Abre Los Ojos review

 Number 446 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Spanish science-fiction thriller 'Abre Los Ojos,' (Open your Eyes.)

Cesar (Eduardo Noreiga) is a young man who has it all: good looks, money and a loyal best friend called Pelayo (Feliz Martinez.) He also has the affection of the attractive young woman Sofia (Penelope Cruz.) This fuels the anger of Cesar's jealous ex-lover Nuria (Najwa Nimri.) When a terrible accident leaves Cesar scarred and deformed, his life begins spiralling out of control. This leads to him uncovering a greater conspiracy.

Although science-fiction films are rotted in the real, their plots can lend themselves to the fantastical, and, at times, the unbelievable. To some extent, this would apply to Abre Los Ojos. At the end of the film all our questions are answered, but the answers did leave me raising my eyebrows. But let's backtrack a little. Cesar is an attractive playboy, but he is involved in a car crash that leaves his face deeply scarred. Forced to wear a mash, he quickly becomes a social outcast. The only thing that keeps him tethered to sanity is Sofia. But when Sofia vanishes with Nuria claiming to be her, Cesar begins to lose his mind. He tries to tell everybody the truth, but nobody believes him. All this is crosscut with him in a psychiatric institution telling his story to a shrink.

It's revealed that Cesar paid for his body to be cryogenically frozen with a cryonic company called Life Extension. Afterwards he kills himself. But Life Extension has the ability to preserve the mind in a virtual reality that is created from their client's own lives. However, this film was made in 1997. How advanced was virtual reality back then? Would it be capable of sustaining a whole virtual world? If this was the modern day, when VR headsets are a dime-a-dozen and the metaverse is looming overhead, I would find this easier to believe, but not the nineties.

Despite the spurious premise, this was a watchable film. The time-jumping narrative leaves plenty of clues to keep us interested, but it is never so mysterious that it's frustrating. There are questions to be answered in both the past and the present, and I enjoyed figuring them out at the same time as Cesar.

And Cesar is such a tragic character. You could argue that it can be difficult to feel sorry for a wealthy playboy, but he is sympathetic. He is a man who goes from everything to nothing. His jealous ex-lover crashes the car they're in, which is the accident that horrifically scars his face. He is forced to wear a mask turning him into a Frankinsteinean monster. Soon his personality becomes monstrous as he turns all his friends against him. But Noreiga played whim with just enough humanity to not make him a self-pitying mess. And Najwa Nimri was very good as his scorned ex-lover.

If there was something I would mark the film down for it would be the god-awful CGI in the during scene, but that is only a minor niggle. All in all, this was an enjoyable film. I would recommend opening your eyes and watching it.

Drive review

 Number 442 on the top 1000 films of all time is the action drama film 'Drive.'

Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed character only referred to as the Driver. By day he is a stuntman and a mechanic for a man named Shannon (Bryan Cranston.) By night he moonlights as a getaway driver for heists. He becomes attracted to his neighbour Irene  (Carey Mulligan.) However, her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) has just been released from prison and owes a lot of money to the wrong people. Standard decides to rob a pawn shop to get the money. Upon learning this, the Driver becomes his wheelman. But things quickly go south.

There is no denying that this is a stylish thriller. It has a great neon aesthetic that gives it a very synthetic, timeless look. It could be in the eighties or the modern-day or the not so distant future. However, I didn't particularly like this film and that was for one simple reason: tone.

Tone is important for any film and this film's tone was overly-dark. I get it. It's a thriller. It's not a comedy. I wasn't expecting laugh-a-minute, but I was hoping for one or two jokes. All throughout the film there was a foreboding sense of doom and at times this fog became too much. It needed some comic relief to help disperse it. This could be some black humour for the audience or maybe some jokes between the characters. It would have been nice to have at least seen them smile. Everybody was so serious all the time.

