Joe The Movie Guy Presents: The First Annual Movies That Deserve Awards Awards.

This year has been a pretty great year for movies and in the tradition of a lot of other film 'critics' I am going to do my own awards ceremony for the best and the worst.

As the categories go they are to be as follows:

• Best Picture
• Worst Picture
• Best Actor
• Best Actress
• Worst Actor 
• Worst Actress
• Best Cinematography 
• Best Direction
• Best Score
• Best Sound Design
• Most Surprising Movie
• Most Disappointing Movie 

Expect additional categories as I think of them.

The actual awards will go up after Christmas after I have seen Star Wars and all the festivities are over. Another thing to keep in mind is that since I live in England a lot of movies such as The Revenant and Creed wont be released here until next year so if you see something that is missing that will be why.

Hope you like them.

-Joe

Quick Thoughts: Black Mass

While this movie has only been out in England for a short while it has been out in America for a while which is why this a 'Quick Thoughts' and not a full review.

Johnny Depp is superb in this film. He takes on this entirely knew, slimy quality that is a great deviation from the parts he normally plays and is really magnetic on screen.
The other performances are also commendable, most notably Benedict Cumberbatch who has a pretty decent Boston accent.  However they never feel anywhere near as interesting to watch as Depp which makes the scenes without him feel somewhat lacking.



Technically this movie is also great with solid camerawork and art direction. The scrip and screenplay are also both pretty good but nothing that will set it apart from the likes of other gangster movies, not even its big contender 'Legend' that released earlier this year.

There is one glaring problem with this film that stopped me enjoying it nearly as much as I wanted to, this being the lack of soul.
I know that is quite a pretentious thing to say but it's true, there was no sense of an artistic passion from the people behind the cameras that you get with so many of the great films. This left us with a technically very good movie but one that is just not that engaging with the audience and has almost no re-watch-ability.


With this in mind I would say go and see Black Mass if you either really love the gangster genre or a single superb performance is enough to draw you to a film.  Otherwise there wont be much to enjoy for the masses in Back Mass as, whether they know it or not, artistic passion seeping through the camera to the audience is what gets them to really connect with movies.


Thanks for reading this Quick Thoughts.
Soon I will posting my own made up awards for different categories, kinda like the Oscars but a bit more ridiculous. It should be a fun one.

-Joe

Quick Thoughts: Slow West

Slow West, not quite sure what to say about this one.
They title really says it all, it's slow and it's a western. It has some really nice cinematography but the actual directing is nothing to shout about.
I have three main problems with this film.
Firstly are the performances.  Micheal Fassbender gives a somewhat lackluster turn as the outlaw Silas which is a real shame as he has had some incredible performances earlier in they year as Macbeth and Steve Jobs.
Kodi Smit-McPhee also give a underwhelming performance as Jay Cavendish, a young boy traveling the frontier to find his girlfriend Rose (Caren Pistorius) who actually give the best performance in this film.
My other problem with Slow West is that all the locations they visit look remarkably like sets and not real places, especially the buildings which all have a 'newly built from B&Q' look to them which really betrays the character of the wild west which is supposed to be gritty and dirty.


My last issue with Slow West is more a personal one. I never really connected with the characters and a lot of the time I felt their actions never really lined up with what they were saying which led to points where I was wondering if I had missed a part of the movie.

Having said this though there are a lot of things to like about Slow West.
As I said before the cinematography is really excellent.  Also whilst it may take a while to get going the finale is really something to behold.
There is also a cartoon-like sense to the movie in the way it looked and how the characters moved, this may not be for everyone but I found it quite endearing and gave the film a whole lot of personality.


To sum Slow West up, I would say that its a very artsy but quite enjoyable film to watch.
If you enjoyed the likes of Drive and you are into westerns then I would recommend you check this out.
If you are more of a mainstream cinema goer however I don't think you would gel too well with Slow West, at only 84 minutes however you might as well give it a go.


Thanks for reading my quick thoughts. I saw this film so late as it was another one of the BIFA awards movies my cinema was playing.

-Joe