WEDNESDAY: Saving Private Ryan, 12 Angry Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Faithful readers will notice two things about this post. You will first realise this is my first post in three days, which is quite a long time considering how often I've been posting for the past week. The second thing you will notice is the return of my old title system.
The two are actually related. I put off blogging because I couldn't think of appropriate titles for a blog post each time.
In the past three days, I watched three movies- Saving Private Ryan, 12 Angry Men and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.Saving Private Ryan (for those who haven't seen it) is a WWII film set during the Normandy invasion. It focuses on a handful of soldiers given the special task of finding a Private Ryan to send home.

The remarkable thing about Saving Private Ryan was how long I kept thinking about it after watching. It was probably the last thing I thought about before I slept. All those flying body parts, streams of blood and crying soldiers really got to me. You see that stuff in a movie like Kill Bill and a movie like this, it's very different. In terms of how hard it grabbed emotions, which is probably the best way to rate a film on first viewing, this film is brilliant.

12 Angry Men follows a jury deciding on the innocence of a boy accused of murdering his father. Pretty much the whole movie takes place in a cramped, stuffy jury room so the only thing pushing the story forward is the dialogue. The fact that the story remains tight and riveting is a great achievement. The script makes it perfect for an adaptation to a play, which according to Wiki has been done.


I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly two years ago. The first time I watched it, I can't say I liked it that much. But I pretended to because it's an arthouse film about a man with a rare disease that received critical acclaim. I even took the idea of locked-in-syndrome for my Year 9 major work. Unfortunately, that didn't go very well.

Well the good news is I watched it again and I can safely say I really like the movie. The cinematography is fabulous. I'm surprised it didn't win an Oscar for it.


This post took a surprisingly long time to write (almost an hour, though I stopped a lot). Therefore be assured faithful readers that you won't see something like this again.