jakefilmblog

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Film Review Evil Dead Rise (2023)

The Evil Dead Rise worked so great for me because of its focus. It nailed the simplistic setup using common horror conventions:  A group of characters stuck in an apartment block, with the goal of escaping. I often find myself uninterested in horror films due to wanting more character development and less jumpscares, but for this film character development wasn’t needed. It set up everything well. What intrigued me most was the set design. From watching the behind the scenes footage it was clear that this film was a display of what happens when a good budget and creative set designs meet. The blood bath as the remaining people came out the elevator was real, the elevator cords that twist around the Mother were meticulously created to suspend the actor and let CGI do very little of the work. The callbacks to previous Evil Dead films were obvious but not in your face. The drone work employed mimicking the previous Evil Dead films was brilliant. The operators did a wonderful job of twisting and jiving the drone at high speeds to push in on a character being taken over by Kandarian Demon.

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Scene Breakdown

Instead of doing a film review, I've decided to do a scene breakdown of the argument scene from Marriage Story (2019). This will allow me breakdown intricacies of the technical work used in the scene and throughout the film in more detail.

Charlie enters the kitchen whilst Nicole stands in the living room. A wide shot displays the characters separated by the wall between rooms, visually emphasising the divide between them. Coincident with this shot of the separate rooms, the first area of contention arises in 

dialogue. Thus, the visuals complement the dialogue. Additionally, Nicole is positioned in the foreground and Charlie in the background, creating increased depth and distance between the two characters. 

Another instance of blocking complementing the narrative, is the presence of the juice box, which appears in conjunction with conversation topics and character mood. Charlie has juice boxes for when his son stays at his apartment. The only jovial moment between the two characters' interaction is when they discuss Charlie, and Nicole fiddles with a juice box and smiles. Once conversation shifts from their son to financing their divorce, Nicole puts down the juice box and her smile diminishes. The juice box returns in the final shot, when the contention is over and they console each other, implying visually that the mutual care for their son is the last thing which holds their mutual respect for each other. 

When they insult each other, the two shot sequence alternates between medium close ups of Charlie and Nicole. The framing tightens in each cut back to the two shots, as insults become more hateful and shouting increases. The two shots eventually tighten to two close ups, increasing the intensity as it focuses on the aggravated facial expression of the characters. 

Rapid cutting amongst the two close ups whilst on a single line of dialogue not only provides constant insight of the emotions of both characters, it also adds weight to the insults. This is because the cutting frequency increases with the shouting and hateful phrases used. To ensure such cutting between the two characters was seamless, Noah Baumbach directed Adam Driver and Scarlett Johanssonn to do physical gestures on each line of dialogue planned to be cut upon. This results in not having to rely on just cutting on dialogue to transition between the shots, but also cutting on movement.

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The Squid and the Whale (2005) Review

The Squid and the Whale was a wonderfully written story to what seems like the predecessor to Noah Baumbach’s later made film Marriage Story. It follows the divorce of Bernard and Joan, who have two sons, one 16 years (Walt) and the other, Frank, who is 12. Based on Noah Baumbach's experience with his parents divorce, the film covers a lot from the perspective of the children. Bernard is a wonderfully sanctimonious writer, of which his far reaching sense of righteousness has passed down to his 16 year old son, who sides with him. The flip side of the coin is Frank, who always sides with his mum. 

The film is full of painfully awkward to watch interactions. One aspect stuck out to me the most was that tension was created by characters failing to address an elephant in the room. For example, when Bernard went to pick up stuff for the cat from Joan. They had just argued that previous night, and were very coy to each ther the next day. A great performance from Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, as they’re facial expressions and body language managed to create a sub dialogue whilst talking about the cat. It was obvious Bernard was regretful, and Joan distraught, but they were unwilling to express any of that explicitly. It really made you want them to address certain issues, but they never would. Bernard would never sacrifice his pride, and Joan never admits her mistakes. Once again a reminder that everything doesn’t happen as it does in the movies, because people's actions are defined by their own nature. 

Overall, a well written, interesting study into detailed and tangible characters and their flaws.

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Fury (2014) Review

I thought Fury was a wonderful tale of the grim nature of war. Piles of dead bodies lying around the camps, every participant justifying their actions as black and white, the good guys and the bad guys. 

The cold lighting through much of the scenes inside the tank add to the desolate and hopelessness the group face in the final battle. Viewing the events from the perspective of Norman, a young man unaccustomed to the brutality of war, as most of us would be if put in his shoes, makes everything much more impactful. THis is is because we react alongside Norman to everything happening, everyone else is used to seeing brutal death and illness take over and a lack of humanity when it comes to killing the nazis. Whereas Norman is as equally petrified as any sympathetic viewer to much of the action scenes.

The Tarantino-esque brutality of having soldiers shot so much their limbs fall off also added to the extremity of the violence.

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Reviewing the Story of Killers of The Flower Moon

I’m of the ilk that a three and a half hour film can work without being too much in terms of narrative. I think the Irishman worked brilliantly, there were plenty of scenes that could’ve been removed and wouldn’t have impacted the story but I didn’t think this overcrowded the film. I can’t say the same for Killers of The Flower Moon. I felt as a story it dragged out. I would’ve liked to have seen more of Dicaprio's characters conflict with doing what he did to the family he married into, instead of focussing on him dealing with the aftermath. 

