127 Hours (2010)
127 Hours (2010) — Wow… just wow. Not only is this the best movie you’ll ever see about a guy stuck in a hole, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. As an actor, James Franco has kind of been at both ends of the spectrum. He’s been great in movies like Milk and Pineapple Express, but he was absolute crap in Spider-Man 3 (then again, most things about that movie were pretty bad) and had a recurring role on General Hospital (which if the clips I’ve seen on The Soup are any indication is surreal in its awfulness). Anyway, whatever the low points of Franco’s career, they are wied away but this movie. Being about a movie about Aron Ralston, the climber who got pinned down by a rock in 2003 for (you guessed it) 127 hours, the film lives or dies on the lead performance. In the beginning Franco plays Aron as a cocky outdoorsman, walking the fine lin between awesome/charming and smug/annoying that gung ho outdoorsmen so often do. After the accident, he is pretty much confined to one location and that’s when he runs through the full range of human emotion as he’s trapped in a situation he more than likely won’t walk away from. Danny Boyle, the director of Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Slumdog Millionaire adds another to his already-impressive body of work. The movie feel claustrophobic when it needs to but Boyle also takes us out of the hole with flashbacks and fantasies that show us more of Aron’s life, which lends even more weight to his struggle to survive. Aron reflects on his life and regrets because, really, what else are you going to do facing near-certain death in a hole? The things Aron does to survive… well some I already knew and some I didn’t. All I know is in that situation I’d be dead. Stone cold dead. That’s probably a big reason I’ll never put myself in that situation. Anyway, [SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU DIDN’T WATCH MUCH NEWS IN 2003)] the scene that everyone is talking about is the one in which Aron amputates his own right arm in order to get free (the sheer act of will that is the reason anyone knows the story). I like my movies gory; I watch copious amounts of blood-and-guts slasher movies, zombie flicks, and the like. The amputation in this movie isn’t one of the “whoa” moments from movies like that. It is a giant HOLY SHIT! moment that had me squirming in my seat. Once again, the Saw franchise pales in comparison to real life. The scene is even crazier because he’s using a crappy blade that is even duller because he’s been trying to chip away at the rock with it (amputation is no one’s first choice). Not to mention that he needs to break his own arm in order to do this. It’s a prolonged, bloody, HOLY SHIT! moment that fills me with awe. [END “SPOILERS”] 127 Hours is a triumph for both Boyle and Franco and is flat-out one of the best movies of 2010.
Persistence of Vision 
I was a fan of this movie, and am a fan of Franco in general (if you haven’t seen Freaks and Geeks, you should get on it).
Quick point: have you thought about breaking your posts into paragraphs? It would make them a bit easier to read.
I have indeed seen Freaks and Geeks and might even write about it in the future.
As for paragraphs, I will happily acquiesce once I begin generating new movie reviews. I’ve basically been copying and pasting reviews that I used to post on Facebook which is already taking a huge amount of time. So every movie I saw up through this August is probably still going to be in big monolithic blocks (sorry) for the simple reason that I’m in a hurry to catch up to the present. But once I do I will try to space my thoughts out a bit more.