Showing posts with label Sean Harris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sean Harris. Show all posts

Saturday 22 September 2012

A Lonely Place to Die



A group of five friends are on holiday, hiking and climbing around the remote mountains of Northern Scotland when they chance upon a strange noise. Tracking it down they discover a pipe sticking out of the ground and what appears to be a girl trapped in a box underground. After setting her free they begin their trek to the nearest town to report a kidnapping but are chased every step of the way by the shady men who put the girl in the hole in the first place.

I have a vague recollection of the film’s title and my girlfriend assures me that we wanted to see it so she borrowed it from a friend. I wish she hadn’t bothered. The plot is ok but doesn’t go deep enough and the acting and dialogue seem like they were done by people who understood the concept but had never actually seen it practiced.

Saturday 2 June 2012

Prometheus

"A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable"

It’s 2089 and two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover the same star map amongst paintings and artefacts from various different ancient civilisations which had no interaction with each other. Convinced that this map is somehow connected to our origins the two enlist the help of Weyland Industries and visit the moon LV-223 aboard the ship Prometheus. Four years later they and the crew, totalling seventeen are woken from Stasis by robot David (Michael Fassbender) and with specific instructions from Weyland representative Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) not to interact with any species they might encounter, set off into an unidentified structure on the Moon’s surface.

Firstly I’ll get the Alien stuff out of the way. It definitely helps if you have seen the Alien franchise but is in no way a necessity. The film can be viewed as both a stand alone movie and as a prequel. I’ve only recently watched the series for the first time so it is still fresh in my mind. As such on a few occasions I thought to myself “ooh I recognise that” and “aahhh, so that means…” but the film also made me want to watch the original Alien again as I was a little confused at times. I think that my confusion was due to two reasons. Firstly the plot is fairly complex and you have to pay close attention. Secondly, there are far too many plot holes. I won’t go into them here in order to avoid spoilers but if you’re interested then fellow blogger Life vs Film has compiled an extensive list here.

For me the film’s biggest strength was its atmosphere. The film isn’t as tense as I’d expected it to be but is rather more like a mystery. Unlike say Alien you aren’t waiting for something to jump out and scare you but rather it unfolds very slowly, creating more questions as it progresses. Many of the questions are subsequently answered but some are left open which I liked but left me feeling slightly frustrated. The tone was much less about horror and more about what, why, where and how and tone wise it is closer to Scott's Blade Runner than Alien. I loved how slowly the plot unfolded but wonder if the Transformers generation will have the patience to stick with it?