Friday, January 26, 2018
Coming Soon: www.1995Batman.com
Quick update. I'm shuttering Collected Cinema for the time being and will be moving on to a new blog focus solely on Batman Forever. Look out for it soon.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
5 things to love about The Neighbour (2016)
What’s it about:
Josh Stewart plays
John, a man who lives with his girlfriend in a remote house in the woods. He
makes a living changing car license plates for a low rent drug smuggling operation
and has plans to run away to Mexico when he gets enough money. However, he has
one problem. His neighbour who it turns out is doing something equally illegal
on his property.
5 things to love:
1. The
escalating tension in the first act is great. I particularly liked the way the neighbour
comes over uninvited with a couple of beers and proceeds to nicely warn them to stay out of his
business. I love these types of scenes in the film where characters say one
thing but very obviously mean another.
2. Once
again Josh Stewart is great in the lead. His weather beaten face and near
constant look of fatigue really fits the character well. I’ve got to check some
more of his films out.
3. The lighting
really stood out. Director Marcus Dunstan is clearly getting better and better with
each film. He uses lots of very vibrant blue, pink and yellow lights to keep
the picture visually arresting.
4. The use
of the telescope was great. Obviously, not as good as Rear Window but I’m a sucker for films that have the hero forced to
use binoculars or telescopes (Someone’s
Watching Me, Body Double) because it makes them really vunerable and unable
to stop events.
5. There’s a
neat little visual cue that’s repeatedly used in the film where it cuts to
Super 8 footage. I enjoyed this and thought it could have been used a little
more, perhaps during the more tense scenes to make them scarier.
1 thing it did need:
More originality.
As much as I still enjoyed the film – it’s very solid – it does feel like a
variation on the same themes as The
Collector and The Collection. Bad
guy has to save people from REALLY bad guy. I’m happy that Dunstan and Melton
have dropped a lot of their usual gore but the neighbour and his secret
activities aren’t anywhere near as intriguing as the collector which is a shame
as it loses a lot of tension in the last third.
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