Watched misery. The link being the director to the princess that dinky is doing. To be honest, misery is a way better film i thought, but running this site i'm going to say that ain't I
What do you think about misery?
There's something weird about reiner's films, they feel so fake as if they are shot on a sound studio or for tv... am i the only one that expects the backgrounds to fall over. Its weird, its a kind of style a lot of his movies have. I mean even roger corman, who was working on a crap soundstage had the ability for some kind of illusion of film quality, even though most of the time it was exactly the same feeling. I didn't have it with spinal tap though, so maybe it was just a sequence of movies he made with the same cameras, etc. that made it seem very low tech and unfilm like.
Anyway, the actual film itself is actually quite enjoyable despite I don't think reiner has the basic abilility to make a dark and disturbing movie, and quite frankly that's what misery needs more than anything. For those that haven't seen it, I'll use spoilers but they are light.
Given its about a guy that's held hostage, it seems to be shot at a very abstract and uninvolved level, you don't really see people emoting as much as you see fuzzy abstract sequences of events... its weird, but this is exactly a criticism i think holds true of Princess Bride too. Its just not quite 'engaging' enough. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean people won't like them, I just think ultimately it doesn't make it half way near as engaging for the audience and the characters are just brushed over and appear a tad hollow. I think its the type of camera work and interaction that does it, there's very little technique used to really... i don't know, this hitting any cords with anyone else? I mean take any movie, I'll take something out of the blue, The Shining... now here you see how the camera works and tells a story but also follows characters emotions, builds tensions not just setting the scene but playing with the audience. With Reiner's work, it seems that he's just filming the scene and I think ultimate his movies just miss that extra edge that would make them great.
Misery is a fluffy movie where it should be downright brutal, and horrifying... i enjoyed it on some levels, but think its completely fails to engage emotionally. I also have this criticism of Princess Bride, I enjoyed it and found it a light fluffy movie with some great dialogue, but it seemed detatched from the characters, and from building emotion like I think great movies do. its a shame. I had a kind of deja vu with monkey shines a bit, i couldn't help but see the little similarities (okay so its not a monkey obviously, and its a bit different in context and reasoning) but Romero actually uses the camera more to his advantage to build, for example, desperation and fustration.
That said, I did like misery, and everyone remembers that nasty scene. Its just nasty, I hate stuff like that happening but that's why i
love it. Let the audience get to the stage where they are uncomfortable and hate what's happening and what to stand up and do something but have to sit there and take it... i think it makes for great movies and breaks the mindset of playing up for the audience (Lucas, take notes, yes the audience want epic battles, but don't just give them epic battles, you've got to hold back and let the audience use their imagination, you've got to have your characters kicked around and things to be out of the audiences control, when you just cater for the comfort of a general audience, the movies are shallow and meaningless. Take the end of Empire for example, that's how you take expectation and "control" from the audience).
Damn, where'd my point go? oh yeah, reiner although has done some rather prominant movies, I think he would have benefited for stronger technical control in terms of building emotion with the audience, his movies are too detatched. i can't recall any others though to be fair, maybe its just those two?
Finally and a temporal aside, smoking is very prominant in Misery, there's a rather obvious close up shot of the main character enjoying his cigerrette... when did he change his mind and become anti-smoking? I assume now that he's a reformist and is reacting to what he did to present smoking on scene. Seems rather hypocritical on face value as is, so there must be something i'm missing in this anti smoking debacle.