Ted

Ted (2012)
Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Screenwriters: Seth MacFarlane & Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild

Like Family Guy, also created by Seth MacFarlane, Ted is very funny in places. However, it's one and only mission, for which it pulls out all stops and sacrifices everything to achieve is to make you laugh. Oddly enough considering the type of film it is and it's creators, it feels very earnest in this mission, and it bombards you with all types and forms of humour. Subtlety is definitely not the strong point of this film. You will find some of these jokes funny, but unless you are the most ardent fan of Family Guy, some jokes will definitely miss the mark. For me, there were several mildly offensive racial slurs that crossed the line just a bit too much, while there was an extended fight scene that just made me wince a lot.

But that sounds a bit too harsh. Ted is still a film with a huge, joking sense of fun and its appeal is obvious. Headed by Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis who manage to steer on the right side of annoying. The concept is simple yet brilliant: a man's childhood teddy bear has grown up with him. This film covers the themes of maturity and growing up, all the while being startlingly immature. Watchers of Family Guy will also recognize MacFarlane's familiar brand of humour, and the film is full to the brim with pop culture references, and sheer randomness in places. Joel McHale is one of the standout performances as Kunis' boss and it is unfortunate that he is given so little screen time as he is all but left out in the second half. The film also feels self aware and self-deprecating, with especially enjoyable references of Ted sounding like members of Family Guy. Seth MacFarlane is also excellent as the voice of Ted. And the film manages to mix the blend of drama and comedy almost perfectly, despite an emotional conclusion that was perhaps a bit too overwrought with emotion.

Ted feels like a breath of fresh air, and superior to most recent stale comedies. 

3½/5

Before Sunset

Before Sunset (2004)
Empire 500 (2008): #110
Empire 301 (2014): Not Included
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenwriters: Richard Linklater & Ethan Hawke & Julie Delpy

This is a rare and beautiful thing. A sequel that feels better than the original and entirely necessary, not a tacky, moneymaking add-on but something different and unique. The distance of 9 years between the films clearly helped, as did the obvious passion of the three main creative leads, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy, for the project. The film starts with a playful and funny reminder of the original film through the eyes of Jesse, who has published a book about it. Nine years later, the setting (Paris instead of Vienna), the format (lots and lots of conversation)  and the type of encounter remain similar, but Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) have moved on. Jesse is seemingly locked in an unhappy marriage, while Céline has been hurt numerous times in her love life, to the extent that she has given up trying. Nine years later, the characters feel wiser and more grown up than on their last outing, and the stakes and urgency feel much higher as both have made serious commitments.

My problem with the original film was despite the conversations and the characters, there felt like a lack of narrative, stakes or urgency. This film feels different and rectifies that, as it firstly is far more condensed, playing out in real time The conversations are also just a bit more personal and real, due I guess to the fact that Hawke and Delpy wrote the script themselves with Linklater. There is more tension and conflict between the two characters this time, while the central 'will they, won't they?' dilemma feels more pressing and interesting. We also know these characters already so the film has the liberty of being able to instantly go into the meat of things. For all these reasons, this film takes a dramatic step above Before Sunrise.

As the film races towards the end, another sequel feels inevitable and needed. I still haven't seen Before Midnight, but I will sometime soon, and I am looking forward to completing the Before trilogy a lot more now that I have seen this gem.

5/5 Stars

Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise (1995)
Empire 500 (2008): #200
Empire 301 (2014): #233
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenwriters: Richard Linklater & Kim Krizan

Richard Linklater is unquestionably one of my favourite directors, and Boyhood and Dazed and Confused are two of my favourite films ever, so I was looking forward hugely to tackling his Before trilogy. In Linklater's films there are never any forced stakes, the world is never saved and nobody dies. They tend to be gentle and meandering chronicles of a certain point or period in somebody's life. They delight in and relish the slowly unfolding pace at which they take place, and there is no forced meaning or point other than simply being there. The nature of these films also reflect the kind of people Linklater portrays, the laid back, Generation X 'slacker' or drifter of an artistic bend, and yet not quite sure of what they want to do with their life. I write this having only seen Before Sunrise which I liked, and Before Sunset, which I loved, trying to work out why Before Sunrise didn't quite capture me, in the same way that his other films have.

The premise of Before Sunrise is basic and timeless: two strangers meet and bond overnight in a strange city. Despite this, it is clearly not a conventional film, and it is arguably little more than an extended conversation, although that doesn't detract from it at all. Pretty much the only two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) both have their own distinct and unique personalities and the developing romance between them has several touching moments, such as listening to a song in a record shop, each of them stealing glances at each other in turn but turning away quickly, not wanting to be caught. It is a touching film with a lovely ambiguous ending, but for me, it became just a bit too boring, for want of a better word by the end. I made the mistake of watching this film with my laptop and several times my desire to browse the Internet and google something overcame my desire to watch the film. I think the problem with this film, at least in my mind is that there is quite frankly nothing besides the slightly repetitive feeling musings of Jesse and Céline. The low stakes involved aren't necessarily a problem, as Linklater himself showed in Dazed and Confused and Boyhood, but in place of high stakes I feel there needs to be something to interest the watcher, to keep him fixated and for him or her to focus upon. In Dazed and Confused for instance there are a large number of enjoyably different characters in a large number of enjoyably different situations, while in Boyhood there is simply the pure unadulterated pleasure of watching Ellar Coltrane slowly develop from a boy to a man.

