Tag: films

Off the cuff 5 films I watch over and over again

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Just quickly and off the top of my head, here's a quick response to Marc Fennell's top 5 films he likes to watch again and again. These are in no particular order:

  • Barton Fink: It's a lesson in how to write a screenplay about a man trying to write a screenplay. Kind of like a depression era Adaptation, but not really.
  • Wild at Heart: passion, tragedy and the American dream all there on the screen.
  • North By Northwest: It's a silly film but a hell of a lot of fun.
  • Mars Attacks: Just one of those films that I can walk in half-way through and always get sucked into watching the rest of the film.
  • The Exorcist: It starts so slowly and just builds up fear and doubt. Watch it in the dark and double it with Poltergeist for some great cushion clutching fun.

Of course there are so many more films to put in this list. It's not a top 5 of all time or a 5 favourite films of all time. But if you don't want me to bother you for a couple of hours, put one of these in the DVD player and I'll definitely stay out of your way.

Sometimes Marc and I can be so bang-on the same and sometimes not so much. Hmmm. Deep.

GI Joe: The rise of something yada yada

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There were these action figures when I was in grade 6. Called GI Joe, these were essentially military dolls with a hint of invented story behind them: nationally non-aligned villains; an endless supply of imagined weapons and vehicles.

Now they've made a film based on those action figures. The plot follows what you'd expect but just to spice it up a little, I'm going to program it in basic:
10 print 'exposition'
20 print 'explosions'
30 goto 10
Hit Break after about 110 minutes.

The thing is, though, with all those explosions and all that exposition there isn't any time left for character development. Actually one character does have some kind of emotional journey but he's a villain so it lasts about 5 minutes before he's stripped of anything resembling humanity including clothes.