scarlett johansson – NZ Film Freak

Top 10: Flaws in Horse Films

old Spice horse advert

War huuuurse. Directed by Steven Spielbhuuuuurg Horse films are typically watched by horseriders, which means the film is going to have a very critical audience right off the bat.

I can’t enjoy horse films or TV shows (although… I don’t really know anyone over the age of 12 who does) because it’s really difficult not to nit-pick.

These are the things that always seem to let a horse film down:

Foals not being the gender they’re supposed to be. (War Horse and Black Beauty (1994)).
Using incorrect terminology. (Racing Stripes).
Fake white markings. Therefore, making the differences between all four of the horses used to play the main horse very obvious.
“Wild horses” wearing metal shoes (Of Horses and Men and The Saddle Club).
Actors who can’t ride! The studio cut-aways to the actor riding in front of a green screen does not make up for it! (Flicka).
Giving the actor a saddle to use when they’re supposed to be riding bareback (Snow White and the Huntsman and McLeod’s Daughters, watch it here). Also, “bridleless” horses (see right) wearing bridles made of string (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
Wrong sound effects used for when horses are cantering on grass. Sometimes it sounds like they’re galloping on concrete wearing iron shoes (Black Beauty).
– So much rearing!!
Excessive loyalty between horse and rider. Horses aren’t dogs. Horses don’t sniff out their human from across a battlefield. I’m referring to that bloody War Horse film again of course.
The worst thing? The excessive neighs and horse sounds. Horses are actually really quiet animals in most circumstances. This blunder is in every film with horses.

I think the biggest disappointment though, is the false hope we get from horse films. I always get so pumped to go out for a ride after watching Black Beauty or whatever, but when I hop on my old nag, he refuses to look awesome and respond in the same way as a Friesian does. He also has never protected me from so much as a wasp, let alone a fire, a speeding truck or gun-waving soldiers as seen in the movies.

I must give a thumbs-up to the following horse movies though. For the most part, they got a lot right.

Seabiscuit.
Certainly looks like Toby Maguire can ride!
Black Beauty (1994).
I’m still baffled as to how they got the horses to do half the things they did. Maybe the animal welfare laws were a tad lax in those days? Fantastic score though!
The Horse Whisperer (featuring Scarlett Johansson).
Again, how they got the horses to do much of what they did is amazing. A very realistic approach to training for once too. And, yes! That’s another dig at War Horse! It’s terrible! I wrote all about it here. Including the part where horses climb ladders to get into the loft.
Of Horses and Men.
A beautiful Icelandic horse film celebrating the horses’ way of life there.

Random facts:

Most horses in films are solid colours because it’s easier to get a double that looks the same. That’s why you rarely see spotty, patchy or dappled horses on the screen – even the ones in the background, so as not to draw attention away from the main horse… I wasn’t going to break out the Saddle Club fan girl in me, but that’s why Comanche is an Appaloosa in the books but a bay in the TV series! SCANDAL!
Solid black horses with no white markings tend to be difficult to come across. Hence why Friesians are often used (Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, any war or fantasy film you can think of), because that breed only comes in black, never has white markings and they’re all similar in size and height.
Horses are taught to rear to show resistance to the rider because teaching them to buck is much, much harder to do.
The two gorgeous ponies in Sleepy Hollow are my favourites. Johnny Depp even adopted the one he rode (named Gunpowder in the film, and Goldeneye in real life) because he was going to be put down after the film! *Sigh*

Thank you to my fellow equestrian friends for helping me collate this list!

Let me leave you with the worst and most cringe-worthy horse film trailer I’ve seen. Enjoy.

Jodie.

Her

joaquin phoenix in Her film poster
Director: Spike Jonze
Writer: Spike Jonze
Released: October, 2013
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Scarlett Johansson
—

(Prepare to see a lot of screen grabs with quotes from this film around. The script is so poetic.)

Her is a sci-fi romance, drama hybrid that premiered at the 2013 New York Film Festival.

It’s set in the near future where rather than keeping one’s head down – staring at a phone screen – people now have an ear piece that respond to voice commands.

joaquin phoenix in Her film The operational system – or OS – that performs the requests now have personalities, and for all intense and purposes, are a personal assistant with feelings and emotions equal in complexity to humans.

