127 Hours Danny Boyle, 2010
Franco plays some douchebag weekend warrior who ignores everyone else and goes backpacking thru some random outside place that apparently exists. After he's done macking on two chicks, he runs off all cool and stuff. Then he falls down a hole, gets stuck in a rock, and suffers. Yay! Survival! I don't think there's a sense of observation at place. When he first falls down, he struggles, he tries to devise a way to get out of here, that's all good. But then Franco is essentially buried by the editing, which is essentially makes him another object in the frame, not an actual person. His struggle is viewed at a remove and made less important (or a physical fact - you don't feel that stillness?) as we spend increasingly more time in his piss-filled water bottle or in his fantasies and memories. I suppose that would make a more entertaining film for some. Not for me. Whatever transcendence was possible at film's end was undercut by the film's fascile revelations that "people need people" or whatever. Don't get me wrong. Franco is solid. Often very good. But he's let down by Boyle. Big time.