And Ryan Gosling encapsulated this seriousness. The Driver is the strong, silent type. An emotionless man who finds a cause to fight for. But the Driver felt more like a robot than an actual human being. It was like the evil terminator from T2 had decided to pack in killing John Connor and start robbing banks instead. It was a difficult character to get behind. And I don't think this is Ryan Gosling's fault. Having starred in rom-coms like the Notebook or La-La land, he is obviously capable of playing lighter roles, but he didn't even get the chance here. The gratuitous violence did nothing to help the overly-dark tone either.

Earlier on, I referenced the eighties. And that was very intentional. The musical score contains a lot of synth-wave - a genre reminiscent of the eighties. But I don't think it was employed well. There were these long scenes accompanied by synth-wave music. Except for the music playing there was very little else happening within these scenes. It became very tedious after a while.

Aesthetically the film looked great. But the overly-black tone coupled with the extended instrumental sequences made it all more style over substance.

Zwartboek (Black Book) review

 Number 435 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Paul Verhoeven's Dutch WW2 film Zwartboek which translates as Black Book.

Rachel Stein (Carice Van Houten) is a famed Jewish singer during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. When her hiding place is destroyed and her family are murdered by the SS, she joins the Dutch resistance. She is tasked by high-ranking resistance member Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman) to seduce the Gestapo leader Ludwig Muntze (Sebastian Koch.) This was all based on a true story.

In war films, it is all too easy to say that these are the good characters and these are the bad characters. but the reality is never that black and white. And that was all part of Verhoeven's vision. He definitely succeeded. We'll take glamorous heroine Rachel Stein as an example. Victim of Nazi persecution, she makes an obvious hero. However, she then falls in love with the Nazi official that she's seducing. The Nazi official Muntze quickly realises she is a Jew, but he has also fallen in love with her. And he is much fairer than his brutal deputy Gunther Franken (Waldermar Kobus.) Realising the war is lost, Muntze secretly negotiates a ceasefire with the Dutch resistance.

*spoiler alert*

When the Netherlands is liberated at the end of the war, Muntze is executed for his crimes and Rachel is locked up as a supposed Nazi collaborator. Her fellow Dutch compatriots treat her and the other supposed collaborators deplorably: humiliating them by forcing them to strip naked. But then Akkermans, now an army colonel, breaks things up and declares them no better than the Nazis. And this scene is not difficult to imagine happening in real life. The Dutch are angry at their treatment and want to take out their anger on anything they can.

As the two leads, Van Houten and Koch gave a lot of nuance to character who ran the risk of being flatly good and bad.  But it was these fundamental flaws that made all these characters so human and relatable. even the burtal Franken is a keen singer/ballroom dancer. To have characters be simply good or simply bad would be far too two-dimensional and cliche.  And Hoffman shone as the true villain of the piece. 

*more spoilers*

Hans Akkerman, despite being a high-level member of the resistance, is actually a secret Nazi collaborator.  Rachel Stein and her family try escaping to safety by boarding a boat that will carry them down the river. They are discovered by the SS and Rachel is the only one who escapes with her life. It is later revealed that Hans set this up, so he could steal whatever money the refugees had. This is entirely believable as well. Everybody becomes desperate in war. And loyalties can change at the drop of the hat.

Van Herhoeven perfectly captured the brutality of war: from the SS gunning down escaping Jews to them torturing one of the captured resistance fighters. He certainly pulled no punches. He succeeded in creating a harrowing tale of human morality and I'll end this review on his assessment of Zwartboek: "in this movie everything has a shade of grey. There are no people who are completely good no people who are completely bad. It's like life. It's not very Hollywoodian."

The World's Fastest Indian review

 Number 326 on the top 1000 films of all time is the New Zealand biographical drama: 'The World's Fastest Indian.'

Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) is an ageing speed bike racer from New Zealand. He travels tot he US to fulfill a lifelong dream: to race his bike on the Bonneville salt flats in Utah.

