Top 100 Favourite Films: #50-41

#50: The Shawshank Redemption – It pays to play the long game

A man is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. For the next ten years, he bides his time inside Shawshank Prison, making allies where he can and waiting for the moment when he can finally escape his confines. Frank Darabont, co-writer of the previously-discussed Nightmare On Elm Street 3, has a penchant for bringing the works of Stephen King to the big screen, but he tends to stick to the less recognisably-Kingian stories. From this to The Green Mile to his later work with The Mist, he not only chose decidedly different material but also showed a startingly amount of understanding of the text to bring it roaring to life on screen. This film, more so than anything else he has touched to date, accomplishes that goal.

Kaabil (2017) - Movie Review

Summer here in Australia means a lot of things: Intense heat, insects flying everywhere, the occasional blackout just make the heat and bugs feel that little bit worse, that sort of thing. Of course, for the country’s cinephiles, it also marks a point of weirdness concerning releases. I say this because every release in January/February falls into one of three disparate categories.

You’ve got the last remnants of the Oscar nominations that get released so that we can be as informed as possible while pretending to give a crap about the Oscars like Lion. You’ve got the scrap heap that wasn’t good enough for a release during the previous year like Monster Trucks. And then you’ve got the first glimmers of the traditional summer action blockbusters to make sure everyone is still awake to see the rest of the year. Today, we’re very much talking about the latter, and considering this is also another Bollywood release, I can’t say I knew what to expect walking into it. Specifically, I wasn’t expecting something this good.