Three Colours: Blue review

 Number 336 on the top 1000 films of all time is Kryzstof Kieslowski's first installment of his French Three Colours trilogy: Blue.

Julie (Juliette Binoche) has just survived a car crash. Her daughter and famous composer husband did not. Shutting down from the world, she tries to close herself off to everything, but her past life continues to intrude into the present.

As is the nature of this list, I often watch film trilogies out of order. Here I watched the final film 'Red' first. Luckily, these three films are only linked thematically and not narratively. Each film in this trilogy corresponds with a colour of the French flag - in this case, blue. This film also explores the theme of 'libertie' or freedom.

As much as Julie tries freeing herself from her past, it always finds a way to resurface. She was a tragic character. And Binoche made her both believable and likeable. Kieslowski used her a way to explore the theme of grief. Shutting down as Julie does is an all too common response to this severe trauma. Yet she has constant reminders of the past to having a stranger trying to return her daughter's necklace to her having a relationship with her late husband's best friend. Together, they try to complete her husband's final symphony.

The colour blue was also factored into the film's cinematography with many of the scenes having a distinctive blue filter achieved by placing a filtered gel over the lens. This is another motif that carried over to the other films. It made the film look so nice on-screen, as well as really dialling into Julie's grief.

Three Colours: Blue was a good film with a unique colour aesthetic which really helped it to explore the theme of grief.

Blue Velvet Review

Number 471 on the top 1000 films of all time is David Lynch's neo-noir mystery thriller 'Blue Velvet.'

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is a recent college graduate who is returning home. When he discovers a severed ear in his garden, he is thrown into a dark world involving the night-club singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini) and psychotic drug dealer Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper.)

When you think of David Lynch, you think of dark, abstract and surreal. When you think of noir films, you think of over-complicated, convoluted films. Thankfully Blue Velvet was relatively straightforward lacking any of the backwards-speaking and red rooms that made Twin Peaks such an enigmatic watch. If anything, David Lynch was just warming up here for his seminal TV show. Don't get me wrong, Blue Velvet was still weird, but it was nowhere near as weird as it could have been.

It helped that you had the excellent Dennis Hopper playing Frank Booth. Some might argue that he was so over-the-top, but this is what made him so scary. You never knew what he was going to do next. And this unpredictability made him such a terrifying villain. Yet Hopper kept the character incredibly grounded. He brought an electric energy to the role.

Praise should also be given to Isabella Rosselini. She was playing the tragic character of Dorothy Vallens helping her to revitalise her flagging career. But with good reason. She was great as the emotionally damaged cabaret singer who had fallen victim to Frank Booth's violent tendencies.

While Lynch was warming up for Twin Peaks, Kyle MacLachlan was doing the same for detective Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. Kyle was good as well. But I think Lynch was the true star here, crafting a memorable, if weird thriller that was an intense and gripping watch, with a great performance by Dennis Hopper.  

Blue Valentine review

 Number 881 on the top 1000 films of all time is Derek Cianfrance's 2010 romantic drama 'Blue Valentine.'

Blue Valentine tells the relationship between under-achieving slacker Dean (Ryan Gosling) and his over-worked nurse wife Cindy (Michelle Williams.) The film flashes back and forth between the start of their relationship and their eventual breakdown and divorce.

I've watched a few Ryan Gosling films and while I think he is a versatile and charismatic actor, I have never liked the films themselves. They're either too sentimental or too dark or in the case of Blue Valentine too bleak. And bleak is putting it lightly. This isn't a film that will have you leaving the cinema with a warm, fuzzy feeling, but rather the saddest frown on your face. I imagine this was Cianfrance's intention, so in that sense, he succeeded in making one of the most depressing films since the Pianist.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with unremittently bleak films, but there has to be something more than the unremittent bleakness. True, there are the flashbacks to the happy start of Dean and Cindy's relationship - while these scenes were cute especially the tap dancing/ukulele scene, but they always played second fiddle to the present timeline where their marriage falls apart. Any warm, fuzzy feeling was replaced with a sinking stomach, as I saw this once happy couple scream at each other.

And due to the unrelenting bleakness you know it's only going to end in one way. These characters are never going to rediscover their love for one another and live happily ever after. There is nothing wrong with knowing how a film is going to end, but it does kill the narrative tension.

Cianfrance was inspired by his parent's divorce and the pain that caused him as a young man. And he wanted to create a film that charted the beginning and end of a relationship. In that sense, he succeeded. But did he have to make it so damn depressing? I do like Ryan Gosling as an actor, I'm just waiting to see a Ryan Gosling film that I actually like.