By all accounts, this is a film that wouldn't interest me. I know that I should review these films with an open mind, but motor bike racing has never been something that interested me. I thought this would be a film that would only appeal to other bike racers, but I was wrong. It was an incredibly watchable film.

And a lot of that is down to Anthony Hopkins' portrayal as Burt Munro. Munro is such a likable character that it's difficult not to root for him. He is charming, jovial and personable. To gain passage to the US, he works as a chef on a small ship. Upon reaching the US, he encounters many obstacles with the local bureaucracy, but he always manages to talk his way out of trouble. He even convinces traffic cops to let him go without a ticket.

He also quickly befriends people who help him on his journey whether this is a transvestite motel clerk or a second-hand car salesman. This pays dividends when the jobsworth racing officials deny him the opportunity to race because he hasn't pre-registered. But the other racers rally around him and he is eventually allowed to race where he goes onto break the land speed record.

The only thing I found weird was how Hopkins didn't speak with a Kiwi accent. Considering this is a New Zeland production that's set in New Zealand and constantly has Munro referencing he is from New Zealand, it was a really bizarre choice. Surely this was some weird director decision as an actor of Hopkins' calibre must be capable of doing a convincing Kiwi accent.

This was an entertaining film. It could have been a tedious adventure that would only appeal to a small audience, but instead it was a heart-warming tale about an old man fulfilling his lifelong dream. 

The 39 Steps review

 Number 419 on the top 1000 films of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's mystery thriller 'The 39 Steps.'

Richard Hannay (Robert Donnay) is in London when he befriends a mysterious woman. This woman tells him about a secret organisation called the 39 Steps. She later turns up dead and her assassins chase Hannay into Scotland where he becomes tangled up with a lady called Pamela (Madeline Carroll) as he tried to solve the mystery of the 39 Steps.

There is no denying that Alfred Hitchcock has had a momentous career. From the Lady Vanishes to Notorious to Dial M for Murder and Vertigo, he has been thrilling audiences for decades. And you can argue it all started with the 39 Steps. Released in 1935, this was one of his earliest sound films.

Hitchcock is a very good storyteller. His films usually stretch the realms of believability, but they work because the story is good. The Lady Vanishes is pure hokum and North by Northwest has the incredible scene of Cary Grant being chased by a cropduster, but both are still great films. The 39 Steps is equally unbelievable, but equally watchable. Hannay is shot at point-blank range, but he survives because a hymn book in his pocket blocks the bullet. I'm doubtful that even the bible could stop a speeding bullet at point blank range.

Yet Hannay is a likable protagonist. Like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, he is a victim of circumstance. Mistakenly identified as a murderer, he has to work hard to clear his name. It is this character arc that was interesting and engaging to watch.

Yes Hitchcock's films aren't always the most believable or realistic, but they are damned entertaining.

The Killing Fields review

 Number 382 on the top 1000 films of all time is a biographical drama 'The Killing Fields.'

Set during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the Killing Fields details the relationship of two journalists during the Cambodian genocide. One journalist is the American 'Sydney Schanberg' (Sam Waterston) and the other is Sydney's Cambodian interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor.) John Malkovich co-stars as Sydney's photographer Al Rockoff.

Whenever I watch films about subjects like war or genocide. I am always of the mantra or go hard or go home. The Holocaust film 'The Pianist' goes hard and it's all the better for it. However, I cam coming to believe that this doesn't always need to be the way. the Killing Fields is subtle and understated. This isn't to say it shies away from the horrors of the genocide, but it far more selective in what it chooses to show.

We see the build-up of prisoners being executed, but we never see these executions first hand. So when we do see scenes like Pran escaping his internment camp to find himself tumbling into a pit of skeletons, the impact is all the stronger. The fact these skeletons are the remains of the executed prisoners makes the image even scarier.

