Avatar (semi-analytical) 9.5/10

I just have to lay this on the line before we do this: 1. Avatar is worth all the hype. 2. I'm not going into the political stuff because in reality that's your job as a viewer. So let's dig into this movie in a semi-analytical way. I'm basically going to roughly go over a couple things in terms of IMAX vs. Regular and Good and Bad 3D.

Basically the story of Avatar goes as such: bad guy humans go into a new planet cause Earth sucks. They find really really nice minerals on this new planet. The inhabitants live on a nice patch of minerals. The humans are made of stupid and try to move the natives by force. Sound familiar? If you haven't, it screams "NATIVE AMERICANS" I mean one of the scenes literally is a picture of the Trail of Tears. The mis en scene was great but it shoved that point down the audiences' throats. Anyways, I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about those two aspects cause of course you've heard that Avatar is great and most of the people are right. So let's go to the first topic IMAX vs. Regular Theater. I didn't know what the difference was and is it worth the extra four dollars to see avatar (or any other movie for that matter).

To start off with a more funny point, the first thing I noticed about the IMAX theater were the seats that it had. They were very comfortable, and I remember sinking into the seat and leaning back almost like it was a recliner. Although this is a good perk, it obviously doesn't make a great mark. Let's just say this makes fifty cents of the four dollar difference. The next part is the movie screen, the screen makes it so that even while immersed within the movie, there is more going on within the person's peripherals (this is assuming you're smart and took center seats). This part makes up maybe two dollars and fifty cents because it allows the viewer to HAVE to pay attention to everything! Scenic views are more expansive and the action scenes take more than just a passive view of things. IMAX makes everything not bigger but wider. The last part is the sound (this makes immersion complete in Avatar). The sound boxes are bigger--much bigger. Sometimes action scenes would literally make the fabric on my clothes quake because of the sound. The immersion here makes the viewing so much better. The surround sound and everything makes everything complete. So IMAX sort of wins over regular if you're viewing a movie that lends itself up to it (like Avatar and maybe Lord of the Rings). Watch it for GREAT movies because it is fourteen dollars to see it.

The next topic is more subjective than objective. My past with 3D isn't much but from what I know 3D has been basically these cheap gimmicks where things from the movie either pop out at the audience or they're cheap gimmicks where things basically "poke" the audience. I don't know--I don't really enjoy it because it's not the story that matters at that point but rather just the 3D. The three dimensional part isn't what interests me at all when it came to Avatar. There is an immersion factor that is played within the movie. The three dimensions makes the person almost a character within the story. To make a "better" comparison, the 3D in Avatar accomplished what Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield could not do. The experience doesn't make you nauseous and they fully immerse you within the movie. The 3D makes it so that you and the screen are not separated at all but rather that the screen comes to the audience and the pans aren't pans but rather just the audience looking around. The zooms aren't zooms but the audience looking closer. The 3D in this film is both revolutionary and phenominal. The CGI is fantastic the Na'avi are SUPREMELY lifelike. They seem almost like real people! Man has movie making come a long ways since the 90s.

Quick thing before I end: I'm giving it a 9.5 because there isn't much to look at other than the stunning visuals and well written story. This is what true Hollywood style filming is all about.

Sherlock Holmes (non analytical review) 8.7/10

It's been a while since I've gone to the movies, but all in all there is a first for everything! Reviewing this movie will be enjoyable because I'm starting off with such an aesthetically and thematically wonderful story. Most of my friends have been wondering whether the story would live up to both the books or to the hype in general and I say Watkins it has (yes I know that was cheesy but I had to do that)! The pemise of the story is that there is a mage that is on the loose and has awoken from the dead and is planning on a new world order. Will Sherlock Holmes save the day and the four lives that the mage (Adler) intends to murder.

Where the movie shines is both in the storytelling and the mis en scene. Within fights that Sherlock Holmes gets into, there are scenes that are what I might want to call "thought scenes" where Sherlock thinks about each one of his attacks, how much damage it will do, and at the end he says how long it will take the recipient to recover. With both humor intermingled within the fight scenes, the movie doesn't try to be completely serious and it also doesn't try to make it a comedic movie with action scenes.

Ultimately everything seems to make sense and things are revealed throughout the movie. I can't really explain it too well but then again if you want to see how the story progresses then you have to see the movie. It's a good movie to watch and an alright movie to analyze aesthetically. I give it an 8.7.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (analytical review)

SPOILERSSS

Since many a person has seen the Lord of the Ring (LOTR) series let me just say that it is my favorite. I'm pretty biased, haven't read the books (though it is on my to-do list), and now that I look at it with a more analytical heart I find the editing, cinematography, and mis en scene all amazing as well. I guess a film class can really be an applicable class (and not just a waste of money). It's given the movie a more Christian perspective and the class has also given a deeper perspectives on why Peter Jackson did what he did in LOTR.

So I guess to boot I should answer all three of those questions. The reason I say that it deepens the story in terms of giving the story a deeper Christian perspective is because the cinematography and all the other technical aspects gives this to the active viewer and merely shows it to the passive. In the narration there is a dialog of how it was a "pity that Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had a chance." Gandalf then goes on in the dialog by saying one of my favorite lines in the first movie. "Pity? Men that have lived deserved death. Men that have died deserved life. Can you give it to them Frodo? Do not be too eager to give out death and judgement. Even the very wise can't see all ends." It shows the greater Christian perspective on how to treat others. It is not with contempt or judgement but rather see what is happening within their lives.

There is a shot that just makes me want to pause the movie and just let me view the scene. It is not one of the many gorgeous establishing shots during the course of the movie and it is not of Arwen, but rather it's of Boromir. Boromir, Boromir, how I love you because you embody the struggle of man, the fall of man, and the redemption of man all within one movie! During the end of the movie when Boromir is about to be killed (did I mention that there are spoilers?)he feels sorry for the fact that he has tried to steal the One Ring from Frodo. He is kneeling in front of the head Uruk Hai, the epitome of sin and what has become of an elf when dealing with an evil magic. This is where I want to pause because right as this happens it is the mis en scene that shows the symbolic nature of sin and what it does to men, it kills them and pierces them with arrows (kind of like what is said in the Bible). Then Aragorn comes and rescues him (he is the representation of Christ which is repeated over and over within the dialog. Aragorn is the "savior", the one who "cast himself in exile", and has the blood of the savior before him). He comes and tries to help Boromir and Boromir says that he would follow Aragorn "to the end. You are my brother, leader, and my king!" And it is at that point where he is redeemed and the light shines upon his face in an unnatural sort of way. Oh! So good!

Well time for the more technical parts: why does Peter Jackson do what he does. To start on the hows of Peter Jackson, the editing and cinematography are top-notch in this movie. The one big part about editing that I love are the point of view shots and the editing in the battle scenes. Peter Jackson does something that many did not do before which is to make it so that we are either in the view of the arrow coming or we are the arrow itself. This makes the battles more dramatic but it also enhances the way we see the battle. Another way how the point of view shots are great is how they do point of view shots from the water. They rock the camera almost as if we are stalking the fellowship and are preying on them, watching them in a more distant way. It makes us get into the eyes of the enemy and it is superb to see!

The places where the editing takes flight is during the battle scenes. The camera almost pans as fast as it can when it does certain establishing shots and whenever the Fellowship is battling other creatures the close ups and the cuts are milliseconds long. They aren't jarring, where the crowd is disturbed but it is almost to a point where the crowd wants all the faces to back off and just go away and the result is that the battle seems chaotic and in-your-face, which it is. Sorry for the run-ons but this is pretty exciting stuff for a nerdy boy like me. The camera almost shakes sometimes like they do as if the cameraman is running away from the creatures.

