Author: asf66

“One Large Popcorn, Please!”. Is a film review blog created by Tom Parry. His blog is similar to mine in that when we both review movies; we make sure to add our opinions along with commenting on the things that the movie is being praised or disliked for. His reviews tend to be longer than mine on average allowing himself time to give a fuller more descriptive summery of the plot. While this is helpful for a reader that might not have seen the film, I find that if you have already viewed the full movie the summery is a little unnecessary.

On Parry’s page he grades his films out of five stars, five stars being the best and one star being the worst. After viewing a few of his reviews I like this grading system and am considering implementing a similar idea on my page.  Parry also chooses not to stick with just doing stand-alone film reviews. In 2019 as the year closed, he had blogs for the best and worst movies of the decade along with T.V and ranking his favorite stand out actors and actresses of the decade. Along with this he reviews older movies that are current to the movies coming out soon. If a marvel movie is coming out soon, he will review another marvel movie that relates to it.

While I do enjoy the fact, he reviews older movies he has not reviewed a movie that was made before 2013. I think this is a shame because there are a lot of movies that came out before 2013 that are still relevant and exiting today. “One Large Popcorn, Please!”. Is a great film blog with a lot of clever insight to films all set on a very user friendly blog site. I plan to take the many things I liked about this blog and perhaps add some of them into my blog, while learning from the things I disliked.

https://onelargepopcornplease.wordpress.com

Joker, is directed by Todd Phillips and follows Arthur Fleck later known as Joker. The story follows Arthur and his rapid downward spiral into madness and mental illness. Early in the film Arthur is found working as a sidewalk clown spinning advertisements on a board. Life in the trash filled, gritty, and mean early 1980’s Gotham city coupled with a mentally unwell mother and separation of reality pushes Arthur into the world of crime and chaos and soon he starts enjoying it.

After seeing the film for a third time I came to the conclusion that the film can be described by two words. “Fantastic” and “disturbing”. I call this film fantastic because it is, the film is shot beautifully. Phillips utilizes long takes following Arthur up and down the grimy streets of Gotham allowing the city to act as a character unto itself. The acting from every major character is flawless and the score masterfully follows Arthur building up into his transition to the joker. Along with being a great film I found Joker to be quite disturbing. Instead of following the mold of previous Jokers where the Joker is just a crazy person with little reason of why he is like that. This film shows more than just a crazy man, Arthur is mentally unstable in every aspect of his life. He imagines relationships with people that he barley knows, going on imaginary dates with people he doesn’t know and getting tremendous laughter from people listening to his jokes who are not really there. Later he murders a few men on the subway and imagines himself having sex with his neighbor directly after. This was showing that in this man’s head murder for him was in some way sexually arousing, witch no most viewers is incredibly disturbing. 

After watching I found joker doesn’t push a message the film is not looking for you to leave the theatre with a positive or negative message. This movie only wants to study what it takes to get a person to that point and what it takes to be that kind of maniac. There were a few side story’s like the one with his mother and a possible relationship with Thomas Wayne and her own story of insanity that I thought were not necessary to the telling of the story. These story lines only offset the pacing and didn’t really lead anywhere. However, Joker is an amazing character study on what it takes to be crazy and I recommend you watch it on the biggest screen you can find.

Parasite, is a south Korean film directed by Bong Joon-ho. The story follows a lower-class family Living in the slums of Korea. As their son finds a job working for a rich family as an English tutor, he slowly works to get the rest of his family employed while not allowing the family they are working for to know they are related.

 Despite being a film, in a different language and set in a part of the world I know little about I found the story easy to follow. This isn’t due to any kind of simplicity of the plot, its due to how well the film is shot. The cinematography of this film is stunning the camera uses expansive wide shots and lets the movement of the camera determine the pacing of the movie. My favorite scene in the movie was when a large rainstorm hits the city. As the rain is falling the upper-class wealthy family looks at the rain as a thing of beauty taking in the view from the confines of their own house. As this is happening the lower-class family is seen running to a lower spot in the city to stop their house from flooding. This is just one example of how a scene without words can perfectly fill you in on both of these families and how they feel about the situation they are both in.

I loved parasite and I’m just truly thrilled that movies are making a comeback this year. It’s been a long time since I have seen a film as well made and well-acted as parasite. Even though you will have to read the movie through subtitles it takes nothing away from the film, and though great film making, and great use of camera work this film deserves every award it has been given and more.