Game Changing Movies

[Sam@Cult Labs]

Some movies split the history of cinema in two. A few, like Birth of a Nation, help to define what cinema will be. This silent movie with a very dubious line in racial politics is vital as it helped to set the rules of plot and pacing that would help to mould the art form (i.e. It had a beginning, a middle and an end).

Jaws (and it's partner in crime Star Wars) changed movie by grabbing the power from the character-led auteurs of the 'the new Hollywood' and taking over the screens with B-movies writ large. They took the trashy stylings of a Roger Corman B picture and threwa bucket load of cash in, ushering in the blockbuster era.

Halloween altered the path of horror, leading to a slasher boom. Monsters opened people's eyes to possibility of big screen entertainment produced on high street equipment. Pulp Fiction Tarantino-ized action flicks for a good couple of years after it's release, as witty retro referencing dialogue became an essential accompaniment to gun violence. Scream made horror movies into a self-referencing suckfest for a while.




These are my ideas on the topic, what are yours?

Which films do you feel altered the path. In the case of The Raid, I think the movie offers a wake up call for Hollywood. People are tired of action edited to an MTV beat. People are fed up of CGI action smeared onto the screen in such a blurred and confusing fashion that you can't follow what's happening. People want their action raw, real and visceral again. They want heroes who can really fight, not pampered stars with stunt doubles and double wide luxury trailers.

Hopefully, big budget action filmmakers can take some lessons from this amazing new movie and start producing films that leave you on the edge of your seat rather than frustrated by the confused events unspooling on the screen.

[pedromonkey]

What we need is a return to the style of 70s and 80s action, blowing stuff up for real not using CGI, Big men with big guns and proper fights not this quick edit chaos cam that is so prominently used in action films today, where you can't really make out who's hitting who. The best example of the worst use of this type of screen punch up is Quantum Of Solace which tried to replicate the Bourne style of fights but ended up giving people a head ache. Now take a film like Jackie Chan's Gorgeous, there is a simple one on one fight between Jackie and Bradley James Allan which is expertly shot and you can see every punch and kick and it doesn't give you a head ache. As for shoot outs, i think modern day action directors need to take a leaf out of Walter Hill's book, make them a centre piece, make them loud and make them watchable. There have been so many hollywood gun battles that have been unwatchable due to fast paced frantic editing that takes away the enjoyment of seeing people get shot (in a movie of course). Michael Mann's Heat was the last film to truly have a straight up centre piece gun battle and it's never been matched since and that was in 1995. Tony Scott is the worst offender when it comes to action movie editing, the best action scenes in Man On Fire are ruined by jittery editing and his film Domino is almost unwatchable as almost every scene is badly edited or is too dark. Hollywood needs to go back to the old style of action movie making, where we can see what's happening. It worked for the studios in the 70s and 80s and they didn't have any gimmicks back then.