This new update is something that the main character, melancholy and lonely Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), becomes immediately interested in.

By day, Theodore is a professional personal letter writer, which is an occupation where people who feel unable or unwilling to compose heart-felt and genuine letters to loved ones pay letter writers like Theodore to do so on their behalf.

joaquin phoenix in Her film (I’m really hoping this job gets invented soon. I’d be on that like white on RICE!)

I think his job is an example of how emotionally distant we are becoming as technology becomes the middle-man in human interactions.

It’s also the perfect job for this introverted character, who clearly expresses his emotions best when done so indirectly. I think this is a characteristic that allowed him to get so attached to his personalised OS, named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

Before long, Samantha and Theodore have bonded and their relationship grows.

Considering Samantha isn’t a physical character yet still a main character in the movie, Her is fantastically written and shot.

Amy Adams - Her movie OS/human relationships become a common phenomenon, and certainly makes the viewer question what makes a relationship, and what love is.

If you think about it, meeting people online was frowned upon not too long ago. I think the OS relationship story parallels the shift in society’s thinking about online relationships.

Or, a colder interpretation of this story is how we are avoiding personal relationships by hiding behind screens all the time. Where people are ‘being in love with their lap top or phone’. But I don’t think this is the writer’s ambition, according interviews I’ve seen.

I found Her a really thought-provoking film. I enjoy movies that focus on characters, human behaviour and social development, and I think this is quite an accurate depiction of what the future could look like.

Her is an interesting insight into the future of romantic relationships, an interesting reflection on what relationships fundamentally are, what the most important components are, and what the common obstacles are.

It’s a fascinating and compelling analysis of the human heart and its complexities.

Sorry, I know I’m babbling on – I could say a lot more – but my final point is about the clothes. I bet this is accurate of what we will wear in the future. No silver jump suits, but a mix of old fashioned pants and bold shirts.

Oh wait! This is my final point: the music by Arcade Fire is AMAZING.

Her may be a little too abstract or boring for some watchers. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

Lucy

It was a great concept, but it was just so weird! It was simply bizarre.

Scarlet Johansson plays the protagonist, Lucy, who is kidnapped and used as a drug mule. The new drug seeps into her system, which enables her to use more and more and more of her brain.

She is able to manipulate everything from pain tolerence to technology. She even pulls some solid Matrix moves.

It would have been a great as a short film… It’s almost as though it should have been an arty film festival film. The mere fact it ha Johansson and Freeman in it threw it into the Hollywood sphere. I don’t think it belongs there though. It attracts the kind of audience who want an awesome sci-fi film, when it should attract the deep-and-meaningful film analysts.

Some parts of the script were super cool, particularly in regards to how people have evolved, how we think and behave.

Other parts were plain odd.

Basically, this movie isn’t what you think it will be like. The trailer advertises a Hollywood action sci-fi, when in fact it’s mind-bender with a screwed up ending.

Jodie’s rating: 4/10

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Directors: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Writers: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Released: April 2014
Featuring: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Hayley Atwell, Robert Redford and Samuel L. Jackson
—

Wow! Okay, I haven’t seen the first of the Captain America films (Captain America: The First Avenger) but I feel I still got the impact of the movie without much of the back story.

I haven’t seen the Avenger movies either (don’t kill me!).

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is about Captain America’s (AKA Steve Rogers) past haunting him. He was once in the army where he lost a dear friend, Bucky. The flash backs are gorgeous; back to the 1940s. Steve Rogers is trying to fit into the modern day but the values of the people in charge don’t sit well with him.

Basically there is a lot of action, awesome characters who are well developed, and the plot is so relatable with our current battle against Nanny States and over-surveillance.

I thought Captain America was going to be a patriotic conservative goody-two-shoes… A wannabe Superman if I may say so…

How wrong could I be.

Captain America is a bad ass super soldier with a ridiculously calm attitude. What a dude. With awesome morals, too.

My favourite quote of his comes about when Nick Fury (director of the super-spy agency, SHIELD, that Captain America is a part of) says that the world needs more surveillance to eradicate potential threats to humankind. Captain America/Steve Rogers, finds it difficult to justify this lack of privacy:

“…holding a gun to everyone on Earth and calling it protection… That’s not free, that’s fear!”