Anyways, now that I have left you that bit of information, I hope you should look at the LOTR series with a little more analysis and just to tell those that haven't seen it 1) shame on you for looking at the spoilers and 2) hope you enjoy this classic tale of good, evil, temptation, and redemption. Just remember that "even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

Taxi Driver (long essay)

Michael Giachetti
12/09/09
Taxi Driver
The movie Taxi Driver (directed by Martin Scorsese) “may be the greatest first person character study ever committed to film” according to an interview of Quentin Tarantino. Within the realm of film noir there is interplay with light and darkness and there is the classic main character. The main character within every film noir has a couple key components that are common within many (if not all) the antiheroes of the genre. The film noir anti-hero (or corrupted hero) is most known for their descent moralistically or in the case of Travis Bickle, mentally. The conventions used to display this mental ambiguity is via the mis en scene, cinematography, and editing. Most normal formal elements that are used in film noir are within Taxi Driver. The hero is most of the time in film noir is a washed up hero who is preconditioned to descend into darkness in order to let justice prevail. In the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade was already cold and distant when he met with Mrs. Wonderly and he was already having an affair with his partner's wife. By the time his partner died he really didn't have any remorse, in fact he actually replaced his partner's name on their company the next day. In Chinatown, Jake Gittes is already a washed up detective who left Chinatown to get away from whatever the system let him down for. Most of the elements within film noir "create a fatalistic, hopeless mood. There is nothing protagonists can do; the city will outlast and negate even their best efforts" (Film Noir 235). In Chinatown the villain gets away with the woman and the whole scene is a mess in the end and the good guys lose (which is more or less realistic in one fashion). The last thing is that within the story it is common, which is that there is usually a detective who meets the femme fatale. She is either a liar or a temptress of some kind and through the course of the film she leads the man on a very dark path which he usually takes willingly. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese doesn’t have Travis Bickle descend in terms of moral ambiguity but rather turns Travis from oddball to “Killer.” Travis’s descension mentally is synonymous to a film noir hero’s descension morally.
Like many film noir heroes, Travis seems predisposed to becoming a psychopathic killer, being that he was in the marines, needs a lot of time to keep himself busy, and he’s a complete loner. The mis en scene, editing, and cinematography of the movie show to the audience many scenes that connote to his later and more troubling behavior. The lighting is a part of mis en scene that permeates within the film (because it is film noir) and connotes that Travis is psychotic beforehand or is predisposed to it. Near the beginning the audience sees darkness around Travis’s eyes and not only that but they are then later drowned in a red light. All the audience sees are Travis’s eyes for a good fifteen seconds. Eyes are a very striking thing and to cover them in darkness and red light poses an ominous picture. For most of the movie there is only darkness but within the first thirty minutes of the film (or the setting of the film) there is only darkness and every scene takes place at night. The reason is to show the darkness that is already brewing within Travis. Another aspect of mis en scene is the actual props and what they connote. Travis’s “office” or his apartment is a symbol more or less of what he is, which according to the screenplay itself,
“Is unusual, to say the least: A ratty old mattress is thrown against one wall. The floor is littered with old newspapers, worn and unfolded streets maps and pornography. The pornography is of the sort that looks cheap but costs $10 a threw - black and white photos of naked women tied and gagged with black leather straps and clothesline. There is no furniture other than the rickety chair and table. A beat-up portable TV rests on an upright melon crate. The red silk mass in another corner looks like a Vietnamese flag. Indecipherable words, figures, numbers are scribbled on the plain plaster walls. Ragged black wires dangle from the wall where the telephone once hung” (Taxi Driver 8).
At the beginning of the movie there is rain upon the city and all Travis’s voice over says is that “someday he wants the rain to wash all the scum away” and as much as this sounds noble out of context, it carries a more eerie weight within the movie as it foreshadows his own psychotic actions against the pimps. Also when he meets Palentine in his cab, the senator asks him “what’s the one thing in the world that bugs him the most?” and as they’re all in darkness he says he “flushed down the toilet” and cleaned by force almost. This is both a message of politics and how his antiheroic actions eventually clean some of the streets faster than the senator who always answers “it will take some time” to every one of his questions. Everyone is in the darkness and so everyone has bad intentions at heart.
The last part of mis en scene that connotes that he might have a problem is his Holden Caulfield impression when he enters into the pornography theater. He acts like Holden Caulfield because he acts the woman behind the counter not for candy or soda or a ticket but rather he asks for her name. Eventually he bugs the woman behind the counter enough that she is tempted to call security. It doesn’t prove that he is a psychotic pimp killing machine but it points to him being a little off-kilter. The facial expressions tell most of the story though and if the sound was off both of them did an excellent job in displaying the emotions of both confusion (since all Travis wanted was her name and all she wanted him to do was move along) and anger (since they were both frustrated). The scene within the theater is a striking scene of mis en scene, where he is surrounded in darkness (like usual) but at the same time he is not smiling and there isn’t a look of pleasure on his face at all. It paints a picture of this loneliness and his search for empty love. He is desperately lonely.
The editing also connotes that he is a lonely man that is in search of love of some sort. In a voice over he is saying how he met Betsy and how she is beautiful. The camera cuts to many different crowds of people and there are people walking everywhere. The audience is drawn. It is daylight for the first time and the audience wants to know what sort of woman would attract Travis? Cut from one crowd (there’s no one) cut to another crowd (there is still no one) and then the last cut she comes at the last minute. She comes “like an angel” out of the right side of the screen with a bright white blouse. Betsy comes out of no where and the camera follows her just as Travis’s eyes would (which is a nice use of cinematography). Travis begins to fill that empty void in his life with Betsy.
In many noir films the main character finds that there is temptation within the drug or the money or whatever is being offered to them. In the movie Brick, the temptation for Brendan in the end is to ditch Emily and stop investigating whatever is going on and just become Laura’s boyfriend. In The Maltese Falcon the temptation was money and to make much more money than his current job offered. He could be rich and have whatever he wanted. The temptation in Taxi Driver isn’t drugs or money but rather love. At first he was satisfying himself with empty love by going into the movies but now there is someone new, someone to go into the light for. For most of the movie the cinematography focuses on just Betsy’s face and so we are forced to make eye contact with her and try and sympathize with Travis. The amount of point of view shots whenever the audience sees Betsy or anyone else for that matter are the reason why this may be considered a great first person case study. The audience is supposed to empathize with the person they “know” the most.
The mis en scene between the two would be subtle. Whenever the two of them would go to a movie or to dinner, the camera would focus on the faces. This was to get a hold on the very subtle hints of displeasure within the two of them that came up from time to time. The weirdest part about this whole relationship (other than her accepting his offer for coffee) is that he was staring at her in the darkness of his taxi (which is weird to have amidst the daytime) with the cup that he was drinking from during the adult movie theater.
The breakup between Travis and Betsy is what drives him off the edge and begins his descent towards mental instability and psychotic rampages. Since Travis is already a weird guy, he of course thinks that taking a woman to an adult movie theater is the perfect way to woo her and of course (and understandably) she breaks up with Travis. As Travis talks to her for what seems to be the last time (according to the voice over), the camera shifts from him being in the light with a telephone to an empty and narrow hall leading towards the darkness outside. He walks into the empty hall and gradually walks away from the audience and into the darkness itself. In his own apartment all his flowers rot and are dead. The visual symbolism almost explains itself for how his love for her is dead and she is now viewed by him as just as cold as everyone else in the world. The smell of the flowers makes him sick and he starts to become a misanthrope.
At this point things start to roll and Travis begins to literally crack from the inside out. Within his cab, Travis is almost drenched in darkness and there is a shady guy in the back of his cab. He is a little bossy but the cuts grow more rapid as the screen moves from the shady man who’s going to kill his wife to Travis. The audience is told by the cinematography that we are to be slightly annoyed by the man since the camera is in a first person point of view. He is yelling at the audience to look at the light on the second floor and the camera hasn’t gotten there yet. The break up at this point brings about this more vocal embodiment of just how psychotic Travis will become.
Right outside the bar where Travis and Wizard both hand out, the two of them have a talk and the two of them are sopping in darkness and red light. The two of them have a conversation and the cutting and everything stops--the cinematography and the editing stops at that conversation. The director wants the audience to focus on the conversation and not anything else. “A man’s job becomes what he is” says the Wizard and according to an extra feature on the DVD version of Taxi Driver on the making of the film, the screenwriter Paul Schrader says that the taxi cab is a metaphor for loneliness and that it is a metaphor more specifically for Travis’s loneliness. Travis wants to get rid of this loneliness and doesn’t want it to become a part of him. He is starting to get some “crazy ideas.”
He finally descends when he meets Iris and has this instinct to protect her and feels that it is his calling upon earth to get this child back to her family. After almost running her over, Travis feels the need to stalk her (which seems to be his usual tactic) but this time even though he is in darkness he does not have his adult movie cup with him. After he goes to the weapons dealer Easy Andy and mentions the gun the psychopath had—a 44 magnum. As he takes out the guns the audience hears screaming children in the background which is foreshadows later events. As he practices before the mirror and does the famous and eloquent soliloquy “You Talkin’ to Me?” he says “you’re dead” and yet another girl screams in the background. The girls in the background symbolize the intense and yet shocking episode that will come later for Iris.
Darkness descends into the next scene as Travis pulls into a supermarket. Of course the small supermarket gets robbed and this is where the cracks turn from internal to external. As the robber points a gun towards the cashier, Travis whips out a gun says “look here” and then proceeds to shoot the robber in the face. Part of mis en scene is the musical numbers that play within the scene. In this particular scene there is a song called “Late for the Sky” which talks about why Travis does what he does. “How long have I been drifting alone through the night/How long have I been dreaming I could make it right” (1.18-19).
One of the most striking scenes within the whole screenplay is the dance that Sport has with Iris. There is darkness amidst a crimson light which pours everywhere. The crimson light gives the scene a darker lusty feeling and the jazz music that once served as background music for Travis’s love music now serves for this pedophile. The cinematography makes this more disturbing as well, which focuses on the hands. At first the audience is drawn to an insert of the record player. As the music plays the camera scrolls up almost seductively to a close up Sport’s face as he says “I need you.” As they dance, the camera doesn’t cut but rather it just leaves the audience there to view this more striking scene. Immediately the scene cuts to a series of shots. There is darkness all around except for a window where we see Travis shooting his guns. It’s almost looks like he’s shooting Sport (which makes for great foreshadowing).
The cinematography in the scene where Palantine is talking delivers Travis’s new haircut well to the audience. The camera drifts but doesn’t show the heads of anyone. We see Travis holding his pills but the audience still doesn’t see his head. The camera then tilts upward fast and the audience sees that he has a Mohawk. The physical transformation has been complete—his mental instability matches his physical difference in the crowd. Travis now looks like an individual within the crowd (there is even a point of view shot from Palentine’s perspective that shows everyone and then Travis in the back grinning with his new haircut).
The end of the movie is where most of the technical aspects of the movie go wild. There is a deeper and noticeable contrast within light and darkness within the last ten minutes of the movie. Everything looks more grainy as well. The light is more emphasized and the darkness is more pronounced. Everything is harder to see but at the same time everything that is full of light draws the audience in. After shooting Sport, he goes into Iris’s apartment and shoots the old man in the corridor. There are three rapid cuts that go up the stairs and seemingly follow the noises that the 44 magnum made at that shot. The director then cuts to an overhead shot of the corridor. Travis travels into the darkness at the end of the hall, shoots Sport and continues to shoot him even when he is dead. His descent into darkness is palpable. He shoots the old man but the old man climbs up the stairs, screaming that he’s gunna kill Travis (with his stump) and then things go into slow motion. The old man’s words are in real time but Travis is moving in slow motion and when they cut to Iris, she turns back in slow motion. As the old man tackles him into Iris’s room we cut from Iris to a close up of the old man to a close up of Travis’s boot to the knife to a close up of the old man getting stabbed in the stump. This is all to convey the scene of the fight and to get the audience into the fight and hope that Travis wins. The cinematography then allows the viewers to take a breather and to see the “overhead slow motion tracking shot” (106 Taxi Driver) which “surveys the damage” (106 Taxi Driver)
Unlike the regular film noir heroes where the hero seems normal at the end of the whole debacle they seem like the good guy, Travis is a psychotic killer who just happened to do the right thing. The only hint the audience gets that Travis is still not normal is at the end of the film there is a sudden boost in speed. As Travis pulls away his eyes quickly turn towards his rear-view mirror, the saturation of the colors brightens and there are weird noises in the background (like radio interference). But this doesn’t take away from the fact that this is indeed a film noir. According to the screenwriter Paul Schrader, film noir is a culmination of different stylistics. “The majority of scenes are lit for night” (Film Noir 235) which most of them are within the movie, “compositional tension is preferred to physical action” (Film Noir 235) which is true seeing that it was a gradual descent in Travis’s mind that brought him to the violence in the end. Before that there was no real physical violence within the movie. Some of the themes that go into film noir that are in Taxi Driver is that the heroes within film noir “emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, and insecurity then submerge these self-doubts into mannerisms and style” (Film Noir 237). Within Taxi Driver Travis at first is devoid of having love and then loses love when he brings her into the adult movie theater. For a part of the movie travis goes to his friend Wizard and asks if he is in the right place. He doesn’t want to be a part of the taxi driving business for long. He wants to do something else which reflects him not having clear priority. The reason why this movie is such a remarkable one is because it shows the film noir style with modern day conventions and uses the new technology not to hamper his own creativity but rather to enhance his own dark and lusty feel. The movie Taxi Driver brings a genre long neglected and brought it back with a new fresh feel to it.

















