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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Saw (2004)- Carey Elwes (3 ½ )

Director: James Wan

Stars: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell and Danny Glover

Genre: Crime | Horror | Mystery

MPAA Rating: R (strong grisly violence and language)

Running Time: 103 Mins

Tagline: "Let the games begin"





Synopsis:
{According to IMDB}

"With a dead body lying between them, two men wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw". The men must follow various rules and objectives if they wish to survive and win the deadly game set for them".

************** WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS************************
                                      
I remember as if it were yesterday, the reaction I had when the final twist to the film came up; it had been a while since a film had shocked me so much. Since the film was so shocking, I will have to say that If you haven’t seen Saw I recommend you stop reading this review and go rent or borrow the movie from someone NOW!. If you have not read the disclaimer, I will mention it again; this review is going to contain plenty of spoilers, so keep in mind that you have been advised.  This review has been written mainly for those who have seen the actual film before and just needs a better understanding of it…or if you just don’t care about twist endings.


Two men wake up in an abandoned bathroom. Both men are strapped with shackles on their ankles. They have no clue how they arrive in the bathroom.  The first character is Adam, a man in his late 20’s, who we later find out is a free-lance photographer contracted to take pictures of the man in front of him.  The man in front of him is Dr. Lawrence Gordon, a surgeon who also has no clue why he is in that room.  In between them is the body of a dead man, who shot himself in the head out desperation...or that is what they want the viewers to think. The clues they have to escape lie in a two audio tapes that they find in their pockets. The objective is for Dr. Gordon to kill Adam before six, if he doesn’t comply, then his wife and daughter will die. The man responsible is John Kramer (the corpse in the middle of the room that is actually not dead.) he finds pleasure in placing victims in his sadistic games of survival. His philosophy is that people don’t appreciate life until they see death up close. What is his motive? He has Cancer, yes, he had nothing better else to do, Monopoly just didn’t do it for him. So, with this we have the beginning of the film Saw…how interesting…no?

THE TRAPS OF SAW

Now that we have the premise (that most people know by now) let’s get into the individual traps of the film, and let’s see how plausible they can be in the real world. I will rate them on a scale of 1-5
1: Not Believable At All
2: Not Very Believable
3: Somewhat Believable
4: Pretty Believable
5: Very Believable



TRAP # 1- REVERSE BEAR TRAP
Amada Young is a drug addict that doesn’t value her life, and for that she is placed in one of jigsaws games. Like the picture, she has a sort of bear trap around her face, and she has limited time to find the key to free herself from it. If she doesn’t find the key on time then the mechanism on the bear trap will trigger, and her mouth will remain permanently open…and thus death will inevitably occur. The key to the trap is inside the other cellmate.  He seems to be dead, but he is just knocked out from an opiate that Jigsaw injected him with. The only way for Amanda to free herself is to stab to death the other man and find the key inside his body. She eventually does find the key and manages to free herself on time.   
Believability:  4.


TRAP # 2- RAZOR WIRE
  A man named Paul is placed naked inside a cage filled with barb wires.  The objective of his game is to find the path along the razor wires to reach the exit of the room. He is being given 3 hours to make it out of the room.  Unfortunately he does not make it out; he bleeds to death from the cuts produced by the razors
 Believability: 5


TRAP # 3- THE FLAMMABLE JELLY
 Meet Mark, a man who had fakes an illness for personal and financial gain, he finds himself in one of Jigsaw’s games. He was placed nude in a dark room with broken glass covering the floor, all he has is   tape telling him that there was a slow acting poison in his blood and the antidote is in a locked safe beside him. He had to find the combination to the lock which was hidden amongst thousands of numbers scrawled on the wall. He was also supplied with a lit candle and a box of matches, so as to be able to see in the pitch black room. Unfortunately, he was also covered in a flammable substance, so if he made once false move, his body would become alight. While searching for the combination, he accidentally moved too close to the flame and was entirely incinerated.
Believability: 5



TRAP # 4- THE DRILL CHAIR

As Detective Tapp became more obsessed with the Jigsaw case, he eventually finds one of the secret lairs of Jigsaw. With him is another Detective.When they arrive they find a man strapped to a chair, and two power drills are aimed close towards his temples. Jigsaw is about to be arrested by Tapp before the drills become activated the only way to deactivate it is to find the key inside a box, in the box is countless keys, and very little time. One of the detectives, Detective Sing, did not know which key was the necessary one needed to unlock the neck brace, and instead shot the drills, deactivating those moments before reaching  the victims head. My problem with this trap is that the detectives make it just on time to witness a game, and Jigsaw manages to somehow know that the detectives are going to be there on time…I don’t buy it, sorry.
 Believability: 3

