The Breakfast Club and Crank Last week we looked at a couple of films that took place in a single location. Naturally, this week’s features will all take place within a single day. Again, we’ve seen this before. Sometimes it’s an attempt to keep a hyper pace to an action film. Other times it’s just a way to show a little slice of a slightly specific life.
We’ll start this week off with a classic I’m sure all of you have seen. The Brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal make up this microcosm that represents the average high school experience. John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club” (1985) is a modern classic and probably Hughes’ best film. Five students who wouldn’t typically be caught dead together are forced to spend an entire Saturday in detention with each other. Although the dialogue is sometimes clunky and not all of acting is spot on, the brilliance of this film is in its relatability. Every audience member would find one of these characters to identify with at first. Then gradually, as the characters in the film open up, all the rest of the other five begin to become more relatable to every individual.
Our next film had much less of a social impact. Unless of course you measure social impact by how totally rad it is. The writer/director tandem of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s first film “Crank” (2006) follow Professional assassin Chev Chelios (coolest character name ever) around on the day he is attempting to tender his resignation. This film pushes a lot of envelopes, both technically and from a story-telling standpoint. Most of the film was shot on consumer grade camcorders. This allowed the filmmakers to get in closer to the action without having to worry about damaging expensive equipment. This technique was carried over even more so in the film’s sequel “Crank 2: High Voltage”
Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment