Love and Sherlock Holmes

So yesterday I spent the majority of the day hanging out with a good friend of mine Joe just running around going to a few places. I got to shoot my first handgun which I sucked at from the start and then after that owned. We went to the Science Center which was awesome when I was a kid but kinda sucked now that I am older (should of expected that). Finally we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows which I felt was better than the original in some regards and in others not so much.

This new film goes much further into the psyche of Holmes and decides to point out more of his quirky methods at time to the extreme for instance when he is drinking embalming fluid but other hits it right on the nose when he hates riding on the horse. I felt like the use of slow motion like in the first to show his thought process was again a very smart trick but when it was used on things such as a gun about to fire a huge explosive device it became a bit overused. The scene in the woods of them running away from the Germans was amazing and this by far was the best use of the slow motion effect in the whole film. The introduction of Moriarty was not overdone at all (as it can be in the Holmes universe) and his character was written in very well to fit the way the books had described him (he is a man who never gets his hands dirty). The ending is nothing short of a very Hollywood style but it still fits within all the workings of a Conan Doyle story. I would recommend a watch either in theaters or at home when it is on DVD. Not worth a rush to the theater really but it is still an enjoyable Sherlock Holmes film.

The other film I watched yesterday was entitled Love which is a very intensely slow drama piece about a man up in space who slowly learns he is going to be up there for a while. It can be assumed that back on Earth man is slowly killing themselves through war. At the same time there are flashbacks to a civil war soldier who is on the quest for a mysterious ship that is near the Mississippi river. Throughout the film we watch this lone mans decent into madness as he has no human interaction aboard the space station. There is no real villain in this film or not secret he really finds. It is just a slow paced strange film which is not terrible but a bit too philosophical for its own good at parts. Sometimes shots get repeated but from different angles which is excusable but the fact that these shots are shown in slow motion several times make it very apparent that we have seen them before. It comes to an end in a less than satisfactory ending and the only real way to have it make sense is if you use the excuse that he must have died. I really love the concept and the majority of the execution considering how indie this film is. I'd say if you can get past the slow pacing and the almost cheesy soundtrack from Angels and Airwaves at times it makes for a very good film. If not though stay away it is not going to pick up the pace at any point really.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess