I AM LEGEND

I AM LEGEND

Francis Lawrence, known for Constantine brings us the third adaptation of Richard Mathesons 1954 novel. The first adaptation was in 1964 known as ‘The Last Man on Earth’, the second was in 1971 ‘The Omega Man’, and now in 2007 – I am Legend.

October 2009, a medical researcher, Dr. Krypton (Emma Thompson – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) created a genetically engineered variant of the measles virus, which was meant to be a cure for cancer. There was a brief period of great clinical trials, however, the virus mutated into a strain that killed 5.4 billion people worldwide. The people that survived, 558 million devolved into aggressive creatures known as ‘Dark-seekers’, which heightened agility and strength along with animalistic behaviour, though, also developed photosensitivity. They then began hunting down and killing the remaining 12 million humans who were immune to both the virus and the mutation effects.

In September 2012, military virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith – Men in Black) is the last human in New York City, and potentially the last human on earth. He lost his wife and daughter in a helicopter accident during the quarantine of Manhattan. His daily routine includes; experimenting on infected rats to find a cure for the virus, trying to isolate the gene in his blood to make him immune and trips through Manhattan to collect food and medical supplies and even hunts dear that have wandered into the city. Many animals managed to escape from the zoo and thrive like wild animals, who seem unaffected by the virus.
He also listens each day for a response to his recorded radio broadcasts, which instructs any survivors to meet him at midday at the designated South street Seaport, where he sits on a bench and waits every day for 30 minutes. The only communication he has is with his dog, Sam and interaction with mannequins he has set up as patrons of a video store.

With the outbreak, Robert uses knowledge from the Dark-Seekers habits, he has shielded his habitat with UV projectors and iron shutters inside the window. He also set up some generators inside the house to provide electricity.

One day, he goes out deer hunting with Sam, who chases one into an abandoned building. He finds the deer and finds a dog hiding and realises it is filled with Dark-seekers. They then flee.
To test a treatment, Robert sets up a snare trap that uses the scent of blood to capture an infected person.
As he inspects a captured woman, a male Dark-seeker emerges from the building and screams with the pain of the sunlight. Robert thinks this is due to the increased hunger and notes down that the loss of all human characteristics in the Dark-seekers are gone.
Back in his lab, he tries a new serum on the infected woman, with no success.

The next day, Robert notices one of his mannequins has moved onto the street infront of Grand Central Terminal. He is caught in a snare trap and passes out. Once he regained consciousness at dusk, he manages to free himself, however, a pack of infected dogs attack both him and Sam.
Sam is attacked and Robert takes her home to inject a strain of the serum in the hope to save her, however, it is too late and Sam begins to mutate, forcing Robert to strangle her to death.

Full of grief and rage, Robert attacks a group of Dark-seekers in the seaport the following night with his 3rd generation Ford Expedition which is equipped with UV lights, which looks like a suicidal last stand. He manages to kill many of them, but he is almost killed before he is rescued by a pair of immune humans, Anna (Alice Braga – City of God) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan – First movie role), who have followed his radio broadcasts from Maryland.
Anna and Ethan take Robert back to his home and Anna explains that they are making their way to the survivors camp in Vermont. Robert does not believe the camp exists and expresses doubt when Anna says that God told her about this camp.

The next night,a man leads an infected mob to attack Robert’s home. Anna, who was unaware of Robert precautions in covering his scent outside the house had inadvertently allowed the Dark-seekers to follow their scent.
As the Dark-seekers charge the house, Robert stops the first lot with the UV projectors, which others destroy. He destroys the second lot with mines in his garden, but finds himself defenceless against the third lot.
As Robert tries to find Anna and Ethan, the leader and another Dark-seeker enter the house and the leader attacks Robert. As Robert fends him off, the other Dark-seeker gets upstairs and tears a hole in the roof so the others can get in.

Robert manages to save Anna and Ethan, they retreat into the lab. They manage to seal themselves in a glass walled room with the infected woman and discover that Robert treatment is starting to work – the infected woman starts to look more normal. The Dark-seekers manage to break in and the leader begins to throw himself against the glass, managing to crack it into the shape of a butterfly.
Robert then sees Anna’s butterfly tattoo and thinks of his daughter, who used to make a butterfly shape with her hands.
Robert then draws a vial of the infected woman’s blood and gives it to Anna, before shutting her and Ethan inside a coal chute in the back of the lab.
Robert manages to detonate a M67 grenade to destroy all the attackers and kills himself in the process.

The next morning, Anna and Ethan wake up to find all the attackers had gone and they head towards the survivor colony.
They manage to arrive at the colony where Anna hands over Robert’s antidote.