In Before Sunrise however, I don't feel there is enough to maintain our interest for the whole film. It serves as an enjoyable introduction to Before Sunset which I found more easily watchable and compelling due to our preexisting knowledge of Jesse and Céline and curiosity of who they have turned into nine years down the line, a more tight and contained time frame, more tension between the two and slightly higher stakes, which I will hopefully go into more detail on in another post soon.

3/5 Stars

Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire (1996)
Empire 500 (2008): #420
Empire 301 (2014): Left Out
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Director: Cameron Crowe
Screenwriter: Cameron Crowe

Before watching this film, I had only seen one Cameron Crowe film, the brilliant Almost Famous which remains one of my favourites. So my expectations as I pressed play were perhaps unfairly high. There are one or two fantastic moments in this film, and the cast are outstanding across the board, but ultimately it doesn't feel tight enough and at least for me, something doesn't quite hit the mark.

It is still a very good film, expertly acted by everyone, especially the supporting roles of Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) who provides the film with some much needed emotional depth and Rod Tidwell, (for which Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Academy Award) as the football player who sticks with Jerry Maguire when seemingly everything is lost for him, and the emotional payoff at the end of the film for all three of them is genuinely stirring. As we follow Jerry Maguire, who gets sacked from his high-paying job as a sports agent for the sin of writing a mission statement about the lack of honesty or respect in his business, losing everything besides his one client and one assistant, we become personally attached to him, due in no small part to the effort of Tom Cruise, who stays on just the right side of smarmy and know-it-all to be sympathetic. The film also avoids an easy cliché, shown especially in the romance between Jerry and Dorothy.

However, the film feels at times a bit too flabby and contain some meaningless characters. Chief among them is the babysitter of Dorothy's son who despite being completely meaningless to the advancement of the plot is given a lot of screen time, and doesn't add anything at all to the overall experience of the film. The long film also occasionally meanders a bit too much at certain points. A very good film, but in my opinion not quite as good as Almost Famous, which is a great movie.

4/5 Stars

Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Empire 500 (2008): #433

Empire 301 (2014): #117
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

Director: Gus Van Sant

Screenwriters: Ben Affleck & Matt Damon (Oscar Winners)

Good Will Hunting is a film about friendship, loyalty, genius and figuring out who you want to be. It aims to move, and it does. Starring and written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, it is easy to forget they were not the major Hollywood stars of present and the gamble it must have taken for them to be cast in the lead roles by a studio. Both give fantastic performances, as the struggling genius and his most loyal friend, but the cast is extremely strong all around. Robin Williams (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) as the psychiatrist provides the emotional heart of the film and gives it depth, while Stellan Skarsgård, as the college professor that pulls Will Hunting out of his slump. Both provide some fantastic moments of drama and their broken relationship also serves as an interesting subplot, while Minnie Driver as Skylar is Will’s emotional core and is the synthesis of his past and present and his wants and needs, having fun with Will’s buddies and also being rich enough to be able to pay for her own college education. Crucially, all the characters feel ‘real’, and flawed but relatable, and there is no standard villain, just Will Hunting battling with his own ethics and conscience and attempting to avoid being shaped by those around him.

In that respect, Good Will Hunting feels very similar to Boyhood. Growing up, Mason is struggling to work out who and what he wants to be, while avoiding the attempts of others to shape him into a projection of themselves, and a similar theme runs through Good Will Hunting through the power struggle of Lambeau (Skarsgård) who is absolutely determined that Will seizes his potential for the sake of his own ego, and Maguire (Williams) who Will shares a background and upbringing with and sees him as projection of himself. This conflict proves to be the core part of the film, and (spoiler alert) in the ending in which Will drives off to California to try and reconcile with Skylar shows he has uprooted himself and moved on from his past, while simultaneously refusing to be shaped or changed by anyone else but himself, as he drives off into the distance for his own personal reasons, which have nothing to do with Lambeau or Maguire.

It would have been so easy for this film to have become overly dramatic or overblown and to have been a clichéd mess, but the performances, the directing and the screenplay all manage to avoid this, and pull it together to equal something emotional, profound and greater than the sum of its parts. The standout scene is suitably enough between the two screenwriters, Damon and Affleck as Affleck tells Will how lucky he is to have his ability, encouraging him to embrace his future, acting as the turning point for Will’s emotional state, and releasing all the emotion that has been steadily and masterfully built up in the audience. A lovely film

4½/5 Stars

My Top 10

This list is very liable to constant change as I update my taste, watch new films and reevaluate old ones, but this will be my top 10 films at the present moment, which should serve as an idea of my taste in films generally. You can probably tell that I like coming of age films. And Richard Linklater.

10. Memento
9. Minority Report
8. Moonrise Kingdom
7. Pulp Fiction
6. Boyhood
5. The Godfather
4. Almost Famous
3. Trainspotting
2. Dazed and Confused
1. The Shawshank Redemption

My Goal

Hello Internet,
I am a 15 year old, living in London who has had a lifelong fascination with creative media, and in the past year or so, films. I have found myself in a unique position of having watched very few of the 'classics' of cinema's past, and so I am hoping that this blog will motivate me to watch as many films as possible and to provide a fresh insight and record my thoughts on a film while they are still fresh. I don't particularly have any rules but will be using certain lists, such as the 'Empire 500' as a rough guideline as to which films I watch, as well as any more recent films I see, and will mostly be using my Amazon Instant account to watch the films.
Thanks, Nicholas