KEVICC Courier Winter 2022

Page 18 at Page 27 Quite ironically, I’m going to start this review with a criticism of the very concept of film reviews – or any reviews for that matter. A review is basically someone else’s opinion on something. In this case, a film. Someone judges a film as good or bad and you as the audience are expected to accept this as truth because The Reviewer is either deemed ‘an expert’ in their field or someone with ‘considerable standing’ whose opinions must be taken on as gospel over others. Basically, they’re better than you so you must believe them because they’re right and you’re wrong. So there. This is garbage. At the end of the day, they’re just a person with an opinion on something and their opinion is no more valid than yours. Just because I think Inception is brilliant doesn’t mean it actually is. Similarly, my disdain for The Fast & the Furious franchise doesn’t mean those films are bad, it’s just that I think they are. What’s to say my opinion is more valid than yours? Do you enjoy them? Good for you. However, the what really puts you on an equal footing with The Reviewer is this: can you say WHY it’s good or bad? If you don’t know WHY then it’s probably because your interests or beliefs are being dictated to by others and you’re just ‘following the crowd’. If you say ‘it’s because [insert experts name] says so’ then you’ve become nothing but a lemming following someone else without knowing WHY. And that’s my problem with reviews because that’s exactly what Film Reviews and reviews of any kind basically do: encourage a herd mentality. ‘This is what you must like, as I have spoken’. We give so much credence to the opinions of Mark Kermode, Kim Newman and the like, that we agree with them because of who they are and their status in society. This isn’t unique. The same could be said of anyone who professes an opinion that is held as gospel, even – dare I say it at the risk of making my lessons far more difficult – Teachers… Anyway, I really have digressed hugely here – probably so much so that Mr. Cotton will probably censor this review hugely due to the excessive word count. But onto the review of a film you are free to totally disagree with as long as you’ve watched it: Inception. In my opinion, it’s a brilliant film. The narrative is complicated enough to keep you hooked but not so complicated that you stop watching. Synoptically, set in the near future, there is technology that enables you to go into other people’s dreams and extract information from them, like a form of dream espionage. However, is it possible to not just take something ‘out’ of someone’s mind, but also put something ‘in’? This is the main premise of the film. It’s not based on a sequel, a comic, a TV show or a remake – it’s a totally original concept. For Hollywood, this is huge. They don’t take risks, but the Director Christopher Nolan played his cards right by having the huge success of The Dark Knight to back him up so he could make Chilton vs Charlie Mr Chilton & Charlie Andrews-Came take on the same film fact, maybe only Hitchcock has previously. We study the film in A Level FilmStudies. It’s amazing how every little aspect of the mise-en-scene, sound and other elements of film language have been carefully tailored for a specific reason. The level of detail that we can go into the film is quite staggering, but you’d have to join the A level Film class to get into that. It’s way too much detail to get into here. But the fact that a mainstream Hollywood Blockbuster can have that level of complexity and still be a success at the box office – a film which was as an original concept as that – is quite something. The music by Hans Zimmer is superb and manipulates the mood of the audience fantastically. There is a stellar cast, with Di Caprio in fine form and his casting works perfectly in manipulating the audience. If you’ve seen it and you don’t understand that last sentence, that’s because you were manipulated. Boy, I’m really taking risks with this one. And then there is the ending. I won’t mention anything else about that as it would be a HUGE spoiler, but you have to watch it and then discuss WITH THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN IT what you think the resolution is. At the end of the film – just as with many of the things I ranted about earlier – it’ll probably come down to what you choose to believe. Mr Chilton's Rating: ***** Now, I've been meaning to watch this film for a while, but when I heard that it was Mr Chilton's favourite movie, I thought "Uh oh, this is gonna be the worst thing I have ever laid my eyes on '' but I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, the concept is very well done. The idea of being able to go into others' dreams is such an exciting idea, bending reality to your whim, with things like "Dreams within dreams' ' adding to the tension and spectacle in the third act, as we've got different setpieces all happening at the same time, but at different speeds. It's executed very well, with it tying into Cobb's story with his wife as well. That's very tragic; her being in a dreamy reality so long she can't tell what's real and fake, and how the guilt of that weighs on Cobb. The rest of the characters are just fine, with good performances that hide characters that otherwise don't have a lot going on. What's really distracting is that half the cast are in The Dark Knight Rises, another Christopher Nolan film we watched recently. Overall, I think the film has a fantastic story, but with characters that leave something to be desired. But it's evident Nolan wasn't focusing on characters when writing this film, he was focusing on delivering this concept, and i think he did that very well Charlie's Rating: **** Finally Mr Chilton takes on a film he doesn't actually hate, in fact, he loves this one; it might even be his favourite. More importantly, Charlie also gives us his informed opinion on the same movie...