Calum Gilchrist

  1. Review: Memento

    5th March

    Memento is one of my favourite films, I’ve seen it roughly 3 times and I’ve always enjoyed it. It’s one of those films that you learn more about it and catch more subtle things as you watch it more and more.

    The hook to Memento is that the main character has a memory problem, he has no short term memory. So every 10 minutes he completely forgets where he is, how he got there and what he’s doing. The interesting thing about this is that you experience this as well. All the scenes are in reverse order, so you see the end first. It’s a really unique and cool way to see a film and it works brilliantly.

    This makes it really easy to relate to the protagonist as you know as much as he does. You know where he’s going but not where he’s been. This leads to many really interesting plot points. The lead character, who’s name escapes me was really interesting and I really liked him and felt sorry for him. At the same time it was impressive to see a way that someone could try to deal with a condition like that.

    My favourite scene in the film simply shows the protagonist running through a trailer park and he notices someone else is running, he assumes he’s chasing the other guy. But it’s the other way around. This scene really defines just how weird it must be to not even know that you are being chased by someone.

    Films that keep you thinking and pull of such nice little hooks always tend to be much higher in my list. As I’m not a huge fan of mindless action films as I’ve probably said in my past reviews. But luckily Memento is nothing like these, and I’m not sure why I brought them up.

    Memento 5/5

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  2. Review: Inception

    15 Jan

    Saw Inception in the cinema last year and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved everything about it. The premise, the casting, the settings. Everything was just done so well.

    Christopher Nolan is great. I’ve loved all the films of his that I’ve seen and I would gladly watch them all over and over again. Memento and Prestige are two of my all time favourite films. He just has this beautiful story telling and great way of telling complex and incredibly interesting stories.

    Inception was great. The soundtrack is wonderful, the plot intriguing and the whole idea of going into someone elses dreams is done so well. All the little touches and interactions between the different levels of the dream are brilliant and so enthralling.

    It’s hard to really know what happens throughout the film, but I have my own thoughts and theories and I like the way I think it goes. This was the second time I’ve seen the film, and I was no less unimpressed. Everything made a little more sense and I could concentrate less on trying to understand what was going on and focus on the characters and the scenery. I just love everything about Inception, although I will admit it has a few holes and it’s not the best movie out there, but it was very enjoyable and I recommend it highly.

    Inception 5/5

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  3. Review: The Season of the Witch

    14 Jan

    Nicolas Cage said in an interview that he did this film in honour of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, but it was in no way on par with those films, although I haven’t actually seen the original Horror films, although they are quite high on my to watch list.

    Season of the Witch was not good. The story was basically; take the witch from A to B, but be careful as she’s a witch. Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman were decent, although the “banter” between their characters felt a little stretched and was pretty corny to say the least. The film opens with several large-scale battles during the Crusades. Firstly, the battles look really fake when there are wide shots, secondly it portrayed the Crusades to seem positive at first. Which they most definitely were not. I will admit that they did try to right it, in one of the early scenes.

    Overall the film was pretty poor. It wasn’t incredibly interesting, although I didn’t hate it enough to leave, which I have done before. I really like Nic Cage and Ron Perlman but this film was just a bit… shlocky. It really wasn’t that enjoyable. The penultimate scenes were quite interesting and slightly more exciting but it still didn’t redeem the film.

    The Season of the Witch: 1/5

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