Top 5 Single Location Movies | Archive

18:51Josh Larsen:Paranormal Activity 2 widens the scope of it. It involves a family and there are more cameras, but it still gives us this intimate sense of a single location. And there's a really clever use of the mirrors in a baby's bedroom there. And in the third film, there's this really ingenious touch. They place one of the surveillance cameras on the base of an oscillating fan. So it slowly pans from the kitchen, say, to the family room and then back again. And we're completely at its mercy. It's just some excruciating tension when something we're desperate to see is going on in one part of the house and the fan just pans away and we can no longer see it.

19:27Josh Larsen:We can only hear it. So, yeah, sorry that you haven't seen any of these. I'm guessing you're also never going to see any of these.

19:34Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I was going to say that I'm a little too terrified just by the trailers for the Paranormal Activity movies. Yeah, they're really effective.

19:38Josh Larsen:I know some people don't like these films, but I find them very effective and pretty clever.

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22:29Josh Larsen:terms apply on covered repairs.

22:31Adam Kempenaar:Go on, get a little out there into the big heart of Nevada, where you can go off road and off the map on two lakes or on horseback, dip into hot springs and dive into deserts, climb a mountain or make your best effort. See thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies, stake out haunted hotels. Can you make it to sunrise? There's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com. My number three single location movie is another movie we've talked about fairly recently here on the show and one we definitely split on. It is Locke, one of my top five films of 2013.

23:13Adam Kempenaar:Stephen Knight wrote and directed it and Tom Hardy, the star. And I've been hard on Tom Hardy with some of his recent performances, but I think he is mesmerizing here as a character who spends the entire movie, basically about a 90 minute running time, pretty much just talking on the phone in his SUV. And I think we get one shot of him outside the car over the course of the entire movie at the beginning. Yeah, that sounds right. We see him getting off work. It's nighttime getting in the car and then starting to make a few calls. And we piece the story together as we go.

23:46Josh Larsen:Hello? Eddie, it's your dad. Is your mother there?

23:51Adam Kempenaar:No, she's not back from the shops yet.

23:54Josh Larsen:She's getting that German beer that you like for the match. Okay, listen, I won't be back for that. What? Something's come up.

24:02Adam Kempenaar:I can't get out of it.

24:04Josh Larsen:I'm wearing the shirt. Mom's getting sausages. Oh, yeah, and guess what? She's wearing the shirt as well. Oh, Dad, it's so embarrassing.

24:13Adam Kempenaar:In theory, there's no way this should work. Tom Hardy is that good of an actor that he can make 90 minutes watching him. in a car compelling. I do think there are some things that Knight adds from a visual perspective that clash in a really interesting way with the stasis of the movie in terms of the background and how some of the colors are used. But that hearty performance is what really sells it. There's a real thematic resonance for me as well. I mean, the movie is this exploration of masculinity in crisis and free will, and then just the stakes of it are so amazingly high, where over the course of this one trip, we're going to watch a guy potentially throw away everything.

24:52Adam Kempenaar:And we have to ask ourselves, why is he making the right decision here? And we learn little bits about him as we go. We learn even more about what the consequences of what his decision will be. Locke hasn't come up in a little while here on the show. Wanted to give it some love.

25:07Josh Larsen:It came up quite a bit from listeners on social media when I asked for suggestions for this topic. So you're going to please a lot of people. I'm just not that into concrete, Adam. I don't know what to tell you. No problem. I know. All right. Let's get to a sacred cow review we did that we agreed on for my number two pick. And this is The Breakfast Club. It's the ultimate high school as prison movie. And that's largely because it takes place entirely in one location. It's primarily the library of this suburban Chicago high school where Saturday detention is held. Even when we do leave that room, it's very briefly, and I think largely to emphasize that these kids are trapped.

25:44Josh Larsen:I think of that shot of them caught on the other side of the gate when they've snuck out and they're running down the halls and they can only get so far. When we did review this, we spent a lot of time, deservedly so, on the cast. You've got Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Anthony Michael Hall. But I think director John Hughes' use of space is also a big part of why this movie works so well. When Vernon, this is the assistant principal played by Paul Gleason, lays out the rules for the day at the very beginning, it's interesting that he even does it in spatial terms, letting them know essentially that he's right on top of my office.

26:19Josh Larsen:Yeah, right on top of all of this. It just echoes the constriction, the claustrophobia, that feeling of being hemmed in by adults. Right. That that's what these kids are as different as they all are. I think they all share that. And that's one of the main things that The Breakfast Club is about.

26:35Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. And along those lines, as they become more comfortable with each other and become less interested in worrying about the principal, they, of course, move around the space a lot more. That's true. The library finally opens up as they move about the space. Yeah, they stay tied to those tables. Yeah. But they, yeah, that's true. Well, we're in Sacred Cow territory here with my number two, our most recent Sacred Cow discussion. Josh, I tried to find reasons to leave it off because we just last week talked about Alien, and it was one of the films that partially inspired this top five. But I just love Alien too much to not include it.

