127 Hours

I didn't waver for a minute over any rating other than 5 stars. James Franco played his role perfectly, movingly, and naturally. My hand ached for him from the beginning and my heart was pounding until the end. The imaginative and, most importantly, original ending only made me believe that this film is 100%. (03/06/2011)

This is Touching the Void in a more cinematic, but less emotional package. Boyle cuts back on the poignant sequences and instead serves up a minimalist tale of one self-centered fop for whom a smaller rock was waiting to show him that ego isn't everything. The cinematography, music, editing, and especially the acting are incredibly captivating for the entire ninety minutes, even if all of this can be summed up in a single sentence. Maybe this is how you recognize good filmmaking, and maybe this is what works better than all the sad sights from the slums. But then again, it doesn't collect gold-plated statuettes. (10/01/2011)

Desire for adventure, desire for solitude, desire to live. Danny Boyle translates a relatively trivial story into a highly personal level, where no hallucination is purposeless and no flashback empty. With the breathtaking James Franco and a visual that never rests, 127 Hours becomes a magnificent spiritual cleansing and also the most intimate story. It is simply a difficult task that passed with flying colours and made me, despite the inconspicuous warning, desire to rush somewhere headlong, making it perhaps the biggest surprise of the season. (11/01/2011)

It can be argued that 127 Hours has no great overlap, and that it is simply a post-modern stylized testimony of courage and desire to survive. It can also be argued that subliminal stressing of fate and miraculous hunch smacks of melodramatic cheesiness. A lot can be argued about, but what really counts is the experience. Pain, despair, fear, and above them a triumphant animal desire to escape and live, no matter what it takes. And 127 Hours has plenty of raw experiences to give. That's why this is an exceptional film and one of the most intense experiences of pain I've ever experienced in a movie theatre (Gibson and his biblical exploitation should study how it's done "for real"). (12/01/2011)

Danny Boyle is a good director and this adrenaline bite is far more impactful than it might seem at first glance. He turns a a banal storyline into a psychedelic affair of the highest caliber. The desire to survive is beautifully displayed in full force. From minimal resources, he achieved the maximum outcome; this film is definitely worth seeing. It is a simple, yet highly watchable affair. (19/02/2011)