Brokeback Mountain review

 Number 585 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ang Lee's neo-western romantic drama 'Brokeback Mountain.' 

Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis La Mer (Heath Ledger) are two cowboys working up a mountain. After spending one fateful night together, the two fall madly in love. They spend the next twenty years seeing each other in secret, while trying to live 'normal' lives with their families and jobs. Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway co-star as Ennis' and Jack's wives respectively.

At the 78th Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain controversially lost Best Picture Oscar to Crash. Many thought Brokeback Mountain was a highly superior film. Having seen both, I absolutely agree with this sentiment. Whereas Crash was contrived and half-arsed, Brokeback Mountain was wonderfully understated, but also very moving.

Great romance stories always hinge on the two leads. If they didn't have chemistry, the film would have fallen flat. But I thought both Ledger and Gyllenhaal were great together. They were very believable in the roles of the emotionally conflicted cowboys. Both of them are living double lives; trying to maintain their stoic cowboy image, while seeing each other in secret.

Heath Ledger was hesitant about taking the role, as he didn't think he would be able to do it justice. These fears were unfounded, as he was brilliant. Granted, he sometimes spoke with a gruff, mumbling diction that made him difficult to understand, but he was still superb. He gave a compassionate and layered performance. Gyllenhaal was equally good. Both actors played off of each other well.

The cinematography was also spectacular. Wide panning and master shots emphasised the sheer vastness and splendour of the landscape. It was reminiscent of the old spaghetti Westerns. 

I've spoken a lot about the male actors, but the female leads were just as good. Granted Anne Hathaway was under-utilised, both she and Michelle Williams were very good, as Alma and Lureen - two wives trying and failing to understand their husbands.

I thoroughly enjoyed Brokeback Mountain. It was subtle, nuanced and powerful with some great performances. And it certainly deserved to win Best Film Oscar.

October Sky review

 Number 493 on the top 1000 films of all time is Joe Johnston's biographical drama - October Sky.

Based on the true story, October Sky follows four teenage boys in Coalwood, West Virginia, who after being inspired by the Sputnik launch, decide to enter their county's science fair with their own rocket programme. The group is led by Homer Hickham (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is assisted by his friends Roy Lee Cooke (William Lee Scott) Sherman O'Dell (Chad Lindberg) the nerdy Quentin Wilson (Chris Owen) and their teacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern.) However, the group faces stiff resistance especially from Homer's father John (Chris Cooper) who is adamant that his son follows in his footsteps of working in the local coal mine.

Since starting this challenge, I have always tried to refrain from comparing films. I believe you should judge each film in its own right. But a comparison here would be appropriate. The last film I reviewed was the Breakfast Club. But where the Breakfast Club failed, October Sky succeeded as a great coming-of-age film. It had heart, drama and plenty of laughs.

Our group of boys faced innumerable challenges, but they resolve to never give up and eventually achieve their dream. And in the process, they all grow up. It is quickly established that the most common career path is to work in the coal mine, but Homer refuses to accept this. This steely determination made him a likeable protagonist. Even when it looked like all hope was lost, he continued working toward his dream.

And Jake Gyllenhaal did the part justice. This was his first leading role and he displayed an impressive maturity for such a young age. His tension with his father was one of the driving conflicts behind the film. And Gyllenhaal and Chris Cooper are very good together. Sure their relationship borders on the melo-dramatic - especially nearing the end, but it was no less effective. In essence, it was a clashing of generations - the old man bound by tradition and the young buck wanting to make his own way.

All in all, I did enjoy this film. It balanced humour with heartbreak. And, no doubt, it was a major contributor to Jake Gyllenhaal's current status as one of Hollywood's leading men. 

Source Code review

 Number 839 on the top 1000 films of all time is Duncan Jones' science-fiction thriller 'Source Code.'

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a soldier who becomes an unwilling participant of a scientific programme called Source Code. He is repeatedly sent into an alternate reality where he has the chance to stop a domestic terrorist from blowing up a commuter train and killing everybody on board. Stevens assumes the identity of one of the other passengers and soon forms an attraction to a young woman called Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan.) Vera Farmiga plays Captain Goodwin - the soldier guiding him through the reality and Jeffrey Wright plays Dr Rutledge - the scientist who created Source Code.