But the most impressive character was Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff. She is equal to male superheroes intelligence-wise and combat-wise. She is also witty… I don’t know if I’m going too far saying this, but she is CLOSE to being a female version of Batman… I’m not taking it back! It’s out there.

It happened.

Natasha is just the coolest. She doesn’t have a fat cry when things get difficult, she is sneaky and knows how to work the system. She is still so feminine without wearing next to nothing too.

I said Black Widow should have shorter hair, but then I realised that would be inconvenient for Johansson’s stunt double whose face is obscured in all the long-shot fight scenes.

captain-america-winter-soldier-sebastian-stan-set-photo_jpg_crop_display A super exciting film that doesn’t let your mind wander during the fight scenes. Relatable characters and plot with awesome enemies. The Winter Soldier is a good-looking son of a gun, yet ridiculously ruthless with an upsetting back story.

Fantastic. Such a fun film. Even for somebody who hasn’t seen the previous film, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Scary, funny, exciting, thrilling and dark.

Go see it.

Jodie’s rating: 7/10

The Horse Whisperer

Director: Robert Redford
Writer: Nicholas Evans (Novel)
Released: 1998
Starring: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Cooper
—

I am a sucker for any great horse film – such as Black Beauty, but unlike War Horse.
And The Horse Whisperer is certainly way up there in terms of lack of soppiness, being accurate in the training and horse terms as well as having a strong sense of realism.

So it begins in the most idyllic farm blanketed in thick snow. Grace (the young Scarlett Johansson) puts her riding boots on and tip toes out of the house. She sees he friend over in the next field and yells “HELLO!!” with steam coming from her mouth and her voice echoing. “HELLOOO!!” her friend replies and they run toward each other, then make their way to the stables.

This is my idea of paradise which is why this film starts out on an instant high.

Unfortunately during their ride, Grace’s friend and her horse get hit by a truck and die. The accident was filmed so well! And when I say that it was filmed well, I mean insatiablely exquisitely well! I can’t even put my finger on how they did it… Perhaps they really did get a horse to do all of the stunts or perhaps they got away with realistic dummies due to the many quick-edited shots. Anyway. I almost don’t want to know because it was so convincing.

The accident leaves Grace and her horse Pilgrim physically and mentally injured so Grace’s mum (Kristin Scott Thomas) takes them to a ‘horse whisperer’ called Tom Booker (Robert Redford) in order to help them both recover.

The thing that stood out for me was the acuracy in the training techniques. The Horse Whisperer is based on a training system called Natural Horsemanship where the rider asks the horse for submission, acceptance and softness.

Obviously the reactions of the horse are not always particularly realistic, nor would the lack of time spent on Pilgrim result in the horse becoming totally cured. However, I think we are all grown up to accept that this is a film that has certainly taken the horse’s reactions into consideration, without it becoming an instructional video of how to train your horse.

The epic music is as incredible as Titanic and Black Beauty. I blame the music for my constant blubbering throughout the entire film…

I remember when I last watched this and I felt like there wasn’t enough of the horse’s story in it. However, this was about ten or so years ago and I am rather thankful that a parallel storyline of how humans interact and accept each other was weaved throughout. The love story is strong and does not take from the overall story of the horse’s journey through recovery.

You kind of get to know how cruelly we treat each other, how trauma affects people differently and how we listen and communicate with each other through the recovery of the horse. It’s really quite deep.

The end of the story is unexpected… But I can’t decide if it was in a good way or not. Everything is concluded except for the love story which I was eager to know more about.

After watching this I wanted to buy a ranch in Southern America so badly! Get a horse and go out riding for days. It made horseriding look incredibly natural – which I suppose it isn’t really – with big western saddles, loose reins and calm canters over the endless hills. A fantastically jolting contrast between the uncontained farm land and the claustrophobic New York City show within the film.

A fantastic watch for any horse lover or lover of deep emotion-driven films. I enjoyed the culture of the farm in the south.

Robert Redford has style! So keep an eye out for the use of shadows and colour.
A film that is very well done.

Jodie’s rating: 8.5/10