Sleepers review

 Number 792 on the top 1000 films of all time is the legal crime-drama Sleepers.

Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra (Joe Perrino,) Tommy Marcano (Jonathan Tucker,) John Riley (Geoffrey Wigdor) and Michael Sullivan (Brad Renfro) are four boys growing up in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York. Father Bobby Carillo (Robert De Niro) keeps a watchful eye over them. But when a childish prank goes horribly wrong, the four boys are sentenced to Wilkinson's Home for Boys where they experience horrific abuse by the guards led by Sean Noakes (Kevin Bacon.) Cut thirteen years into the future, the now adult John (Ron Eldard,) Tommy (Billy Crudup,) Shakes (Jason Patric) and Michael (Brad Pitt) swear to take revenge on everybody who did them harm.

Sleepers is very much a story of two halves. We have the lives of the boys before they attend Wilkinson's and their lives afterwards. If anything I preferred the first half. We're given a rich tapestry and a deep insight into life within Hell's Kitchen. There's no doubt that our four protagonists are little shits, but they are still interesting to watch.

And then things go south in the second half. The narrative tension just stops, as we enter a courtroom drama. The contrivance of all four boys all being sent to the same prison aside, the second half was not as neat or tightly focussed, as the first half. *spoilers to follow*

Upon release, John and Tommy become hitmen in the Irish mob. By chance they see Noakes in a bar and they publicly assassinate him. The case goes to court. Michael, now an assistant district attourny, seeing an opportunity to punish the rest of the guards who abused them, takes the prosecution with the intention of botching it. He enlists the alcoholic Dan Snyder ( Dustin Hoffman) to defend John and Tommy.

But the problem lies in how Noakes was killed early on. Noakes was the ringleader. He was the big, bad villain. The other guards were just his cronies. Without him, we're just seeing John and Tommy being persecuted for a revenge kill that the audiences knows they were justified in carrying out. It was dull.

It would have been more interesting seeing Sean Noakes, and the other guards, standing trial for the atrocities they committed. Instead, we were focussing on John and Tommy. And that killed any narrative suspense. The second half felt almost disconnected from the first. It didn't help that Noakes' cronies were little more than names on a page with little characterisation other than being a crony. The one exception was Ralph Ferguson (Terry Kinney) who was the only guard to express any remorse over what he did.

Even though there were some big names in the cast; Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman have five Oscars between them, I don't think anybody really shone. Brad Pitt and Dustin Hoffman only appear in the second half and De Niro was closer to a supporting character.

Overall, Sleepers was an entertaining if uneven film that went to sleep in its second half.

The Kite Runner review

 Number 655 on the top 1000 films of all time is Marc Foster's 2007 adaptation of the Kite Runner based on Khaled Hosseini's novel of the same name.

Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) is a Pashto boy living in pre-soviet Afghanistan. His best friend is also his servant Hassan - a Hazara, (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada) who is an expert in the game of kite-running. After the soviets invade, Amir and his father flee to the US. Twenty years later, Amir (Khallid Abdalla) returns to a taliban-led Afghanistan to right the wrongs of his past.

I read this book in 2022. It was a powerful and harrowing read. But the film was incredibly underwhelming. I'm disappointed to stay this, but the film lacked the same emotional pathos. 

*spoilers ahead*

There are three harrowing stand-out scene in the book - Hassan's rape by Assef - an older Pashto boy, the stoning in the stadium and the final confrontation between an adult Amir and Assef. What should have been three brutally-honest scenes highlighting the sad reality of living in Afghanistan were little more than damp squibs. The emotional beats completely failed to land.

Perhaps that's due to the film's 12-rating. Maybe if it was fifteen or eighteen, it could have shown a lot more, and thus been more devastating to watch. But the 12 rating hampered it into either rushing or glossing over the most important scenes.

For example, Hassan and Amir win a kite-fighting competition. Hassan runs to collect the fallen kite as a prize for Amir. But Assef and his gang corner him and demand the kite. Hassan refuses. Assef rapes him. This is depicted mostly through allusion and some choice close-ups, but it is rushed, and thus the pathos didn't land. I'm not saying we needed to see a graphic depiction of the rape a la Oz or the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but they could have taken it further. Although I acknowledge this would have been problematic with the young actors.

