this love triangle and its twists and turns.
First things first, I don't know how I went so long without watching this film given its popularity and the fact that I'm a big film enthusiast - pretty darn cray cray. This film was pretty darn good. I knew I would find it aesthetically pleasing because Baz Lurhmann creates some aesthetically pleasing films, but I also quite liked the love story and the soundtrack was pretty bomb. Despite the fact it was set in the 1800s, it featured many pop songs but with orchestral twists (I love rearrangements of pop songs and when a pop song has interesting instrumentation, so this was pretty cool) featuring Queen, Nirvana, and Elton John just to name a few. Basically, I liked this film a lot and I think it would be one that would go down well with a lot of people (if you've not already seen it, I do feel like I'm one of the last people in the world to have watched this film)
THE SHINING (1980)
★★★★
The Shining is about a character called Jack who takes a job at the Overlook hotel as a caretaker, he stays with his wife and his son Danny who seems to have psychic premonitions, so he keeps on seeing things that are going to happen and they're quite traumatic for him. Danny's visions become scarier whilst they're at the hotel and Jack becomes psychotic to the point where he becomes homicidal.
I quite liked this film, it was very much about the tense build-up and the soundtrack helped this especially. I thought Jack Nicholson captured the psychotic part of Jack Torrance pretty well and even though I don't find films scary, he did genuinely freak me out and I thought this film was a great horror. I was expecting it to be a blood bath kind of film but there isn't actually a whole lot of death in it, it's a lot more about Jack's descent into madness and the worsening of Danny's visions. I did find that there wasn't a lot of consistency in the film in the sense that the scenes felt very disconnected and there were visions that Danny had that weren't explained or made clear necessarily, it's definitely the sort of film you'd have to analyse afterwards to make sure you get it (which we did, and we spent a long time looking on Google to see what other people, but it's a whole debate so you'd have to watch it and think about it for yourself). I'm glad I've finally watched this because it's one that I've always felt that a film enthusiast should watch, but I hadn't watched it, but now I have I can maintain my title of film enthusiast - definitely worth a watch.
What films have you been watching recently?
THE SHINING (1980)
★★★★
The Shining is about a character called Jack who takes a job at the Overlook hotel as a caretaker, he stays with his wife and his son Danny who seems to have psychic premonitions, so he keeps on seeing things that are going to happen and they're quite traumatic for him. Danny's visions become scarier whilst they're at the hotel and Jack becomes psychotic to the point where he becomes homicidal.
I quite liked this film, it was very much about the tense build-up and the soundtrack helped this especially. I thought Jack Nicholson captured the psychotic part of Jack Torrance pretty well and even though I don't find films scary, he did genuinely freak me out and I thought this film was a great horror. I was expecting it to be a blood bath kind of film but there isn't actually a whole lot of death in it, it's a lot more about Jack's descent into madness and the worsening of Danny's visions. I did find that there wasn't a lot of consistency in the film in the sense that the scenes felt very disconnected and there were visions that Danny had that weren't explained or made clear necessarily, it's definitely the sort of film you'd have to analyse afterwards to make sure you get it (which we did, and we spent a long time looking on Google to see what other people, but it's a whole debate so you'd have to watch it and think about it for yourself). I'm glad I've finally watched this because it's one that I've always felt that a film enthusiast should watch, but I hadn't watched it, but now I have I can maintain my title of film enthusiast - definitely worth a watch.
What films have you been watching recently?
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