Film Review: Son of Saul

"You Have Forsaken The Living For The Dead..."

If anything, Son of Saul is one of those sad indicators of modern cinema. Sure, anyone can go and watch the latest blockbuster, the latest superhero movie, the latest sequel, prequel or remake, yet when it comes to independent, foreign hidden gems, regardless of critical praise across the globe, such films are particularly hard to find, unless, like me, you are one of those crazy cinephiles who would traverse the plains of England to try and find them. In the case of Son of Saul therefore, never before have I seen a film so visceral and utterly heartbreaking, a film that encourages you to witness the appalling acts of the Holocaust without exploiting them to a winding degree and ultimately, a film which indeed has a sense of independence and singularity, a film which rewards you fully in your attempts to seek it out, even if at times, events on-screen may indeed be too much for some to handle yet not through a sense of exploitative means, but rather through a sense of Son of Saul being perhaps the most accurate and horrific tale of recent histories' most awful tragedy to have graced our screens since well, forever. 

Following a day in the life of Hungarian-Jewish prisoner Saul, played in sheer majestic fashion by Géza Röhrig in his first on-screen role, Son of Saul attempts to show us the true horror of the events at Auschwitz with Saul's role as a member of the Sonderkommando being fully embraced and materialised in a cinematic fashion that combines the stark horror of reality without attempting to dislodge and alienate the viewer by means of certain overkill and bad taste. This success is primarily captured by means of the film's cinematography with the film's choice of having an incredibly shallow depth of field and the camera being a constant companion of our titular hero both giving the impression of ambiguity regarding certain events that occur on-screen, suggesting Saul's own blurred mentality, one that accepts events that are going on around him yet decides to not fully embrace them, whilst also showing enough to capture the essence of sheer madness that encapsulated the events that took place. The film is not one that attempts to dramatise, it simply portrays the horror of reality and the wrongfulness of the past, something of which reminded me of films like Apocalypse Now, with madness being at the root of the evil presented throughout.

As a piece of cinema which acts as a debut for both director László Nemes and actor Géza Röhrig, Son of Saul is a remarkable achievement, one which rightly deserved the Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture and one that should not be forgotten any-time soon. Writing this review after watching the film more than a week ago, the thought of the movie leaves me with a rather weird feeling of this indeed being a film incredibly important and innovative whilst also being a incredibly hard film to sell to the majority. Son of Saul is a particularly hard watch, one that will ultimately leave the viewer with a down-hearted sense of either hatred or sadness, or perhaps both, yet the fact that such a film can lead to such emotions only enhances the many strengths throughout the course of the film. Yes indeed, it is a hard watch and that alone may distract the lay cinema goer, yet for cinematic purposes and from my personal point of view, Son of Saul is perhaps the greatest tale of the tragedy of World War II, one that will not be forgotten by all that attempt to seek it out and one that inevitably will be one of the best of the year so far. 

Overall Score: 9/10

Fury 2014 - REVIEW - SPOILERS

In December of last year when I worked on the list of stuff I shall be keeping an eye out for, I noticed an unnamed David Ayer project featuring Brad Pitt, Shia Labeouth, Jon Berthnal, Logan Lerman and Michael Peña as a five man tank team during world war 2 in Nazi German towards the tail end of the conflict. Seeing we haven't had a great war film in many years, the concept of approaching the conflict from the tank teams perspective was rather intriguing. As my love for Brad Pitt kept growing, my excitement for little titbits of news and information was building huge expectations in my mind. The trailer alone helped solidify what I was going to think of this film and to put it simply, the film was great.
During WW2, Nazi weaponry was typically far more advanced and their tanks were tearing into US units with ease. The tale doesn't have a narrative that drives the movie like an action movie. Documentation springs to mind with its portrayal of the lives of those who fought in these tanks and the hardships they went through. After loosing their machine gunner, the Fury team were given Norman (Logan Lerman), a young man with no combat experience, 8 weeks in boot camp, never been in a tank and never killed before. Quite common in the time but we follow him as he is forced into the deep end with a crew of hardened fighters who don't take kindly to having a weakness in the armour. The main character appears to be Norman. Over the 2 hours his character changes vastly and to see the conflict and infighting that gets him to where he needs to be is really engaging towards the audience. In this short period of time, we follow a boy become and man and what it makes of good men and the pain they went through to do their job. The final act is where the real action sets in with a convoy of tanks making their way too hold off a possible German advance but soon gets whittled down by a German tank. Upon defeating it, Fury stands on its own and carries its orders out until they hit a mine and lose one of the tracks. During repairs its found that Nazi forces are moving down the road and the final decision to fight or run is made. If I were to spoil it here, I don't feel that would be fair. It ends rather dramatically with a blaze of glory and a barrage of emotions which I can only describe as epic. With its character driven story, it can feel a little slow towards the beginning when Norman is reluctant to do much but it grows even bigger with each step he takes.

