The Graduate

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The Big Lebowski

He Went Out In Search of A Rug But Found So Much More

Director: The Coen Brothers
Release Date: 1998
Rating: 18
Running Time: 110 mins
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Actors: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Jullianne Moore

"The rug really tied the room together"

When his rug is stolen by criminals after he is mistaken for Billionaire Jeffrey "The Big" Lebowkski, The Dude (Bridges) sets off in search of the illusive man in the hope of finding the men responsible for this theft in the hope of being lead to his rug. Though from one problem spiralling into another, The Dude and his buddies Walter (Goodman) and Donnie (Buscemi) are roped into a conspiracy involving the kidnapping of The Big Lebowski's young newly wedded wife. Held at ransom for a considerable amount of money and after being sent her toe in the mail, The Dude and his friends have got to try and come up with away to rescue Mrs Lebowski before they're sent any other part of her, but also most importantly...find his rug.

There's no doubt the Coen's pride themselves on their humour, their dark yet at the same time effectively light hearted narratives, but most of all there's no doubt they pride themselves on laying out a complicated film riddled with twists and turns only really to find out the whole thing is a bit of a farce. Spun into a web of lies, deceit and foolishness, The Big Lebowski becomes a film that no one can fully understand what is going on at first viewing, but will soon turn out to be a fantastically spun comedy.

Jeff Bridges and John Goodman without a doubt make a fantastic double act as The Dude and Walter; who as a duo manage to find the line between perfect comedy, heart-warming bromance and lovers tiffs. It's obvious that the two have some deep problems: The Dude being a lazy unemployed stoner who will nearly always leave the house in just a dressing gown and underwear not giving a damn. And Walter, a short tempered ex Vietnam Vet who as a result will often act rashly and spontaneously resulting in some fantastic consequences, (throwing the blackmailers a duffle bag of dirty underwear oppose to money, smashing up a strangers car and of course biting off a mans ear). Both men share a common view that when all else fails, go bowling.

With the help of The Big Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore), The Dude searches for the missing Lebowski and thus begins a story like no other. For me, this is still one of the funniest films of it's generation and though you may not know completely what is actually going you, you'll enjoy it none the less.

9/10

Witness For The Prosecution

Guilt or Not Guilty?

Director: Billy Wilder
Release Date: 1957
Rating: U
Running Time: 115 mins
Genre: Noir/ Courtroom Drama
Actors: Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Marlene Deitrich

Billy Wilder takes on Agatha Christie after writing and directing this noir courtroom drama of a man, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) pleading his innocence for a murder he is accused of commuting. It will take the brain power of lawyer, Sir Wilfred Robarts (Charles Laughton), the most successful but angry barrister in England, to prove Vole's innocence whilst all the evidence builds up against them. But it may take more than a good lawyer for the jury as the evidence stacks up against Vole with an almost certain death penalty awaiting him.

Witness For The Prosecution like such films as 12 Angry Men before it, forces the audience to question their own thoughts and morality in proving a man's innocence or guilt. Though maybe not a film that would appeal to a large audience, especially given its age and plot, it is a film that would be able to grab any person and keep them thoroughly entertained throughout. Maybe not a Wilder film that has necersarily aged the best, it still holds up as a classic that audiences can still appreciate.

One of the most edge of the knife dramas from the 1950's, another masterpiece by the incredible Billy Wilder who has once again managed to find the perfect balance between the noir suspense and comedy.

8/10

Lucy

One Girl You Will Not Want To Mess With

Director: Luc Besson
Release Date: 2014
Rating: 15
Running Time: 85 mins
Genre: Sci-fi/Action/Thriller
Actors: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-ski Choi

If you haven't heard the name Luc Besson, you would surely be familiar with his work. He's director, screenwriter and producer who has been behind some big blockbusters over the past two decades: Leon, The Fifth Element, The Family, Taken, The Transporter, District 13; the list can go on and on. So now the auteur has decided to, what feels like, take on Limitless with this sci-fi thriller that shows us what could be possible if we could access 100% of our brain power, 10 times more than we can actually use.

Combining two stories, we begin with Lucy, a naive 25 year old girl working in Taiwan, who is conned into delivering a briefcase to a kingpin drug lord. Unaware of what might happen, Lucy enters into the nightmarish world and is consequently forced to be a drug mule after having a bag containing a new drug inserted into her and made to board a plane to Paris in order to successfully smuggle the drug into Europe. However, plans begin to change when the bag ends up leaking the drug into Lucy's blood, causing it to have unbelievable results. Lucy then looks for the help of neuro scientists and lecturer Morgan Freeman for some form of explanation as to what's happening, but it's not long before Lucy after only a few hours gains more knowledge than him and could potentially have the answers he's been looking for all his life.

