Subsidiary Task – Film Review Research

Frozen River (tbc)
Homicide: Life On The Street’s Melissa Leo is literally on thin ice in this 2008 Sundancer, an atmospheric indie from writer-director Courtney Hunt thrust into the limelight earlier this year by two unexpected but deserved Oscar nominations. The slow-burning tale of a cash-poor mother-of-two who becomes a reluctant human traficker on the US-Canadian border, this gritty yarn – much of which involves two women gingerly driving across the frozen St Lawrence river with illegal immigrants stashed in the boot – at times resembles Thelma & Louise in a parka. As the tough, resourceful Ray, though, Leo quickly shows why she landed that Academy Award nod in a film that succeeds equally as a taut thriller and a female buddy movie. The Geena Davis to Leo’s Susan Sarandon is Native American Misty Upham, who plays Lila Littlewolf, a Mohawk who exploits her reservation’s frontier-straddling territory to sneak undesirables across it. Newly deserted by her gambler husband, Ray’s ideally placed to accompany Lila on these jaunts, nocturnal missions over treacherous terrain. Suspicion melts into grudging respect as the ladies learn they have more in common than they first thought. When things go tits-up, though, will it be every smuggler for herself? Hunt – whose screenplay deservedly picked up River’s other Golden Baldie nod – keeps the action spare and gripping, especially during a sequence when Ray and Lila discover they have accidentally left a baby out in the snow. By its close, though, her film has thawed into something rather different: a touching portrait of solidarity, self-sacrifice and simple human decency. Some might find this a disappointingly low-key ending to a story that had seemed headed in a more dramatic trajectory. Yet it’s in keeping with a feature whose entire ethos – from producer Heather Rae and DoP Reed Morano to cutter Kate Williams – is about sisters carrying the can.
Verdict:
Leo and Upham make an unlikely double act in a finely written, well-played film with a striking plot and setting. Hunt’s clearly a name to watch; Leo, meanwhile, can look forward to finally getting the recognition, and roles, she deserves.
( http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/frozen-river )

Public Enemies (15)
“I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars and you. What else do you need to know?” What, indeed? The short, fast life of ’30s American gangster John Dillinger is legend: he robbed banks that robbed the public, becoming a media sensation, a Depression-era folk hero and the fi rst Public Enemy Number One of J Edgar Hoover’s new FBI. After breaking out of every jail that held him, he was chased across America by G-man Melvin Purvis and at last famously shot dead by police outside the Biograph cinema in Chicago after watching a Clark Gable crime fl ick. We know this. Michael Mann knows this. And, throughout his “true story”, you can’t help feeling that Johnny Depp’s Dillinger knows it too. He’s a dead man walking from the moment we meet him. Meaning Mann’s movie isn’t a biopic, it’s an elegy – one long dying breath. When we do meet Dillinger, he’s already a Tommy-Gun-blazing master criminal, busting his men out of Indiana State Prison and roaring away under an epic blue-sky to a heroic soundtrack. A better title might have been The Man Who Shot John Dillinger. Like John Ford before him, Michael Mann loves to print the legend, turning cops and crims into duelling demi-Gods. Thing is, John Ford never printed the legend on HD. Armed with hyper-real, hi-def video cameras, Mann and Heat cinematographer Dante Spinotti make mythic movie-drama look like faux-documentary. This is not American Gangster. This is something else. Something much more startling in which ordinary scenes become electrifying experiences as Mann takes an old story and makes it feel new and unexpected. Framed in thrilling deep focus, Depp moves through familiar spaces – banks, restaurants, prisons, press conferences, wood cabins, cars, cinemas – that suddenly feel packed with fresh tension and atmosphere. Despite moving like a getaway wagon, the plot is the least interesting thing about Mann’s latest crime epic. This tale is really about the telling. Beyond the wild chases, daring jailbreaks and bank robberies, much of the movie unfolds in a weird twilight zone between docu-style reality and gorgeous mythmaking. Long before the breathlessly poignant final moments outside the Biograph, an eerie sequence sees Dillinger walking alone through a deserted police station. Better still is the surreal, funny scene in a packed cinema, where Dillinger sits sweating under the hot lights as a giant image of his face appears on screen while a public service announcement asks the packed auditorium to stay vigilant (“He could be the man sat next to you!”). It might be the movie’s best scene – try finding a better snapshot of the fame game’s seductive danger and dazzle. Public Enemies gets its coffee-shop moment, too, FBI hotshot Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and Dillinger staring at each other through prison bars in an exchange of sharp lines and even more piercing silences. Initially looking too physically small to play a violent bank robber, Depp fills out the role of Dillinger with effortless charisma, authority and – most important of all – star wattage. But this is not Heat: we never sink into the life of Purvis or his rivalry with the gangster. Exploiting Bale’s trademark intensity, Mann keeps him a cipher. Same goes for Billy Crudup’s unctuous J Edgar Hoover and Stephen Graham as the sociopathic Baby Face Nelson. Like Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice, these characters actually have almost no real personality at all. But as we watch them attack their work with brutal efficiency, we have to take them deadly seriously. Not least because guns in a Michael Mann movie really sound like guns. Each deafening blam from characters’ pistols, rifles and submachine guns reverberates through your body as if you’d taken the bullet yourself. Public Enemies’ gun battles erupt with sudden, visceral force – never more so than in a woodland shootout between Purvis’ FBI hit squad and Dillinger’s crew, lensed by Mann at the infamous Little Bohemia Lodge where it actually took place. Hot lead thwacks into tree bark. Desperate breath and muzzle smoke fill the night air. Bodies are wrecked by the carnage. But as ever in Mann’s world, the real heat around the corner is the romance that’s just out of reach. From Manhunter to The Last Of The Mohicans to Heat to Miami Vice, Mann’s career is a secret string of beautiful, impossible love stories. Here it’s La Vie En Rose Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard as Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette. It’s their story that gives Public Enemies its touching, tragic heartbeat, as she and Depp become two lost souls clinging to moments of a freedom they know can’t last. As the man says, “What else do you need to know?”
Verdict:
Call it the anti-American Gangster. And we mean that as a compliment. This superstar crime thriller emerges as something surprising, fascinating and technically dazzling. Don’t expect a Hollywood movie. Expect a Michael Mann movie.
( http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/public-enemies )

