Tags: avengers, captain america, marvel, movies
Griff The Invisible
2 MarGriff The Invisible follows Griff (Ryan Kwanten) a regular average Joe who has lost his job recently. His brother has managed to get him a new one in an office where he continually gets bulled by another employee. Griff is socially awkward who lives his life through the dream of being a superhero, Griff The Invisible.
It offers a very different, very real life, quirky interpretation of a superhero film. This is not like any other superhero film you will have seen before. There is no real big master villain that is out to bring down Griff. The closest thing to a stereotypical villain is a bully at work and Griff’s psyche itself.
The director uses some lovely effects to show the duality of lives for a hero. For example whilst Griff is trying to make his invisible cape, the other scene shows a typical family meal where drinks and liquids are poured simultaneously. Further, the way we see Griff’s mental state is brilliantly put together making you begin to wonder what is reality and what is not. This is to the extent that at the beginning of the film it feels and looks like a typical superhero film, almost an Australian Kick-Ass, but as the film moves onto the second act it becomes clear to you that this film is so much more.
The set feels right for Griff. His flat paying homage to differing superhero ideals with much of Griff’s opinions on superheroes seeming to come from the Adam West Batman series. He has the red phone connected to the commissioner, the poles, the works.
The key aspect of the film is to show the problem of loneliness and how differing people deal with it, how normality is anything that you make it and if you are not harming anyone by doing it, then you should do it. Griff succeeds in delivering here, creating real emotion and empathy for the two leads that lesser films would not have managed to pick up.
The True Blood actor is great as Griff who builds on his Jason Stackhouse character as the loveable loser.
Griff The Invisible is for anyone that is a fan of the superhero yet are looking for something more. However do not tight cast it just because of it’s name. It brilliantly shows the human condition and the problems with living in a modern society and therefore even if a superhero film is not usually your cup of tea, this might well be.
How I Ended This Summer
2 MarHow I Ended This Summer is the Russian film by acclaimed young director, Aleksei Popogrebsky. Set in the arctic, Sergei, a meteorologist and Pavel, a student are isolated together for months doing research. Pavel receives a radio transmission about Sergei’s family. Pavel, unaware how to break the bad news to Sergei lives in fear that builds to paranoia and the lust for survival.
Popogrebsky illustrates his directing muscles over and over here. He brilliantly shows the feeling of isolation, intense desperation and survival by you as the viewer hearing that there is only the ticking of the clock, the radio frequency or the sea waves in the background builds the tension wonderful. You truly feel the isolation that the two characters feel. However it sometimes makes you as a viewer feel isolated and in need of surviving where scenes go on far too long that could be edited. The question remains, would the brilliant feeling of isolation come over you if there was less? Does less equal more?
The film heavily builds on Hobbes’ idea of the state of nature where isolation turns you into a savage, where you are all about your survival and no one else’s. Popogrebsky also applies the use of video games to argue what some in the media have: playing violent video games makes you a violent person in reality. This, like some of the other story elements, was pulling at straws for me.
The extreme reaction from both individuals again illustrates this. It must be questioned if these kind of actions would happen in reality is another thing. Further there is little characterisation to the two main characters. Once leaving the film, you can provide a sentence on both characters: no more than you could at the beginning of the film. There is little depth and little evolution of either character. Yet again, this is possibly due to the effect isolation has on the psyche that they have instead devolved to savages.
Whether everything translates to an English speaking audience is another problem that must be considered. If I met him I would say that he was a good director who got not tell a good script from the bad. A pity then that he wrote and directed this picture.
How I Ended This Summer could be so much more. It is an interesting piece of film that for a film buff like myself will find enjoyable to watch all the little nuances and techniques Popogrebsky uses. For example, I quite enjoyed it but my girlfriend did not. However the story does fall flat and drags at moments. One only for film buffs.
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21 JanI welcome you to this site. Foreverfilms will be looking at the latest news, reviews everything. So if you like films, I hope you will enjoy this!
