One of the cinemas in my city has a double feature showing every Monday, the films are sometimes an odd combination (I remember once they showed Matilda followed by A Clockwork Orange) however, the tickets are cheap and you get to bang out two films in a night. Last Monday's feature was particularly epic; they showed, The King's Speech (this years Academy Award Best Picture winner) and True Grit (a respective nominee). Both I enjoyed equally in different ways.
(source;google images)
The King's Speech screened first, and although I thought it was a little long towards the end, I thoroughly enjoyed it. For such a mundane theme as a King trying to speak, I went into the film a little cynical as to how it would be entertaining. However, director Tom Hooper managed to capture the audience through his brilliant score and script. He also achieved this through, most notably, the techniques used. Many intrusive fisheye lens, eye-level camera shots were used which evoked the idea of constriction as a result of being (to an extent) voiceless. Furthermore, it placed the audience on the same level as the King.
(source;google images)
As for True Grit, I'm not particularly a fan of any western films. The idea of revenge and private justice just doesn't really do it for me in a film, coupled with tacky American accents and the conquest of the wilderness just bores me most of the time. But, it was the Coen Brothers, and although I haven't particularly loved any of their work in the past (don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed their films, but I've never fallen head over heels for any of them) I thought that I should probably see the film. And like most of their previous films, I liked True Grit but it isn't something I'd see again or particularly loved. Hailee Steinfeld (who plays Mattie Ross) was excellent, and really deserved the credit she received especially considering her age (she was 14 at the time of release). The film is a typical story of western vengeance and follows Mattie who is in search for the man who killed her father. She finds the best man in town to accompany her, the merciless Rooster Cogburn (played by the one and only Jeff Bridges). Watching two films subsequently made me lose slight interest during the beginning scenes of True Grit, but it managed to hold my focus until the end of the film.
All in all, the two films were an enjoyable watch. I preferred The King's Speech over True Grit, probably due to a number of things. The first being the era they were set in; the pre-world war two era that The King's Speech was set in is one of my favourites and thus the socio-historical context probably influenced my preference over the western True Grit. And secondly, because Colin Firth is to die for and Geoffrey Rush is an amazing Australian actor.
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