MLA Citation

Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film Noir.” Film Genre Reader lll (2003): 229-242
Tarantino, Quentin. “Tarantino on Taxi Driver.” Tarantino Takes Over Sky Movies. 16,
August 2009.
Browne, Jackson. Late for the Sky, 1974. Asylum Records, 1976.

Making Taxi Driver. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1976.
Schrader, Paul. Taxi Driver. Columbia Pictures Corporation: 1976

Citizen Kane: Greatest or Overrated?

Greatness is only defined by the people around it. The people went into an uproar when the book One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published since the novel mocked the work ethic in mental hospitals. George Washington brought the United States independence and refused to be the new King of America, Abraham Lincoln, for whatever purposes were in his mind, brought about the freedom of the African slaves in the North and South. All of the greatest people and all of the greatest pieces of art evoked a reaction of either great shock (such as Picasso’s Guernica) or great jubilation (Franklin Delano Roosevelt bringing about the end of the Great Depression). All things great bring about a reaction equal to their greatness, one that brings about the true character of the surrounding culture and society.

The movie Citizen Kane is considered the best in my eyes because it has greatness that reaches far beyond its own timeline and culture. The movie made the powerhouse and divine king look like a lonely spoiled man who got everything he wanted. After Hurst was able to hear of the movie (he never actually saw it) he was bent on getting rid of it and not letting his reputation be tarnished. Citizen Kane reflected in many ways what the society around it was—there was no real freedom of speech. Only society dictated what was to be seen and what was to be heard. Citizen Kane was not to be heard at that time.
The societal aspect of the movie that transcends generations is that this whole issue of freedom of speech. If someone hadn’t known the past of the movie, they wouldn’t know of the film’s greatness (which is more or less the same way with anything great such as people or books). Citizen Kane is the best American-made movie.

Citizen Kane is the best American-made movie because of the humanistic aspects that are intermingled within the story and the themes that the characters embody throughout the story. The movie is more realistic than any other I have seen yet (or any that America has made yet). No one is able to see Kane for who he is, his life tragedies bottle into what his attitudes are (something movies don’t portray too much), and that people often look into another person and don’t instantly see them for who they are (something seen in romantic comedies in general). The complexities of humanity are portrayed spot-on within Citizen Kane.

Some younger critics within a film classroom might say that Charles Foster-Kane is more of an archetype and so is not relatable and doesn’t portray any meaning. They might say that he is only there to facilitate the story and brings about meaning through his more unorthodox actions (such as wrecking a room when his wife leaves him). His more unorthodox actions are intentional and also portray the biggest theme of the story: that everyone has limited empathy and views others in a more archetypal way. There needs to be a more in depth involvement to feel what Foster-Kane is feeling during the course of the movie. His feelings and “our knowledge is restricted principally to what Kane’s acquaintances know” (Bordwell 311). The reason why Citizen Kane is so great is because the script doesn’t feed the audience what the character is feeling and the film doesn’t explain Foster-Kane’s actions some of the time. The movie seems to encompass that theme of not being able to penetrate another human’s mind. Other movies don’t really delve into every step almost of a character and provide no explanation. Usually movies that tell a story of another’s life make the character a little more open to the audience or the specific scenes within the person’s life are more telling of what is emotionally happening with the main character allowing that interpersonal connection between the character and the audience.

The reason why I think that Foster-Kane grew up to be a more spoiled character that cares mostly about money and succeeding and retaining the things he is able to obtain is because Charles Foster-Kane is brought up in an abnormal environment devoid of love. Near the beginning of the movie we see Charles Kane being handed over to a man that is supposed to be a Foster parent to Charles. Through this we see that there are more parental negligence that culminate to what makes Charles Foster-Kane and to ignore that is to only prove what the movie is trying to prove (which is that since no one really knows the full story no one knows that all Charles needed was love or “Rosebud”). All the tragedies such as being born into a more negligent home and having a foster parent that only cared for his success and not for who he was (which is presented via the angry collage of grunts his foster parent has when he wants to own a newspaper).