A recurring issue I find with films about world historical events told from a Western lens is that there is the tendency to wrongly focus on the Western character. I wouldn't go far to say there was a white saviour narrative. Sydney is no hero and definitely no saviour. When he and the other Western journalists are being evacuated home, they do all they can to take Pran with them - even going so far to making him a fake passport. When this fails, they have no choice, but to leave them behind.

Sydney later acknowledges had a chance to leave long ago, but Sydney convinced him to stay. Back in the US, Sydney uses every contact he has to find Pran, but it is Pran who escapes and find a Red Cross refugee camp near the border with Thailand. Obviously growing up in the Western world, I view things through a Western lens. And so narratives like Sydney's are very familiar to me. Overly-familiar I would say. It wasn't until halfway when the film switched to Pran in the internment camp did I start taking serious interest. Pran was an infinitely more interesting character and I was rooting for him to escape. He was also a very clever man, playing dumb when interred, as he knows he'll be killed otherwise. If he is even suspected of being a working professional then the regime would kill him.

And all due credit to Haing Ngor. Having survived three stints in Cambodian prison camps, he went onto win an acting Oscar for this role, despite having no previous acting experience. He is the only Asian actor to win an Oscar and he very much deserved it. It is so sad his life was cut short when he was killed in a 1996 robbery.

Please give this film a watch. Albeit, it is very traumatic, but it makes for absolutely essential viewing.

Let the Right one in review

 Number 332 on the top top 1000 films of all time is the Swedish, romantic horror 'Let the Right One in.'

Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a twelve year-old who is being bullied in school. He also has a troubled home life. One wintry evening, he meets a mysterious child called Eli (Lina Leandersson) who is harbouring a dark secret. Eli is a two-hundred year old vampire who has the form of a twelve-year old child.

This film very much reminded me of Stephen King's Carrie. A troubled child is terribly bullied. They are then aided by supernatural forces to overcome their bullies. Whereas Carrie has special powers, Oskar has unknowingly fallen in love with a vampire. And it s this love story that drives the film. Despite being far from conventional, it was sweet seeing the story unfold.

Oskar meets Eli in a playground while it is snowing. This may seem like a suspicious and an unlikely place to begin a romance, it is believe as we see how isolated Oskar has become. As the film progresses, his and Eli's relationship develops further and even when Eli's true nature is revealed, Oskar isn't scared away. The two of them even use Morse code to secretly communicate with each other.

I also enjoyed how the 'horror' was underplayed. Modern horror film tend to over-rely on tacky CGI or a jumpscare every five seconds. Sure this is scary once or twice, but it becomes very tedious if it's done all the time. Much of the horror in 'Let the Right One in' happens off-camera making it even scarier. The creepy atmosphere is alluded to either with creepy music or clever angles rather than excess gore. And then this makes the on-screen horror moments truly terrifying. Whether this was a character bursting into flames or Eli's eyes bleeding, this film had its genuinely scary moments.

And a quick note on Kare and Lina. Both of them were great in the lead roles. I don't think all the child actors were great especially those bullying Oskar, but the two leads gave good performances.

Overall, I enjoyed this film. It worked as a romance and as a horror. It had some endearing moments, but some truly scary ones too.

The Man from Earth review

 Number 337 on the top 1000 films of all time is the science-fiction film 'The Man from Earth.'

John Oldman (David Lee Smith) is an academic moving on from his old life. At his farewell party, he reveals a big secret to his fellow academics: he claims to be a caveman who has survived 14,000 years into the modern day.

Before I watch these films, I generally take a cursory glance of their Wikipedia pages, so I know what I'm up against. When I read about this film, I thought it would be a tedious, surreal, philosophical arthouse film a la Ingmar Bergman.  And we've established that I'm not a fan of Bergman.

However, that assessment could not have been more wrong. Despite The Man from Earth being little more than a one-act play, it was very engaging. The academics discuss the philosophical nature of Oldman's being in a way that is accessible for audiences to understand. It isn't too scholarly neither is it oversimplified. I never felt like I was being talked down to or did the dialogue feel contrived.