Though this film has an exciting plot line, I feel like it almost tries too hard to confuse audiences and to be quite honest, at the end of the film I wanted to put it straight back to the beginning and watch it all over again, as there was just too much information to take it. There's no denying it was an incredibly interesting film that makes you think about life and how the mind works, but this film made mine work a little bit too hard and will take several viewings to fully understand everything Luc Besson is throwing at us.

Leaving most of the exposition down to Morgan Freeman, lecturing a roomful of students in Paris, we learn the brains capabilities in animals and humans a like and we're taught about the significance of the brains capabilities along with what could happen if this could expand. Through unique cinematography in action films, we're shown real life footage of animals and primates representing the evolutionary scale of what we've achieved.

Scarlett Johansson is left to the action side of the film and proves herself as a more than capable badass. After seeing Johansson in other films such as the Marvel series as Black Widow, the actress pushing thirty is certainly making her mark as a female action hero and still at quite a young age, taking the reigns from Angelena Jolie, Uma Therman and Sigornier Weaver previously, showing us that Johansson could just be the female action hero to look out for at the moment.Hopefully now she's settling into these rather badass roles, this won't be the last we see of Scarlett Johansson kicking some ass.

6/10

The Inbetweeners 2

The Boys Are Back

Directors: Damon Beesley, Iain Morris

Release Date: 2014

Rating: 15

Running Time: 95 mins

Genre: Comedy

Actors: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas

"You know why they call it down under? Cause that's where your face spends most of the time"

No idea of how to be cool, talk to girls or what they want to do in life, sounds like something any teenage boy can relate to, just add constant embarrassment, rejection and downright clueless behaviour to that and you've got the inbetweeners. More outrageous than ever, the boys are back and this time heading on "A mental gap year to Australia" and it's looking like this time it might actually go well for them...of course it won't, these boys have no idea what they're doing and landing them on the other side of the world,  the writers have made for a bigger catastrophe than ever before.

Having left sixth form and been on a lads holiday to Malia where each of the boys managed to strengthen their friendship, find love and maybe even become men, you'd think the writers would leave the poor guys alone and let them get on with their lives. But of course, them being the inbetweeners, this could never happen. Having almost finished their first year at uni, Will, Simon and Neil still haven't really grasped how to fit in with other people and maybe they would've in fact been better off staying together. So when Jay messages them explaining how he's got over his relationship with his ex and is settling into a life as a DJ in Australia with pick of the women when he wants, the other three want to get in on this luxury life and head down under, only to find Jay may not have been completely honest.

As you can probably guess, it follows a typical inbetweeners narrative, with Will thinking he knows best when actually has no idea, Simon constantly having girl problems, Jay covering up any truth to his life what so ever, and Neil. Though the film was entertaining and had it's moments, I just feel that it hasn't been able to match the TV series or even the last film and I think it may be because I felt like I wasn't seeing anything new, but rather just the previous antics but in Australia. The biggest problem was that it all just felt a bit rushed, and with a film there's the luxury of not having to cram it all into 20 minutes like the series. Perhaps if it slowed down a bit and it wasn't filled with just travelling then perhaps the story could've developed and delivered slightly better, but all the same it managed to be enjoyable.

I'd like to think this isn't the end for the inbetweeners, the cast has got almost ten years older than their characters now the writers could actually make the story jump ahead a few years rather than only a few months each time. I guess the possibilities are endless, but I hope the standard of comedy doesn't continue to dip and they can find the sort of humour energy that was there when they first started.

All in all, it was good, but just lacked that flare.

6/10

The Expendables 2

The Expendable Dozen

Director: Simon West
Release Date: 2012
Rating: 15
Running Time: 100 mins
Genre: Action/ 80's Revival
Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwartsnegger 

"You've been back enough, I'll be back".

I'm going to be honest, when I saw there was a new Expendables movie coming out I thought 'Here we go again', another stupid blockbuster that will feature little to no narrative or character development, cost millions to make and its primary aim would be to blow up and much stuff and kill off as many extras as it possibly can and have plenty more to franchise this film to death just so some of the action heros from the 80's could revive their career in a film for the fans. So when I finally had the guts to sit down to watch, I was not surprised at what I came to see. However, what I was surprised at was how much I actually ended up liking it.

I think the truth is at the end of the day, we don't want to sit down every time and watch 'Citizen Kane', 'Vertigo' or 'The Godfather Trilogy' because we just don't have the energy to absorb our minds in such fascinating and genius films that you've got to watch five times before you can actually begin to comprehend. Though perhaps that's hypercritical of me to say given that I do live for those sorts of films. I guess what I mean is, sometimes we all just need to switch our brains off, ignore the many plot holes and just enjoy watching everything that's shown on screen get blown up for 90 minutes.