But although the humanistic aspects are deep enough to display a theme just by the characters’ movements, maybe that alone is not enough to satiate the “Best Movie of All Time” title. The title for those with more experience with film analysis, exemplifies the most top-notch mis en scene, editing, and cinematography. Not only are the more technical aspects pleasing to the eye but they also convey the theme of the story which is something that is lacking in the Hollywood film business. I’m not even sure the great Alfred Hitchcock or some of the other more prominent film directors did this (but then again since Welles was an author maybe I am a little biased).

The mis en scene is the first part I’d like to focus on. If you have been reading my blog you should know what it is but for those that are newer to this ongoing blog, mis en scene is all about how a still shot looks to the audience. The still shot could be aesthetically beautiful but have no meaning (such as some scenes in Diving Bell and Butterflies—a great film by the way) or they could derive meaning from one shot. At the very beginning of the movie, there are literal still shots of this dark mansion beyond a mountain and a sign that says “No Trespassers.” This not only sets the movie in place and conveys the theme but it settles this eerie feeling into the audience and thus prepares us for a more tragic movie. The opening of Citizen Kane opens the window for whatever theme is coming our way aka “No Trespassers” are to come into Kane’s life. “By avoiding crosscutting or other techniques that would move toward a more unrestricted range of knowledge” (Bordwell 331) the theme is also conveyed by not letting us get any personal attachment to Charles Foster-Kane. The style or the mis en scene of the film “requires us to take each narrative’s version as objective within his or her limited knowledge. Welles reinforces this by avoiding shots that suggest optical or mental subjectivity” (Bordwell 311) and by doing this he causes the audience to have to search deeper. The lack of first person shots and voice overs causes the audience to not really empathize with his character as much as say his wife.

The other part is that even his best of friends is far away from him at the end of the movie. The mis en scene in the scene where Charles Foster-Kane writes a bad review for his own wife exemplifies this perfectly. Jedediah walks in as Charles is typing up the rest of Jed’s article. We see a shot that meshed two shots together. The first is with Jed being in the background. He is very far away, distant and in the light while Charles is very close to the camera and is very close up to the camera. The two juxtapose one another and provide a very breath taking dichotomy between the two. The two of them have a silent fight and try not to talk to one another during the course of the movie.

Light and darkness also play a crucial role in Welles’s mis en scene, which provides both foreshadowing and it sheds some light on the theme of the movie. When Charles is creating the Declaration of Principles he is placed within darkness for the whole time while his two cohorts and drowned in light. Although this doesn’t make sense in terms of how light works and how darkness works either, it displays a theme. Those that pick at the scientific realities of the movie (or any movie for that matter) are not asking the right questions. The real question is “what is this movie trying to convey to me as a person” or “how is this movie trying to change me?”

The cinematography within Citizen Kane also exemplifies “an external perspective on the action” (Bordwell 311). The cinematography of the movie serves the same purpose as the mis en scene which is to make the audience more objective than any character in the movie and to make a road block for those that want to empathize with Foster-Kane. The person facilitating the story, a journalist by the name of Mr. Thomson, is made almost anonymous and forgettable through the use of cinematography which is great for the audience. If this failed the rest of the story would have failed. The way they did this was by making him put “his back to us, he is tucked into the corner of the frame, and he usually in darkness” (Bordwell 312). Although this doesn’t contribute to the story, it certainly is a remarkable act to try and get the audience to forget about Thomson and not be interested in a certain character because of how they face and where they are placed.

The editing also provides the audience to have a couple laughs while also being able to analyze Kane in a more objective way as well. At first while the news reel is going on, they say that after losing a couple of the races and losing popularity he turns to things more simple and then they cut to Susan a morbidly stupid woman (but still a character more empathetic in the movie to that of Kane). Comedy though is not the only way that Welles used editing. In the scene where Charles Foster-Kane wrecks the room there are a limited amount of cuts and the limited amount of cuts make the scene seem more edgy and for once we are allowed to look at him and sort of wonder who he is and why he is doing this odd thing. Most of the time when there were long shots where there weren’t cuts, the focus was not on Kane but rather to those that were either talking to him or the focus was on Kane’s back.

As all these things come together they formed what I think is the best movie. It affected the movie industry back then because it shook what it meant to expose others. Newspapers only last for so long (and now they are a dying breed of communication) and movies last forever which is why I think Citizen Kane paved the way for more documentary or expose sort of films like Sicko and Bowling for Columbine. Of course they aren’t fictitious films based on real life but Citizen Kane is what opened peoples’ eyes to the power of film and just how much of an impact it can make on society.

Noir: Genre or a Time Period

Spoilers in multiple films will be in here.

Within the course of four films (the Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil, Chinatown, and Brick) encountering the film noir genre has been interesting. Although Notes on a Film Noir by Paul Schrader says that "film noir is not a genre...It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by convention of setting and conflict but rather the more subtle qualities of tone and mood...Film noir is also a specific period of film history." (230 Schrader) I beg to differ. I propose that the makings of noir in the way that Schrader describes it makes it a genre. There are conventions, expectations, and a general formula that makes up film noir. If noir was a time period in the history of film making it would have a distinct flavor to it. His argument is that "full lighting and close-ups, gradually undercut the German influence, and color cinematography was, of course, the final blow to the noir look" (240 Shrader). I still differ on that last part alone since I think Brick was definitely a noir and it had a high budget, full lighting, close-ups, and color. Also the mechanics of noir is still in Brick. In some ways Brick is more of a noir than Touch of Evil. Many of the elements of film noir are universal (which makes it a genre not a film time period).

The genre conventions(the characters, settings, props, and events) do make up the film and are repeated within the film contrary to what Schrader may think (and of course I being a sophomore in college know more than Paul Schrader)! The archetypes repeated within each film noir are the same in many, if not every, noir. The hero is most of the time a washed up hero who is preconditioned to descend into darkness in order to let justice prevail. In the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade was already cold and distant when he met with Mrs. Wonderly and he was already having an affair with his partner's wife. By the time his partner died he really didn't have any remorse, in fact he actually replaced his partner's name on their company the next day. In Chinatown, Jake Gittes is already a washed up detective who left Chinatown to get away from whatever the system let him down for. There is a recurring theme with the main character which Schrader even addresses in his article which is that the heroes have "a passion for the past and the present but also a fear of the future. Noir heroes dread to look ahead" (Schrader 237). This is one way we are able to organize noirs like a genre. The setting is usually in the city and "lit for night" (235 Schrader). Both of these elements "creates a fatalistic, hopeless mood. There is nothing protagonists; the city will outlast and negate even their best efforts" (235 Schrader). Also within the story itself there are similar events that happen in all noirs, which is that there is usually a detective who meets a very beautiful woman but she is also a very dangerous woman (this is also known as the femme fatale). She is either a liar or a temptress of some kind and through the course of the film she leads the man on a very dark path which he usually takes willingly. The protagonist usually feels sorry or loves the femme fatale in some way that inhibits his ways of thinking. As he descends and his morality sort of diminishes he starts to also find out more about the femme fatale and all of her wily ways as well as he starts to find out about the case with the villains. He eventually descends so far into darkness that the audience might not be able to tell if the protagonist is good or evil. At the end of the movie the femme fatale and the protagonist have a falling out and the protagonist usually ends up taking up the path of goodness. The overall events all hover around the theme that there is no morality within justice.

Schrader not only describes in his own paper how there are certain conventions repeated in each noir (which makes it a film genre), but he also describes how there are certain expectations with each movie. There are aspects of each movie that allows the watcher to know whether the movie is noir or not noir within the first five minutes or so. The movie should have a feeling of "something is wrong" and that the main character should already have a dark side and not just be the classic ultra-pure archetype of a superhero. The making of a noir hero and the making of the setting (which is usually a dark setting either metaphorically or literally) and the events within the first five minutes (which is usually the meeting of the femme fatale or the actual event being told such as a murder) all point towards the genre of film noir. There is a style to noir, which makes it more of a sub genre but it is still a genre nonetheless and not just a style or a memento of an age long gone.

Brick

The first scene is a boy and a girl in the water presumably dead. We then take a trip two years back in time. Brendan is a school boy who right at the beginning of the movie. He gets a call from a girl named Emily who needs his help in some mysterious way. With the help of a kid called The Brain he hopes to get some information. Intercepting an invitation that was supposed to be from Emily, he is able to get to go to a party called Halloween in January.

