Day 148: The Great Gatsby

Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) recounts the short time he spent with Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and how it affected his life.

I won’t go into specifics since the film itself is only recently out, so I’ll just make some general comments. The first half was both weird and boring at the same time, although I’m not sure how it managed that. I don’t know who keeps giving work to Tobey Maguire but they need to have their heads looked at. He is just so awful, it’s like he’s fresh out of acting school and thinks every line has to be said in this ridiculously dramatic way while his eyes look all serious and thoughtful. To be fair though, all the rest of the actors were good. All of Leonardo DiCaprio’s scenes were great, he never fails to impress me. Some of the shots were beautiful but I feel like the film relied too heavily on the beauty involved and didn’t spend enough time developing the story in a believable way.

6/10

Day 133: The Thing

A spaceship has been discovered under the ice in Antarctica, and a body of whatever was on board has also been found. The team are excited at being the first people to discover aliens but it all goes to hell when the alien they thought was dead breaks free and attacks them.

The alien can imitate its victims, so it copies their cells and hides inside. That is pretty excellent, I’m sure we can all agree. This should have led to such a high level of suspicion and paranoia but they don’t really make use of it well. There is the one scene when they’re all scared about who could be a copy but that’s it, it’s just the one scene and then it’s back to fighting. I think what might’ve made the film more interesting would be if they made it less about the action and more about the actual terror that would’ve been felt in that situation.  And I have to agree with one of the commenters on the IMDb page, there were far too many shots of the alien. It might have been better if we heard more noises and saw shadows rather than actually see the alien itself because it takes away from the fear, I think.

I’ve not seen the original film so I’m not sure if this stands up well as a prequel, but I did enjoy it in itself. Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) was amazing and I think using her as the main character was definitely a good choice. According to the IMDb trivia page, she is supposed to have traits in common with Ripley from ‘Alien’ and I can see that. She’s strong and smart and just an all round badass, really.

6/10