Rodrigo Cortés
42 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Written by Christie LeBlanc, "Oxygen" evokes a plethora of films before it — you'll have your own touchstones, but my mind goes immediately to Ryan Reynolds in coffin-squirmer "Buried."
Similar experiences have been crafted recently (Buried with Ryan Reynolds comes to mind as the most direct parallel), so it’s not necessarily a new concept but one seemingly always challenging to pull off successfully.
Trying to deliver a fully-formed, three-dimensional and engaging performance from within the confines of what’s essentially a coffin isn’t an easy task, but Ryan Reynolds proved in 2010’s Buried that it could be done with aplomb, so it’s no surprise that Aja cited Rodrigo Cortés’ nailbiter as a direct inspiration.
It instantly reminds me of Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried (2010), which starred Ryan Reynolds as an unfortunate victim trapped in a wooden coffin.
The film is in some ways reminiscent of 2010’s Buried, which took the viewer into a buried wooden coffin alongside Ryan Reynolds.
It’s also a single-person, single-location gimmick movie along the lines of Colin Farrell’s “Phone Booth,” Ryan Reynolds’ “Buried” and Blake Lively’s “The Shallows.”
With its single-location, practically real-time idea of a one-on-one confrontation between two snipers, “The Wall” belongs to a select pool of tête-à-tête thrillers — “Phone Booth,” “Buried,” “Sleuth” — in which our hero discovers he’s the mouse being hunted by a sly cat and must use his wits if he hopes to survive.
It’s been the better part of a decade since “Buried,” “Devil,” and “Frozen” (the one about flesh-eating wolves, not the one about princesses) all hit theaters in the same year, and, for a moment there, it almost seemed as though the sub-genre those films share had started to lose its appeal.
Not only is it about brotherhood and friendship among snipers, but it presents itself as an isolated single-location horror in the vein of Buried.
Hiding places are scarce, mouths are dry and muzzle flashes represent the only radar advantage – not exactly Black Hawk Down, but more an open-world Buried.
Ryan Reynolds in "Buried"…
That’s why similar or relatable films like Buried and Locke, while focusing on only one person and close-ups for 90-minutes, could have never come together otherwise.
Sometimes these movies focus on a single character, as in 127 Hours , Buried , or All Is Lost , and sometimes they focus on a duo or a group, such as 47 Meters Down , the original Frozen (not the Disney film), or Devil .
Parallels will definitely be drawn between Brendan Walsh’s feature film with two other claustrophobic titles, both from 2010 — Buried, or where Deadpool must make videos to get out of a wooden coffin, and Frozen, or where “let it go” is a no-no for three youngsters stuck on a ski lift.
Other films—like Buried or Frozen (no, not that Frozen), both from 2010—have had similar feels to Centigrade, combining close quarters with a battle against the elements.
Anyone hoping for the narrative twists of something like the 2010 Ryan Reynolds thriller Buried are likely to be sorely disappointed.
Knight's film is one of those cinematic high-wire acts in the vein of "Buried" and "All is Lost" in which a director tries to burnish his storytelling cred by tying one hand behind his back and setting his whole film in one place.
It's the type of concept similar to what Rodrigo Cortes was going for in " Buried ."
Think Castaway with Tom Hanks (2000), Buried with Ryan Reynolds (2010), 127 Hours with James Franco (2010) and last year's Gravity (Sandra Bullock) and All is Lost (Robert Redford).
Dramatic stuff to be sure, though far removed from the sort of nail-biting thriller narrative audiences have come to expect from the man-in-a-confined-space sub-genre (think: Ryan Reynolds in Buried, Colin Farrell in Phone Booth, etc.).
Most man-in-a-can titles wear out their welcome quickly, including “ Phone Booth ,” about a man trapped in you know what, and “ Buried ,” about a far less lucky guy buried alive in a coffin; in “Gravity,” Sandra Bullock switched cans often enough that the movie never felt oppressive.
A little like Tom Hardy in Locke (a terrific movie) or Ryan Reynolds in Buried (not so terrific), 7500 is largely a one-man show.
