Fall 2014 #3: The Usual Suspects (1995) - Bryan Singer

Okay so I may have watched this a few weeks ago but I think I finally have time to review it. The Usual Suspects, the 1995 Neo-Noir Crime thriller by Bryan Singer tells the incredibly well-written story of a con-artist who recounts how he and four other criminals ended up being a part of heist that ended in the deaths of the other four. Kevin Spacey plays Verbal Kint, who, after surviving a massacre on a boat where he and his gang failed to destroy $91 million in cocaine after they were blackmailed into doing the job in the first place, is telling his story to an FBI agent in exchange for near-total immunity.

If that sounds complex it’s because it is.

The title of the film is inspired by the famous line from Casablanca, “Round up the usual suspects.”

When Verbal begins his story, he explains that he and four other criminals met one night when they were rounded up as suspects for a gun-shipment robbery, they decided that their will never to rat the others out would make them an elite team of con-artists. They get revenge on the cops by outing them as being corrupt, busting them for helping a smuggler get his drugs into New York City by stealing the drugs themselves.

The five then move to LA, where a series of miscommunications lands them with the lawyer Kobayashi, who says he works for Keyser Söze, an infamous yet mysterious criminal who has the power to kill them all if they disobey him. Their task is to intercept the delivery of $91 million in cocaine, but when they get to the ship and kill all of the Hungarian gang involved in the drug deal, a mysterious agent approaches and kills all of them except for Verbal. Being the sole survivor, he agrees to tell his story in exchange for immunity.

The film’s twists and turns are worth every moment of watching it, because it’s impossible to tell as a viewer who is lying and who is closest to solving the case. Kevin Spacey gives an amazing performance as Verbal Kint, a dim-witted man with cerebral palsy.

I recognized so much of the film just from its effect on pop culture. TV shows, movies, everyone has played with this idea of tricking the audience so fully into believing one thing and then revealing another. I was so thrilled while watching it that when the ending finally happened I just froze and slowly dropped my jaw. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes films that present puzzles for their viewers to solve.

The film is #23 in the IMDb Top 250, winning Oscars for Best Screenplay and Kevin Spacey for Best Supporting Actor. 

Day 13: January 15th, 2014: The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Frank Darabont

I’m not going to make a grand statement about how The Shawshank Redemption is a film that regularly comes up in conversation and is often referenced in pop culture, but there is something about this elusive film that kept it in the back of my mind up until I made this list. Probably because it ranks as THE #1 on the IMDb Top 250, so that must make a big deal, right? Also I realized that out of the 15 films on my list, 3 of them were from 1994 (Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption). Coincidence?

Number 1. The highest rated film of all time (according to IMDb users, who obviously have their own biases). Some bromance between Morgan Freeman and some random guy who I guess never acted again? Tim Robbins? Oh wait… turns out he has an Oscar from Mystic River (2003)… sorry Tim. Anyway, I underestimated The Shawshank Redemption, and thank goodness, because it made the film all the more amazing.

The Shawshank Redemption is the story of Andy Dufresne, who is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. He claims to be innocent. There he meets a man known as Red (Morgan Freeman), whose talent is smuggling contraband into the prison. Their first encounter is when Andy asks Red to smuggle in a rock hammer, since he has an interest in geology. What follows are decades of friendship and bonding that allows Andy to remain hopeful despite his depressing situation.

Red is the narrator, and he believes in giving up all sense of hope in order to survive the crushing atmosphere of prison life. The order, the monotony, those things are ingrained in Red. He worries about Andy’s inability to give up on having a life outside of the prison.

But during their years in the Shawshank State Penitentiary, Andy becomes valuable to the warden and the guards because of his successful banking skills. He soon becomes entrapped in the warden’s plans to launder money by having the prisoners do manual labor jobs in the town. While working for the warden at first has its perks, it quickly turns into a lose-lose situation for Andy.

Most critics consider the film’s greatest asset to be the accuracy with which it depicts prison life. It’s the 90s version of Orange Is The New Black I guess? And Andy does resemble Piper a little bit, with his educated background and his propensity for standing out in the prison world. Not to mention his dreams of getting out, while most of the others seem to have accepted their fates.

The Shawshank Redemption didn’t actually do that well when it was released in 1994, but after being nominated for 7 Oscars, word of mouth helped it become one of the top rented VCRs of 1995.

I’ve seen A LOT of classic films in the past two weeks, but I think The Shawshank Redemption might actually be my favorite of this entire endeavor. The ending is truly unforgettable, and the way it makes you appreciate something as basic as freedom is very powerful. But the film goes even deeper and proves that a man in prison can be as free as a man in the real world, and the same goes with the feeling of being trapped.

