In this post, we have quite a few films that 'every film buff should have seen' as well as one on Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain (which I decided to watch in one night, great combo if you want to feel very sad afterwards).
THE WICKER MAN (1973)
★★★★
The Wicker Man starts with the protagonist, Sergeant Howie, venturing to an island to investigate a missing child. This island is predominantly Pagan, however, and Sergeant Howie is a conservative Christian so the commonplace pagan rituals freak him out a bit and get in the way of his investigation.
I feel like this is in that list of films that 'one should've watched' so I'm glad I've seen it now, I can definitely see why it is such a well known film. I did think it was quite an interesting film and the theme of apathy was quite interesting too, like your initial reaction with any film or book or whatever to empathise with the protagonist but Sergeant Howie isn't really a nice character so it questions that initial instinct of empathy. Something I found a bit disappointing (which I know wouldn't necessarily happen for me) but I guessed what was going to happen at the end and I think my brother did too - it could be a generational thing, because in the documentary we watched about it afterwards everyone said how the ending was such a shock and I feel like it wasn't much of a shock at all. Definitely worth a watch, it's a real classic horror movie and one every film buff should watch at least once.
CONTROL (2007)
★★★★
Control is a biopic about the life of Ian Curtis and Joy Division's rise to fame. It shows the leadup to Ian Curtis' suicide as his marriage is failing, the band is starting to become more famous, and his epilepsy is worsening.
I liked this film so much. I've always found Ian Curtis' life interesting and I'm a fan of Joy Division, but I think to enjoy this film those facts aren't even important. The film is so well made and it's really gripping. I loved how it was made in black and white, I feel like that makes the film so much more atmospheric and it just adds a whole other level to the film. It was very emotional, understandably, but such a great film. One I think any person would enjoy, but especially fans of Joy Division or people who are interested in Ian Curtis - top notch.
KURT COBAIN: ABOUT A SON (2006)
★★★
This film is a 'visual essay style documentary' about Kurt Cobain featuring interviews of Kurt Cobain with Michael Azerrad.
As you can tell, I had a themed movie night . . . In all honesty, I didn't think this was a particularly good documentary. Don't get me wrong, I love Nirvana and I'm really interested in Kurt Cobain so I, as a fan, enjoyed it but I don't think it was a particularly good film in its own right. I didn't really realise it was going to be a visual essay documentary so that in itself disappointed me a bit, but I also didn't think the clips used were all that relevant. I don't know, it was a all a little bit artsy, so I enjoyed it for Kurt but I think you'd have to be a fan to watch this.
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)
★★
Plan 9 from Outer Space takes place in California's San Fernando Valley where flying saucers from outer space have started to attack. The aliens intend to conquer the world by resurrecting corpses in a Hollywood graveyard. At the same time, the living dead start spying on humans who are looking for UFOs in the graveyard.
This is another one of those films that every film buff should've seen, although probably not in a good way. I've been wanting to watch this film since watching Ed Wood a while ago (great film by the way, Johnny Depp's great in it!). If you don't know, Ed Wood is quite well known as one of the worst movie makers ever and this is one of his most well known films so I've wanted to watch it for quite a while. My brother chose it for his movie choice and whilst in its own right, it's a very bad film, and I mean
very bad - the special effects are abysmal, the story's a little bit all over the place, and one of the actors, Bela Lugosi, died halfway through the making of the film but they still carried on making it so the way they covered up that up wasn't done too well. That being said, I really enjoyed watching it. I thought the fact that it was so terrible just made it even funnier, so y'know in its own right it's a 2/5 movie but in terms of the enjoyment I got out of it, I'd probably give it a 4/5.
AMELIE (2001)
★★★★
Amelie is a story about a girl (shock horror, she's called Amelie) who's a waitress and she's quite shy because she was misdiagnosed with a heart condition when she was younger, and as a result she was cut off from real people. This leads Amelie to become a girl with her head in the clouds. When she moves to Paris, she finds a long-lost childhood treasure that belonged to a former occupant of her apartment and returns it to him, and after seeing how much of a positive affect it has on him she decides to set out and make other people happy. She then realises that in doing this, she's disrupting her own quest for love.
My housemate and I watched this rather than going out clubbing (lots of movie nights is the best way to do freshers - #confirmed), and I actually wanted to watch it for ages because I really liked the soundtrack - I actually learned to play one of the pieces on the piano quite a while back, I also quite like foreign films and I feel like this is a film I really needed to watch given its popularity. I really liked this film, I quite liked the storyline but I also thought the way it was shot was really lovely as well like the use of colours was really aesthetically pleasing. I think even if you're not into foreign films this might be a good one for you to watch because it's not a complex storyline, and the aesthetic of it all and the music is generally enjoyable too - it's a good'un.
What films have you watched recently?