Two of the more impressive examples of the latter we've seen in recent years include the 2010 Ryan Reynolds' feature Buried and Tom Hardy's 2014 Locke, films in which the performers are the only ones seen on screen for the entire running time.
Most man-in-a-can movies wear out their premise quickly–a malaise that affected the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Buried (about a man buried alive in a coffin), as much as Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth (about a man trapped in a comparatively nicer cage).
Like Steven Knight’s Locke or Rodrigo Cortés’s Buried , Vollrath fully explores the possibilities of this single location, trapping the audience in a confined space from which the wider drama plays out.
Like other star-driven, single-location thrillers like Phone Booth, Buried, or Locke, one of the finest examples of the genre , the movie makes an implicit promise to the viewer: you're not going anywhere.
“7500” – which is an aviation transporter code for a hijacking – is a combination of “Buried” (2010), “Captain Phillips” (2013), and “United 93” (2006), and this public invasion in the sky also feels personal.
But as anyone who watched Hitchcock play with space and tension in Rope and Lifeboat will know, limited room invites a lot of cinematic invention, and newcomer Cortes has the skill to make his 90 minute experiment work brilliantly.
The film's hemmed-in parameters court comparisons with Hitchcock's "Lifeboat," which confined virtually all its activity to a World War II-era lifeboat bobbing on a rear-projection ocean.
From Lifeboat to Phone Booth, single setting films have used the limitations of their settings to facilitate incredible tension and drama, and Buried – one of the most extreme single setting films yet – does exactly this.
There are echoes of "Scanners," "Unbreakable" and "The Prestige" as Margaret and Tom go about disproving phenomenon after phenomenon, from supposedly haunted houses to elaborate stage performances akin to those for which Simon was once renowned.
In this respect, I found myself comparing the approach of "Red Lights" to Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige."
Things wind up to a fevered pitch before a rewind, like "The Prestige," but without any rabbit coming out of the hat.
The film wraps up with a reveal along the lines of "The Usual Suspects" or "The Prestige" in which it turns out there was another story being secretly told in tandem all along.
Granted, this isn't the first film to exist in a confined locale as others have taken place in single rooms and director Joel Schumacher kept Colin Farrell in an old-fashioned place for making calls for most of the appropriately titled "Phone Booth."
Like Buried (and Joel Shumacher's similarly stripped-back Phone Booth), at that movie's heart was a great, simple concept - two men, trapped in a room, forced to resolve their situation or die there.
It’s a bit like 2002’s Phone Booth, only where said phone booth has been tipped on its side, buried somewhere in the Middle East and is occupied by Ryan Reynolds ( The Proposal , X-men Origins: Wolverine ).
From Lifeboat to Phone Booth, single setting films have used the limitations of their settings to facilitate incredible tension and drama, and Buried – one of the most extreme single setting films yet – does exactly this.
Wouldn't it be interesting, I thought, if the film never left the box, like a more extreme version of the 2003 thriller Phone Booth, in which Colin Farrell was essentially chained to pay phone by a psychopath?
With "Buried," director Rodrigo Cortés and actor Ryan Reynolds engage in the kind of extreme real-time filmmaking once practiced by Alfred Hitchcock in "Rope" (and, more recently, on "24"), setting up an experiment in limitation that, at least until the movie's deflating final payoff, manages to tap into our deepest anxieties.
But as anyone who watched Hitchcock play with space and tension in Rope and Lifeboat will know, limited room invites a lot of cinematic invention, and newcomer Cortes has the skill to make his 90 minute experiment work brilliantly.
The claustrophobic setting, ticking clock and innocent-man theme are reminiscent of "Rope," in which Alfred Hitchcock used the limitations of time and space as production design elements.
But almost instantly the movie feels like an offshoot of the “Saw’’ horror franchise, in which characters awake to find themselves trapped in a game for their lives.
It's kind of like if Saw were a one-man show in a tiny theater.
His unseen captors have a sadistic side — perhaps they’ve seen Saw? They’ve left Conroy with a cellphone that miraculously works better under the Iraq desert than it would in your basement at home.