In the party he is visited by a girl in red, also known as Cara, as he fixes himself a glass of sherry. They sit, they mingle, and she gives him a little bit of information ("coffee and pie oh my!"). Cara leaves for a couple seconds, asks him to wait, but he ends up getting out of the party altogether and following her. Some muscle-headed guy starts to yell at Cara and drives off. He ends up ditching the party.

Brendan then goes to see a man named Dode the next morning. Dode says at first that he has "enough on his plate without having to deal with a jilted ex." He asks where Emily is, Dode says "you better get it while it's good". Uh oh. We see that not only is Brendan smart and resourceful but is also a bad ass and a good slugger. He gives Dode a nice slug (it was actually so dramatic due to the shot if you love mis en scene). After that he asks Dode again where Emily is and slaps him around so badly. Basically she's with Dode and thinks that Brendan will only make things worse.

Turns out Dode was telling the truth. Dode meets up with Emily that afternoon and they hug and a letter is transferred between Dode and Emily. Brendan is overlooking the whole thing hidden in a hill. Later Emily and Brendan meet up and they have a talk about how Brendan judges people and Emily explains why she broke up with him in the first place. She came to say goodbye and he came to get her out of a tough spot with whatever is the brick or the Pin. At the end of the conversation they hug and Brendan ends up taking her notebook (where all of her letters are kept).

He finds one letter in particular. It's an uppercase A and midnight on the bottom. The Brain and Brendan try to figure out where this is pointing towards. This is the start of something big. The letter might be where the drugs are being taken and it's the upper crust of the whole thing. The A might be a random symbol, a symbol of the place, or it might be a drawing of the place. Hopefully Brendan can make this right and rectify all the wrongs.

In comparison to the rest of the noir films I have been seeing this was incredibly enjoyable to watch. Also it had some great cinematography, I felt that the characterization of the characters were very smooth (of course the reason I judged the others so harshly was because they weren't smooth and modern in terms of how they did it). Also I liked the way that the storyline progressed. It was more of a character driven story rather than a story driven by the plot.

I felt that the movie worked in many ways. I felt like the kid was just as resourceful as any other kid and that the Brain and Brendan had their vices and their strengths in whatever they wanted to do. There were also more modern themes which made the movie more interesting such as drugs being given to children and it seems to not also try and pose as a dark film even though it was. I felt that the earlier noir was trying to push too hard to try and be dark that it was almost forced. Even some of the dialog was forced. Also they actually made use of flashbacks something that the other noirs did not use flashbacks which made Brick so much better in my mind. I also felt that Brendan in many ways was smarter than the other guys in the Maltese Falcon and in Touch of Evil. The only problem I had with the movie was that it was in high school and they make it seem like as if these high school children are adults. They do address it though when Brendan is at leader's house and the mom comes and makes Brendan breakfast. It makes it all seem unrealistic.

Maybe it is the time period that these movies took place in but what I do know is that this movie is a good one to watch. I'd give it a 7/10 for educational value and a 9/10 for entertainment.

Chinatown

Jake Gittes,an LA private investigator, is hired by a woman who calls herself Mrs. Mulwray. She tells him that she suspects that her husband cheated on her and that she wants some confirmation upon these suspicions. Mr. Mulwray, it seems, only cares about water and nothing else. All he does is hang around the waterways, riverbeds, and other water outlets. There is one time that Mr. Mulwray is having a fling with a young blonde and Gittes is on the scene with his camera. One photograph and a large front page headline later another woman comes into his office.

According to her, she is the real Mrs. Mulwray. The woman who hired him was just an imposter. The real Mrs. Mulwray threatens to sue for defamation and libel. Now we have a story. Jake Gittes has been embarrassed and wants to talk to Mr. Mulwray. As he learns of Mr. Mulwray's whereabouts he sees that Mr. Mulwray is indeed dead. Plot twist!

That night he "wanders" into the reservoir area once more (where he tried to meet Mr. Mulwray the first time) but is confronted by two goons, Claude Mulvihill and his short midget friend. The short midget takes a part of Jake's nose and says to get the hell away from their business. The next day Jake receives a call. It's Idra Sessions (also known as the imposter in the beginning of the movie) and she gives him some information.

Who is this woman in actuality? What happened to Mr. Mulwray? Will he be able to keep the honor of his good name?

This movie I would say entertained me for about the first hour or so. The first hour is full of action and drama and all the plot elements are all separate but they still all make the movie. Then the movie settles down. We see Mrs. Mulwray. She's a mess and she takes Jake down with her in this whole debacle. As we go further into the movie I feel like the investigation sense of this film noir is taken and the investigation takes a back seat for character development, where we learn more about Jake and Evelyn (Mrs. Mulwray). Jack Nicholson (Jake) is phenomenal like always but we don't see his character fleshed out. If you like mis en scene, this movie has a bunch of cool shots where we see things from a weird camera angle. In one scene we are in the back seat as he is backing away from an armed horseman and to see that one shot as the horse is galloping towards us raises the tension and the excitement. It was a great shot.

The parts of the movie that I guess didn't work is one of the characters. Mrs. Mulwray's father is not the nicest of guys and at first they paint him as a sophisticated guy but the thing is that they didn't lead us up with any clues that he would be the type of guy that he would be. There was no build up and no subtle clues for a nice second viewing. Monsoon Wedding did a better job setting us up for the surprise.

I guess I give this a 6/10. It got kind of boring for the last half hour.

Touch of Evil

The opening scene starts out in Mexico with the sounds of swing, old cars running everywhere, and a finely dressed couple. We then see Mike and Suzie Vargas. Mr. Vargas is a cop who gets drug criminals and recently got a part of a big mob family arrested. The newly married couple kiss and an exploding car crashes into the scene. So much for a happy time. After a little investigation we meet Hank Quinlan, a rather rude sort of guy who is captain of the local policeman. To add to the exploding car crash Uncle Joe, one of the members of the Grandi family, is telling Mike to get out of their business and lay of their brother in Mexico City. To boot, the inside of the Grandi family mob is separating as some of the members in the lower rung of the whole family are trying to assault Mike, something that was not planned. We learn that Hank is the type of guy that would go and sacrifice himself. That is why he has a cane. He ran in the way of a bullet intended for another person. The investigation goes on and just like many of the movies in the time of film noir the story isn't triangular but rather it's more of a line. It rises in tension until the last minute. Will Mike catch Mr. Grandi? Will Suzie ever be able to get away from Mr. Grandi and his thugs? Will Hank figure out what's going on in this explosion case?

I personally enjoyed the movie but then again I understood a lot of the Spanish dialog so that added more for me. Also I love the sense of mystery so the story was more or less reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes (well without the whole British accent thing). I also enjoyed the tension between Vargas and Quinlan. It really seems to touch me now that we as a nation sort of have this same tension with the immigrants that come to America.

I thought that the whole music imagery and symbolism worked. I thought that the switch between the Spanish music and the swing music made me think more about what the two types of music symbolized. I think it was representative of the tension between the two sides. I also felt that the characters in this movie were much more developed than in the Maltese Falcon (of course there was also not in the Maltese Falcon they were trying to display a certain theme). What I really think did not work was the characterization of Quinlan. I thought although he was an enjoyable character, he had this whole thing of being the archetype of being the washed up cop with a really really crappy back story. The problem I have with this is that although it contributes to the story, it doesn't allow for the characters to be believable. I'm always thinking that this is just some story. It's not believable.

Overall I give this movie as a whole a 7/10. It's not the best movie but it certainly is entertaining.

The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is said to be the epitome of what film noir is all about. When someone is asked about film noir they usually think of a movie resembling the Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade is a private investigator. His partner Miles Archer and him are in the room and the two of them are relaxing when a woman enters. Miles is mesmerized by her looks and when this damsel in distress comes in he is there to protect. The woman's name is Ms. Wonderly. She asks the two of them to follow this scary man Floyd Thursby who has run off with her sister. Archer takes the job of tailing Thursby with joy.

One day later Tom Polhaus, a fellow detective, comes in later that day and informs Spade that his partner has been shot and killed while following Thursby. Later that night two officers come into Spade's wondering where he has been for the past few hours. It turns out the accusations are against Spade right now in terms of who killed Archer. Thursby is dead as well which knocks him off as a suspect.