I thought the opening scene was great, a spectacle of dance and explosion of mud with a great choice of using extremely wide shots and slow motion, which made the image look like a painting, as there was the sky, horizon line and the land was clear besides those dancing. 

Overall I thought Killers of The Flower moon was quite a drag.

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Film Review: Human Traffic (1999)

The film is about a crew of friends in London preparing then going out in the 90's.

John Simm narrates the film, from the perspective of Jip, a young man working an unfulfilling job in a clothes shop who lives for hanging out with friends and clubbing. Having John Simm’s character narrate via breaking the fourth wall worked great to fuel the fast pace of the narrative. Frequent use of pop culture references relevant to the 90’s helped give the extra setting of it being in the 90’s. The dutch angels and wide lens close ups were used sparingly and humorously when anyone was out of their mind on drugs. IN summary, it’s a a great insight into the escapist elements of nightlife.

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Scene Recreation Review

I was the cinematographer and created the shot list. The biggest challenge I found was planning the lighting setup, as the lighting was a crucial element of this scene. I think the position of the lights was planned well, with a few exceptions of sloight misplacements. The lights could have done with being softer as the original scene. Besides some slight misplacement and harshness of lights I think the framing was accurate. Only for a few shots in which a tighter lens by roughly an extra 20mm would've been used, the framing was accurate. The only tighter lens after a 50mm was the 85mm and with a trial that proved to be too tight. 

I think the actors were very good. The acting was also very important as the scene was mostly MCU’s of a long conversation. 

One troubling element of setting up can be seen in the photo of a crew member drinking coffee. The background for the actor being interrogated had fire escape signs and a notice board behind him, so the lighting had to be perfect for avoiding including this in the frame. This took a while to avoid the shot being too bright to show these items but not so underexposed for the character.

The timing of the whip pan could've been better, with a few more takes I could've gotten one closer to the original scene.

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Thoughts: The objective was to capture the canal as a gritty and dreary environment. I think we achieved this well by highlighting the construction, graffiti and stubbed out cigarettes. Selecting a cloudy rainy day also contributed to this. Every shot was a cool clue colour with low contrast which also helped create this bleak atmosphere. My one issue with it is only capturing one wide shot of the canal. This made the video focus more on the surroundings of the canal rather than the canal, however this did not make the video stray from capturing the atmosphere.

Writing Piece: The canal water flows downstream, passing the greyscale concrete paths which pave the way for pedestrians alongside. The movement of construction machinery drones alongside the wind. The only injection of colour runs down the walls, spray can scribbles. Another bleak day at the canal.

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Reading Key Points

Framing and focus can dictate the importance of subjects and their relationship. An example of this shown in the text is from The Grand Budapest hotel. All characters are in focus and squashed together in a wide shot, “showing the interdependence of the characters”. 

The focal distance of a lens can also convey the relationship of subjects. For example using a telephoto lens compresses space thus shooting a dialogue scene with a telephoto lens would create more intimacy. In addition, using a shallow depth of field to blur the background can also isolate characters, adding to the sense of intimacy.  An opposite example of this can be seen in the film Drive, in which two characters have a conversation in the same room however a wide angle lens is used and there is a lot of dead space on one side of the frame. This conveys a great distance in the characters.

Due to off level verticals being extremely noticeable, using an off vertical shot, called a dutch angle, can create a sense of tension or that something is peculiar. 

A pull focus, or rack focus, is when the focus shifts in a shot. This can be used stylistically and for narrative. It can emphasise importance and unimportance.

Suspense can be created by making the audience aware of impending trouble and not the characters.

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The Diamond Review

The Diamond, directed by Vedran Rupic is a short comedy about a man seeking the help of a small person to retrieve a diamond from a hole in the ground.

Its use of upbeat music was apt for every scene, as it added to the eccentricity of the film. The camera angles were very neutral, balanced medium close ups and medium shots with the subjects often centre framed meant the focus was all on the characters performance. The expressionless and plain delivery of dialogue made everything deadpan and off beat, very fitting for a story about a peculiarly small man with claustrophobia. In one scene, Stefan places a box over the small mans head as he screams and Stefan notes in a plain voice, "ok, interesting".

As stated in an interview, Rupic was inspired by the likes of the Coen Brothers and Charlie Kaufman, which is evident in the tone of the film which matches the off beat and bizarreness of the Coen Brothers and Kaufman.

I thoroughly enjoyed the simplicity of the story. The summary as stated in the beginning clearly defines that this film is off beat and strange, and it was clear that the filmmakers knew how to use this tone.

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The Rule of Thirds version has a lot of cluttered space in the frame. However the subject lying across either of the thirds that was in the foreground was where the eye was drawn to. This is because the subject filled a whole third and their head was on the apex.

The centred version worked well in drawing attention to what subject was important in the frame, as the centred subject was always in the foreground.

I prefer the centre framing version as it is most clear on where our attention should be for every shot, whereas the rule of thirds wasn't as clear every shot.