As such, fearing for reprisals against the young actors, Paramount relocated them to the UAE, fully prepared to pay for them to grow up there. But Mahmoodzada had to return to Afghanistan due to visa issues. There he received death threats from both the Pashto and Hazara communities, and he had to seek asylum in Sweden.

Anyway, I would also make the same point about the final fight between an adult Assef and Amir. Again, it felt rushed without anytime for the emotions land. And I think this was a big faux pas considering this was such a climatic moment in the film. If anything the most emotional points came into the quicker scenes like after the rape Hassan returns to Amir still holding the kite. That was so sad.

But none of this criticism should be directed to the cast. Ebrahimi was very good as the adult Amir. He had to walk a fine line of a guilty man atoning for his past sins and a saviour saving Afghan children from a line of wretchery - a comparison aptly made within the film itself.

Perhaps I've been biased by reading the book first. If I had seen the film first maybe I would have left feeling more impressed. While it isn't inherently a bad film, it could have been a lot better.

The Count of Monte Christo review

 Number 572 on the top 1000 films of all time is the swash-bucking adventure 'The Count of Monte Christo.'

Based on Alexander Dumas' novel of the same name, 'The Count of Monte Christo' follows Edmond Dantes (Jim Caviezel,) a French sailor wrongly imprisoned due to a collusion between his so-called friend Fernand (Guy Pearce) and the corrupt magistrate Villefort (James Frain.) With the help of fellow prisoner Abbe Faria (Richard Harris,) Edmund swears revenge on all who wronged him.

I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. Before watching it, I had unfairly written it off as another tedious period drama, but I was pleasantly wrong.

This was an entertaining, fun-filled drama, albeit often straying into nonsense territory, but it was good fun nonetheless. Richard Harris only appeared in a supporting role, but he provided some much-needed light relief to what else could have been an overly-serious revenge story.

Guy Pearce was very good as the slimy Fernand. With friends like him, who needs enemies. And Jim Caviezel was likeable enough as our eponymous count. But can we just talk about his accent? I think it was supposed to be an English accent, but on many occasions it strayed back into his native American accent.

But both of them were far more convincing than Luis Guzman who played Dantes' loyal manservant Jacopo. He was completely out-of-place. He also stars in Narcos and Oz as gangsters and he was far more convincing there than here. Henry Cavill also plays Fernand's son Albert. And he was such a wet blanket, it's difficult to believe that Cavill is now one of the hottest men in Hollywood.

Nevertheless, the Count of Monte Christo was a fun, swashbuckling adventure albeit with awful accents and a miscast Luis Guzman.

The Machinist review

 Number 542 on the top 1000 films of all time is Brad Anderson's 2004 psychological thriller 'The Machinist.'

Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) is a machinist who hasn't slept in over a year. Dangerously underweight, he starts having a paranoid delusions as he wonders whether somebody is playing games with him. But are these delusions or real or not?

This is the David Fincher film that David Fincher never made. It's easy to draw connections to Fight Club, most notably, with the theme of insomnia. Of course, it's impossible for anybody to stay awake for a year, so this film is pure hokum. I was certainly willing to suspend my disbelief for a good film.

And the Machinist was a good film. Up until the final reveal, Brad Anderson drip-fed us twist after twist. You could never tell what was going to happen next. He certainly created an atmosphere of dread with creepy imagery. Case in point that freaky ghost-train scene. Seriously, what was that? Although I'm not sure how much it works now that I know the final twist.

But Anderson also made great use of colour contrasting a cold, industrial blue-light for Reznik's present-day scenes and a warmer hue for all his flashbacks.

One thing I will admit is that I have never been keen on Christian Bale's acting ability. Sure he takes method-acting to an extreme evidenced by the intense amount of weight he lost for this role, but I don't think he has great emotional range. Trevor Reznik was just one of the many dark, brooding, moody men that he plays. Sure, he does it well, but I want to see something else.

Nevertheless, the Machinist was an incredibly creepy, and well-directed thriller. Although it's obviously pure hokum. Who's up for a game of hangman? 

500 Days of Summer review

 Number 461 on the top 1000 films of all time is the romantic-comedy 500 Days of Summer.

Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a greetings' card writer in LA who is looking for his soulmate. He thinks he has found it in Summer (Zooey Deschanel) a woman who doesn't believe in love or soulmates. What happens next?

If there were a list for most underwhelming films of all time, 500 Days of Summer would be number one. If I were to describe this film in one word, it would be average. Sure it was entertaining enough, but it didn't blow me away.

