The Hallway Fight – OldBoy (2003)

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Ross Birks

The first time I saw Oldboy I sat in complete silence for a good 10 minutes after the credits rolled. It left me physically shaken and totally gobsmacked. It’s film so audacious and so full of jaw-dropping visuals that you feel as if you’re being throttled by a master filmmaker for 2 hours and literally watching cinematic technique being re-invented right in front of your eyes.  I don’t think I’ve uttered the words “How the hell did they do that?” quite as many times during a film as I have with Oldboy. The centre piece of which is the now legendary hallway fight sequence.

This show stopper sees our tortured hero, Oh Dae-su, singlehandedly face down an entire mob of bad bastards with a hammer. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, director Park Chan-wook goes one step further and stages the entire sequence in one long, un-edited take. It reportedly took seventeen attempts and three days to get right, but the results are jaw-dropping. A physical endurance test as much as it is an astounding bit of cinema. Movies don’t come much better than this ladies and gentlemen.

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“They Call Me Dr. Manhattan” – Watchmen (2009)

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Ross Birks

Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, I feel, is one of those movies that gets better with every year that goes by. Shrugged off upon it’s initial release as an overly stylish, OTT and inferior adaptation of it’s groundbreaking source material, when looked at with fresh eyes however, Watchmen turns out to be something quite special in it’s own right. Running at an epic 3 hours and featuring countless unconventional narrative shifts and dramatic tangents, Snyder’s collosal comic-book behemoth is literally the ballsiest and most experimental movie of it’s kind that is in desperate need of re-assessment.

Zack Snyder is a filmmaker who has been unfairly lumped with the Michael Bays and George Lucas’s as one of modern cinema’s walking death knells. While it’s true that his movies do tend to favour style over substance in many places, on the other hand he has executed some truly breathtaking sequences. My favourite of which is the haunting and delicate backstory to Watchmen‘s Dr. Manhattan. Narrated soothingly by Crudup’s voice-over, we watch as he goes from a young and naive scientist to a modern messiah, touching on romance and tragedy along the way all set to Tyler Bates’ chilling score. It’s a spine-tingling piece of filmmaking that I appreciate more and more with every viewing. You could argue that Snyder simply translated the graphic novel’s panels to the screen but the fact he captured the beauty and horror of those panels is definite evidence that there’s some great talent in that mind of his somewhere.

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Free Birds – The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Ross Birks

The Devil’s Rejects is not only Rob Zombie’s masterpiece but one of the finest horror movies from the Noughties. What makes it so unique, however, is the fact that it isn’t actually a horror movie at all, but rather a Sam Peckinpah style western dressed up as one.

The comparison is none more evident than in the films blood-soaked finale which sees our three psychotic heroes embarking on a “to the death” showdown with the police. Guns blaze, bullets fly and blood is spilt by the gallon, but it’s Zombie’s choice to score the whole sequence to Lynyrd Skynard’s iconic hippie anthem Free Bird which makes it so spine-tinglingly cool and nail-bitingly brutal.

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Infinity and Beyond – Contact (1997)

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Ross Birks

I literally just finished watching Contact a few hours ago but it has immediately struck a chord with me. Robert Zemeckis’ science-fiction epic also boasts one of the most cinematic opening sequences I’ve ever seen.

Beginning in space with an explosion of overlapping music as the sun shines over Earth, we slowly start to pull away further and further into the far reaches of our galaxy. The sound gets fainter and fainter and transforms from contemporary pop music to history’s earliest broadcasts then eventually fades away into complete silence. The camera keeps going, floating lightyears and lightyears away out of the solar system and into the infinite before finally pulling out of a glint in a little girl’s eye.

It’s a hypnotising and epic sequence that you can’t take your eyes away from for a second. The perfect opening to a film that all at once inspires wonder, mystery, and awe.

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“I’m Howard Hughes” – Melvin and Howard (1980)

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Ross Birks

Jonathan Demme’s criminally underrated Melvin and Howard opens with this great sequence in which down-on-his-luck Melvin Dummar (Paul Le Mat) picks up a grizzly old man (Jason Robards) he’s found lying on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. We then sit back and watch as the two characters get to know each other in Melvin’s pick up truck. Things get even more interesting as the old man claims to be legendary reclusive billionare, Howard Hughes.

What’s so great about this scene is just how rare it is in movies these days. Demme slows everything down and gives us the time to get to know these two characters (who couldn’t be more different) through a very normal and very sweet conversation. Also, seeing Jason Robards sing “Bye Bye Blackbird” is both haunting and beautiful. The scene lasts a wonderful ten minutes but you’ll wish it was longer.

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Little Bill’s New Year – Boogie Nights (1997)

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Ross Birks

I love Boogie Nights with all my heart. Paul Thomas Anderson’s virtuoso expose of the porn scene in the 70s and 80s is full of wonderful cinematic sequences. One of the film’s finest moments sees William H. Macy’s tragic Little Bill crash the New Years party by murdering his wife and her lover before sticking the gun in his own mouth and pulling the trigger. The majority of the sequence unfolds in one long steadicam shot (surely one of the best ever put on film) and plays out to the beat of Charlie Wright’s groovy Do Your Thing.

It’s a breathtaking piece of filmmaking that perfectly signals the beginning of Dirk’s downfall. Bravo, PTA, bravo.

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