“If you understand what happened in the camps, you have a much better understanding of what we’re all about as human beings” says Tim Blake Nelson, director and writer of “The Grey Zone”. But will we ever be able to understand the holocaust? Will we ever be able to understand why we as humans would destroy others like us? Why we would kill Children, and elderly people who were treated like worthless animals? Why one man ordered the destruction of the Jewish race nearly wiping out the entire population of Polish Jews? Based on the play by Tim Blake Nelson and Miklos Nyiszli’s book “Auschwitz: a Doctor’s Eyewitness Account”, “The Grey Zone” dares to explore that question but never gives an answer. There is no answer good enough to explain why the holocaust even happened in the first place.
Tag Archives: Masterpiece
Minority Report (2002)
In the movie it’s the future (2054) and we now see Washington D.C. where a system known as pre-crime is born. Pre-Crime is a new law system where people known as pre-cognitive are used as machines which can foretell the future and predict a major crime. Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, one of the best officers who bust the people who commit the pre-crimes. The system is perfect, flawless and it does the job… but what happens when the system turns on you? Now, accused of killing a man in thirty-six hours he doesn’t know, he is now on the run from his own task force and a Government official (Colin Farrell) who wants him at all costs.
Road to Perdition (2002) (DVD)
Adapted from the graphic novel and based on a true story of the Sullivan family in the early thirties who are all tight knit with a rich old man named John Rooney whose known Mike Sullivan, the head of the Sullivan family since he was a child and raised him. Mike’s kids Peter and Michael (Tyler Hoechlin) soon become curious of Mike’s job. One night, young Michael follows his father on one of his “missions” and learns the gruesome secret of his job. In an attempt to protect his son from being hunted by a vicious assassin named McGuire, he sets out on the road with his son to search for salvation and dodge death.
28 Days Later (2003)
Occasionally within the throes of watered down horror movies, a director comes along and decides to completely re-write the way horror is done. Danny Boyle is one of those people who will undoubtedly change horror movies. The movie constantly changes into pastels of moods within its canvas setting constantly going from light moods, ala the shopping scene, instantly cranking up the tension. He can leave us smiling with delight and in a split second leave us biting our nails and cringing in our seats. Boyles relies a lot on isolation to scare us, showing massively long scenes of lonely landscapes forcing us to feel even more terror and insecurity.
After animal rights terrorists invade a science lab, they begin breaking monkey’s free from their cages despite the frantic warnings from a scientist and are violently attacked by the apes that tear them apart and infect them. 28 days later, a man awakes from a coma in a hospital bed to discover a desolate and trashed hospital before him. He begins to inspect the marvel before him as the entire city of Britain is empty with no one in sight. He stumbles upon survivors that save him and tell him a virus has broken free on the general population and mankind as he knows it ceases to exist. The results of the virus are the infected. People that growl with beaming red eyes that kill anything in their path and infect others by tearing them apart or vomiting blood on them. It only takes twenty seconds to become one, so they waste no time disposing of their friends.
They stumble upon father and daughter survivors who decide to travel a military base where they supposedly have everything under control, but what they will find is not what they will expect. Boyle dares to break the mold of the horror genre by masterfully giving us a range of moods and colors, and terrifying sequences non-stop. Writers Boyle and Garland actually gives us characters we can care about and the director helps us by exploring the psychological effects this horror is having on them. We see Jim, the coma patient, have dreams that he is alone and deserted; we can see the desperation within the father’s eyes, and the torment in the daughter’s. These are actually characters that we feel bad for and within a split second Boyle takes them away from us. Characters in this movie come and go and Boyle snatches them without hesitation. Boyle often drops the characters off in small cramped dark places making the audience even more nervous and more anxious as we know terror is looming but we can do nothing about it.
The infected are horrifying as they stare with beaming red eyes and bloody faces and growl aloud; they can run and jump and dash and never stop. While “28 Days Later” is horror first and foremost it’s also more of a commentary on humanity and how we never really learn from our mistakes. We watch four people forced to live and exist in a world without order, a world with carnage, a world not very different from ours. This forces them act upon themselves and begs the questions: In a world without order, how do you achieve it? Who decides what life should be like, and is it all ultimately futile? This shows what humans do when there’s no structure or basis for order and basically take it upon themselves to do it with unsuccessful results. Danny Boyle is a genius director and might as well have re-invented the horror genre. Bravo Mr. Boyle, bravo.
Signs (2002)
In director M. Night Shyamalan’s third directorial outing in the supernatural genre, he tells the story of Father Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), an ex-preacher whose lost his faith in god and quit the church, living in seclusion with his two kids and brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) raising crops and living a generally quiet life. One fate-filled morning, Graham’s son Cole (Rory Culkin) discovers their crops in which they raise have been lowered into the forms of mysterious signs known as crop circles. What ensues is the psychological and emotional horror that will test Graham’s faith and devotion to god and his family. Are the crop circles signs from god, signals from aliens, or do they signal the coming of the apocalypse?
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
In the academy-award winning biography picture, John Nash played by Russell Crowe is a shy college student who is considered somewhat of a genius by his peers and a bit of a odd man. He soon gets recruited by a secret government agent (Ed Harris) to encode secret documents and codes for the rival government. He then meets Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) who falls in love with him. But soon, John begins to discover that things in his life aren’t as they seem. Finally, that academy decided to award Ron Howard with the best director Oscar at the awards and did he ever deserve it. What struck me the most about this movie is the incredible style in which Howard directs.
Almost Famous (2000)
The movie starts off sometime in the sixties with Francis McDormand (Wonder Boys, Fargo) talking to a young William Miller (Patrick Fugit) our reluctant hero about characters from “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, The sister comes home with a record of “Simon & Garfunkel” which the mother bans in the house along with Eggs, Bacon, and meat. Eventually The sister leaves home to become a stewardess and tells William: “Look under your bed. It will set you free”. The Young William discovers a case of classic rock records Like “Zeppelin”, “Cream” and “The Who”. He then begins playing “The Who’s Tommy” and gets introduced into another world. We fast-forward into 1973, where young William becomes an amateur rock critic. He then is sent on an assignment with a not so famous band Named “Stillwater”, where he is introduced into a world of rock, women, and love.