Film 2 - Shallow Grave

A couple of days ago nothing else good being on TV and my internet down meant that I decided to watch Danny Boyle's directorial debut, Shallow Grave. I expected a lot, with Christopher Ecclestone, Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox starring. The original premise, of three people having to decide what to do with a dead body and a suitcase full of money expands over the course of the film into something much more.

This was the most gripping film I've ever seen, David's descent into psychosis was just brilliant, drilling holes in the floor, holding a drill to his flatmates head, and all this caused by sawing the hands and feet off the corpse. The film continues to spiral out of control, making me ever unsure of what David would do next. The killing and body disposing parts of the film have a very horror theme, and the garish piano music is reminisicent of the beginning of  Halloween

It may have been easy for many people to dislike the main characters, but I found myself identifying with their very human greed. They didn't want to kill, they weren't insane to begin with, they just wanted the money. Who knows what they would do in the sort of situation they were put in?

Film 1 - Madagascar

Animated family films with talking animals rarely fail... and this was no exception. For my first film of this year I chose (because it was on BBC3) Madagascar, and it didn't disappoint me.

The group dynamic between the four main characters (Alex, Marty, Melman and Gloria) was brilliant, the slapstick comedy was laugh out loud hilarious and they all delivered some very funny lines, especially Melman and King Julian.

The Penguins have a small subplot which could have been expanded. They were brilliantly funny and seemed to have some very socialist/marxist tendencies. Maybe that was just me.

As I was watching the movie, good as it was, my mind drifted to who the voice actors were for the main characters. I immediately worked out that Melman was David Schwimmer and not long after my suspicions were raised that Alex was voiced by Zach Braff. My wild guess for Marty was Chris Rock, it just sounded like him, but I couldn't be sure, and for Gloria I had no idea.

A quick look at Wikipedia shows me that I got two out of three, but not the ones I thought. Alex wasn't Zach Braff but rather Ben Stiller. It sounded so much like Braff though!. I also found out that the voice of King Julian was Sacha Baron Cohen, which makes sense now, but I couldn't tell at the time.

Brilliant fun, not hugely sophisticated, but then, neither am I.

100 Films

Yes, that's right, I plan to watch 100 films this year and blog about every single one of them on here.

That will give me 101 posts on this blog (including this one)

I may start today by watching Once Upon a Time in the West, a film which I saw the start of in a Media Studies lesson last year.

Hopefully in a year and 100 posts time some people will be reading!