…horror scenario on par with the original Saw.
Chris Sparling’s script takes place in 2006 (was it written then?), so perhaps he intended it as a pointed comment on the war—but it’s actually just a clever topical adaptation on the old Lucille Fletcher radio drama (and Barbara Stanwyck movie) Sorry, Wrong Number; Sparling even wraps things up with a variation on Fletcher’s classic last line.
There's not even a view from immediately above (a vantage point that was perhaps the most chilling aspect of the Dutch buried-alive thriller The Vanishing, from 1988).
“Hours” is a high concept thriller in the vein of Ryan Reynolds’ “Buried” or the lesser seen “Brake” starring Stephen Dorff.
Of course, this is first and foremost a thriller, one of those locked-room types with a single location, which tests the inventiveness of the filmmakers and star (something along the lines of “Buried,” say, or “The Purge“), so emotion isn’t its chief concern.
The trouble is, despite a couple of decent performances at its heart and a nice shift behind the camera from Eduard Grau ( Buried ) The Way Back just never achieves lift off.
The Southern California setting tends to feel a bit downplayed by DP Eduard Grau ( A Single Man , 2009; Buried , 2010), but overall, The Way Back is a pleasant surprise and conversation piece just as it is a reminder of Affleck’s abilities in the right material.
Capably acting his way out of a tight situation, Reynolds channels a measure of Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard” hero John McClane, as the isolated Conroy, longing for his family and struggling to keep his cool, is forced to develop trusting relationships with those he can’t see.
In another direction entirely, I remember hearing Donald Sutherland explain, more than 20 years ago, how he set a new gold standard for character actors in the 1989 movie “Lock Up.” Sylvester Stallone wanted Sutherland to play the sadistic prison warden that his character would battle against, but the esteemed Canadian thought the picture sounded dreadful and didn’t want to do it.
Buried from a couple years ago tackled a similar idea but that was a little more of a B-movie, while this one feels like it's trying to make a larger point.
Much like Tom Hardy in Locke or Ryan Reynolds in Buried, Jakob Cedergren isn’t afforded the luxury of a cast of other performers to share the spotlight with him.
While the plight of an emergency dispatcher calls to mind forgettable Halle Berry vehicle “The Call,” Moller’s movie actually bears more of a resemblance to “Locke” and “Buried,” single-set movies based almost entirely around a single character and the fragmented communications he has with the outside world.
Fans of single-setting thrillers like Buried and Locke should definitely check out this compelling Danish story set in an emergency call centre.
The movie also is similar to and lesser than the lunacy in Adrian Lyne’s shocker “Jacob’s Ladder’’ or the overcooked nonsense of the 2004 B-movie “Cellular,’’ in which Chris Evans tries to save Kim Basinger’s life through a mobile phone connection.
…buried ★★★★ out of 4 stars Cinematographer Eduard Grau, who also shot Tom Ford's ravishing "A Single Man," films the proceedings with sinister elegance.
But back to my point: that at any given juncture, Paul's terror is a different flavor of panicked, which Cortés visualises in a number of different ways, aided by the extremely valuable talents of Eduard Grau, the young cinematographer whose only other prominent work has been last year's grimly over-conceived A Single Man .
Cortés and cinematographer Eduard Grau ("A Single Man"), the heavy lifter here, use all kinds of tricks.
Lit by way of a Zippo, a cellular phone, a flashlight and a flare, cinematographer Eduard Grau (2009's " A Single Man ") impresses in the amount of different camera setups he is able to achieve, as well as in the different shades of color that punctuate the image depending on what Paul is using for light at any given moment.
Cinematographer Eduard Grau, whose previous work includes the sumptuous A Single Man (2009) does an amazing job making this film visually engaging.
Yet cinematographer Eduard Grau ( A Single Man ) constantly innovates with his angles and framing, making exceptional use of diegetic light sources such as a flickering flame and a mobile’s screen glow.
From the Vertigo-style movie poster to the Psycho slashes of Victor Reyes’ pulse-pounding score, the master’s influence is everywhere.