Anna states that the survivors are Robert’s legacy, as his fight for a cure became a legend.

I am Legend feels like another zombie type movie, the creatures are all infected and can infect others and theres one person who can save the world – like Resident Evil.

However, there is one thing that makes this movie different than others – Will Smith. He is just a normal guy, not a mutation, or robot or flapping his arms about like a mad man, he is a virologist, who believes he has a cure to the Dark-seekers. He, along with his pet dog, are almost like the Terminator Salvation resistance, trying to find others like him, to prove he is not the only human left.
The movie itself is very dark and quite jumpy at parts, the Dark-seekers are very different to a typical type zombie with excess skill and strength, which also cannot come out in the light due to the light sensitivity – which also differs from a typical ‘zombie type’ movie.

This movie is just about surviving. He has lost his wife and daughter and then sadly loses his dog.
The sequence in his home as he hugs his dog, we begin to see the mutation of the dog and as the camera pans up to Will Smith’s face we can here the growling, and whimpering of the dog as he strangles it to death to prevent further mutation.
This sequence changes the movie. Anyone who has lost a pet, whether its of natural causes or merely putting it to sleep, Smiths character is doing it for the dogs benefit and anyone who has lost a pet will feel a lump in their throat at the untimely death of Sam the dog. As he strangles her, the camera is fixed on Smiths character, Roberts face, where you can see different emotion’s across his face – anger, sad, helpless and grief as he has to put down his best friend.
This stands out purely because it is an action/thriller movie, we normally do not see things like that and it almost feels like Robert has no one left to live for – the dog was the last of his family, which is not only powerful to show the relationship between man and animal but also seals Roberts fate he puts himself into.

The movie setting is very dark and desolate. Very little characters are seen throughout the movie, so it is purely again up to Smith to hold screen presence alone, which not many can do, but he was able to pull it off brilliantly, especially with the ‘Castaway’ type speaking from Tom Hanks with the volleyball to Will Smith talking to manniquins.

Will Smith is a very under rated actor and is merely seen as a action/comedy star, but in the likes of this movie and several others, we see different sides to his acting ability which is very widespread and should not been just seen as ‘that funny guy who can shoot a gun’
The only negative point of the movie is the moments of flashing lights. Not only can it disarray a typical audience member but, that of those who are epileptic, who are potentially missing out on a great film. Though, taking my own precautions to watch the movie, I would have preferred to see this film in the cinema, but unfortunately would never be able to due to the flashing/strobe lighting.

I am Legend is a great movie from start to finish, a thrilling ride with such emotion at parts, it is definitely a film not to be missed, however, there was no need for excessive flashing lights used in parts.

Rating 4/5

 

AMERICAN PSYCHO

AMERICAN PSYCHO

American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, to which is a cult, crime drama. Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) brought it to the big screen with several big named actors in such a little movie.

The movie starts with an introduction to Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale – Empire of the Sun), who is an investment banker living in Manhattan in the mid to late 1980s. His life revolves around the high life – trendy restaurants and has a fiancee, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon – Cruel Intentions). He has a circle of equally wealthy friends, to which are very shallow and he dislikes. However, Bateman leads another life, a secret one of that being a serial killer.
The movie documents his lifestyle from his daily exercise and beauty routine, his music collection which includes Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston. He has a taste of expensive designer clothes, the perfect apartment, everything anyone could ask for.
Then, in one instance, he finds himself angered by his associates flaunting their business cards, to which are much better than his. He is further enraged by a co worker, Paul Allen (Jared Leto – Urban Legend) and his classy business card, so goes out and murders a homeless man and his pet dog in an alleyway, merely to get his rage out his system.

At a Christmas Party, Bateman manages to make plans with Allen to have dinner with him, under another associates name, Marcus Halbestram, whom Allen always mistakes Bateman for.
At the dinner, Bateman manages to get Allen drunk and manages to lure him back to his apartment.
As he plays ‘Hip to Be Square’ in the background, Bateman murders Allen with an Axe and disposes of his body. Then, Bateman goes to Allen’s apartment and stages that Allen has went to London and packs a bag.

Allen’s family grow suspicious and hire a detective to investigate. This is where Bateman is met by Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe – Mississippi Burning), who is searching for the truth.

That night, Bateman has a horrific threesome with two prostitutes, with made up names – Christie and Sabrina. He lectures them about the band Genesis after Phil Collins replaced Peter Gabriel as the lead member. The two prostitutes leave later on battered and bruised.

