The Fall review

 Number 404 on the top 1000 films of all time is Tarsem Singh's adventure-fantasy film 'The Fall.'

In 1915 Los Angeles, stunt man Roy Walker (Lee Pace) is hospitalised after a stunt gone wrong. In hospital, he forms an unlikely friendship with fellow patient, eight-year-old Romanian girl Alexandria  (Catinca Untaru) who is recovering from a broken arm. He entertains her with a wild and fantasy tale about a rag-tag group of rebels to team up to kill a common enemy, but he has an agenda of his own. 

I think this is a film that you have to see more than once to truly appreciate. Upon the first watch, I decided the film wasn't for me, being critical of the story-within-a-story format. On other occasions such as with the Chinese Wuxia Hero, this format fell flat because the framing story wasn't as interesting as the secondary story.

Upon a rewatch, I can say this was not the case for the Fall. I really enjoyed watching Roy and Alexandria's relationship progress. The two of them had great on-screen chemistry. Catinca Untaru was adorable and she worked well with the much older Lee Pace who became a surrogate father figure for her. I'm not sure whether Untaru went onto have a big acting career, but she was very good here. So was Lee Pace. It was a relationship with lots of pathos.

*spoilers*

This pathos extends into Roy's dark secret. In exchange for entertaining Alexandria with these stories, he asks her to steal morphine for him. Ostensibly, this is to help him sleep, but he actually intends to commit suicide. His beloved has left him for the actor he was doubling for. Now he no longer wants to live. This was suitably tragic with Pace and Catinca giving good performances.

While the B-story has great visual flair reflective of the countless different filming locations as well as director Tarsem Singh's insistence that the film be shot on-location with minimal special effects, the framing story is suitably more muted and dour. 

The B-story sees a range of quirky characters including a masked bandit, a silent Indian warrior, an ex-slave, an Italian explosives expert and Charles Darwin. They all team up to take revenge on a governor who has wronged them all. The fantasy land they inhabited was marked by bold colours and a distinct look - similar to the Chinese Hero film. I enjoyed seeing this colourful cast of characters and it was sad watching them meet their respective ends.

If you were left unimpressed watching this film once, do yourself a favour and watch it again. You might just be surprised.

The Bucket List review

 Number 869 on the top 1000 films of all time is Rob Reiner's comedy-drama 'The Bucket List.'

The blue-collar mechanic Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) and the grumpy old billionaire Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) meet in hospital after both are diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. With only months left to live, the two embark on a trip to complete their own respective bucket lists.

This film had lots of potential. It had two great actors in the form of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Between them, they share four Oscars. It's a fun plot-line with plenty of opportunity for laughs and tears. And it was very funny. Jack Nicholson was very good as the grumpy, old, misanthropic billionaire. It might be a overly-familiar role for him, but he does it very well. Much of this humour comes from his constant abuse of his poor valet Thomas (Sean Hayes.) But Nicholson and Freeman had very good chemistry with the characters being polar opposites of each other. I may also argue Freeman is now type-cast as the wise, old mentor, but again he is always great.

Yet despite all this potential, the film felt very lacking. I feel like they could have done a lot more. Its runtime is just under one hundred minutes and it spends most of that on the beginning and the ending meaning that the middle is rushed. Considering the middle is the characters fulfilling their titular bucket lists, I was expecting much more. Some key character beats were reduced to a simple montage. There were lots of funny moments like Chambers and Cole sky-diving, but it felt like a very small, unimportant footnote. An extra half hour or even twenty minutes might have helped to bring things together more. 

Also what was with the awful CGI? Obviously I wouldn't expect Nicholson and Freeman to really be on top of the great pyramids of Giza, but I also wouldn't expect it to look so fake either. Maybe Reiner spent the film's budget on Nicholson and Freeman's salaries?

The Bucket List isn't a bad film per se. There are good performances and plenty of hilarious and heart-breaking moments. But they could have done a lot more than they did.