Let's start with the comedy or lack thereof. For the most part, none of the jokes elicited much more than a little chuckle from me. The funniest part was the parodies of the Ingmar Bergman films where Tom imagines himself in The Seventh Seal and Persona. Since beginning this challenge, I have become overly-familiar with Bergman. Otherwise I was only snickering throughout, sometimes at the narration or Tom's friends saying how pathetic he was being.

Let's come onto Tom and Summer whose romance was the focus of this story. Both characters were incredibly insipid. Tom was extremely whiny and Summer felt more like a rough sketch of the girl-next-door rather than a three-dimensional character. I am unfamiliar with Zooey Deschanel's other work, but this role was nothing compared to JGL's role in previous rom-com 10 Things I hate about you.

If anything, the true star of the show Chloe Grace Moretz who co-starred as Tom's half-sister Rachel. Many times she acted as the voice of reason. She was only twelve at the time, but you could already see her promise as an actress.

500 Days of Summer also employed a non-linear narrative in an attempt to subvert expectations. We are shown the different days of Tom and Summer's relationship out of order. However, we didn't get enough time on each day before it cut to the next. This hardly made for a cohesive film.

500 Days of Summer was certainly watchable enough, but it was nothing more than that.

Hamlet film review

 Number 544 on the top 1000 films of all time is Kenneth Branagh's 1996 adaptation of Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh) is the crown prince of 19th-century Denmark. But when his father is murdered by his evil Uncle Claudius (Derek Jacobi,) Hamlet swears revenge. The huge ensemble cast includes Jack Lemmon, Julie Christie, Robin Williams and Kate Winslet.

There is a reason that film-reviewing will always remain my hobby rather than my profession. There so many films that are objectively-enjoyable, but I have no interest in. Hamlet is one of them. Most of that is down to how I have no interest in Shakespeare, but also in relation to Kenneth Branagah's direction.

Branagh's adaptation is the first un-abridged version with all the dialogue coming straight from Shakespeare's original folios. It has been transcribed verbatim. This means that there is a monologue every five minutes where characters would speak for whole paragraphs, but say very little. Some of the dialogue was needless exposition whereas others were purple prose. I'm sure I am sounding ignorant, but I had very little idea what they were talking about. And Hamlet was four-hours long. If the monologues were cut down, the run-time could have been easily reduced to one hundred and twenty minutes.

But also Brannagh made extensive use of extended long shots, having the camera rest on a focal object for much longer than necessary. This really killed off any narrative pace. It made the film feel much longer than four hours.

Although Kenneth Branagh has won an Oscar, it was for writing Belfast and not acting. Having seen Hamlet, I understand why. I was not impressed by his performance. It was so over-the-top.

I'm sure if you're a Shakespeare lover, you would love Hamlet, but I hated it. 

Dances with Wolves review

 Number 333 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Kevin Costner's 1990 epic Western 'Dances with Wolves.'

Lieutenant John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is a soldier in the US Civil War. In 1863, he is assigned to a military post in the American frontier. Instead of finding his assignment, he finds a group of Lakota. There everything he has ever known is flipped on its head.

I've never rated Costner much as an actor. He's very wooden and over-the-top. After seeing this, I don't rate him much as a director either. Dances with Wolves was a slow-plodding affair that had no business being three hours long. The film centres on Dunbar's relationship with the Lakota, but they barely feature until an hour in - which was also the first sign of tension.

How Dances with Wolves won the Best Picture Oscar is beyond me. How it beat out brilliant films like Awakenings or Goodfellas is even more stupefying. And don't even get me started on Costner being nominated for Best Actor. His constant narration slowed the film to an absolute crawl. He logs all his interactions with the Lakota in a journal. This is accompanied by the slowest, most monotonous, expository voice-over known to man. We see something on screen, and, for some reason, Costner felt the need to over-explain it ad infiniteum. 

It made everything very on-the-nose. It would have been much better if the audience had been left to figure things out for themselves.

Dunbar wasn't an interesting character to follow at all. I was far more interested in the dynamics of the Lakota tribe. It would have been more interesting if the film had been told from their perspective rather than from a tepid soldier who loves the sound of his own voice.

I did not care for Dances with Wolves. It was an overly-long, tedious affair. And how it was the 1990 Best Picture winner is a complete mystery.