Spade then gets a visit from Archer's wife who has been in an affair with Spade for some time now. This doesn't help Spade's cause. She asks if Spade would kill Archer so that the two of them could be together. He kicks her out of his office and later that night he gets the secretary to get rid of all of Archer's stuff and also to make the company name not Spade and Archer but just Spade. This seems to not help his cause out too much either.

We then learn that Ms. Wonderly is not a wonderful person at all. Her real name is Ms. O'Shaughnessy. She never had a sister in the first place. Thursby was just betraying her and was a partner. We then also meet Joel Cairo who offers five thousand dollars for a black bird that has recently arrived. Will Spade descend into darkness amidst accusations and betrayal? What significance does the black bird have? You have to watch to find out.

The character of Spade is also the character of Nick in Casablanca and the character is almost synonymous in terms of the spunk that the two exude. The two characters also develop the same way as the movie goes on but I find Nick to be the more warm character. The movie was kind of bland but at the same time it helped me think of what really is noir. The thing is that the overall storyline has a couple comic lines but the storyline is very linear and the characterization I think isn't that great. They sort of rush a lot of elements at the audience. An example is towards the end when the bird is found, the character of Spade almost seems to be going to be a bad guy but uh oh! Psych! He's been a good guy in disguise. There's no lead up to all of this though.

I guess I give this story a 5/10 for entertainment but an 8/10 for learning purposes.

Bollywood vs Hollywood

Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover. The major difference between Bollywood and Hollywood films lie not within the musical numbers that appear within the film to display a deeper theme but rather in the narration and the characterization of the movie in general. The narration and the characterization deviate and even challenge the "conventional" ways used by Hollywood.

For narration, the stories of Monsoon Wedding and Daughters of the Dust both make a point to not make one or two specific characters the main characters. Although in Monsoon Wedding Aditi and Hemant are supposed to be the main characters, it seems like they have the least amount of lines and that their overarching storyline almost takes a back seat to the rest of the characters. Similarly in Daughters of the Dust although the main storyline should be between Nana and the rest of her family, that storyline also takes a backseat to the rest of the characters' storylines.

In Monsoon Wedding, Aditi and Hemant are going to be in an arranged marriage but at the same time we barely see them get any screen time. There are a couple of different storylines that are juggled in this screenplay. One of the storylines was that Ria was sexually abused by her uncle and that he wants to do the same to her younger cousin Alijah. Another is how the father, Lalit, has to fund this grandiose wedding and he might not have the money to do so. This is customary in India but at the same time it is still stressful. Another is that P.K is instantly in love with Alice. The smallest storyline is Varun (the youngest son of Lalit) and how he is not as masculine as his father would like him to be.

All of these storylines are juggled and the challenge to Hollywood is that the subplots take over the actual plot and contribute that way. The challenge is to tell Hollywood to deviate from making all romantic comedies the same. Hollywood is almost boring to myself because of the fact that they all go like this: first two people meet, they flirt a little at first (they might get frisky in the process), they encounter something that separates them (such as another person), and then after a pep talk from their best friend they reunite. It's almost sickening how monotonous it all is. The challenge to Hollywood is if there are so many subplots then the narration makes the story and the characters (not the plot) make the stories all different.

The other part of Bollywood and Daughters of the Dust that is different is the way characterization works. In Daughters of the Dust, each little interaction causes individual characters to change which makes the overall story turn into another direction. In Daughters of the Dust the story goes on from conversation to conversation until finally the family decides to carry Nana's blessing off to the new land.

In Monsoon Wedding it more clearly does this by intertwining all the subplots to affect each character. Ria's conflict of being sexually abused when she was younger eventually transfers to Lalit's. He now must deal with the internal strife. The war is between having a community and having this extravagant wedding verses losing Ria forever because of something her uncle did. Eventually he changes and in the middle of the wedding he kicks out the uncle and tells him to never see his family again. The tiny subplot changes Lalit and transforms him into a man that cares more about family than for extravagance. It is something that makes the story so much more meaningful.

By using subplots to convey characterization and narration is an amazing and somehow unseen way to produce a wonderful movie. Hollywood's way of making a movie is almost invisible in terms of how they even put it together. The writing all seems the same but if subplots take over the actual storyline it might be risky but the outcome is something beautiful, where the audience cares for every single character.

Monsoon Wedding 9.4/10

Bollywood is an ever increasing ever growing style of film that differs from American films. If you liked Slumdog Millionaire and are willing to drift even more from America then Monsoon Wedding is the best film you might want to get. It submerges the audience into the Indian culture immediately.

The movie is character driven story (but not nearly as much as Do the Right Thing). For many reasons this movie is not a difficult movie to watch at all. The storyline is about the arranged marriage between Aditi Verma (Vasundhara Das) and Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas) and how Aditi struggles to want the marriage. At first the array and plethora of differing names might be confusing but the story eventually pans out into a well written screenplay. The true beauty of this movie is not the overall story but how the screenwriter and the rest of the camera crew allows the story to be told by not including the main characters.

Another storyline within the movie is the comic relief of Parabatlal Kanhaiyalal 'P.K.' Dubey (Vijay Raaz). He is the wedding planner for the Verma family. At first he turns out to be an arrogant man who's only on his cellphone. Then we see his goofy side when Alice (Tillotama Shome) shows up. The development from comic relief to a truly heartfelt mini-story (which still has some funny moments within it) is the beauty of both the writing and the mis en scene.

Although Monsoon Wedding is a dark romantic comedy the development of each character helps the audience to connect to each one. It doesn't feel dark but rather it's a colorful story full of laughing, crying, and anger. Each character has their own story and eventually they all come together for a final dance which if the audience loves other cultures will thoroughly enjoy.

I personally loved the movie. The beginning of the movie was a little confusing with all the names being thrown and the subtitles helped a lot. For some people subtitles retract from the movie but I don't really care about them much. Also what might throw some people off are the more edgy themes that go along with the movie (such as child abuse). Just remember to keep an open mind within this movie in terms of culture and also in terms of having a good time.

9.4/10

Daughers of the Dust (?/10)

The background that everyone needs to know before looking at this movie is that the Peazant family is a West African Gullah family living in the secluded Ido Landing. The only way to get on the mainland is via boat. The Gullahs were able to keep their older traditions and were able to retain their spirituality.

The story of Daughters of the Dust is Kafkaesque in that the "action" starts immediately and the story is character driven. The story is also more realistic in terms of where the story begins. It begins with the Peazant family in their own situation. There is no unity and there is no real tangible happiness within the beginning. There is just a feeling that there is something wrong already.

The story begins in three separate directions. We have Nana (Cora Lee Day), the matriarch of the family, who still holds up the old but dying traditions of her heritage. Haagar (Kaycee Moore) is an grumpy character (she yells at people throughout the movie) and wants to leave for the main land as soon as possible. Viola (Cheryl Lynn) is a new Christian who is dissatisfied with her family's situation. She is trying her hardest throughout the movie to change her mother's evil ways and correct her sisters whenever possible. While all this is going on we have Eula (Alva Rogers) who is pregnant (and they make it perfectly clear that she is pregnant by showing her stomach again and again and again) via some white guy that raped her. The problem is that she isn't telling who did it to her husband Eli(). There is also a character called the Unborn Child who appears from time to time walking amongst the people and they don't seem to notice her at all and sometimes she narrates.

The reason why the story is hard to explain and I can only give out the main plot is because the story doesn't follow a linear Hollywood-esque style where there is a plot triangle. The story seems to go in all sorts of places. It is definitely a hard watch but if you can get through it then you might find the style interesting. The only real hard part is if you struggle with accents. There is a certain dialect of English and West African languages that brings the movie to life but at the same time it was hard to hear at times.

I really don't know how to rate this. If I was looking for a pleasure movie I would give this a 1/10 but for analytical purposes and for appreciatory purposes I would give it a ?/10.

Casablanca (non-analytical) 10/10

In World War ll the Moroccan city of Casablanca is a bustling world of its own. The Nazis, the underground rebellions, the gambling, the prostitution, the underground favors, all happen at Casablanca. Some are trying to escape from the concentration camps while others are merely trying to make a profit off of those that travel through. The audience then hones on Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) a cold and bitter man who owns Rick's Café Américain, an exclusive nightclub where just about all the underground deals go on. Drinking is in the front and gambling in the back (to those that can afford to get in).

