Ain't Them Bodies Saints - Review

In this tale of love and drama, Bob (Casey Affleck) is arrested after taking the blame for his wife's shooting of a cop, during the time he is in prison, his wife, Ruth (Rooney Mara) gives birth to their baby girl and chooses to wait for him. The film follows Ruth and her daughter, Sylvie, coping without Bob, and also Bob's escape from prison and cross-country journey to be reunited with the people he loves.

This film is without question one of the few absolute masterpieces of modern drama films, David Lowery presents everything, the good and the bad, in such a hauntingly beautiful way that it now feels the genre would be hollow and lacking in substance without this film listed. Reaching down into the deepest caverns of our hearts, the tragic situations the characters find themselves in provoked such an immediate and honest response that the fact I was watching a fictional piece of work never entered my thoughts, I was with the characters emotionally, feeling their pain and hoping for some good to come their way. The fact that the artificiality of the film didn't interrupt my viewing even once is something special, and Lowery should be praised for this seamless feature.

The constant conflict of emotions in regards to what we should be feeling and what we are feeling is something that I felt to be extremely thought provoking and perhaps the greatest thing I took away from the film. We are watching criminals, people who have lied, cheated, robbed and killed people, yet we feel so attached on an emotional level to them, and their love is presented with such strength, that it bypasses all of the bad and we are stripped down to viewing them as two human beings in love who have been separated by an unlucky set of events. The addition of the cop into the equation presents us with a physical representation of the moral dilemma we are facing as an audience, we know that Ruth would be secure and safe if she let go of her longing for Bob and opened herself up to Patrick (Ben Foster), however we know in our hearts that her love for Bob is everlasting, to live on the edge of danger for her is worth it if she can be with Bob, and we never want her to give up on him.

The cinematography of the entire film is reminiscent of the likes of Terrence Malick and other directors influenced by avant garde cinema. Bradford Young shows his natural skill in making a frame as aesthetically pleasing as possible, the lighting, movement of camera and positioning of mise en scene leads us into appreciating a purely visual element of cinema at times almost unconsciously. Everything about this film just adds up, making it one of my favourites of the year so far. With outstanding performances by both Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, I will be surprised if an Oscar nomination or two isn't given out in regards to acting, the moving portrayals fit perfectly with the atmospheric and memorable film.

The Darjeeling Limited Review

Wes Anderson is one of the most exciting auteurs of our generation. It seems that each of his films have a certain life given to them that some directors will try their whole life to achieve, The Darjeeling Limited is an example of a film effortlessly thriving with just that excitement and life. 
This 2007 feature tells of three brothers (played by: Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman & Owen Wilson) who are travelling around India in order to regain the bond that they lost the previous year when their father died. After numerous failed spiritual trips and a disruption to their travel plans, the three men find themselves in rural India, and after a fatal accident involving a small child, regrow their bond in places they never thought they would.

The cinematography in this film is stunning, with Robert Yeoman, a long time collaborator with Anderson, responsible. The creative placement of the camera in some shots makes a change from the thousands upon thousands of soulless manufactured films that are released each year and neglect the creative possibilities of the art form. Films directed by Wes Anderson are instantly recognisable as being created by someone who is in love with cinema, Anderson has found actors and crew that get his style of production, and it works for him, allowing him to try interesting camera techniques and the likes with a crew of people who have faith in him. The cinematography is complemented by the breathtaking landscape of both urban and rural India. The shots of the built up areas of India show us bustling towns filled with market stalls and eccentric characters, with quick and snappy camera work, while the exceptional natural beauty of rural India is shown through slow motion editing and less dramatic pans and tilts.

The casting of this film was also a positive, with the three lead actors brilliantly conveying emotions of pent-up frustration through as much as a glance. Owen Wilson's performance sticks out as prime of the three, however whether this is due to his character seemingly being more developed in the writing process than the others or whether his acting abilities add the development to the character, I don't know, but he gave a brilliant performance as the surrogate parent to his brothers and the hilariously deluded figure of reason. The lack of a shining star performance by Brody and Schwartzman coincides with their character's emotional troubles back home, their slightly reserved personalities in comparison to their brother's adds almost a divide to the group, creating tension at even the slightest disagreement on the train, all of this is intentional and brilliant.

The film combines really dark themes such as death and grief with some of the most laugh out loud comedy. With many quotable moments, the film perfectly balances having a substantially moving plot with breaks for laughs and cries, which I feel a lot of films struggle to do, with a lot of recent films focusing too much on the ability to make the audience laugh than to engage with them through narrative. I think it may even be my favourite thing about Wes Anderson, his ability to perfectly balance his films, the moments with music are just enough for the audience to listen to the lyrics and take a message from it, the moments of slow motion are just enough for viewers to admire the framing, the actions of the characters of even just the technical ability of the modern camera.

Wes Anderson's films have just enough of everything you could want, and The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect example in support of this statement.

REVIEW: ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S 'TO CATCH A THIEF'

Opening with a shot of a travel agents window advertising France as a tourist destination, Hitchcock's 1955 'To Catch a Thief' could very well be mistaken for a advertisement funded by the French tourist board. That is, however, until a sudden cut to a panic-stricken woman screaming takes over the screen and we are violently thrust back into the world of Alfred Hitchcock, where the pleasant parts of life are overlooked in favour of the sinister.

We see the character of John Robie, played brilliantly by Cary Grant, living a reformed life of peace in the south of France after living the life of a well-known jewel thief, however in the typical Hitchcock trope of 'the wrong man', he is accused of being responsible for a new set of jewel robberies in France and is pursued by the police. The film follows Robie's attempts to catch the real jewel thief and clear his name of the crimes he has not permitted.

The first thing to comment on about this film is the absolutely stunning cinematography  The
picturesque backdrop of the south of France combined with the beautiful camerawork makes for one of Hitchcock's most aesthetically pleasing films. Robert Burks, the cinematographer for this feature, worked on many other Hitchcock films such as North by Northwest and Vertigo, however he seemed to have peaked before either of these two films with the beautiful camerawork featured in To Catch a Thief.

The plot is good, not the best of Hitchcock's, but the performances from Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are as brilliant as ever. The suspense and intrigue caused from the two actors is really quite something, with Kelly looking fantastic and desirable as the infamous 'Hitchcock Blonde' and Grant playing the role of a man wrongly convicted nicely. It seems that Grant's performance in this film was perhaps his warm-up role to the peak-performance of his career, North by Northwest which was produced four years later.

The directing is as good as any other Hitchcock film, with the film being released in the '50s, it is clear that Alfred Hitchcock was in the prime of his career, becoming an auteur and finding both his strengths and weaknesses as a director. The film is definitely worth watching, if it's just for the cinematography itself, however, like all Hitchcock films, the audience is taken on a journey of suspense, with pauses for comedy and a subplot of a love interest with complications, the film boasts perhaps one of Hitchcock's most well-rounded features.