Director Danny Boyle’s dramatic thriller chronicles the hours of Aron Ralston and his battle with a lodged rock that sealed his fate and brought Aron down to Earth to come to grips with his own life and mortality. Much like “In to the Wild,” director Boyle takes what was something of an already interesting story and turns it in to much than an experience by altering it in to a surreal and somewhat spiritual look back at a young man whose life has been filled with excitement and adventure that he used as a form of coping with his inability to allow people to connect to him as he connected to nature and the wilderness. And much like Sean Penn accomplished with “In to the Wild,” he manages to take an accident and uses it as a form of expressing the ideas of fate, coincidence, and the afterlife and a person communing with and ultimately becoming one with the environment around him.
Tag Archives: Drama
Let Me In (2010)
I think “Let Me In” will be deemed as a respectable companion piece to the infinitely superior “Let The Right One In” if only because Matt Reeves directs this version with his eye on convention more than edge. The original was already so gruesome and complex and filled with subtext and undertones that Reeves opts instead for simple and superficial and it will rely on the audiences preference if they want a movie about a vampire and a boy falling in love, or if they want a story about a boy and a girl falling in love, one of whom mutilates people and drinks their blood.
Black Swan (2010)
Director Darren Aronofsky has always had a talent for delving in to the human psyche and offering us deeper more complex looks in to our souls and perceptions of reality. “Requiem for a Dream” was a film constantly teetering between a life of misery and woe distorted by our own desires for something better, while “The Fountain” destroyed all of our notions of time and infinity in a world not bound by simple quantities of hours and days. His master opus is a work of art that transforms the world of Nina Sayers in to something of a personal hell where she is incapable of escaping and is seeking a perfection that she may never be able to obtain. “Black Swan” is a masterpiece, a classic trail of perceived normality in to madness, a world of light consumed by shadows, and our very own minds becoming the key to our unraveling of consciousness and reality.
The Social Network (2010)
As long as you don’t buy in to everything “The Social Network” tells you, David Fincher’s 2010 film is actually a compelling and engrossing exploration of the evolution of socializing through computers and how it’s shaped and defined our new generation turning us in to passive aggressive bullies and thugs who seek one another out through text and HTML code. David Fincher’s film is not perfect. It’s sexist, sensationalist, and turns an internet revolution in to a mere game of revenge from a lovelorn geek. But for its faults, “The Social Network” is a truly gripping and entertaining courtroom drama about the construction of Facebook, and how it managed to affect every single person who ever came in to contact with Mark Zuckerberg. He’s depicted as a narcissistic social outcast who brought down the walls of class, superficiality and exclusivity by allowing people the advent of elitism by virtue of distance that could allow anyone from the gorgeous woman to the awkward nerd to become the kings of their own personal domains.
Avalon High (2010)
So why am I reviewing a movie adapted from a teen book I’ve never read in to a film on a channel meant for preteens starring a bunch of actors I’ve never heard of before? Well, because admittedly, “Avalon High” really peaked my interest while changing the channel (and uh… staying on… “Wizards of Waverly Place for a half hour, don’t judge me) and I really had to see what kind of movie “Avalon High” was. As a kid in middle school I was absolutely enamored with the legend of King Arthur and always found the myths and folklore to be absolutely amazing. From the lady in the lake, Excalibur, Merlin, the round table, Mordrid. Camelot, the love triangle of Arthur, his best friend Lancelot, and Guinevere, it’s all rather entertaining and compelling to research, and watching “Avalon High” I realized if I was thirteen this movie would have been watched by me thirty times a day.
Between the Blinds (2010)
Speaking as an author who is constantly thinking up new ideas for novels, injecting his own sentiments in to the psyches of his characters, and has known what a struggle it can be to muster up an idea for a new story at the demand of an editor or a publisher, I found “Between the Blinds” not only a testament to the fragility and beauty of human emotions but to the power of the creative process and how absolutely tumultuous it can be. For any self-respecting writer, they will be able to relate completely with our protagonist, a writer who is given only a few hours to complete a new manuscripts and angrily struggles to concoct a new idea.
Superman: Earth One
“Superman: Earth One” verifies exactly what I’d feared. Superman is emo. Superman is selfish. Superman is “edgy,” and worst of all by the time the tedious graphic novel is over, we’re told by Jonathan Kent that Superman should serve a being higher than himself alluding to religious ideals. What a waste of time. Not since “Smallville” have I seen a less sympathetic portrayal of Superman and Clark Kent before my very eyes. Clark Kent, even with modern fashion, and a jacket and hoodie that’s meant to be his signature look indicating a nerdy but sexy persona, is so absolutely boring and one dimensional in “Earth One” that had I been introduced to Superman for the first time here, I would have never read another piece of fiction with this character ever again.