I find a lot of science-fiction very pretentious. It's overly-intellectualised made by people who are not only smarter than me but like to rub that in my face. Or maybe I'm just stupid to realise their big, philosophical points. However, Source Code was not like that at all. And that's what I enjoyed the most: its simplicity. The storyline is easy enough to follow: Captain Stevens must identify a domestic terrorist to stop him from not only blowing up the commuter train but the city of Chicago as well. He has only eight minutes to do this otherwise the programme resets and he must start all over again.

The film has real heart too. Although, I thought that at first, Gyllenhaal and Monaghan didn't have the best chemistry, by the end, I thoroughly warmed to their relationship. I was rooting for the two of them to live happily ever after. But there are moral quandaries abound in Source Code. It is revealed that Colter Stevens, for all intents and purposes, has died in battle and his body is being kept alive in a life-support chamber. His mind is being stimulated within the Source Code programme. And Captain Goodwin must decide whether it is morally ethical to keep him alive or to let him die.

Source Code comes in at just over an hour and a half. A lot of science-fiction goes on far longer than it should, but Duncan Jones picked the right length. It didn't need to be any longer. As the storyline revolves around a time loop, there was a real danger of Source Code becoming monotonous and repetitive, yet this was never the case. 

I might argue that if the film could have been expanded anywhere it would have been with the villain. Derek Frost is a domestic terrorist who thinks that society is sick and should be rebuilt from rubble. But there has to be rubble at first. Perhaps an extra ten minutes or so developing his motivations would have been nice, but then again, I don't think it was that necessary. You can argue that Dr Rutledge was a more obvious villain keeping Stevens in an eternal torment, because he has been the only subject compatible with the Source Code programme. Jeffrey Wright played the villain well with his velvety tones doing little to gloss over his odiousness. 

True, a timeloop story is hardly the most imaginative, I've seen it plenty of times in Star Trek, but the execution of Source Code is what made it such a thrilling and enjoyable watch.

End of Watch review

 Number 633 on the top 1000 films of all time is the crime drama 'End of Watch.'

Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) are best friends and LAPD officers. Shot documentary style, the film follows their relationship as they stumble upon a massive drug-running and people trafficking organisation and soon become targets of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Since starting this challenge, I've watched my fair share of cop dramas from Crash to Training Day. And they're often felt unrealistic. Either they've been over-the-top or too understated. But End of Watch had a lovely authenticity flowing through it. Part of that was down to its cinematography.

As previously stated, this was shot as a documentary. This is worked into the story. Brian is doing a film class and so he's filming all his police work on a hand-held camcorder. What he misses is picked up by dashcam and bodycam footage. Some critics maligned this as being unnecessary and confusing. Yes, at times, especially during the gunfights, it did become chaotic. But that's exactly what it would be like in real life. And the camera work adds another layer of realism. It shows these cops at their most relaxed, there is no fake facade or veneer. These are your police, like them or not. 

Rather than being unnecessary, it made everything feel so much more real. What I will concede is that it was strange seeing the Mexican gangbangers film themselves with camcorders too. Surely, they're smart enough to realise that they're incriminating themselves. This didn't make any sense.

Another reason End of Watch felt so real was because of the chemistry of the two leads - Gyllenhaal and Pena. Reportedly, the two didn't connect at first, but over time they became good friends. And this came across in the final project. A lot of the banter between them was completely improvised making their relationship all the more genuine. You got a real sense of the camaraderie that exists within the police force.

If there was anything I didn't like, it was the ending. *Spoiler alert* The cartel tracks down Taylor and Zavala - shooting both of them. Taylor survives and Zavala doesn't.  It would have been better if this was the other way around. Taylor is reckless and impulsive, often dragging his friend into danger - he's the one who initially incurs the cartel's wrath. It would make sense that his rashness would get him killed. But then again, it's all too common for the more rational characters like Zavala to die because of the impulsiveness of people like Taylor.

Granted, the film is a little cheesy in places - I could have done without Taylor's opening monologue, where he espouses about what it means to be a police officer. However, I do think that this type of cultural identity definitely exists within the LAPD.

This is a gritty police drama that neither exaggerates what being a police officer is like nor does it romanticise it. Rather it creates an authentic reality that lets the viewer make up their own mind.

Zodiac review

 Number 640 on the top 1000 films of all time is David Fincher's mystery thriller Zodiac.

