Following true events of two teams of mountaineers making the climb up to the peak only for events to go terribly wrong, Everest is a great visual and emotional spectacle.
Since the first few teams conquered the life-or-death climb to the peak of Everest, modern climbers have established tours to train up adventurous spirits so they too can experience the thrill. But when several teams are jockeying for the safest time to climb, the time between fierce storms striking the mountain narrows too far, and the teams risk getting caught in the maelstrom.
First of all it has to be said that this film, directed by Baltasar Kormakur (director of such action thrillers as 2 Guns and Contraband) has a powerful cast at its behest: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kiera Knightley and Emily Watson, even the secondary characters deliver excellent work throughout.
And for Everest's advantage, the first half of the film is dedicated to establishing as many of these people's character as possible, their lives and their reasons for going on the adventure. Jason Clarke is centre stage as Rob; the expedition leader for his company "Adventure Consultants", Jake Gyllenhaal is a competitive team leader, and Josh Brolin is a man determined to climb the mountain. There are many characters in need of backstory, some with more to lose than others.
Yes, while this is a true story of course (and criticising it feels undesirable) there are the typical foreshadowing points as: He has a baby on the way and he's excited to come home or; he's tried many times to climb the mountain and has everything to prove. But while cynics will see this as a disadvantage, I felt the film was honest enough to be still thrilling. Perhaps even more backstory for other characters would have blurred the foreshadowing even further.
Visually Everest is stunning. I watched it on a regular 3D cinema screen but I can imagine an IMAX 3D showing would have been extraordinary. There are several shots early on that deliberately show off the dizzying heights involved with the characters' journey; watching people walk over extraordinarily high bridges, or traversing rickety makeshift walkways over icy chasms. These moments alone are worthy of admission. The sense of cold and horrendous freezing temperatures become unbearable towards the end, some moments feeling morbidly graphic and brutally real.
There isn't much else to say about Everest. It is a straight-forward experience: men climb icy mountain and struggle to find their way down again. But I often say less is more, and the film enjoys setting up its characters, at least the ones that are deemed important enough (Sam Worthington's character Guy arrives too little too late) the rest of them do tend to blur into one another when the storm hits and identifying them becomes a struggle.
It is a visual spectacle with a decent human story behind it. I enjoyed it on the big screen (and in 3D!), though I'm unsure if I need to watch it again.
Additional Marshmallows: I was entertained to discover that Josh Brolin's character Beck's wife Peach was played by Robin Wright. I recognised her, but I didn't realise I recognised her from the 1987 classic The Princess Bride!
Jake Gyllenhaal and Forest Whitaker carry this boxing film higher than its fairly average pedigree would normally allow.
Billy Hope is at the top of his game in professional boxing, but when a terrible incident sees his wife shot and killed, he finds himself unable to cope with the loss and risks losing his daughter too. Can he prove himself to both her and those around him before he loses everything?
I purely wanted to see Southpaw because of leading star Gyllenhaal and his physical transformation for the role of a heavyweight boxer. He is proving time and time again now that he throws himself into the role, and the film opens with relish; showing Gyllenhaal as a terrifying storm in the ring who's reckless fighting style has him bloody and bruised before he can destroy his opponents.
The first half of this film is a bloody, bleak and quite oppressive experience. The word "endurance" came to mind several times and I imagined that this was thematically deliberate; the audience experiencing the struggle with Billy while his character battles far worse injuries than any he takes in the ring.
This hard opening, watching a simple man's life being systematically destroyed was a struggle at times, and not just because of its content but because I found the characters a little shallowly written at first. Even when things go wrong, I didn't feel much emotional attachment to those suffering the consequences.
But, after the first half the film develops into the more formulaic boxing film storyline (yes, there is a training montage!) and while this might sound like a bad thing, I actually became a lot more sensitive to their emotions at this point.
There are a couple of scenes between Gyllenhaal and his new trainer Wills played by Forest Whitaker that are very powerful and meaningful. Gyllenhaal does not disappoint in any of his scenes, seamlessly going from simple brute to mellowing father extremely well. He also shares scenes with his daughter, played by young Oona Laurence (who was a very good child actress!) which are also very emotional and intense.
The film ends much stronger than it began, a slow boil weighed down with obvious foreshadowing and a weak, unmemorable script. But if you power through the stiff, unrelenting start, it becomes a gritty story of finding one's self-respect and inner strength.
Nightcrawler is one of those films that does so much with so little; a meticulous escalation of one character's desires coupled with a rich subtext of media's rotten underbelly.
Louis Bloom is a nobody. He has no friends, no close family and zero empathy for others. His shallow attempts to give his life meaning begin by stealing and selling to a buyer only to simultaneously ask for a job.
But upon seeing a near-fatal car accident one night, he sees the potential as a freelance cameraman; his lack of compassion fitting the need to get in close on grisly accident and crime scenes. But when his lawless approach to reporting gets the attention of a sensationalist News network boss, his cravings escalate to dangerous levels.
I am late in seeing this movie, and as many reviewers have already made clear: Jake Gyllenhaal dominates this movie, taking centre stage and making it work seamlessly, his anti-hero persona as Bloom is captivating. He is lost within this character he has created: little personal ticks, how haunted yet enlivened he appears. Bloom is a psychotic with no passion beyond that of a textbook; his conversations with others rattle with business cliches and management hyperbole to the point were one sniggers, yet Gyllenhaal delivers it all with suitable conviction making it all the more real. We are told next to nothing about Bloom's past, we can only take him on his word.