The next day, another colleague of Bateman, Luis Carruthers shows him his new business card, to which tips Bateman again over the edge. Bateman tries to Kill Luis in the bathroom of the restaurant they are dining in, but cannot seem to bring himself to kill him. Luis mistakes the attempt to murder him as a sexual advance toward him and declares his love for Bateman, who quickly leaves.

After murdering a model, Bateman asks his secretary, Jean, who secretly likes him back to his apartment to have dinner. As they have sex, unknown to Jean, Bateman holds a nail gun to the back of her head as they are ‘together’.
As he receives an answering machine message from his fiancee, Bateman decides not to kill Jean and asks her to leave before she gets hurt.

Following a lunch with Kimball the next day, Bateman has another threesome with his friend Elizabeth and ‘Christie’, in Allen’s apartment.
He kills Elizabeth during sex and Christie runs out the apartment in horror. As she runs, she finds several female bodies and words scrawled on the walls in blood. Bateman then catches up with her and murders her with a chainsaw by dropping it down a flight of stairs an kills her instantly.

Several months later, Bateman breaks off his engagement to his fiancee. That night, he finds a kitten and while he uses the ATM nearby, he imagines that the ATM displays the words ‘Feed me a stray cat’. He is then stopped by a woman, to which he murders instead. Then, the police chase him, but he manages to destroy the police cars by shooting their gas tanks, leading to an explosion killing every policeman in the cars. As he attempts to run to his office, he accidently enters the wrong building and then murders a security guard and the janitor before leaving again.

When he reaches his office, he calls his lawyer, Harold and leaves an answering machine message confessing to the murders in great detail.
The next morning, Bateman visits Allen’s apartment to find a ‘For Sale’ notice and all the belongings gone. The estate agent sees him as an intruder and tells him to leave immediately.

As he goes to meet his colleagues and his lawyer, Jean finds detailed drawings of murder and rape in his office journal.
At the same time, Bateman sees Harold at a restaurant with his friends and tries explaining that he is Patrick Batmen and he is a serial killer. Harold mistakes him for another man, Davis and laughs off this big confession as a joke.
Harold also informs Bateman that Allen is not dead, claiming that he had dinner with him in London only 10 days previous.

Bateman realises that he has escaped punishment that he deserves and lament that there has been no catharsis and it still remains a mystery to himself.
He regrets that nothing has been gained from all of this, but, he still wants his pain to be inflicted on others.

He finishes by stating ‘This confession has meant nothing’.

American Psycho is a very low budget movie which proves worthy of the classic cult movie. The movie has a basic eerie setting with plain colours, which highlight the power of the red blood that seems to run constantly through Batemans mind.
The main theme is also very eerie and yet classic to which gives u a nauseating feel right from the start, which proves worthy of the subject matter.

The scene of business cards is a very classy sequence. As everyone exchanges their business cards, we can see Bateman’s anger building up as he feels like his card is the best. Then when Paul Allen shows his card, a close up of Bateman’s face as he stares in anger as his voiceover describes his anger at this seemingly ‘perfect card’, to which leads him to kill Allen in later sequences. This sequence seems very pointless, yet the basis of his crazy side begins to unravel and is done beautifully.

The main sequence that everyone associates to the movie is Paul Allen’s death – to Hip to be Square.
Batemans voice seems like a very american game show host, to which is rather amusing in itself. The way he puts his white rain jacket on to his swivel dance to hide his axe whilst the drunken Allen is lounging is also very amusing, yet terrifying at the same time. When Allen askes if he is wearing a raincoat, Batemans reply is “YES IT IS!!”, which is hilarious the way he puts and he marches to his music system to blare out the iconic song for the scene. He then goes on to detail the flaws of the band and music and shouts “HEY ALLEN’ and then brutally murders him as he shouts random rubbish and he hacks him to death with the axe. Once he is finished, he takes the raincoat off, fixes his hair and sits down to smoke a cigar as he views his blood bath. Not only are the camera techniques cleverly done along with the acting and action, and of course the music makes this scene the definition of a horrific, yet hilarious cult classic sequence to which is Jared Letos most iconic role to date.

The backing cast has the likes of Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon and Willem DeFoe, a wide variety of acting capability to which proves worthy for this type of movie. However, the main characters performance, Christian Bale proves this to be his BEST acting movie. The sarcastic, eccentric madman suits his working method down to a tee and will remain his best performance to date and is a shame that he did not get any recognition for his witty character.

American Psycho is a product of fantastic adaptation and true classic acting. The movie will remain a cult classic, yet is really under-rated and shunted to the side. This is a must see movie, which will not disappoint.