And as the story advances things only become more interesting as Oldman's story is examined from different academic disciplines - from biology to archaeology and even theology. This culminates in the implication that even this outlandish claim didn't harm the suspension of disbelief. This claim and the others were all backed up by reasoned logic like any academic argument.

I also really enjoyed the ending. *Spoiler alert* Under duress, Oldman reveals this was all an elaborate prank. Some of his friends believe him and others. But without any conclusive evidence to either prove or disprove him, the audience is left to make up their own minds.

This film definitely surprised me. It was quiet, understated but very powerful.

District 9 review

 Number 329 on the top 1000 films of all time is the South African, science fiction action thriller: District 9.

In 1980's South Africa, an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg. The alien inhabitants, only known by the human moniker of 'Prawn,' are rounded up into a shanty town known as District 9. Thirty years later, humanity has had enough of these aliens, whom they see as nothing more than thieves and liars, and demand their relocation. Heading this up is bureaucrat Wikus Van Der Mer We (Sharlton Copley) who befriends a Prawn called Christopher Johnson who is trying to return home with his son.

There is no denying that we are a tribal species. We are afraid of the unknown and sometimes that fear can turn into anger, as an us vs them mentality takes over. This is a theme that's been tackled many times before, but nothing about District 9 felt cliched or hackneyed. Having the "other," so to speak, being an insectoid alien was a refreshing way of engaging with this time.

District 9 is a very obvious allegory of South African apartheid. And the metaphor helped to keep the message pertinent. Wikus was a likeable protagonist starting off as a hapless, ineffectual bureaucrat and becoming an unlikely hero. After being exposed to a mysterious alien liquid, he begins mutating into one of them. This brings him to the attention of the shadowy MNU - a weapons technology who want to dissect him. They believe he holds the answer to helping humans to operate the alien weaponry. Vikus escapes and later connects with Christopher Johnson.

Sharlton Copley was very good considering that he had no formal acting experience. This was even more impressive considering that he improvised most of his dialogue. I did enjoy how he didn't fulfil a reluctant or even unlikely hero archetype. At many times he isn't heroic but cowardly. He helps Christopher Johnson, not out of altruism, but for the purely selfish reason of wanting to be transformed back into a human. But this flaw made him classically human. And he overcomes this flaw to become a hero.

And although the Prawns were little more than CGI animations they felt real. Just like humans, they weren't all the same. Some like Christopher Johnson were only trying to protect their family while others were criminals and miscreants. And the fact that we learn nothing about them except for how humans perceive them only makes them the more empathetic. You realise that there is more to them than meets the eye.

If the film falls down anywhere, it would be with the villains who were generic and superficial. The head mercenary Colonel Koobus (David James) was little more than your shouty, run-of-the-mill bad guy. He evens falls into the classic "I'm going to monologue before I kill the hero instead of killing him" cliche, which results in the Prawns catching and dismembering him. And Nigerian crime lord Obesadnjo (Eugene Wanagwa Khumbanyiwa) wasn't developed enough to be menacing. I also don't understand why Wikus would still love his wife after she betrays him to her father, who is the managing director of MNU, but I guess love is blind.

Ultimately, this was a great film. I enjoyed it immensely. It was a brilliant morality tale in how our own hatred and fear of the 'other' can tear us apart.

The Lady Vanishes review

 Number 311 on the top 1000 films of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 mystery thriller 'The Lady Vanishes.'

Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) is an English tourist returning home from travelling in Europe. She befriends an elderly woman called Miss Froy (May Witty) on the train before drifting off to sleep. When she awakes, Miss Froy has vanished. The fellow passengers don't know where or even who she might be. Iris is convinced something bigger is happening and along with the pompous Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) she begins to investigate.