I can't guarantee that you're going to be watching you're new all time favourite film, or even that you'll remember half of it in six months, but what I can guarantee is that you'll get to see Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger ripping the doors of a smart car and driving round shooting nameless terrorists whilst Chuck Norris walks around just not giving a shit. Stallone also, for a short period revives his role as the legenary Rocky Barboa as he puts aside the Rambo by tossing his gun away and taking on the so aptly named French villain Villain, in a brawl to the death.

As you can probably imagine it tried to take itself seriously, but at the end of the day just had to throw in all the clichés and cheesy one liners they could think of e.g. "I'll be back", "You're ass is terminated" and what's an 80's revival without "Yipe-kaya". If you ask me though, this managed to pull off another rare successful sequel, in terms of star power and finally getting to see Bruce and Arnie get involved in some of the action rather than just compete for who's got the biggest ego. I don't see why this franchise can't keep going as they can just keep replacing the story with new places and villans until maybe one day the indestructible action hero's decide to call it a day.

What I'm basically saying is, if you're expecting Francis Ford Coppola or Alfred Hitchcock, you're going to be disappointed, so just don't expect much but fighting and and dick measuring and you'll pretty much love it.

7/10

Taxi Driver

The Perfect Film

Director: Martin Scorsese
Release Date: 1976
Rating: 18
Running Time: 120 mins
Genre: Action/Drama
Actors: Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybil Sheperd

"I go all over. Don't make no difference to me."

If you know Robert DeNiro from Meet The Parents then you'll know a completely different side to the actor than the 'you talkin to me?' vigilante DeNiro that Scorsese introduced us to in 1976. Almost four decades ago and you would probably now barely recognise the actor, but even then it's fair to say DeNiro was on the top of his game. As a method actor, the Hollywood legend would give everything to a role, and after spending months driving taxis preparing for a role, Bobby left us with a truly memorable and fantastic performance as Travis Bickle - Taxi Driver.

When it comes to film directing Martin Scorsese just completley knows what he's doing, and whenever the opening titles emerge with "Directed by Martin Scorsese", you know that you're going to be in safe hands. There's so much to appreciate about Taxi Driver, from the way that writer Paul Schrader is able to manipulate a classic western plot line, into a more contemporary story fit to suit the life of a disturbed taxi driver during the darker years in New York City. The way that once again Bernard Herman can combine romance with a sinister and dark undertone to provide the perfect score for a films theme tune. But mostly the way that even though the pace of it is so slow but at the same time can allow for so much to happen during it.

It's a simple story but the way that it's centred around such a unique and complex character, we find ourselves entranced by what it has to offer. When isolated and disturbed drifter,Travis Bickle gets sent home from fighting in Vietnam, he finds himself returning to a very different home to the one that he left behind. Suffering insomnia and other traumas from the war, Travis becomes a full time taxi driver ("any place any time") and does his best to settle back into a life in civilisation, but civilisation is not what Travis thinks has greeted him, so instead wants to try and clean the streets of the scum that has taken them over.  "Hopefully one day a real rain will come and wash the scum from the streets."

However, it's fair to say that all the acting in this film is done incredibly well, even from Martin Scorsese himself who has the small role of a passenger who talks to Travis one day late at night after climbing in the back of his taxi. But what's so fascinating about the scene is that given Travis' persona and attitude to New York City in the 70's, once the passenger gets out we're left wondering if he was real or just Travis loosing his mind. And that's partly what's so ingenious about this film as their are so many readings that can be taken from it. Jodie Foster also manages to shine through in this film (at the age of 14) as a young girl who one day gets into Travis' taxi and turns out to be working as a prostitute after running away from home. It's a tough character for any actor to play, and at such a young age, she performs superbly.

If you haven't seen Taxi Driver you're still bound to know the famous "Are you talking to me" scene and if not, well I don't know where you've been. It's a film that's so dark yet at the same time still manages to be so poetic, and though our protagonist, Travis, seems so disturbed and someone who know one can understand, we still can't help but like him. There's something about the slow pace of this film that makes it so fascinating, and it's fair to say that this, much like many Scorsese films, focusses heavily on the character development as we see Travis reach his boiling point. There are parts where people will wonder where this film is going and what even is actually happening, but that's why it's so effective and works. It stands alone as a very unique representation of life in 1970's New York during the depression, and probably is one that many people can understand because of this.

Fantastically acted, and superbly written and directed. A true film that can be watched and watched and will always be able to give more each time.

10/10