The Last House On The Left (18)
Horror remakes are like spots: they mostly target teens and no one asks for them. Still, Wes Craven’s 1972 exploitationer was ripe for an update. Made for buttons, dated and really not that great in the first place, it’s a remake of sorts itself, based on Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (in turn based on a medieval Swedish ballad). Craven is on board as producer for this rehash, which shares plot, structure and characters with his original: two teenage friends (Sara Paxton, Martha MacIssac) are sexually brutalised by an escaped con (Garret Dillahunt) and his gang of sadists before the tables are turned when the attackers unwittingly seek sanctuary with one of the girls’ parents (Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter). But beneath the surface, the two films couldn’t be more different. Because despite some shonky acting, ill-advised comedy and a dreadful score, Last House ’72 still felt raw, real – assimilating, distressing news footage from ’Nam to turn viewers stomachs. It was dangerous where this is safe, dirty where this is glossy, genre-breaking where this is generic, influential where this is derivative and political where this verges on irrelevance. Helmed with impersonal polish by sophomore director Dennis Illadis, Last House is a competently made rape-revenge thriller. It’s a tidy little Holly-horror, where motives are clearcut, morality is black and white and retribution is glib and guiltless. Tension is built with workmanlike efficiency and there’s generous gore. But there’s nothing really to fear – and despite reasonable performances, it’s hard to give a monkey’s about any of the characters. In isolation, it’s adequate but throwaway. In comparison with Craven? We’d rather feel sick than feel nothing.
Verdict:
A passable, pointless remake that’s as slick as it is empty. At least they scrapped the jaunty score and cop capers – but if you only watch one shiny, violent revenger this year, make it Taken.
( http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/the-last-house-on-the-left-1 )


I read through the above three film reviews to gain an idea of the conventions involved within the writing and structure. The first thing I noticed about each review is that at the top of the page next to the film title is a star rating. This gives the reader an idea about the content of the review before they begin to read it. The start of each review gives a brief outline of the film without revealing any of the surprise elements or plot ending. This allows the reader to first make their own decision on whether the film itself would be relevant to their personal preferences. The review structure leads on to discuss how well the film itself is constructed and the acting abilities shown within. The reviews also compare the movies to others of a similar plot line and themes. Each reviews the ends with an overall verdict of the films. The verdict itself seems to be quite blunt using many adjectives to enhance points that are made. All the verdicts are clean cut with a definite conclusive opinion shown about the films.

Specification for film review

- Must have a star rating.
- Must begin with a brief description of the film plot.
- The body of the text must contain a critical analysis of the film.
- The review must end conclusively.