Rating 5/5

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

IN DEPTH ANALYSIS OF SIR ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. Hitch, The Master of Suspense had a film career spanning over 60 years — over half a century of film work. He is one of the finest Directors in history and most acclaimed for his movie, Psycho. But, how did this Essex lad become so famous?

Hitch was born on the 13th of August 1899, the youngest of three of William and Emma Hitchcock. His name originated from his fathers brother. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Not only was his English, but he had Irish ancestry also.
According to Hitch, when he was bad, his father would send him to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for up to 5 minutes as punishment. Due to this, Hitch had a lifetime of fear of Policemen, yet was used frequently throughout his film work.

For the first World War, Hitch was declined to enrol for war due to his obesity, which also made him very socially isolated growing up, however, he still signed up to a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers in 1917. His military time was very limited; he received theoretical briefings, weekend drills and exercises. He would march around Hyde Park and was made to wear puttees — though, he could never master how to wrap around his legs properly.

While working for the company, Henley’s, he began to express creativity. In 1919, the Henley Telegraph was introduced and he often submitted articles and then became one of its proflic writers. His first article was ‘Gas’ in 1919 – which a young woman imagines that she was being assaulted in Paris, only for the twist to show that it was all a hallucination in the dentists chair, induced by the anaesthetic.
He then went on to write others including; ‘The Woman’s Part’, ‘Sordid’, ‘And There was no Rainbow’. ‘What’s Who?’, ‘The History of Pea Eating’ and ‘Fedora’.

In 1924, Hitch ended up in Germany, where he co-wrote the film ‘The Blackguard’. He also watched German Expressionist F. W. Murnau at work on ‘The Last Laugh’, which he was very impressed by and in his later works, integrated a lot of Murnau’s techniques into his own work.

Like most Directors, his first few movies didn’t do well. His first directing movie was ‘Number 13’, to which the production was cancelled due to financial problems. Then, in 1925, Michael Balcon gave Hitch another opportunity for directing ‘The Pleasure Garden’, which was made in Germany. Then, he directed ‘The Mountain Eagle’, however, this film was eventually lost.

In 1926, Hitch got his first thriller, ‘The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog’, to which became a huge success in the UK. Many critics regard this movie as the first ‘hitchockian’ movie.
Soon after in the December of 1926, Hitch married his assistant director, Alma Reville in London. They only had 1 child together, Patricia, born in 1928. Alma became Hitch’s closest co-worker to which he would only discuss matters in private as she was keen to keep out of the publics eye.

In 1929, Hitch made his 10th film, ‘Blackmail’, which was originally a silent movie, but was later converted to a talkie, which is often cited as a landmark movie. This movie also sees his longest cameo appearances in a movie.

Then in 1933, Hitch worked with Balcon again for ‘the Man Who Knew Too Much’ and then in 1935 ‘The 39 Steps’, which is considered as one of the BFI’s greatest early period of film work.
After his 1938 film, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, David O. Selznick signed Hitch to a seven year contract beginning in the March of 1939 – in Hollywood.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Hitch brought out many iconic movies and not only had he converted to talkies, but also to Technicolor movies — to which not many directors had the privilege of doing so. It was during this time that he worked with the likes of Grace Kelly, James Stewart, Jane Wyman and many more iconic Hollywood stars.

Hitch moved to Paramount Pictures in the early 1950s to which his first movie with them was Rear Window (1954). Soon after in 1955, Hitch became a US citizen.
In 1956, he successfully remade his own movie ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, which starred James Stewart and Doris Day, to which Day won the Oscar for Best Original Song ‘Que. Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be’, which also became a huge hit for her.

In 1960 came Hitch’s best known film, Psycho. Made on the tight budget of $800,000 and shot in black and white on a spare set came the violence of the shower scene, the early death of the main star and the innocents lives disturbed by murder became the defining moments of Hitch’s new horror genre and have been copied by many others within the genre.
The audiences loved the film, with queues of people waiting outside for the next showing. It broke box office records in China, Asia, France, Britain, South America, US and Canada and was a success in Australia for a short time. It was the biggest black and white talkie ever made and Hitch gained $15 million. He then swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV anthology for 150,00 shares of MCA, making him the 3rd largest shareholder in MCA and his own boss at Universal – on paper anyway.

After his success of Psycho came ‘The Birds’, which was Hitch’s 49th film, with the newcomer Tippi Hedren in the starring role alongside Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshetee. It contained hundreds of shots mixing live and animated sequences.
What also made Psycho and the Birds even more outstanding was the score, the screeching strings in the murder scene of Psycho and The Birds using the electronically produced sound effects to which Bernard Herrmann composed for Psycho and Consulted on The Birds.

