“I attempted to get all of my pressing distractions outta the way before sitting down for this write up: I went to the grocery store, ate dinner, finished the movie I’d started before I’d left (Yes Man). And still I’ve been sitting here 20 min before even putting a single word on the page. I really gotta work on that. I mean, seriously, right now Im drawing on my wrist, planning out future ink. For the record, I’ve been wanting to get “”A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having”” somewhere, and since spying Ryan Reynolds’ wrist ink in Buried I’ve been toying with that thought. Okay, not helping matters, moving on.
I’d been dying to see this one. I am a big fan of Danny Boyle. Slumdog Millionare was one of the sweetest and most fun movies ever (and without thinking too hard about it, likely one of my top 5 “”best pictures””). Sunshine is at the top of my list for sci-fi disaster flicks. Much better done than anything that came outta that wave of ’em in the mid 90’s, even if I predicted every last play. And of course, as we discussed with Howl, I will see James Franco in just about anything, no questions asked. If nothing else, it’d be 90 minutes of his pretty. I was actually just Facebook chatting with my BFF (yet another procrastination source) and just from telling him that it was 90 minutes of Franco, he vowed to go see it with his mom. I gave him a heads up about the fainting reports with the gore. “”The wha?”” “”You do know what this movie is about, yeah?”” “”No, all I know is James Franco for 90 minutes”” Guess Im not the only one 😀
And now I have a purring kitty climbing on me, kneading my stomach. Ahhh distractions! Must. Keep. Writing!
This is one of those rare flicks where to some extent, I feel that it helps to know what’s going to happen. We all know that he gets his arm stuck in a rock, and Im pretty sure just about everyone in the theater knew that (spoiler alert) he cuts his arm off at the end. So when he wanders off on his own, feeling all the rocks around him, I was holding my breath until the mishap happened. I also feel that if I hadn’t known where it was all going, I might not have been so invested, or the stakes wouldnt have seemed to high.
As expected and hoped, Danny Boyle really does get major points for this undertaking. Im gonna try not to compare it too much to Buried, but its kinda hard not to since that was this year’s other take-a-hot-actor-and-shoot-an-entire-movie-of-just-him-in-a-small-space movie. The magic formula to make this type of film is really difficult. It could all go so wrong so easily. But Boyle was able to find that balance, and it was different than Buried (not that they really woulda had the opportunity to steal from each other since they were done around the same time). Buried had a heightened suspense and everything was in that box. 127 Hours was a little more drawn out (it was a longer time period) and had lots of flashbacks and hallucinations. With Buried, you didnt know how it was gonna be resolved. 127 Hours, you knew the end, but you didnt know the mental journey he’d take. Okay enough comparison.
So back to Boyle, any promo for this movie that had his name also had a Slumdog Millionaire stamp next to it. And while I totally understand why (hello Oscar success much?), this had a much more Trainspotting vibe. Yes, the subject matter was _very_ different but the surrealism was there. Or at least from what I remember of Transpotting. Its been a while since I’ve seen it. I actually swung by Best Buy on the way home since I had a coupon that expired today, and was hoping to use it on that flick, but they didnt have it. I’ve got it on VHS, so I’d planned to upgrade it, and thus get an excuse to watch it since I try to avoid watching non-queue movies when Im backed up. I ended up with Charlie’s Angels (justifiable because Im trying to build my Sam Rockwell collection) and Dead Snow (Nazi zombies!). Aaaaaand Im going off track yet again.
James Franco does not disappoint. I adored his character–geeky, goofy, awkward yet confident, sweet and charming yet selfish. He definitely had the heart required to carry the film, and did so quite gracefully. I skimmed thru this week’s EW, and it had some of its really early Academy Award predictions (my cue to start the yearly awards obsession). It had Franco listed as a frontrunner for a nod (though Colin Firth is the frontrunner for the win, very much deserved) and he’s not the only one of my absolute faves in line for their first nod. Christian Bale has a really good shot, and Sam Rockwell has a smaller but still possible chance. But I wont go into that quite yet, we’re just talkign about 127 Hours which actually showed up on a lot of the lists in that article. Still a little early to say how much I support it in each of the categories it was mentioned, but I have no reason to complain about it at this juncture.
Oh, just a quick word about the (spoiler!) amputation scene. There were reports of people fainting during it. I say they were just wusses. True, I do worship Quentin Tarantino and follow Eli Roth on Twitter so you can say Im a bit desensitized to such things, but I think it was more hype than anything else. You want a really cringe inducing tale? Read Chuck Palahniuk’s short story Guts. Although I will say it was cool hearing audience reactions to that big scene and the few teases leading up to it. However, I think it woulda been a much more surreal experience to see this in an empty auditorium. Im seriously tempted to go to a late show in a couple weeks and see it under those conditions.
127 Hours – \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/