For every story there is a beginning and so as such I feel that my blog should oblige with one to; quite a few years ago I started to review films as a hobby but never really ventured to posting them out to the rest of the world, but kept them confined to publishing them on Facebook, where the only really audience they got was close friends and family, for the past few years I've been studying Film Arts and this Summer just passed (2012), I finally graduated with my BA (Hons) degree, though that in its self might be deemed an achievement, its really only the beginning of my pursuit into the world of film and now is where I feel my real work begins with my writing and creating of short films, leading to features in the not so distant future (fingers crossed).
As like most folk the festive period brought my creative productivity to a halt due to the festive celebrations and spending time with the family and all round relaxation, and knowing that jumping back onto the work train can be tough after an extended period of time spent on the bench so to say, I thought that starting a blog about film - reviewing the latest out there and revisiting some older titles would be a great way to get back into the rhythm of writing without having that added pressure of jumping straight back into the deep end with my feature script. So the idea for this blog is to get me back feeling confident with my writing and the blog itself will contain movie reviews for every film that I watch, whether it be new or old or even something that I've re-watched on DVD/Blu-Ray; I will try to stay clear of spoilers, though any time these do appear I'll do my best to make sure you the reader are fully aware of any spoilers.
The reviews themselves might be varied in how much depth I go into each film, but at the very least I'll try to portray a clear opinion on each film and will no doubt 'rate' them out of 10;
- 1 - being atrocious
- 5 - average
- 10 - special
and everything in between for the rest ;)
Obviously I had planned on starting up this blog to coincide with me keeping up to date with all this years new releases and by now though I've been far too busy, I've still managed to catch 2 of this years big new releases; I won't review them on here as with the rest that will surely follow but feel I should have some kind of record of my year in film 2013 recorded on here, for your reference and my own;
I kicked off the year with Les Miserables; directed by Tom Hooper the man who brought us The Kings Speech, which I myself enjoyed quite a lot, this his follow up film gave me nothing but negative emotions; the film itself is a cinematic abomination, if it's not the bad and really quite inept camera work, Les Mis is full of annoying examples of lazy character acting, but most criminal of all was the soundtrack; the decision to record live was a disaster, through the film I found myself really struggling to hear anything, other than some really bad singing, Russell Crowe being at the front of the line for woeful vocals. Overall the film comes across more like a musical that's been put together for Children in Need featuring the actors from Eastenders; I'm sure the stage Musical is great, but this film was offensive to cinema. 1/10
The second film that I've seen this year was Robert Zemeckis's Flight, starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot that pulls off a miracle emergency landing after a technical fault onboard one of his flights as a results saving 100+ souls; Now the high point of this film, is in the sequence leading up to and including the flights dramatic descent; it really is something quite special and might be one of my favourite cinematic moments in recent years it's really just that good, as despite the fact you know he is going to pull it off and save so many lives you are just so gripped to every ounce of movement he makes and hang on everyone of his decisions/actions. Unfortunately the drama and story that follow can't live up to that early portion of the film, that's not to say the film itself derails, in fact Flight is actually a really solid drama with an interesting story, though there are moments that will irk it's audience with relation to Denzel's character. A good solid film, you could argue that the film feels like a disappointment because of its superb opening, but take a step back and look at the film as a whole and you'll appreciate that Flight is a 'good' film with one moment of greatness. 7/10
Well that pretty much sums up the beginning of this whole project I believe, I will be keeping my Letterboxd account up to date in line with this blog, as it will no doubt help me for one keep track on what I've been watching and two give me the kick up the ass I need to encourage me to write again; other than that hopefully you'll be seeing some reviews going up in the not so distant future; and if you want to keep up to date with the very latest of my film viewing activities you can following me at:
Letterboxd - kesslers_curse
Twitter - @kesslers_curse
P.s. my favourite film of 2012 was The Hobbit and worst was Killing Them Softly
