Fight Club

I’ve been dreading reviewing this because I knew it was going to end up being a long review that I’m just too tired to write. This is because it is such a freaking awesome movie. The beautiful cinematography, mind-boggling editing, the acting, the storyline and the characters are all perfect in the sense of great movie making. Obviously, the storyline and characters are due to the book [which I shall put on my reading list] but… I don’t know, its just amazing. This film is kind of like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it. I love it. My brother loves it. I remember he saw it for the first time when me, him, our mum and uncles were on holiday in Wales and my uncles had brought their portable DVD player and some DVDs and he just watched Fight Club on repeat for the whole week. Yes, he enjoys it because of the fighting and he loves Brad Pitt but I think, unbeknownst to him, that its more than that.

Donnie Darko

I’ve watched this movie about 7 times now and I’m only just understanding it. People don’t like this movie because its confusing and weird. Others love it because its confusing and weird. You do have to watch it more than once to even get a small grasp on the whole thing but in a good way. You WANT to understand it and figure it all out. Well, I did anyways.

This movie is about poor little Donnie Darko who has ‘emotional problems’ and his BFF Frank, the 6ft tall bunny rabbit. Sounds like Harvey but its no where near as comical and we actually see the bunny though we kind of wish we didn’t!

This review probably won’t make any sense because the film makes little sense so blame the film if you read this and you’re going “er… what?”

The first shot is of a boy, laying on the ground in the middle of a road on what looks like the side of a mountain, his bike on one side next to him. We have questions from the word go with this film. Forever asking questions. Why is he on the floor? Why is he in his pajamas? Is he Donnie Darko? How did he get there? Why is he so happy? Has he escaped death? WHAT’S HAPPENING?! That last question is pretty much repeated for the whole movie.

It is Donnie Darko. And its Jake Gyllenhaal. Its very yummy Jake Gyllenhaal.

The soundtrack is a mixture of 80s classics and scary music, completely perfect for this movie. The scary, instrumental music shows us the underlying tone of a scene that we wouldn’t realise was sinister.

This whole movie is about time. Everything is about time. Even the fabulous, amazing editing is about time. Fast motion. Slow motion. Interlacing scenes. Its just fantastic. I actually wrote about the editing for film studies A Level. If you’re interested in what I wrote, continue reading. If not, skip this paragraph and move to the next bullet point: