If you weren't spying, what were you doing?

Continuing my trip down Empire’s top 100 films of the century so far…

  • #94 - Batman Begins
    I remember liking this, but I have a suspicion there was some Phantom Menace rose tinted glasses action going on and it's actually a bit of a mess.  I must rewatch some time to either confirm or deny.

Which brings us to my very last film to watch on this list - Un Prophète.  I remember this being raved about at the time and I started watching it, but somehow got distracted and never finished it.  But I managed it this time - well done me!  And it's a pretty strong film, following our protagonist on his journey from naive first time prisoner to - well, that would be telling now, wouldn't it?  


Overall, the story is a strong one and mixes reality with some elements of fantasy well - but a film like this is going to live or die by the quality of the central performance and Tahar Rahim most certainly delivers.  I was struggling to remember where I'd seen him before until Wikipedia reminded me that he was one of the FBI agents in The Looming Tower - with a flawless American accent, which is impressive given that he speaks French, Corsican and Arabic in this film.  To be honest, the rest of the cast don't have an awful lot to do - they're fine, but that's really all i have to say.


Generally, the film is visually good looking (although the locations available are unsurprisingly somewhat limited) - there are some visual aspects of the film that I thought unnecessarily clunky, but they were isolated so didn't spoil the overall effect for me.  I also really liked the ending - it ties up various storylines in a very neat way.  All in all, I thought this was a good film and I'm very glad I managed to end on a high note.





And to complete the list...

  • #96 - Guardians Of The Galaxy
    I mean, it's fun - but it's hardly great now, is it?!?
  • #97 - Ex Machina
    Intriguing, intelligent, well shot sci-fi.  I like this a lot.
  • #98 - Captain America : Civil War
    One of my favourite Marvel films - again, it has an actual plot.
  • #99 - Let The Right One In
    Oh yes, this is good.  If you haven't seen this, then you should.
  • #100 - Dead Man's Shoes
    And the same with this one - two lesser known but excellent films to finish!

And I'm there!  I'll do a recap in a couple of days but I've really enjoyed this exercise and got to see some great films I wouldn't otherwise have seen.  I've also got to see some films that were so dull I don't understand how anyone likes them - but I guess we can't all like the same thing!

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