Hidden Gem: Timecrimes

A man is accidentally sent back a short time into the past and finds himself needing to continue traveling in order to fix the mistakes he was making.

Timecrimes is easily one of the more well-planned and well-written time travel movies ever made. The subtleties within the movie had me rewinding to see if that had happened in the first place. It most certainly had.

What at first looked like a scary thriller turned out to be an exciting, thought-provoking drama. It is interesting to see the mania infect the protagonist and take over, a short-lived but intense obsession.

The acting is pretty good, but it is in Spanish. I find it hard to truly gauge the performance without knowing the language and understanding where the emphasis should go.

Hidden Gem #5

The Fall

The Fall, directed by Tarsem Singh, is a wonderfully crafted fairytale overlapping the story of a sad, desperate man.

The movie takes place in a hospital. Newly paralyzed stuntman meets a young little girl with a broken arm. She tells her a beautiful tale of 5 heroes going after evil dictator and save the damsel in distress. The plot of the fairy tale is very commonplace, but the aesthetic is some of the most beautiful imagery every put on screen. Everything is depicted at such a grand, decorative scale.

Back in the real world, the stuntman uses the young girl to score medication, some that he would use to kill himself now that he is paralyzed and no longer experience the thrills of cinema action again.

The young girl knows English as a second language, and while the lost in translation conversations can sometimes be endearing, it also gets old very fast and becomes more annoying than anything. Also the pacing of each individual story is fantastic but when intertwined they fail each other.

I couldn't help but think it could have been so much better. But Tarsem still delivers on a visceral level. The shear creativity of the flick should warrant a look-see from any kind of movie-goer.

Solid 7/10

Hidden Gems #4

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

George Clooney has many accolades. Sexiest Man in Hollywood. Academy Award winner. Every guy wants to be him, and every girl wants to be with him situation. All-around nice guy. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was his first chance at directing, and in my opinion was a grand slam. The overall look of the film looks like a '70s flashback with a very distinct color shceme and camera filter, which complemented both the gritty and whimsical settings appropriately.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind chronicles that ambiguous secret life of real life television producer Chuck Barris. By night, Barris was depicted as a CIA hitman taking missions on his game show winners prize trips.

Outside of the uber-cool spy world premise, the movie also showed the personal bird-dogging lifestyle of Chuck Barris and his internal thought process of trying to make new shows. It was also edited together with testimonials from Barris' close friends including famed TV personality Dick Clark and Gong Show regulars like the Unknown Comic.

CODM's greatest achievement is spotlighting Sam Rockwell, who until this time was mostly comic support. He takes the lead role of Chuck Barris and plays him as the tragic hero the story depicts him as. He's witty and depressing, crazed and likeable, all at the same time.

This is also one of the few movies I liked BETTER than the book. The book dragged and was much more of an old style, surveliance area of spy work and Clooney's character, Barris' boss, was much less intimidating.