Movie #2: The Ghost Writer

While this film may have been better if it was actually about undead spirits using pencils, it was overall a pretty enjoyable film from Roman Polanski. Let's break this one down, Travis style.

Starting with the good: The cinematography in this film was quite nice, specifically the camera focus. One scene comes to mind where the camera focuses from one actor to another so flawlessly it's almost impossible to not have one's eyes looking at exactly what Polanski wants them to. This brings me to the actors themselves. Ewan McGregor does a great job here, despite how many Star Wars jokes I made about him while watching. It's nice to see him under the direction of a director like Polanski. Pierce Brosnan's performance, while good, will unfortunately be my segue into the bad.

The bad: Pierce Brosnan was good in this movie. All four lines he had. I'm pretty sure that the GPS unit in Ewen McGregor's car has more lines than Pierce Brosnan, who should have been a bigger character here. My only other complaint is that the symbolism of the storm brewing as more and more trouble was uncovered was a little heavy-handed for me.

This was a good movie.

Movie #1: Moon

Out on DVD and Blu Ray, Moon, the debut film of director Duncan Jones, is a Sci-Fi film a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. Staring Sam Rockwell as, ironically, a character named Sam Bell, Moon follows the last two weeks of an astronaut's three year job collecting energy from the moon. I don't want to spoil the plot, which is quite intriguing, so I'll simply say that "an accident" occurs which causes Sam to question the true nature of his mission.

The aesthetic of this film is probably its best accomplishment. The small moon base, with its predominately white interior, creates a cold, lonely, and almost sterile feel. This is contrasted by Sam's health, which throughout the movie becomes far from clean and white. Near the end of the film, when Sam begins to cough blood, it is almost painful to see the blood in his mask, for it is such an abnormality compared to the clean and spotless base around him.

This brings me to Sam Rockwell's performance, which is spot on. While the "Wake me when it's closing time." T-shirt and the fuzzy dice in the moon vehicle add to the effect, Rockwell perfectly shows the audience in the first few scenes that his job has become a routine, a very mundane routine. However, Rockwell's performance changes in a way I can't explain without spoiling the film, but I'll just say that there a many interesting developments with his character.

My only complaint of this movie is that because it is low budget, the CG effects become a bit distracting, especially in shots with the moon rover. These scenes tend to look a little like a video game.
Overall, this is definitely one to check out.

Declaration of Principals

Seeing as this is the first post, I'd like to explain my purpose:

1. To entertain and inform

2. To encourage appreciation of film

3. To show casual movie goers some films they may have missed
4. To give an indication of which films are worth seeing
5. To enlarge my already massive ego