 
TRAP # 4 -THE QUADRUPLE SHOTGUN HALLWAY TRAP
In case of emergency, jigsaw placed four double-barreled shotguns suspended from a ceiling in a hallway, each connected by a tripwire strung across the floor of the hallway. If someone were to cross the string, then the wire would pull the triggers and thus the four shotguns would go off simultaneously, blowing the victim to pieces. In this case, the victim was Detective Sing, who was chasing Jigsaw through his warehouse in an attempt to capture him.  While chasing him he passes through the tripwire, and sets of the shotguns and his head is blow up. While is still don’t buy the whole thing of the detectives arriving in the lair and finding a jigsaw game taking place, I can buy jigsaw being cautious…but even so, if a victim where to pass the wire and activate the guns, he would have to do it forcefully…and Detective Sing does it slightly. The only possible theory is that the wire is securely tight to the trigger of the gun…so even a slight move can trigger it.
Believability: 4


THE FINAL TWIST
After trying to find a way out of the bathroom, Dr. Gordon sees that there is no time left, and that the saws won’t cut of the chains, he ultimately decides to saw off his own foot. After doing so, he reaches for the gun in the middle of the room and shoots Adam in the shoulder.  The man who was thought to be Jigsaw was in fact part of the game as well; his name was Zep, and orderly at Dr. Gordon’s hospital. Adam survives the gunshot and kills Zep. Adam tries to find the key inside the jacket of Zep, instead he finds another recording explaining that Zep had a slow acting poison in his system and only jigsaw had the antidote, so his options were “limited”. I emphasize limited because even if he was poisoned, I would have tried finding someone specialized In poison…that just me.


Final Thoughts
The movie may in fact have a list of flaws, but compared to the subsequent sequels, this one stands out as the best in the franchise. The biggest complain the film has is the acting. The acting in the first saw is pretty laughable, I will admit that, but keep in mind that this film wasn’t intended for theatrical release. Shot on a mere 1 million dollar budget, the crew did the impossible to shoot the entire film in just 15 days. So in all, I give the creators and crew kudos for being dedicated to their work.
                             

I have owned Saw so many times on DVD that I have honestly lost count. I had the theatrical cut released in 04, the special unrated edition released in 05, and I even re-bought the unrated edition just because it was released in a nice box set.  So let’s just say that I have bought Saw various times only because of cover art or special features.

Video
Since saw was a low budget film, I don’t hold too much against the film’s picture quality.  The Blu-ray presents the movie in a remastered 1080p. Personally, I see no difference from the DVD to the Blu-ray.  Even if some scenes do look a bit sharper I still wouldn’t consider it better than an up converted DVD. 

Audio
On the other hand, the audio is very impressive, boasting a 6.1 DTS ES surround sound. All the sounds in the movie sound amazing in this Blu- ray, everything from droplets of blood, sounds of machines, gun shots, etc.   











ENDING OF SAW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OHFXOByYRM&feature=related




Tuesday, November 1, 2011

The Auteur Theory (1999)-Alan Cox (5)* { Top 250 # 11}



 Genre:  Comedy

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Running Time: 77 Mins

Tagline: "They all wanted final cut -- until they got it  "









Trailer provided by Video Detective 



I have said time and time again that I am extremely picky when it comes to comedies. I like my comedies to be smart and witty, to have something fresh on the table, and overall- to entertain me. Now, that is not to say that I don’t like goofy comedies. I actually have seen and liked some really bad comedies (Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Freddy Got Fingered) But most of the time I like intelligent comedies. The Auteur Theory is a rare delight, that actually when beyond my expectations; I didn’t expect this independent film to be so remarkable.

The Auteur Theory is about George Sand: a documentary filmmaker that is hoping to make it big in the American film industry. But he needs a budget to make his dream in film a reality. For that he goes to BBC to get approval from a group of judges, who will hear his story, and decide whether to grant him the money he needs for his project. The film he has in mind is about a filmmaker making a film in a film festival, where other contestants are competing for the award of “best filmmaker of the year”.  So in essence it’s a film within a film.  The mystery thickens when each of the contestants gets killed one by one after their film is screened.  Sand narrates and stars in his own film, investigating the murders, emphasizing that only he knows the mind of a true filmmaker, that it takes a filmmaker to trap another filmmaker...Ok you get the picture.

What makes this movie funny is how it borrows and makes homage’s to other filmmakers. Such filmmakers like: Quentin Tarrantino, Spike Lee, and even BATMAN (I know he’s not a filmmaker, but they make references to the bat). Each of the contestants films are actually funny and cheesy, but are made so on purpose, to demonstrate how much of an amateur the filmmakers really are. For someone like me (who loves filmmaking) I was pleased with this film from start to finish.  The only complaint is that I wish it wasn’t so short (running at 77 min)  
I literally recommend this movie to anyone who is getting into filmmaking. While it isn’t a serious movie, nor it isn’t a film that teaches about filmmaking per se…it does however show a comedic side to the struggles of beginners in the film industry. Now, if you want to see the movie I would suggest buying it off Amazon or EBay. I had a hard time finding this in stores, for many years I only owned a copy I recorded of Showtime (The channel where I first saw the movie)  I don’t think Showtime airs this movie anymore, I am not even sure the channel still exist, I wouldn’t know I don’t have cable.  But anyhow, buy the movie, you will not be disappointed, I promise, if I am wrong you can leave a comment below with all the love.