From what I'm aware, the tanks used for filming were genuine vehicles and a great addition when you consider the over saturation of CGI in modern media. Visually the movie was great. I didn't see any CGI that wasn't the obvious blood splatter and shots on the tanks. Everything was fantastic in the visual department. The only issues that I do have were a few of the goofs. More down to the cutting and editing but switching from day to night in one cut was rather jarring. With the ringing of bullets and the roars of engines, the sound was clear and crisp. Enough to excite but not to deafen. Although with excitement we normally have music to help ramp the scene up. I don't remember any of the songs and nothing really captured me enough to return home and search for whatever song was used (although I now probably will) like I enjoy and that's a real shame for a movie that has prided itself on great cinematography and prop work.

There really isn't much to talk about in the case of acting. We have a group of actors that have already proven themselves as adequate in many of their other appearances. Although Logan stands as the main, Brad Pitt steals it from him with a far superior performance and Shia was rather good. With his recent outbursts and nutty-ness, his career was in real turmoil but he has certainly managed to pick it up and be a part of something to really be proud of. The rest of the cast were brilliant too. There's really no fault on their part. So my overall conclusion is that the movie is brilliant. The goofs can be forgiven but they are rather drastic and shows sloppiness by the cutting crews and there were some rather lengthy chunks of space that felt rather empty that didn't achieve much for the flow. I seriously think the movie deserves all of the praise it is getting and I look forward to getting it on DVD with a few little extras and maybe a directors cut. My score for Fury is 8/10

Sniper Elite 3 - Can it Hit the Broadside of a Barn? - Quicky Review!

Want a game for your next-gen console at £40 that isn't finished? Well this is you game! Rush to your local retailer and purchase this game with a story shorter than that thing you call a penis, next-gen graphics from 2002's Gamecube, a 16GB install, a frame rate that drops as often as an alcoholic in a vineyard and glitches enough to make EA's UFC proud. Having seen nothing about Sniper Elite III at EGX until a few months back, I was fairly excited. X-ray kill-cams and an intuitive mechanic for snipers sold me on V2 and returning with "Improved works" and some new extras just seemed like a much stronger game. It may simply stand that the Xbox One version of the game is supremely glitchy but that's no excuse for a game that cost £40 and just appeared out of nowhere one day without much warning.

If you're looking for a story that engages you in an action packed adventure with colourful lead character and a dark villain to boot, Don't play this. Both of these feel non-existent. Considering you only meet the villain in the final mission and kill him a little later, it feels really unjustified to pave the way for an insane Nazi, only to cut him down without any enforcement of what he is doing that is

Kaaaarl...That Kills People...

anything other than following orders. Our lead man whose name is never mentioned in game but is Karl Fairburne is practically faceless. With the emotional range of Ryan Reynold's Deadpool, the only difference is that Karl talks to himself like a madman...

The redeeming factor for Sniper Elite is the X-ray cameras. Trying to get good shots for the recording (Will be up on the Black Ribbon Youtube channel soon!) was great fun. A yelp of happiness spewed from my mouth once I finally managed to achieve a testie shot on some poor bugger. Playing on the 'normal' rating was fairly simply to do as long as you didn't go getting sighted and make a lot of noise. Bullet drop was the only gimmick that affected that particular setting of difficulty with several others ramming up the difficulty for those with the patience not to draw everyone out and play whack-a-mole with dozens of Nazi craniums.

As a pre-order bonus, I was 'rewarded' with DLC. The trend sweeping over the industry to stick DLC straight after the game is released has to be the worst idea in history. So you couldn't just place it in the game to warrant the money I've just spent on something that's only positive part is shooting AXIS forces in slow-mo, in the nuts and just general violence? I would continue to rave on about the game being screwed. So badly screwed that I had to replay a mission from the begin just so I could get a recording that didn't feature a tank locating me 12ft underground. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy shooting people and it's just a mind-numbing experience which anyone can enjoy while investing the same brainpower as a breastfeeding baby. 6/10 is where I have to place this. With no characters, a story which was already written in for them, just dumbed down and it's fuck-ups are infuriating to battle with. DO NOT WASTE £40 on it. Wait until it's cheaper! Then you may enjoy it.