In the last 20 years of his career, Hitch’s failing health reduced his work load, which also included going back to England to work.
Near the end of his life, Hitch made a script for ‘The Short Night’ alongside screenwriters James Costigan and Ernest Lehman, however, the film was never made. This was caused by his own failing health and his concerns of Alma’s health, who has suffered a stroke. The script was published in a book on Hitch’s last years.

Hitch died of Renal failure on 29th April 1980 and was cremated. His remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean. Alma died in 1982 and their daughter, Patricia is still alive to this day and still working.

There were many rumours to the way Hitch worked. From the tossing over the cup and saucer over his shoulder everytime he finished a cup to the treatment he gave his actors in his films; treating them like props. He had less than pleasant relationships with many of the actors, there was a persistent story that he said actors were like cattle.

Hitch’s visions has influenced lots of film directors, producers and actors, his influence helped create a trend for directors to control artistic aspects of their movies as he learned from the great F. W. Murnau.

Hitch has only ever been portrayed in movies and TV 3 times – Anthony Hopkins in 2012’s ‘Hitchcock, Toby Jones in 2012s HBO TV movie ‘The Girl’ and the up coming film ‘Grace of Monaco’, portrayed by Roger Ashton-Griffiths.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock remains an iconic figure in British and Hollywood film making. Though his attitude toward people and his movies could be seen as ‘inappropriate’, he, like Stanley Kubrick done what is takes to make the movies perfect. There are many great movie directors, but not many have reached the 60 year mark in movie making, which shows the impact Hitch had in movie making.

 

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

John Wells, known for the likes of ER and Shameless, has brought us a black comedy adapted from Tracy Letts’ play with the same title, August: Osage County, which shows a very dysfunctional family, who are forced to come together after a death…….

The story goes that the father of the family, Beverly (Sam Shepard – The Right Stuff) who drowns in the lake, leaving his dysfunctional family and his wife, Violet (Meryl Streep – Its Complicated), a sufferer of mouth cancer and a drug addict to deal with coming together for his death. Beverly and Violet have three daughters; Ivy (Julianne Nicholson – Boardwalk Empire), Barbara (Julia Roberts – Erin Brockovich) and Karen (Juliette Lewis – Whats Eating Gilbert Grape). Though the daughters have their own problems with their own lives, they are forced to pull together for the death of Beverly and to cope with their strong willed mother and her addiction.

The movie is very isolated i.e., not many scenes are filmed out with the house, which gives the movie a claustrophobic, isolated feeling like the actual house is – secluded and out in the middle of nowhere. This claustrophobic feel makes the movie very exceptional as it is solely based on the acting of the movie – nothing else, like Tom Hanks in Castaway, it was all about the acting. August Osage County is exactly the same, there is no special effects, nothing but pure acting, which is a very hard thing to do for 120 minutes and the cast and John Wells pulls it off brilliantly.

The cast includes; Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard and Misty Upham – which covers a variety of performances for seriousness, drama, comedy, sad and even eccentric acting. Each of the cast holds great screen presence throughout the whole movie. With the cast with ‘backing roles’ like Benedict Cumberbatch, Misty Upham, Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper, they still hold great presence as much as the main stars.
One actress which is very underrated in the movie is Julia Roberts. She is one who has unfortunately been missed out as award season for her portrayal as the ‘bitchy’ daughter as she plays a very different role for her norm and plays it beautifully.
Meryl Streep was fantastic for her character for mouth cancer and drug addiction. She is constantly high, to which you cannot help but laugh at, but at the same time, you really feel sorry for her, especially when she finds herself alone at the end with her carer.

The camera work in the movie is again very basic, almost Tv like, but, again does work for this isolated movie as it is a basic story about a family trying to clutch together for blood sake and it brings the movie out more with its camera work.
Not only the camera work, but the music as well, it is mostly country music which gives it an upbeat feel. There is one song, to which Benedict Cumberbatchs character, Little Charles writes and performs both on piano and vocally – yes it is not the best vocal performance in the world, but him singing and playing the piano is such a sincere moment and is beautifully done, to which only his character could do.

The movie as a whole is one of those movies that is so fresh – none of the horror, action or visual effects – just a good old plain movie about plain family life. Every family has its problems and every family only comes together when there is death and sadness, and between the direction and the acting, it is sad to see it not receiving anymore award nominations as it already has.
An outstanding movie from start to finish, truly a real movie to which every single one of us can relate to

Rating 5/5