Calum Gilchrist

  1. Review: The Royal Tenenbaums

    21st February

    Wes Anderson is one of those directors that I just find interesting. All of his films just have this mould breaking view on the world. I’ll admit that they are beginning to follow their on special Wes Anderson mould, but it’s still a wonderful combination of writing and directing.

    Now this is the third time that I have watched The Royal Tenenbaums. The first time, I didn’t really enjoy it but it was my first time watching a Wes Anderson film and they take a little getting used to.

    There’s just this very laid back feel about the whole thing. Characters in Wes Anderson films always have this strange approach to life where they don’t show they’re upset but will SAY how they feel. There are plenty of parodies of Wes Anderson’s style on the Internet which shows his uniqueness it style, but maybe not the variance in style to his films.

    The Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favourite, if not my definite favourite of Wes Anderson’s films. There’s just this really well structured set up to the film and it all flows very well. It has a few, quite funny sections and it has a pretty good cast; Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, The Wilson brothers and a few more. Quite a few of the actors are playing different roles than I’m used to and I really like it. The performances by the whole cast just meld together really nicely and the inner conflicts between almost ALL of the characters keeps the story really interesting.

    Cheerful blends of acoustic and just nice songs make for a really interesting soundtrack. I really like it and I just noticed that the majority of tracks from the film are in my Spotify playlist that I share with my cousin. There’s just so much that I like about the movie; the fact that key scenes open with a shot of a paragraph from the book: The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s just little touches like this that make the film a joy to watch.

    New comers to Wes Anderson should probably give this film a shot. It’s a very sort of hit and miss type film as my family hated the film when they watched it - which was also the first time that I’d ever watched it. But do give it a shot and if you like it pick up the rest of Wes Anderson’s films as they all have the same kind of unique charm.

    Royal Tenenbaums 4/5

    This is one of those films that I’m just not sure about my rating. 4 sounds about right…

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  2. Review: 127 Hours

    7 Jan

    Every week on a Friday my friends and I do, what we call: Double Feature Friday. Basically we watch two films back to back every Friday evening. This evening we only watched one: 127 Hours.

    127 Hours was pretty much everything I expected. I’d already heard the story that the film was based on so was slightly prepared for what happened in the film. The particular scene I was worried about was incredibly gruesome and you could feel the tension in the room after the scene had passed, it was quite horrific but isn’t the most horrible thing I’ve seen on-screen.

    The story was good it wasn’t entirely what I expected. I really liked the way that Aron took hold of the situation and used his vast knowledge of wilderness survival to keep himself going. Luckily he was pretty prepared for going out in the wilderness and he had a lot of experience so had plenty of ideas and escape plans.

    I could not do half of what Aron Ralston did in that situation, it’s quite inspiring to see how well held together this man is. There are several hallucinations in the film which are quite good as it isn’t quite clear what is reality and isn’t in some of them, where others were just out right strange and mystifying.

    Danny Boyle was completely in love with splitscreens in this film. Now, I like splitscreens but when half of the film is in splitscreen it’s a little strange. The splitscreens were done well but there were far too many of them. That’s a very nit picky thing, by the way.

    The soundtrack was quite nice but eclectic. There is one scene where Danny Boyle picked the strangest song choice for that particular moment which was rather bizarre.

    Overall I enjoyed 127 Hours but it left me a little taken aback by the one scene in particular.

    127 Hours: 4 stars

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