127 Hours

I guess if you had to pick someone working today to turn a story of a man trapped in a canyon with his hand pinned under a rock for five days into a movie, and set it entirely within that five day period, Danny Boyle would be one of the better choices. I've only seen a few of his films, but he has shown a consistent ability to make his kinetic sense of style work in a variety of genres and moods, spicing things up without distracting from the story at all. It's a perfect approach to the story of Aron Ralston, as the film is dedicated to its premise but still has a bit of free roam to experiment as it gets inside the man's head, and reveals details of his past generally with experimental visions rather than straight flashbacks.

It helps that the movie's only an hour and a half, but one of the most impressive things about it is just that it never gets boring, even though the main character is stuck in one spot for most of the running time. It's a combination of the screenplay's structure, Boyle's visual style, James Franco's arresting performance, and of course the looming dread of knowing what he'll have to do before the movie's over. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that he cuts his own hand off to escape the canyon, because it's easily one of the most famous true survival stories of the last decade. I also wouldn't want anyone to not know about that detail before seeing the movie unless they have an amazingly strong stomach, because it's one of the most gruesome scenes I've seen in a film.

I usually have no problem with violence in movies, because it's either quick enough or silly enough to not seem real, and I tend to avoid the kind of horror films that really focus on the brutality of it. But here they strove to make the scene as medically authentic as possible, and while it avoids really sensationalizing it or focusing on it too closely, it's still a tough scene to watch. It's one of the most harrowing and gripping climactic scenes I've seen in a movie, ever. It probably would have been worse if I wasn't expecting it, but even after bracing myself it was amazingly intense.

It's also really thrilling because you come to know Franco's Ralston really well in the hour and change before then, and you can see his anguish and desperation grow so vividly as the film goes on. It's an incredibly natural performance, and as much as I kind of like Franco's aloof genius stoner demeanor in public and many of his roles, I'd like to see him push himself like this a bit more often. Other actors are kept to a minimum, and the film relies the most on a single performance of maybe any that I've seen, so it was great to see him totally succeed. It's not my favorite movie of last year, but I was really impressed to see what felt like the dedicated work of basically two guys (I know there are plenty of people that are essential to getting Boyle's vision actually brought to life) get pulled off so well.

Trainspotting

You can pretty easily draw a comparison between Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream, and the fact that the former came out four years earlier doesn't do the latter any favors. They're not quite the same, but they're both the second film by directors who are still acclaimed today, and use a lot of style to tell stories about the lives of drug addicts. Trainspotting is less overwhelming and depressing, and all told I ended up liking it more as a film. It's about five friends, three of which use heroin. One of them refuses but is a psycho on his own without the help of narcotics, and the other ends up getting pulled into that world worse than all of them.

There's an unusual flow to the plot as the protagonist played by Ewan McGregor goes through many ups and downs over time, falling into and out of his addiction. It's a good performance, making the character sympathetic despite myriad screw-ups and bad decisions, and the people around him are good too. My favorite character might be Tommy, played by Kevin McKidd with far more luxurious hair than I'm used to seeing, and Jonny Lee Miller (who we just saw do his best to save a disappointing season of Dexter) is another friend who sees himself as a very smart person, and who likes James Bond maybe a bit too much. Robert Carlyle is sort of a likable psychopath, and while I didn't know Ewen Bremner by name before this movie, I've seen him before and he fits his sad sack role well. Kelly Macdonald plays a girl Ewan rushes into a relationship with, and it's a pretty different part from what I'm used to seeing from her.

Danny Boyle's direction definitely helps the movie a lot, making every scene more interesting to watch and filling the whole thing with a lot of little touches that are both amusing and enhance the story. The scene where Ewan is in withdrawal and hallucinating is obviously a highlight and the film's most famous sequence, but it's far from the only scene that's unique and inventive. Things like completely entering the toilet and falling into the rug are similarly effective at putting you in the head of someone who's out of their mind, and it all works to somehow make the movie a bit more lighthearted than its subject matter would suggest without glorifying it. I really dug it a lot, more than Slumdog Millionaire, and Boyle is definitely a director I need to see more work by.

Slumdog Millionaire

So I'm going to try to watch all of the Oscar nominations for Best Picture. I don't know how far I'll get, and that's not why I watched this, but hey, I'm doing it. I don't think Slumdog was quite deserving of all the awards it ended up winning, but it was still a good movie, a nice mix of a love story, a look at the bad situation in some parts of India, and a pretty taut thriller all in one. I don't think I've seen any of Boyle's films before but he seems to work in a lot of different styles and genres, and seems quite competent and putting a movie together. I've heard a lot of controversy about its depiction of the Indian slums, and it not being a good representation of the country. I think it's a mistake to take the film completely seriously, because it's not supposed to be a realistic story. The whole thing is about how a kid knew the answers to game show questions because his own life experiences had them in chronological order, and how fate ties him to a girl he met when he was a child. It's very much a creation of fiction.

There's an interesting mix of tones throughout it. There are several moments of Hollywood fun and fantasy, although it's generally much bleaker than that. From the beginning when the protagonist and his brother are set on the run thanks to the Bombay Riots, to the underground, scummy world they get caught up in, to his treatment at the mere inkling he may have cheated, it doesn't paint a very pretty picture of the country. I felt like the movie probably deserved it's R rating, even though it earned it almost entirely on things that were implied rather than shown. Whether or not it's a fair view of life in India, it's an exciting, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes heartwarming movie. The use of music, including the original songs, was very good, and it was pretty technically sound throughout. It wasn't the deepest story ever, but it was improved by the skill of its construction and is definitely worth checking out.