Jurassic Park (1993) - Stephen Spielberg

I’m not in favor of 3D rereleases. They’re a cheap way for studios to make a ton of money with minimal effort, and I had never seen one before. That said, when I saw the original trailer for the Jurassic Park 3D rerelease, I decided then and there that I had to see it.

I can’t even explain it in words. There’s something so magical about Jurassic Park that I can watch it on repeat and never get tired of it. It’s so big, it’s so fun, it’s so adventurous. Jurassic Park taught me that movies can do anything.

Jurassic Park was the highest grossing film of all time when it came out, passing 1982’s E.T. and eventually losing the title to 1997’s Titanic. Universal told Spielberg he had to make the film between 1991’s Hook and 1993’s Schindler’s List, because they knew he wouldn’t want to make it if they let him do Schindler’s List first. After over two-years of writing the script, casting, and designing the dinosaurs, they filmed in Hawaii, California, and Arizona. 

To be honest, I hadn’t seen the film all the way through in at least… okay about a year. This time I was watching as a film student, but almost instantly I was brought back to that childhood state where the science is all plausible and the dinosaurs are real. 

The shot of the cup still gave me chills. It has a visual power that I just can’t wrap my mind around, because it means the action of the film is about to begin. The T-Rex is coming. The raw, unbridled power of mother nature and evolution that has not set foot on this planet in 65 million years is headed this way. You can’t manufacture that kind of power.

And the more I watched, the more I understood the film and why it struck a chord with me as a child. Aside from inspiring a dinosaur obsession that lasted probably into my teen years, Jurassic Park is a film about the power of filmmaking. Spielberg has said that he altered the book version of the park’s creator, John Hammond, from a ruthless businessman into a friendly grandfather figure, because he relates with the character. And it suddenly clicked that the argument Hammond makes for why he creates the dinosaurs is the same one Spielberg would have made for using computer animation for the dinosaurs in the film. If the technology exists, man has a right to control it. Jurassic Park defied every filmmaker in the business who thought computer animation was the debasement of film, that those who used it did not know how to use it correctly.

Okay it’s sounding farfetched, but stay with me. Spielberg had to discover several new types of special effects techniques to create the dinosaurs. His work was considered revolutionary, and inspired a whole list of big blockbuster-directors like Peter Jackson and Stanley Kubrick. The key difference that the film illustrates is that Hammond has no respect for the kind of power he is wielding, and he is therefore punished for trying to maintain control by losing control of everything, and almost losing his grandkids. He is mad for power, and as Dr. Malcolm explains, “Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun." Spielberg uses Hammond’s failure to explain that nature is a powerful force that needs to be handled with care. A balance between technology and respect, the same way Spielberg balanced computer generated graphics with old-fashioned, hand-made latex dinosaurs. 

Okay, film analysis aside, the experience of watching Jurassic Park was just as spectacular as it was the first time I ever saw it as a kid. I think it’s easy to argue that Jurassic Park isn’t as action-packed as it could be, but that’s what the sequels are for. This movie finds success in introducing this world that humans have very little understanding of. Audiences were seeing lifelike dinosaurs for the first time in their lives. We had so little understanding, in fact, that paleontology and the study of dinosaurs have changed so much since the film’s release in 1993 that Jurassic Park 4 is going to have a hard time deciding between the newer discoveries of dinosaurs and the science of the first film. 

My favorite scene by far is the raptors chasing the kids. Nothing shows character development like Lex, the granddaughter, pushing her brother through to the kitchen and outsmarting the highly terrifying velociraptors. Just a few scenes ago we saw her naïvely swinging a flashlight at the T-Rex, and now she is risking her life to lure the raptors away from her little brother. Even better, we see the shocking intellectual power of the raptors, who learn to open doors in a matter of seconds? Just awesome.

Since unfortunately I can’t go on forever, I want to end with this gif. The film is a question of man’s so-called "destiny” to control mother nature. The whole film pits the ideas of science and nature against one another. Evolution versus genetics, dinosaurs versus humans, the whole thing is a giant struggle of our scientific development to outsmart mother nature, and unfortunately for the lawyer, Samuel L. Jackson, a security guard, and a crazy short-shorts wearing hunter, we lose. The scientists say all the dinosaurs are female, and yet Dr. Grant finds eggs in the enclosure. John Hammond assures the guests that he has everything under control, and it’s really the dinosaurs that take control of the park. As science marches on, Jurassic Park is a reminder that not everything is so easily bent to our will, and when suddenly the earth’s most powerful reptiles are thrown in the mix, well, “that’s chaos theory.”