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Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Deliciously Gothic, immediately enticing.
Within minutes of this film starting, the bold red writing against a backdrop of a starry sky, SQURLS "The Taste of Blood" adding to the haunting atmosphere, this film draws you in.
All throughout the film there is a languorous sense of isolation, living on the outskirts of everything going on in the world. People have complained that there is not really much to drive the plot, but I believe it's supposed to put across how droll being immortal must become, and the acting from both Hiddleston and Swinton was languid and yet charismatic.
A few unnecessary pop culture and historical references have been shoehorned into the film, and it can be construed as pretentious at times (not by me I hasten to add, the languid pace and isolated backdrop drew me right in, I didn't want to leave), but apart from that, it has been very well put together.
Gamgi (2013)
Melodramatic but a solid disaster movie.
"The Flu" starts with a group of illegal immigrants being smuggled in a container from Hong Kong to Bundang, near Seoul in South Korea. Somewhere along the journey, a mutated form of Avian Flu kills everybody in the container except for one survivor, who escapes when two brothers open the container. The virus quickly spreads all over Bundung, a city of 472,000 people.
While this is happening, a rescue worker named Ji-koo is trying to get close to a woman called In-Hae he rescued from a crashed car, despite the fact that she has an incredibly uptight and vain attitude. He later discovers she has a child, a young girl named Mirre, who is left home alone and free to wander around Bundang with strangers as she pleases, despite being barely 10.
What "The Flu" does well though, is that instead of just focusing on how the epidemic is affecting the 3 central characters, it is able to show how the epidemic is affecting the rest of the city devastatingly as well, as opposed to "World War Z" which focused too much on Brad Pitt's character for the viewer to really get a sense of the magnitude of the virus. How the governing bodies and the general populace deal with this deadly airborne virus provide some of the best scenes of the movie, as the inhumanity that people begin to exude leads to some tense and horrific events.
"The Flu" could also be very melodramatic at times, more so in the second half of the film, which I found was beginning to turn quite ridiculous towards the end, but thankfully didn't go overboard and managed to conclude fairly solidly.
An overall pretty good disaster movie, that manages to examine the effects of the virus outbreak both on a larger scale and at a more personal level very well.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Much more mature than the first.
Since I have not read the books of The Hunger Games, I cannot comment on how well the movies follow them or not, but I really enjoy the movies. I thought the first one was great, though there was a certain lack of violence that made it feel tweeny. Catching Fire was a lot more serious and mature.
It continues from where the first film finished, Katniss and Peeta are on their victory tour, and of course the Capitol is not happy with how the last Hunger Games panned out. Their is civil unrest in all the districts, which results in the Capitol clamping down in a couple of rather fittingly upsetting scenes.
I was glad to find that the new director had gotten rid of the shaky cam the previous film had so much of during action scenes. The action is much more steady in Catching Fire.
Jennifer Lawrence is again outstanding as Katniss, who is suffering PTSD, and is a beacon of hope to the people of the 12 districts, even as she tries to back away from it so that her family and friends do not suffer for it. She comes off as naturally conflicted and scared.
Although Woody Harrelson and Lenny Kravitz are excellent as Haymitch and Cinna, I felt that Effie (Elizabeth Banks) stood out the most from Katniss' team. While in the first film she was just a lackey for the Capitol, in Catching Fire, she expresses a more human side as Katniss and Peeta are forced to go through their ordeal a second time.
Overall Catching Fire is much more mature than it's predecessor, with some emotional moments and stellar acting, and much more steady action sequences with the shaky cam technique done away with. I look forward to the final installment in the series.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Great fight scenes, but a weak villain.
Thor: The Dark World is packed with great action scenes, which is what you get when you add Alan Taylor to the mix. There is no shaky cam, which I find tends to get a bit disorienting, and the camera has you right in the middle of all the battles. There is also a lot of humour, more so than in the first instalment of Thor.
But I do have a couple of gripes about this film. At the start of the film, which deals with a bit of Asgardian history, Thor's grandfather hides the Aether where "no-one will ever find it." You'd think then that some human scientist wouldn't stumble across it very easily not even half an hour into the film.
Also, the villain Malekith was very disappointing. Christopher Eccleston did a good job, but there is no back-story to Malekith, his motives are never fully explained, the audience doesn't get a true sense of who he is, his power is underplayed (I thought) and all in all he's just a rather weak antagonist.
Finally, Darcy. Annoying, not particularly funny, adds nothing to the film, I just don't know why she's there. And the intern has as intern? Okay, whatever.
But apart from that, I really enjoyed it, great action, and a rather satisfying ending.
Gravity (2013)
A phenomenal technological feat.
I went to see Gravity at the IMAX 3D,and I was not disappointed. The size of the screen, coupled with the technologically magnificent use of the medium, staggered me. The use of occasional first-person camera views and the 3D camera really put you in the shoes of the characters. Although some might have found these scenes boring, I found the broad sweeping views of space, the utter silence, and the sheer scale of everything, a humbling experience. The CGI creates a sense of reality as opposed to a world of imagination.
The basic premise of the film is two surviving astronauts, after having their shuttle destroyed and being flung into space, attempting to survive. But it is not just floating around space the entire film, it's a heart-pounding thriller, as the characters are faced with almost continuous danger throughout the film.
There is a fair amount of symbolism and philosophical subtext to a lot of the film, much of it centered around rebirth and self-realization. Bullock and Clooney are portrayed as having hugely divergent reactions and outlooks to the crisis and on a deeper level, life itself. The debris could be viewed simply as just that, debris. It could be viewed as the tendency for humans to abdicate responsibility (out of sight, out of mind) on a global scale, but it is always at our detriment. Or it could be viewed on a personally psychological level, as things we push aside and avoid coming back to haunt us. Gravity is hugely multifaceted, as are it's characters, and as such every viewer will view it and connect with the characters differently. The script is very well written.
I highly recommend that you see this film in the full immersion experience of IMAX 3D, so you can fully appreciate the wondrous cinematography. But don't worry, if that's not an option, Gravity offers so much more. Quite easily my favourite film of the year.