To say that this film employs the suspension of disbelief would be the understatement of the century. It stretches disbelief to ridiculous lengths. The plot creaks as much as the hokey special effects and cardboard sets. I know that this was the 1930's, but the final shootout was made less thrilling by the melodramatic deaths and tinny explosions/sound effects. And it emerges that Miss Froy was secretly a British spy who had to report vital information in the form of a tune. The only thing more unbelievable was how she escaped from the firefight unharmed.

Having said all this, I did enjoy this film. Yes, the beginning drags on for too long - too much time was spent introducing the characters. But when things did get going, the tension became very high. Just like Iris, I wanted to know where Miss Froy had gone and what was her true identity. Also it was a very funny film with Gilbert's standoffish attitude providing a lot of the comedy. Redgrave played the laughs well.

There were plot holes and loose ends - what happened to the henchman who holds our heroes at gunpoint just when it looks like the day has been saved? Nothing apparently, as they're all fine in the next shot.

Despite this, I did enjoy this film which was one of Hitchcock's earliest efforts. But he started as he meant to go on and it was a great start. 

JFK review

 Number 306 on the top 1000 films of all time is Oliver Stone's epic political thriller: JFK.

Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is the former New Orleans district attorney. After President Kennedy is assassinated, the Warren report declares that Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) was the lone perpetrator. Garrison has his doubts and reopens the investigation. He inadvertently unearths a massive conspiracy theory. The huge ensemble cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and John Candy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a film needs a very good reason to be over three hours long. And it needs an excellent reason to be three hours and twenty-five minutes long. JFK had no such reason. it was one of the longest films I've seen and far longer than it needed to be.

It's safe to say that Kennedy's assassination is one of the most controversial topics in history. Few people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting as a lone wolf. The true perpetrators range from the mob to the CIAS to the Russians to the Cubans. Any one of these explored in isolation could have made a very interesting film, but where Stone went was how he tried to connect everything. Reportedly, he read two dozen books on Kennedy's assassination and his research team read 100-200 books. And it was like Stone tried to include every single scrap of information he could find. This made for a bloated, unfocussed film.

The supporting cast was huge and certainly could have been trimmed down. Garrison's many deputies were very similar to each other and I regularly mixed them up. Some of them were also ultimately pointless to the plot as they were involved in subplots that went nowhere. Bill Broussard (Michael Rooker) is one such deputy who becomes uncomfortable at how the conspiracy begins to implicate LBJ. He betrays his former boss by starting to work for the feds, but we never see any consequences for this.

Stone was heavily criticised for taking liberties with history. But my issue isn't so much was he included, but what he didn't, which was nothing. He included everything which was not necessary. I could have done without seeing how Garrison's investigation was affecting his family life. This would have cut the film down a lot.

And everything was slow that after a while it became very tedious. Much of the film were characters sitting in a room either quietly talking or loudly yelling at each other. As such, a lot of the supporting cast was wasted. Gary Oldman did very little as did Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. With so many famous faces, it's inevitable that you can't give them all the attention they deserve and a lot of them did fall by the wayside. Although, John Candy and Joe Pesci gave memorable performances and Costner's ending monologue was particularly powerful.

The film did have the potential to live up to its ambitious premise, but if you have to watch a film in two halves then it is too damn long.

Captain Phillips review

 Number 302 on the top 1000 films of all time is the biographical action thriller Captain Phillips.

Based on the true story of the Maersk Alabama hijacking, Captain Phillips follows the tale of the eponymous titular character played by Tom Hanks - a merchant sailor whose ship is attacked and captured by Somali pirates led by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi.) When the plan goes wrong, Muse then takes Captain Phillips hostage.

If I could describe this film in one word? Intense. From the start to the finish, it was edge of the seat stuff. And a lot of that was down to how well Paul Greengrass paced the film. With thrillers, pacing is absolutely everything and some of them fall flat due to bad pacing. There is the tendency to draw out the scene setting or the denouement usually leading to the climax being rushed and unsatisfying. That was not the case here.

