Sunday, 13 November 2011

this week on 100 Films

3 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...

Bringing Up Baby (1938)
it’s a little awkward to start with while one warms to Hepburn’s anarchic character, and it drags its heels a little through the middle, but by the time we reach the final act — when an array of characters and situations collide in a manic run-about too intricate to describe here — it all pays off marvellously.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
the well-established Potter team have created one of the series’ best instalments here. Long gone is the cartoonish frivolity of Chris Colombus’ opening pair of Children’s Films — this is Potter at his darkest... a grim, oppressive world, where our trio of heroes are completely removed from the safety of school and on the run as fugitives.

Young Guns (1988)
Considering this is ‘the Brat Pack Western’, one might well expect a modernised, sanitised West; something rated PG-13. Instead the film seems to have begun life as a serious attempt at a Billy the Kid biography, right down to bloody violence that earns it an 18. This intention seems to survive — bar a music-video-styled opening, a couple of lines of dialogue and the wailing ’80s guitar score — but how successful it was is another matter.

More next Sunday.

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