This film, directed by the wonderfully brilliant Stankley Kubrick, is a phonominal horror film. The film tells the story of a man named Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) who gets him and his family a job looking after the Overlook Hotel for the winter. His boy, Danny, is kind of abnormal, considering he has an imaginery friend named Tony who lives in his mouth and talks through his fingers. Although things seem to be going great, Jack starts to get writer's block as he sits in his room trying to write his latest novel. It goes back to the legend of the man who killed his family at the Overlook years ago when Jack starts to become more and more insane. He starts to develope insanities over the weeks and finally snaps. He goes around and tries to kill his wife and boy. There is much poetic entertainment and ingenius camera work throughout the film which I cannot explain now. Please watch the film and see the great ending!
Jack Nicholson is one of our greatest actors of all time. His performance in this film prooves it. The way Jack can play wild and crazy and with his insane hair line is incredible. And words can't even explain the feeling I get when I see the Ol' Jack Grin on his face. Anyone who has seen him knows what I'm talking about. He plays the role of insane writer father husband soo well it's incredible. Totally ripped of an Oscar Nod in 1980. Bravo Mr. Nicholson!
"The Usual Suspects" is a really great film. It is noted for having one of the most suprising endings in film history and it does. As the story begins, we see a man, who is given the nickname of Keyser Soze as we see later in the film, who has clearly just caused a disaster on a boat. He kills one man, that we see, and lights the boat on fire and walks away. We then open to a line-up of the usual suspects (Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Benicio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Pollack) for that police station. They have gathered all the usual people who are involved in crime in the city and threw them in one line-up. Then, when nobody is convicted, they start an ill-fated "gang" of crime and do various odd jobs ripping people off, and robbing people. Throughtout the film it is flashbacked to Verbal Kint (Spacey) who is being interigated by a ruthless cop, Agent Kujan (Chazz Palimenteri). As he is drilled by the police, Kint is starting to fall apart, or so we thought. The ending cannot really be explained, you have to watch it do understand. I reccomend it highly. A ****/****!
Spacey was phonominal in this film, for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1995, as he gimped away with his late foot and his twisted hand. He was looked down upon as he was a cripple and nobody ever expected he was a crime lord who is feared by all. He had a great look of innocence and clueless-ness throught-out the entire film. He gimped around never breaking character which is hard when you almost crippling yourself. It was a great performance from a great actor who recieved well deserved critical appraise for. Bravo Mr. Spacey!
In 1978, a Vietnam ar Film came out starring the well known, young Robert De Niro, a young woman named Meryl Streep, and an unknown man named Christopher Walken. This movie told the story of three Pennsylvania steel workers (De Niro, Walken, and Savage) who go off to the Vietnam War. It doesn't so much as tell the story of the war, but the affects it can have on three regular people. After they are captured in war, they are tortured by Vietnamese prison camp leaders and are forced to play Russian Roulette. This game is the symbol of the loss of sanity for the three. During one game, Nicky (Walken) and Michael (De Niro) decide to fight back. They kill the soldiers and escape. When they are sent home, Steven (Savage) is handicapped, Michael is almost the same, but is holding his emotions in on the inside, and Nicky has gone insane and never returned home. He stayed in Vietnam and became a little champion in Russian Roulette. He became insane and when Michael goes to get him, Nicky doesn;t want to be get. Michael and Nicky decide to have a game of roulette and, tragically, Nicky is shot dead. Michael returns home and has the funeral and nothing is ever really the same.
Walken delivered the best performance in the film and that is not easily accomplished in a film with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro. He played insanity very well and looked as if he were in a trance the entire film. There is a scene when Michael comes to get Nicky and tries to talk him out of playing in a game and Nicky spats in Michael's face. I then read on the internet that De Niro had no idea it was coming. Walken had improvised it and not told anyone about it. And anybody who has the courage to spit in Robert De Niro's face has a lot of guts and deserves to win an Oscar, which he did in 1978 for Best Supporting Actor.
A Disney Movie, I wasn't expecting much. But I was wrong. This filmw as amazing. It was the story of a pirate named Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp). He is noted for being one of the greatest Pirates of all time and was the captain of the fastest ship in the sea: The Black Pearl. The story unfolds as he meets the beautiful Elizabeth Swan (Knightley) and the sword welding Will Turner (Orlando Bloom). Will and Jack team-up after the Pirates from Jack's old crew attack and can basically not be killed since they have a curse on them where they cannot die. The Pirates take Elizabeth and it's Jack and WIll to the rescue. With laughs, action, and more action along the way, Pirates of the Caribbean is an amazing movie and prooves that Disney can still make great films.