The film is a murky and often quiet experience, relying heavily on Gyllenhaal's performance to carry much of the film's storytelling. This is a character piece, the film isn't a jumble of subplots and exposition, no flashbacks or flashforwards. We see Bloom begin with absolutely nothing, and watch him connive and sneak his way to success by filming the aftermaths of ghastly accidents and crimes.
Sounds a little like DiCaprio's Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street, though unlike that film Nightcrawler is beautifully paced and edited without repetition. Coupled that film's ability to make the audience sympathise and even empathise with such a crazed anti-hero with the style of Drive, I honestly have a hard time thinking of anything inherently wrong with Nightcrawler...
The characters are all generally unlikeable people, deliberately so. Gyllenhaal is the poster boy of snide and calculating, but Rene Russo's Nina, his employer, is equally as deprived by fuelling this man's unhealthy and unjust methods. Bill Paxton is a fellow "nightcrawler" and provides Bloom's competition. The only heart that is still beating is in Bloom's "assistant" Rick (Riz Ahmed) a man so desperate for work that he cannot turn Bloom's insane ideas down.
Some people have issue with films that lack the more traditional, conventional themes and characters, and Nightcrawler is an unconventional look at sensationalist News coverage in the worst light possible. I cannot imagine everyone "enjoying" it, but I would hope audiences can at least appreciate how effective it is at delivering its subtext.
As unconventional as it is, it is excellently made and wonderfully well paced, and this reviewer can find little wrong with it!
With a runtime of over two and a half hours, this taut
investigative thriller may lose some of the less attentive audiences,
but is so grim with frank realities, moralities and tension that it
succeeds wonderfully.
When two families find their youngest daughters missing, a police
detective runs an investigation into a possible kidnapping. But when
the only suspect has the mind of a child and seems unlikely to have
committed such a crime and the leads dry up, one of the fathers of
the missing girls takes the law into his own hands.
Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal are both electric in this story.
Jackman, as a stormy-eyed survivalist who will do anything to protect his family, and Gyllenhaal as a cool headed, restrained investigator
who has yet to lose a case. Which is a blessing, considering the film
in its entirety is solely focused on the characters and their
seemingly hopeless search.
The story is told unconventionally. We are not given much time for
the generic opening scenes of “Oh what a happy family they have,
how wonderful everything is; wouldn't it be sad if something went
wrong” that plagues a lot of these films. No, Prisoners hits
the audience immediately and has the girls missing within the first
twenty minutes. What follows is a bleak, grim story as each member of
the family deals with the loss, and our two leads struggle with
literally no clues or evidence.
Now some people expecting car chases, murders, or out-of-control
antagonists will find this direction-less second act a little...
exhausting. Our antagonist is a very quiet, unassuming man, and as
such the film's focus is the slow and steady build up into its climax.
I wouldn't dare spoil what happens in the film either since it really, really doesn't give anything away. I've not seen a film keep cards so close to its chest in a while, so I can almost guarantee you won't fully predict what will happen.
It is a slow, very quiet and calculating film which won't grab absolutely everybody, but I can see myself watching this again for any clues I might have missed! If you like crime thrillers and puzzling dramas, I recommend it, it'll leave you thinking about it for days.
A slice of life from the perspective of two American police officers on patrol as they encounter increasing dangers, proves to be a hard edged reality tale but has some irksome direction.
Ex-Marine police officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gylhenhaal) dreams of having a family, while his squad partner Mike Zavala teases him with the easy life he has with his own. They are cocky, self-assured officers whose frequency of success has made them extremely efficient if a little unorthodox. But when a drug cartel moves in on their neighborhood unseen, they could find the ground opening beneath their feet.
End of Watch is from Training Day director David Ayer, and both films rely upon seeing our character talk and exchange banter within a squad car. Brian and Mike have great chemistry, and you quickly appreciate their friendship and police "brothers-in-arms" relationship. There are a lot of American police films out there, and most of them fall into cliche and pitfalls (see Brooklyn's Finest for examples of all the cliches in one place!) but the honest and glamour-less nature of End of Watch makes it insightful rather than painful. It paints a picture of the human beings behind the guns and badges, and the dangers they are constantly in.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided on using a "found footage", "recorded footage" shaky camera style... Sigh... It is quite alarming how I'm sick of this now. Brian, for little reason other than "I'm making a movie", fits himself and Mike with cameras on their uniforms and carries around a camcorder. While this does make it a unique police film, it is either used too much or ineffectively. The number of times the film does shaky-cam when it isn't from a character's camera, or is from a direction that could be... but actually isn't, since we see a subsequent shot showing no camera being held. It constantly bothered me as I was asking "Who's holding the camera now?"
I had myself a quiet giggle as even the drug cartel guys were filming themselves all the time too. Really? Is everyone out and about with camcorders these days?
If the film hadn't been in this format (and the fact that they were recording had little to no significance means it didn't need to be) it would have been a solid police drama. One really worth recommending! The characters are involved, the action is intense when it happens (and it happens suddenly) and the ending is so un-Hollywood its great!
It was an okay watch, it did feel a little bit like "TV Cops" due to the stupid shaky camera. If you want to see something new from American police dramas, you could do worse.