Telling the true story of the investigation into the infamous Zodiac killer, 'Zodiac' stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as San Fransisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith and Downey Jr plays crime reporter Paul Avery. Both journalists become so obsessed with investigating the Zodiac killer that their lives quickly fall apart. Rounding out the trio is police inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo.)

There's no denying the Zodiac killer has its place in the cultural zeitgeist. This film was released in 2007, a good thirty-three years after he supposedly stopped killing. Buzzfeed's video concerning Zodiac has over 15 million views. A few years ago there was even a running joke that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac killer. The Zodiac Killer is a cultural phenomenon and David Fincher capitalised on this brilliantly. Drawing inspiration from Robert Graysmith's true-crime books 'Zodiac' and 'Zodiac unmasked.' Fincher is a great thriller director, but he has a tendency to be gratuitous in his depiction of violence. Se7en is a top example of this. However, he shot Zodiac with a nice level of restraint. I thought we would be seeing Zodiac brutally torturing and killing his victims, but Fincher was far more subtle than this. 

Although what he had in subtlety, he lacked in pacing. I would argue that the film was unevenly paced. It is set between 1969 and 1991. And things move along very quickly. Too quickly, I think. Fincher would show one scene in a particular year and then move on before you have time to get your breath. You would see a scene from 1970 and then the next scene is in 1971. You don't have time to adjust to one scene before it has moved onto the next. This fast-paced nature did make things hard to follow at times. 

However, Fincher did well to always keep the suspense up. I'm not an expert on the Zodiac killer, but I know that he was never identified or caught. I was wondering how this might affect the ending. Would Fincher stay true to life or take creative license? He stayed true to life and left the identity of the Zodiac as ambiguous - although heavily implied to be the suspicious Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch,) but this could never be proved. I think if Fincher had offered a definitive solution would have been disrespectful to the real victims of the Zodiac killer. 

If anything, this film was about obsession. Both Graysmith and Avery become obsessed over finding the true identity of the killer and it costs them everything. Graysmith loses his family and Avery turns to drugs and alcohol before eventually losing his job. Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr were great in their parts. Downey Jr played Avery with the usual aloofness that he affects to all his roles, but Gyllenhaal was more understated as the quieter, socially awkward Graysmith. Although that isn't really unlike much of his other roles. But I particularly liked John Carroll Lynch who was heavily suspected of being the Zodiac killer. He played the role with an arrogance and a menace like he knew that he was untouchable. And he was. He died before he could be officially charged.

True, Fincher's pacing is uneven in places, but Zodiac is still a great thriller with genuine scares that don't lean into gory, as well as a tense plot that will keep you guessing. Will we ever find out the true identity of the Zodiac killer? I wouldn't hold my breath.

Prisoners Review

 Number 251 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2013 thriller 'Prisoners.'

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) are best friends and carpenters in Pennsylvania. But then their daughters Anna and Joy go missing. When Detective Loki's (Jake Gyllenhaal's) investigation breaks down, Dover takes matters into his own hands when he suspects local man and intellectually disabled Alex Jones (Paul Dano) as the kidnapper.

How best to describe this film? Doomy? Depressing? Downbeat? All of these adjectives are accurate. Yet it was till dramatic and interesting to watch. The setting was great as you can see the paranoia of the characters build and build up. The once familiar suburban houses and liquor stores become hostile.

And while the atmosphere was great, I do think it took a while for things to get going. The film opens with the two families sharing a thanksgiving dinner and Franklin showcasing his awful trumpet playing. And I get this was all setting the scene, but I think it could have been set a bit faster. I would have expected that the film opens with the disappearance of the daughters and we would see the backstory in flashbacks.

And I also think that everything was a little too perfect. Jackman, Gyllenhaal and Dano were all great in their roles, but maybe a little too great. Jackman was the angry grieving father, Gyllenhaal was the moody detective who doesn't play by the rules and Dano was the intellectually disabled fall guy. And I think to some extent, they were too good in the roles. Beyond these roles, there was little else behind the characters. In fact, they were closer to cariactures than characters. But I did enjoy the ending twist which I won't spoil here. It made a pleasant surprise and a nice subversion to what could have been a very obvious edning.

Although I enjoyed how Prisoners explored the theme of imprisonment - how we can all be prisoners of our own fears and demons, everything was just a little too perfect.