Depp's character is one of the greatest characters ever on film. It is so memorable with his long dreadlocks, greasy skin, gritty teeth, and flamboyuant attitude towards everybody and his actions. Depp was quoted as saying he acted like Keith Richards, the guitarist of The Rolling Stones. Whatever he did, it worked. Anybody who's anybody knows who Captain Jack Sparrow is and everybody can quote one of his memorable lines. My favorite line of the film is, "You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Jack Sparrow!". Great line! Depp was very deserving of awards for this film and broke boundries of acting for this role. He was supposed to do it as it was written, but he made it his own and it worked. Great performance Johnny!
I remember watching this film all the time at my friends house, but it wasn't until this year, in history, I learned all the historical signifigance and the underlying meaning of some of the things in this film. I never relized Forrest called in the Watergrate Break-in, that he invented the "Shit Happens" bumper sticker, the Viet Cong being referred to as Charlie. All these things were pased me because I was just a kid, but viewing it now, I relized how amazing Hanks's performance was.
Everybody knows what Forrest Gump is about so I'm not going to waste my time saying the plot and the just of the film. Tom Hanks was brilliant as a mentally challeneged man who is always looking for the love of his life, Jenny (Robin Wright Penn), and is always just living life and falling into obstacles and not relizing the historical signifigance of them. He was a football star, a ping pong champion, a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner, and a spirtual leader of running for miles and miles. His Alabama accent mixed with a slow attitude towards it was amazing. His looks and his release of the line "My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates" was unforgetable and Forrest's character depth was mezmorizing. He was spectacular in this film and won his well deserved Oscar in 1994.
From the acclaimed director Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull), comes a tale from the 1860's in the Five Points of New York City. It is a run down part of town with very much crime and murders and robbery. The flood of illegal immigrants from over seas is affecting a man named Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (Day-Lewis) who runs the entire town and all the "Natives" who were born on American soil. They have had quarrels before and this leads to the battle between the Natives and the Foreign hords. Bill is the leader of the Natives and Priest Vallon (Neeson) leads the foreigners. When Priest is layed onto Bill's knife, the battle between them seems to be over. But, it isn't. It stops for a while until Priest's son Amsterdam (DiCaprio) is released from a home and vows vengence for The Butcher. What Amsterdam must do is earn The Butcher's trust and get him while he is on his side. But all goes wrong when Bill finds out who Amsterdam really is. This egnites the battle between the foreigners and the natives again as Amsterdam gets together some Irishmen to fight off the natives. Their is one more battle at the end which is very enjoyable to watch.
An overral good film which is taken to a different level with Day-Lewis's performance. His New York'ish accent is portrayed perfectly and his parading around with greasy hair and a knife welding spirit is amazingly looked at as easy for him. He really shines when he comes to Amsterdam covered by an American flag and talks to him about his father. Pure genius in this performance and was robbed of the Oscar in 2002.
Let me start off by saying that Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List" is so near perfect that it's ridiculus.
This film is about a man named Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) who, at first glance, is a cold hearted Nazi who sends Jews to be gased with no worry. As Oskar's buisness grows, he needs more workers so, he goes to the concentration camp to recieve Jews to come to work for him. As the film progresses, we see that the way the Jews are treated in the camps really starts to take a toll on Oskar and he starts to feel a bit of remorse. He then starts to get more workers so he could free the Jews from the atrocities of the Nazi's, which includes a man named Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes).
Goeth is a heartless, cold, and remorseless Nazi who uses the Jews as his own target practice with his sniper rifile. He sees Jews as not quite animals, but as people who do not matter and who are just here to contaminate society and to bring down the nature of the German people and the Aryan race. Near the end of the film, all the Nazi's are relizing their defeat and the loss of the war for Germany and are fleeing the camps for freedom. 6,000,000 Jews are dead and Schindler is looked at upon as a hero for saving the lives of thousands of Jews. He compiled a list of Jews to save and to come work for him to save them from the chambers and the camps. By the end, we see Schindler as a hero and that he saved thousands of lives that were not doubtly going to die. Goeth at the end is still Goeth and still cold hearted to the bone. He was one of the most remorseless Nazi's of all time and the fact that he participated in these killings was unforgivable.
As far as Fiennes performance well, he was spectacular. His no smiling way of life and his remorseless way of using the Jews as target practice was amazing. I actually felt like I was staring into the mind of a man who would send innocent people to death without even looking twice. Fiennes was my choice for the Oscar, but sadly, he lost to Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive". Fiennes was amazing and will forever be one of my favorite performances of all time.