27:12Adam Kempenaar:And the Nostromo, the name of the ship, which is for the bulk of the running time of this film, the single location. Here comes the very trite cliche. It becomes its own character in this film. We devoted during our discussion a lot of time to the opening of the movie, how Ridley Scott establishes this environment of the ship and how crucial it all is. And they do get off the ship. That's what I was alluding to. It's not all on the Nostromo. They get off on LV-426, of course, and they explore that. And that's where they end up bringing the alien back with them. But if you notice during that whole sequence where the three characters get off the Nostromo and go exploring, there is a lot of cross-cutting back and forth.

27:53Adam Kempenaar:I think we almost spend more time with the characters on the ship than we do the characters who are on this moon. So it really is about the people who are in the dark, who are only hearing what's happening. And they're the people ultimately who are going to suffer because of what those people bring back. So it all makes sense. And that overall attention to the ship and the environment, it struck me while watching the movie how badly the landing on LV426 goes. because how many movies have we seen? How many sci-fi movies where these ships just take off and land at ease, right? And it might, if I remember correctly, serve a little bit of a plot point that they get stuck there, right?

28:31Adam Kempenaar:They damage themselves as they land and so they damage the ship and it adds to the tension a little bit that now they're stuck for a little bit. But it really does make everything more real in a way because they're landing - They're out of their element. They're out of their element. That's it, right? They're landing on an unknown planet with these extreme weather conditions and they're landing, if I'm remembering right, a mining freighter or something, right? It's not this automatic thing. Ridley Scott is not going to let this crew have something that just goes smoothly. Every step for these crew members is going to be a challenge, which makes sense.

29:04Adam Kempenaar:They aren't space heroes, right? They're just blue-collar workers who are on this commercial vessel and they get caught up in something that, kind of like our characters in Green Room, they're not equipped for at all. So it definitely fits because Alien is definitely a classic in my mind, but especially the way Ridley Scott makes that Nostromo such a vital part of the movie moves it up the list for me.

29:26Josh Larsen:Yeah. Can't argue with giving aliens some more love. All right. At number one, I have I'm going with, well, it's actually your best picture choice from our Robert Brisson marathon. I loved it as well. A Man Escapes. So good. Yeah, this is set largely in a German prison camp during World War II, where a French resistance fighter, played by Francois Leterrier, he's methodically planning this escape. So the prison is the single location, and we've talked about before how we mostly get a sense of it through sound, not image. And I think especially in watching some scenes for this list of that final escape sequence when Fontaine is on the roof, and then we hear the squeaking wheels of the night guard's bicycle as he circles the prison down below.

30:12Josh Larsen:We see him too, but just as crucial as when Brisson cuts away and we can only hear as that squeak fades in and out as he comes near to Fontaine's hiding spot. There's, of course, also the single location of Fontaine's cell where we spend a lot of time on as he's chiseling at the door with a spoon handle. There are some moments there where we feel like we're never going to leave this small interior location. So I think the claustrophobic confined nature of A Man Escaped is really in sharp contrast with the final image that we get. And this is what makes it so powerful when Fontaine scurries off into that foggy street, into that expanse, that openness that we've all been yearning for the whole film long.

30:57Josh Larsen:So A Man Escaped is just it's one of the great films in general and certainly a great single location film.

31:02Adam Kempenaar:Absolutely. My number one, if I was going to stick with this director and maybe go in a different direction, I certainly could have gone with another film from Carl Theodore Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Yeah, I thought about that. It's all about the trial, right? And it takes place in that makeshift kangaroo courtroom. But I'm going with a movie I just discovered last summer. You've heard me talk about it a little bit, Josh. It is Ordet from 1955, or in Danish, it translates to The Word. There are one or two scenes that take place at the home of someone else in this small rural village.

31:34Adam Kempenaar:And there are some shots that take place outside on the family farm. But all the drama really unfolds within the walls of the Borgen home. And it was basically the impetus for that class I taught last summer on spiritual crises in cinema because I just needed a great excuse to force myself to watch this movie. And it not only didn't disappoint, it's a film that has, pardon the pun, ascended to a place among my all-time favorite movies. It is about this family. You have a patriarch who has three sons and a daughter-in-law, and one of the sons, the middle child, is Johannes, who we discover at the beginning of the movie wandering around the countryside proclaiming himself to be Jesus Christ.

32:15Adam Kempenaar:He truly believes that he is Jesus. He, we learn later, went crazy studying philosophy. Something about Kierkegaard made him lose his mind, and he spends the whole movie wandering through the house, kind of like a crazy person, espousing all this alleged wisdom about compassion and love and how the current age doesn't seem to recognize what's truly important. And this is a film that is full of just occasionally jaw-dropping camera movements, including one of the best long takes in cinema history. And it has an ending, I think I've mentioned this to you, Josh, that is truly provocative. You know, that's that word again that I love to use that I think sometimes doesn't come through as powerfully as you want it to be.

