After coming out of the cinema two nights ago, I was wondering which was better: Buried, a tale of a man who has been buried alive and has to work with terrorists and their demands to gain his safety, or the fact I only paid £2.80 to see it! I had tried to go the previous week to the same cinema chain and they told me it'd be £10.70, to which I walked away. Cineworld on a Wednesday with student cards is the best thing possible for cinema lovers. But I digress, onto the film in my mind.
Buried gained a lot of hype through it's novelty and a great festival run, with Ryan Reynolds being praised by the critics all across the board. I will try and not ruin the film, as I think people should go and see this, so I will keep it short. This film does make you feel quite ill, with my girlfriend repeating "it's awful" to the storyline when we left, and there are moments which brought a tear to my eye, but a film set in one location and keeping my attention for 95 minutes must be doing something good. Director Rodrigo Cortes and cinematographer Eduard Grau do a fantastic job of keeping up the suspense, and some of the writing is great, bringing in some comedy in a very unfunny situation.
When I was thinking of the film afterwards on my journey home and that night (it's hard to not think of it a lot when it's over) I wondered about how other films only set in one location fair.
Glengarry Glen Ross - This film features a whole load of amazing actors, including Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey, and gets through on the fantastic talent and an amazing script. One scene in particular stays in everyones mind, with Pacino lashing out at Spacey in a two minute rant with a lot of swear words. When I mentioned this to my girlfriend, she pointed out that this film, and the next in this list, are both stage plays, so are written to be set in one place.
12 Angry Men - I remember seeing this film at a quite young age and am dying to see it again, the story of 12 men in a jury deciding on a defendant's innocence. The story is very basic, and again relies on a very strong script to keep up the story. It's carried by one man in particular, Henry Fonda, and Sidney Lumet does a good job on directing. But what about one location films that aren't set on stage productions?
Phone Booth - A more modern single location film that did very well in the box office, Phone Booth tells the story of one man who is held hostage in a telephone box by a sniper. The writer, Larry Cohen, originally pitched the idea of a man in a phone booth for a whole film to none other than Alfred Hitchcock back in the 60s, but they couldn't think of a significant enough storyline for it to work. Then, over 30 years later it came to him what it should be about. I am not a huge fan of the film, but it does work, and does keep you in suspense, and I think it would have been very interesting to see what Hitchcock would have done with the script if Cohen had the idea 30 years previous.
These three films all work in a single location, with some working in better areas in others. For example, Glengarry and 12 Angry Men work in suspense and fantastic writing, while Phone Booth works well because it's set in real time. I haven't seen many one location films, so I can't think of any others that don't particularly work so well, but these three and the new release Buried are all ones to watch. Here is a list of other one-location (or set in one for the majority) films that are out there.
Clerks
Reservoir Dogs
The Breakfast Club
Rear Window
Dog Day Afternoon
1 comments:
I'm a fan of single location films. Hitchcock's Lifeboat and Rope are two that spring to mind and both worth watching, especially Rope.
There's been a few more this year too such as Devil and Frozen, but yet to see them myself. Suppose others would include the likes of The Evil Dead, Cube, Paranormal Activity... probably quite a few horrors when you come to think of it.
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