The Super Network

Every week the people of Super Website (Super Blog) will give you a recommendation of a Film, DVD, Bluray, Book, Soundtrack or any other item for you the readers to check out.

Super Marcey Recommend’s:

127 Hours

With the Oscars now over with, I thought I would recommend my personal pick as the best film of 2010. While this film had some nominations it didn’t win big. But the film is still no. 1 to me and definitely award worthy. The film tells the true story of Aron Ralston who literally got stuck between a rock and a hard place. His hand gets stuck in a canyon when a huge boulder falls down. He survived stuck for 127 hours before he took his own fate into his ‘hand’ and made a huge sacrifice to survive. For a film which has one man on the screen for most of the film, this really kept my entire interest. He’s there, he’s stuck and he’s struggling. He doesn’t really have much food, he barely has water, but his will to live basically gets him through. He knows what he must do to try and get out, and by the end he does it. I can’t imagine I’d have the courage to do what he did, and with this film we feel everything that he does. James Franco gives the performance of a life time, and this is easily one of Danny Boyles best films to date. This isn’t an easy film to get through but it is worth it.

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Nick Bosworth Recommend’s:

Unstoppable

I know what you’re thinking when you read what the title of my weekly recommendation is. Most of you might be thinking “Ugh…another shaky-cam, bleached-looking Denzel action flick from Tony Scott…who cares?!”. Well my friends, I can happily say that UNSTOPPABLE is without question director Tony Scott’s best film in years and a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish. The plot itself which is based loosely on true events introduces us to a veteran train operator named Frank (Denzel Washington) and trainee operator (Chris Pine) who’re both doing a regularly scheduled run along their local track when they’re alone faced with dealing with a fully-powered train engine and cargo that is unmanned due to human error and heading right at them at 70 miles per hour. On top of going head on with the train, it’s also loaded with several train cars full of hazardous materials that could wipe out an entire town if the train was to derail making it a very difficult situation to deal with. 

When it comes to movies like this, my biggest concern always comes down to one word…realism. It’s a real-life situation where you as the audience try to think along with the cast as to how they could deal with this situation. In the case of UNSTOPPABLE, I was extremely relieved and pleased to see that the writers and Tony Scott really thought it through right down to the small details such as the physics of counter-thrust, motion, direction, speed, mass, etc. Everything was taken into account as was the believability of our two main heroes including Denzel who actually gave a great and realistic performance as the veteran conductor. He really came off as a very knowledgeable man who’s been in the business for 28 years and it shows as he’s able to anticipate and figure out how to stop the train. Chris Pine also did a great job as the newbie train operator and had some great chemistry with Denzel. Action wise the film has a ton of great crash scenes and big thrills and a lot of that comes from the amazing cinematography and sound design (as you might know since the movie was nominated for an Oscar in that category). All in all, it was a terrific thrill ride that never gets boring and is easily my favourite Tony Scott film in a long time. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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Pat Torfe Recommend’s:

Batman

I’m reaching way back for this one. While it’s horribly dated in regards to movies in general, as well as superhero movies, it’s still a great one. Of course, I’m talking about Batman. Yes, the soundtrack dominated by Prince isn’t likely to bring back memories (other than the video for the Bat Dance), but Elfman’s score still stands the test of time. Then of course you get into Burton’s decision to make the film seem like a gothic 1950s with a dose of bat gadgets. Again, it has that feeling of being dated, but it still has charms about it. Then there’s the acting, which is most memorable because of Jack Nicholson’s iconic role as The Joker. Taking some of Cesar Romero’s goofiness of the 1960s Batman TV series and giving it a darker twist, the role is one of Nicholson’s most memorable, and probably set the standard for replicating comic book villians for the big screen at that time. In contrast to The Joker, Michael Keaton played Batman/Bruce Wayne with stern emotion, and is my second-favorite actor to play the role. Well, third if you count Kevin Conroy’s voice acting in The Animated Series. Topping things off was Kim Basinger, who was easy on the eyes (despite missing eyebrows) and played Vicki Vale in a sort of ‘damsel in distress’ role that didn’t irk me as much as Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane in Superman. Still, it was a sign of the times. The film was immensely successful, and spawned three sequels before the franchise got the reboot. Again, it’s still dated, but still fun to watch.

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