The film opens with Captain Phillips speaking with his wife Andrea (Catherine Keener) about their home and family life. They talk about the rapidly changing world and how their children will fit in and that's it. That's all we needed to see. The simple ending was complimented by the simple ending where *spoiler alert* Captain Phillips is rescued by the US navy and breaks down in tears. This left plenty of time for a brilliant rest of the film. 

Captain Phillips and his crew fend off one assault by the Somali pirates only for them to return later and board the ship. Some quick-thinking tactics see the pirates being chased into the lifeboat only for them to kidnap the captain and hold him hostage to safeguard their escape. These peaks and troughs really made the fil nail-bitingly tense. I know this was based on a true story where nobody died, but it was difficult to see how any of Captain Phillips' crew could come out of this alive. 

Least of all, Captain Phillips himself. Tom Hanks gave a magnificent performance which really showcases his talents as an actor. In one scene he is kissing his wife goodbye, in another he is trying to talk down Muse and in another he is breaking down in tears. By the end of the film, both the character and the actor have been put through the ringer. And it was an absolute travesty that he was not nominated for an Oscar. 

Barkhad Abdi was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. This was his first acting role and it was a hell of a debut. Muse is the quiet, but thoughtful leader of the pirates. He is smart enough to lead an attack on the Maersk Alabama, but also unpredictable and scary enough to control the more volatile members of his crew.  He has enough nuance to stop him from being a cliched villain. He justifies himself by saying he is only a fisherman wanting to stay in control of his destiny instead of relying on unwanted help from the Americans. Abdi very much earnt his Oscar nomination. But to not nominate Hanks as well? Terrible.

This really was a great film. It was edge-of-the-seat action, but with real heart. Abdi was fantastic as the villainous Muse, but not nominating Hanks for Best Actor has to be one of the biggest snubs in Oscar history.

Brazil review

 Number 299 on the top 1000 films of all time is Terry Gillam's dystopian black comedy drama Brazil.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level bureaucrat in an unnamed dystopian future. He frequently dreams of saving a mystery woman from death. When a typing errors results in the erroneous death of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of rogue heating engineer Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro) Lowry tries to undo the mistake which brings him into contact with the woman he has been dreaming about.

Surreal? Arthouse? Experimental? A satirical look at the modern world? However you look at it, there is no denying that Brazil is a weird film. Made by Terry Gillam and co-starring Michael Palin, it was a bit like a twisted Monty Python misadventure. Rather than one cohesive narrative, the film jumped from surreal scene to surreal scene - we have Sam Lowry dreaming of being a winged warrior saving a woman from falling to her death, the next we jump to Archibald Buttle being arrested and sentenced to death and then Sam is fighting this massive robotic samurai. It really was just bizarre and after a while the weirdness all became a bit much. I just don't have the patience for it. Maybe if there was an obvious deeper meaning than I would get it, but it just seemed like it was being weird for the sake of being weird.

Having said that, Terry Gillam was inspired by 1984, despite having never read it. Gillam was also highly inspired by Fellini and I could see his influence here. Brazil was like a grotesque parody of both Fellini's work and of 1984. Lowry is the stand-in for Winston Smith, another low-level bureaucrat stuck in a totalitarian system. It's not Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein, but it is dystopic nonetheless. The origins of this world are not explored in any great detail, but there is an over-reliance on technology which usually malfunctions. And *spoiler alert* just when it looks like Lowry has escaped and will live happily ever after, it was all a torture-inspired hallucination.

And I know this was in the eighties, but the special effects looked awful. From the tinny explosions to the flamethrowers that were obviously painted paper, they really looked like they were from a cheap B-film. Terry Gillam has referred to this as the second in his trilogy of imagination, and it was nominated for best original screenplay. There is no doubt that this was an original, imaginative film. Confusing, surreal and abstract, but definitely original. I can safely say that I haven't seen anything like it before.