Rick's motto is "I stick my neck out for nobody" and he sticks by that. A man named Ugarte (Peter Lorre) comes in and asks Rick to hide some letters of transit (a rare ticket out of Casablanca). Rick agrees to but doesn't want to have them overnight. It doesn't matter though for the Nazis come and arrest Ugarte in the middle of the nightclub. The letters of transit within Rick's club stay at Rick's club.

Enter Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). They enter into the club expecting to meet with Ugarte to obtain the letters only to find that he was arrested. As Laszlo is with the man telling him that Ugarte is arrested Rick sees Ilsa in the distance. Somehow he knows her. For some reason he's bitter. He has the two tickets they need.

Will Rick's emotions get in the way of helping Laszlo and Ilsa? Why is Laszlo bitter at his encounter with Ilsa at first sight? And will Laszlo and Ilsa be able to escape? Watch and find out.

I personally found the movie to be top notch. There are moments in the film that are moving. Ilsa may not be my cup of tea but I wouldn't say that she ruins the film at all. There is love, hate, tears, and laughter all scattered throughout the film and it is all used very eloquently as well. The character of General Renault was especially funny with his wit and also with his goofy humor. One of the best parts of this movie was the timing. The humor was there to break tension, the sadness there to break the light moods, the tears there to make the audience love the characters. Everything was timed perfectly. Although some of the characters were frustrating at times it doesn't remove the greatness of the movie. I would recommend this for any person at any point in life. A perfectly made movie. 10/10

Bonnie and Clyde (analytical)

Please don't read this before watching the movie

If you want to see the death scene please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhIZ9URHlrQ (I take none of this as mine)

Alright. Let's go dive into the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde. So at first we are seeing Clyde get out of the car via Bonnie's view. We then cut to the conversation. This shows that she is cut off from the conversation for if they continued to shoot it from behind her back we would not be emotionally invested when Clyde died but at the same time we would have gotten the shock factor. We also clearly see that she is having a hard time hearing their conversation because we cut for a split second towards Clyde and CJ's dad (Ivan) and then back to Bonnie who is squinting her eyes.

We then see the camera cut from Ivan looking towards the road to a car back to Ivan and then to Clyde and then birds fluttering out of the bushes back to Clyde and back to Ivan. It certainly picks up the pacing of the movie. We are left in confusion.

Bonnie picks her head out of the car and we see her smile. We see her face for a couple seconds more than Ivan or Clyde. Then the birds continue to fly. Then we see Ivan look towards a bush. They cut to the bush then to the car. Then Ivan drops. They cut to Clyde looking at Ivan and then to Bonnie looking at him. I was looking at him. It was almost as if they were predicting the audience would look at Ivan in that same way. The tension builds with all these weird cuts.

Then their facial features drop with a close-up. Clyde frowns. Bonnie frowns. In my heart I said "oh no." Cut to the bush cut to Bonnie cut to Clyde cut back to Bonnie back to Clyde back to Bonnie BAM!! The cut to the bushes shooting at Bonnie and Clyde builds up to this point. The point where it's sudden. It's not supposed to be long. This is quick (and not so clean).

The camera cuts to gunners popping out of the bush then to Bonnie then to Clyde getting shot. Then the camera goes into slow motion. The slow motion here mirrors the slowness of what the audience is feeling. Now is not the time to be making the audience tremor in their seat but rather to just watch--and absorb the fact that Bonnie and Clyde are getting mowed down by bullets.

Then the gunners stop. Then we see Bonnie lying still and the camera cuts to Clyde lying still(which is mirrored by the audience's reaction). Then there is a shot of both Bonnie and Clyde. This one shot of the both of them is on the screen for more than any other shot in this whole scene.

Then we see that the car was actually two random men in a car. It's almost like an afterthought. We then see the camera cut to the gunners to the two men in the car and then to Ivan. They are all looking at them just as we looked at them. The cutting is more sympathetic. It doesn't raise questions but rather lets the audience see what the characters see.

The reason I analyzed this scene was because of the disjointed cutting. All of it was choppy and the choppiness of it all is rare now and it also grabbed the audience and let the audience see what was in the eyes of the character. The editing was important in this scene and allowed the audience to see meaning in the pacing of the movie.

Bonnie and Clyde (non-analytical) 3/10

In a small town, a bored girl and an amateur bank robber join up in a tale of subtle lust, violence, and a stream of heists. Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) drive away from their small time lives and embark on a quest to make something better of themselves amidst the Great Depression. The romantic tale amongst Bonnie and Clyde take the two from being amateurs to being well known robbers in the state of Texas with the help of Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman), his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons) and a car mechanic named C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard).

As the tale weaves, conflict between Bonnie and Blanche develop. Bonnie represents an upcoming independent woman and Blanche represents the older more shrewd woman of the past. Of course there is also conflict between Bonnie and Clyde as well. Bonnie searches for children and Clyde's only reaction is that he just isn't a lover.

I can't really give this synopsis a real great wrap up because I feel that the movie did the same thing. There was no wrap up. They sort of left the audience and faded to black. It reminded me of the Sopranos and how they ended their movie (or Pirates of the Caribbean 2 if you've seen that movie). The movie also has four basic characters and each one of them is a grating character.

Clyde is a blunt sort of guy. He is the type that never got what Bonnie was trying to tell him. She wants more than just the life of crime and he doesn't know any other way and he is sort of like a kid in that he doesn't change. He doesn't see her point of view. He's just a little kid on the inside.

Then you have Bonnie, whose southern accent is pretty horrendous if you ask me. Sure it got better but there was this whole thing as well where she was an emotional train wreck. One moment she would be climbing on Clyde and the next she would be angry or teary. There was a scene where they are in bed and she asks Clyde what he would do differently if they had a clean slate (referring to her want for kids). He just looks at her and says "I'd go different places". He's blunt and she at first is teary (don't blame her) but then she cracks a smile and just forgives him instantaneously after he says that he loves her.

Then there's Buck and C.W. who are both pretty much just skimmed over within the story. They both have minimal background and they aren't even all that funny either. And then there's Blanche. She is possibly the most annoying character of all time. Her voice is just like nails on the wall and her acting is incredibly bad. She can't even exhibit fear well. When the guns go off she screams for thirty seconds straight. And even when the five of them are away from the cops she is still screaming. She has annoying lines for the whole movie and I think I had some serious anger problems near the end of the movie.

All in all I didn't care about the characters (which is what they want you to care about in the first place). I didn't like the movie because it was so slow and repetitive (amateur bank robbing can only get so invigorating) and at there was no character development. I just thought it was all forced and over hyped as well.

I give it a 3/10.

Run Lola Run (Analytical)

THIS HAS SPOILERS OF THE MOVIE IN IT. PLEASE DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE RUN LOLA RUN.

For this blog we are going to analyze the first run. If you want to follow then go to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaCu0_2k0bU&feature=player_profilepage) I don't take any credit for this movie at all.

At the beginning of a scene there is usually a shot that conveys the whole area (which is also known as the establishing shot). At the beginning of Run Lola Run there is only a close up shot of Lola and Manni having a conversation on the phone. There is no shot of the setting. There is no knowledge of where are the two of them. All we know is what is going on with Manni (which is little information in general).

Just at first glance of Lola's first run-through we come upon Lola thinking about who could possibly provide her with one hundred thousand marks. The camera pans around Lola and the screen cuts to different people as she names each one individually. The cutting shows the way that she is thinking the quickness of her thought. If it was just her walking with a voice over saying "oh no who am I going to get the money from?" it wouldn't have been as powerful as this. It would have lacked emotion and intensity. Also they showed the father at the end shaking his head which was foreshadowing of his own reaction towards his daughter. Without disjunctive cutting, the second viewing wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable.

The next weird decision on the movie's part was going straight to cartoons as she goes down the stairs. My personal analysis is to show the depth and how she felt during this whole ordeal. The staircase, if you look at the cartoon more closely, seems to wind forever. Maybe the decision to cut to cartoons was to make us once more empathize with Lola and feel that the stair are going to take forever.

Lola starts to run and the camera skips a couple things. First as she runs down the long and empty road the camera cuts to her a little bit ahead of when we first saw her. It doesn't enhance the story some but as she runs we have a side view of Lola. The thing is the camera changes the background three times as she runs from this view. It shows that the trek is indeed going to be long. As Lola runs the directors also use dissolves to make it look like a huge expanse of time has passed.

