Displaying Review 6 - 7 of 7 in total

• The perfect killing creature — for Alien
  Written by cahmaran on 18.01.2011

  Alien is a terrifying movie, that relies mostly on great special effects and a smart plot. Scott magistrally develops the haunted-house story about seven astronauts incarcerated in a spaceship with a perfectly lethal being. Not much about the personality of the characters is told in the beginning. We know that they're running into a dangerous, unknown place, from which they might not get out alive, but their emotions are unbearably controlled and restrained. As the menace of the Alien becomes clearer, we start to make a better idea about the character's actions and thoughts.

  The Alien itself is slowly introduced and not fully shown throughot the entire movie. It reminded me of Jaws. The effect it achieves is very similar too. The fear of the unknown, of a monster who is near but still far from everyone's eyesights, is wonderfully conducted. The creature is terrifying, but its purposes (he probably has none, as long as no regrets) and killing methods are never clear to us, as they aren't clear to the spaceship's crew.

  One of Scott's best insights is not to let the audience become too involved with the characters (except for Ripley, a courageous, strong woman, that smartly becomes the only survival of the struggle). In a very strange (but still crucial) scene, Harry Dean Stanton's character is said to be someone with no personality, who only agrees with what his partner tells him. It is, as we will become aware, a hint on the next sequences. He is the perfect first victim for the bloody creature, walking carelessly into certain death. The great achievement of Ridley Scott's direction is the feeling that we are part of the crew, that we belong to that atmosphere and are in Alien's unmerciful hands.

  The art direction and special effects are great, still bright and beautiful for a modern audience's trained look. A masterpiece, as long as its sequel, Alien is a horror movie that contradicts some cliches of the genre and that presents us a great character: the Alien itself, that made its way through the popular imaginarium right after its debut.

• Utter emptiness — for The Seven Year Itch
  Written by cahmaran on 23.09.2012

  Some movies grow old and, with time, become even better than they were at first. Unfortunately, that's not what happened to The Seven Year Itch. There are many things annoying in here and I'm just going to enumerate some. First: The way the main character keeps talking to himself over and over, as a resource to tell the audience what he thinks, what happens around him and to expose his own fears and internal conflicts. However, most of the time the story looks so naïve and plainly stupid that his thoughts seem nothing less than childish cries over an uninteresting subject.

  Second: Hoping to establish itself as a comedy, the movie spends too much screen time trying to lend some depth to the cheating problem. The real problem is that there is no cheating in here at all and the intentions of the two main character seem so unrealistic and pointless that, after some time, it becomes frustrating to watch their artificial interactions.

  Third: Most people watch this movie nowadays for one simple straight reason: the cool scene with Marilyn over the air vent. I must confess that's why I felt compelled to watch it, anyway. And the disappointment you feel when you finally get to that part of the movie is gigantic. It might be easier to point out the potential of the scene, now it has become the way Marilyn is almost always depicted anywhere. But I couldn't avoid feeling some great disappointment when I realized that the scene lasted something around 2 or 3 seconds and that the fame it had in that point of our history emerged only out of a general desire to see Marilyn's thighs. The scene in itself has absolutely nothing special and it smells as an unfinished project of something that could have been a great idea.

  Fourth and last: What was that terrible ending? Ok, I was actually able to understand the fact that Richard finally embraced the reality his fertile imagination had created and really believed, in the end, that the other guy he punched was an enemy. However, the movie tries too much to look like it has some meaning, some moral thought to share with the audience. Marilyn's character tells Richard that he is a guy that deserves to be treated with some jealousy. Why? What led her to that conclusion? And when he leaves everything behind to go after his wife and kid, his actions emulate those of someone who has passed through some really life-changing experience. But then, what was it again? What did he learn? We don't even get a hint about it. Actually, judging by his last frentic actions, the answer might be that Richard has become a mad man. And, yes, it could be an utmost irony from master Wilder. Well, if that's the case, I didn't get it, didn't buy it and didn't like it. There's just no point to any of it. And all I could feel was the screen had been filled, for almost two hours, with utter emptiness.