33:02Adam Kempenaar:Or debt is provocative. It is an ending where hardline believers, hardline people of faith could watch the end of this film and they could claim it while hardline secularists could critique it and could scoff at it. And I'd say that both groups are potentially wrong and misguided in their reading of the film. That's how much it will stay with you. That's how much it can provoke a great conversation about this movie and about the power of cinema, about the nature of cinema. I'm afraid that I'm overselling this movie a little bit in that people are going to rush out and see it and they're going to then write in to me and say, really, this movie that's two hours of people talking to each other in this house, that's that powerful?

33:45Adam Kempenaar:Well, yeah, I truly believe that it is. And if you have the patience for it, I don't think it tries your patience too much. Certainly, there are Bergman films I consider for this list like Persona and Through a Glass Darkly that I think are more difficult to watch than Ordet by far. There are some characters, at least in Ordet, like the daughter-in-law who are kind of our viewers way in to this world and who we can truly relate to. Whereas there are a lot of characters in Bergman films, I'm not sure we can relate to or want to relate to, but Ordet is just magic. It is cinema magic. And you've been telling me that since last summer and I still have yet to see it.

34:21Adam Kempenaar:So I'll get on that. Okay. So I got to shame you a little bit after you shamed me with 17 choices that I haven't seen. Those are our top five single location movies. Josh, what about honorable mentions?

34:32Josh Larsen:We were both discussing before we started here Solaris. Why don't either of us have Solaris? Why don't we? I mean, it kind of came up and we've been mentioning it. I mean, I'm going to rate that film higher than Locke if I'm rating my all-time favorite films. Yeah, and it certainly works. And Virginia Woolf and others. Certainly works for the list. Das Boot, it was one of my top five films from 1981. It also made Maddie's List when you guys did this topic earlier. I still haven't seen it because I'm too claustrophobic to watch a movie that takes place in a submarine. It is very claustrophobic.

34:59Josh Larsen:I also wanted to limit myself, I think, to one boat movie, so I went with one boat. Ex Machina, my number one film of last year. I thought about it. Entirely takes place in Oscar Isaac's house and tech lab. More horror here. You could have gone with Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. Yep. A pair of Bogarts I'll give you. Yeah, the shopping mall. The shopping mall, right? Bogart films, The Petrified Forest I had on my top five hostage movies list and Key Largo, but I had that on my top five stormy weather movies. elaine renee's last year at marion bad would apply fincher's panic room which i really like i know people look down at that as one of his least interesting i like it i saw that a lot from listeners yeah poltergeist i didn't think of poltergeist another horror great movie and then open water did you see open water this is like maybe eight years ago the scuba diving couple who get left behind no i shark infested i did not specifically because i knew i couldn't handle it's It's good.

35:51Josh Larsen:Yeah, I like that quite a bit. And it's a very big single location, but it's one location.

35:57Adam Kempenaar:Well, you named so many there, and I've got so many honorable mentions that I think maybe we should just put it off because 200 shows from now, we'll need to revisit this one. I told you. And there are that many worth considering. Some of the ones you mentioned. The Breakfast Club, obviously one I considered. A Man Escaped, one I considered. Another movie that takes place in A Prisoner of War Camp that was an honorable mention back on episode 358, Billy Wilder's Stalag 17. How about Airplane? How about the Zucker Brothers? Airplane. Love that comedy. Don't tell anyone, I'm not real wild about Airplane either.

36:27Adam Kempenaar:Oh, come on.

36:27Josh Larsen:That could have been on your list of movies I am really...

36:30Adam Kempenaar:Totally wrong about? Don't love. Okay. The Shining, which is in my penalty box. Otherwise, I would have considered it. Clerks from Kevin Smith. How about both the Duncan Jones films, Moon and Source Code? I mentioned the two Bergman movies. You said Solaris. The Exterminating Angel. That was one of my regrets last time, that Buñuel film. I acknowledge that I just hadn't seen it yet. couldn't have been in contention for my list. I have since seen it. It's come up on a few top five lists, I believe, and one I did think about here as well. And that is just about half of the movies I have here that are worthy of this list.

37:03Adam Kempenaar:So it might, in fact, be worth another look here down the road. Again, those are our top five single location films. We want to know your picks. Send those along with any other comments about the show to feedback at filmspotting.net. Captain, how soon can you land?

37:18Josh Larsen:I can't tell. You can tell me I'm a doctor. No, I mean, I'm just not sure. But can't you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can't take a guess for another two hours?

37:29Adam Kempenaar:Josh, I think if you go back to that episode, and if you're a FilmSpotting family member, of course you have access to that FilmSpotting archive at your fingertips whenever you'd like. You'll not only hear that top five, you'll hear a little bit of discussion about Green Room. You'll also hear, I'm pretty sure, my conversation with director Jeremy Sonnier about Green Room. Good film, right? We're both fans. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. Really, yeah, really intense. So check out the Film Spotting Family. If you're not already a member, access to the archive is just one of the benefits. Learn more at filmspottingfamily.com.

38:04Adam Kempenaar:Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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