As Lola runs she bumps into an old woman with a baby. We then get a really huge close up. The camera then cuts to a kid potty training on a kitchen table. The two of them are fighting. The camera cuts to policemen taking this woman's child. Then we cut to her being in despair. Then we cut to a ridiculous scene where she steals someone else's child! They do this sort of cutting for each person that Lola bumps into and it allows the audience to fill in the blanks and it makes the second viewing more enjoyable. Also it tells a story in as little time as possible. I admire that they didn't make these people "characters."

The pacing in this movie for the most part is pretty consistent except that whenever she is thinking or whenever there is pressure of some type the camera cuts to a plethora of pictures for only split seconds. The experience gets the audience on the edge of their seat and gets the audience pumped for whatever she is going to do.

Run Lola Run (Non-Analytical)

Lola (Franka Potente) picks up the telephone. It's Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). He tells her that he forgot a hundred thousand marks on a subway. A homeless guy took it all (don't blame him). Lola has to get a hundred thousand marks in a matter of twenty minutes otherwise "something horrible will happen!" GO!

For most of the movie this is the experience: fast choppy action, screen shots coming from a million places, and a whole lot of confusion. There's not much dialog and there's trance (techno) music throughout the whole movie. The title could not describe Lola any clearer. She runs throughout the movie encountering others and just by the minute things Lola does, she causes dramatic things to happen. These events come in many forms, from creepy to lucky to comical. And although it sounds like I'm bashing the movie they pull it off so that the audience is on the rollercoaster with Lola.

For the whole movie the audience is on the edge of their seat, bombarded by music, thoughts, and overall there is almost no dialog. They allow the audience to think for the whole time. As Lola runs she first encounters an old woman in a carriage and as she charges she accidentally bumps into the older woman. She struts along with her baby, calls Lola a bitch, and goes along with her day. The camera zooms more towards the old woman and we see a series of pictures with her and a baby. Nothing else. The next event is when she runs to her dad in the bank, he's having an affair with the woman, the woman asks if he's willing to give up his family, and he is, and as that happens it cuts quickly back to Lola who is asked by a guy with a bike for fifty marks to buy the bike from him.

Then there are snap shots of his life. Each snap shot has him being beaten up. He has a bloody nose and he looks beaten up. So far it looks bad but then there's a picture of him and a nurse and apparently they get married.

As she runs more and more encounters like this happen. If you want a movie grounded only in realism and have no sort of surprises then don't watch this movie. If you want a movie that is sort of passive and you don't want to think while you watch, don't get this movie. If you want an entertaining film that makes you think and has surprises around the corner and information shooting at you then this movie is perfect.

This movie stirs discussion, not just adoration.

I would give this a 9.2/10.

Do the Right Thing (Analytical Commentary)

Film is a moving painting and all the parts in the scene, from the shading to the objects in the foreground, tell more about the story than what words and actions describe. All the objects and all the lighting within a picture can be approached in two ways. There are those who will look at a great painting like Guernica by Pablo Picasso and will see it for face value. Guernica certainly does show the ugliness of the bombing of Guernica, Spain but there are other parts of the picture that shows the chaos in a more rich and deepening way (i.e the use of black and white in the picture).

Do the Right Thing utilizes mis en scene in a unique way. The objects, the lighting, the colors all not only enhance the story but rather support the theme of the story and show it in a more true light (pun intended). At the beginning of the movie the audience hears the song "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy while the actors are dressed in boxing clothes. These boxing clothes are just one of the many objects that come up in the movie later. It creates a scene where there is an angry aura just around these people. The music and the clothes all reveal more about the theme later.

The next time the audience hears "Fight the Power" is when we see Radio. Radio is a central part of the whole story. Radio initiates the overall climax of the movie and he represents the theme of the movie. On Radio's left hand is a radio playing the tune "Fight the Power" and for most of the movie he doesn't say a word. At first I didn't see what his role was in this whole movie but the one thing I noticed was that his theme song (pun intended) was "Fight the Power".

Delving into the movie more the audience gets to know Radio more via his rings. On one fist he has a ring that says love and on the other it says hate and as he leaves the conversation from Buggin' we see that he grabs the radio and plays "Fight the Power" with the hand that has the hate ring. The whole connotation with Radio is that through the jewelry on his body we see the dichotomy between those that choose pacifist protesting and aggressive protesting. He tells the audience of the "the story of 'Right Hand, Left Hand.' It's a tale of good and evil."

The next part is the symbolism of the heat and water. Throughout the story line, the bright colors enhances the view to make the scene look even more hot than it should be. The heat raises the tension and there is more anger in the air. Later in the movie there is a scene where the hydrant is taken apart and the water comes forth from there and everyone unites. There is a point where there is laughter and everything seems to darken and cool down. This is seen both in the attitude but also within the colors of the scene itself. Then Radio comes and everyone suppresses the water from him as he moves by.

As Sal's restaurant burns, Smiley comes into the building and puts a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The photo is not only a symbol of victory since now there is a picture of two famous black men on the wall but it is also a symbol of unity among people. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King represent two very different approaches of protesting and two very different ideas. The two of them being chummy in one picture is a great symbol of unification.

That is very unlike the symbol of adversity that is upon the Wall of Fame. There is a picture of Mike Tyson on one side of the boxing ring (remember that boxing symbolism is prevalent throughout this movie) and some other white guy on the other side of the ring. This is definitely the symbol of adversity and the camera always cuts to that picture whenever referencing the Wall of Fame.

As the symbols progress they get more intense and the tension thickens as the day grows hotter (until finally Sal's building bursts into flames producing the most heat and therefore the most tension). The whole theme of this movie is that there is a war between hate and love and there is always a side that we must choose. At the end there are two quotations, one by Malcolm X and the other by Martin Luther King. Choose your side on this one.

Do the Right Thing (non-analytical review)

There are two elements that drive a story. In plot driven stories, the story is driven by the plot (seems a little self explanatory) and in character driven stories the story is driven by the characters. Movies and novels have elements of both but there is always a majority of one or the other. Movies for the most part are dictated by the plot and not the characters. For example, for the most part if we were to replace Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) with a monkey I don't think the storyline would change. She does not dictate the story and neither does Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf). If neither of them were in the story the Decepticons and Autobots would still be at war. In general most movies are plot driven.

Do the Right Thing is different. There's no general storyline with a beginning, middle, and end but rather it is more life-like. The story begins in the middle of certain conflict and starts to develop slowly from there. Although the actual plot isn't irrelevant it doesn't give the feel of the movie.

Inside Sal's, an Italian pizzeria, there's a "Wall of Fame." This wall of pictures has all Italians from Silvester Stallone to Al Pacino. Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) decides to boycott the store until Sal (Danny Aiello) decides to put some black people on the wall like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. There are also other side stories, one that involves a boy named Mooky, a Korean family, and three homeless people trying to make it in the world. All four stories do not necessarily intertwine but rather they compliment each other and bring about the theme.

Throughout the movie there is this whole war between those that want to protest peacefully and those that want to "fight the power" with boxing gloves. In order to truly appreciate this movie, all preconceived notions of storyline must be wiped and a more character driven story must come to mind. The characters are the story.

8.4/10.

The Godfather (Analytical Review)

If you haven't seen the Godfather don't look at this blog post. Instead look at the one below.

Mise en scene, also known as what's on stage, is a way that movies paint a picture to display meaning. Cinematography is equivalent to the perspective of a painting while the actual objects within the painting is the mise en scene (or more specifically the objects and the lighting). To better understand any movie the audience has to visualize certain pauses within movies and analyze the things within the movie as well. In The Godfather the objects can be instrumental (or taken for face value) but sometimes there are objects repeated or used to have a certain effect thus creating a metaphor.

At the beginning of the movie we see the darkness. "I believe in America" is the first sentence spoken in the movie. We then are drawn to Don Vito's first client. The light is soft and warm and yet everything behind him is darkness. The lighting is to draw us as an audience to this man and to have an empathetic relationship with him. If the director instead just showed him in a medium or even long shot, the effect would be different (see how cinematography illuminates mise en scene [yes that pun was intended]=). The audience wouldn't feel the draw, the pull towards the first client.

Within that first scene we pull back and see the office. We see that it's "all business." The line between business and family is a very important theme within the movie and translates through this room. The place is dark connoting a sense of shadiness to the room (you should assume by now that all these puns are intended). The detail to the office is not insignificant either. There's the large desk planted near the window of the room (which some say promote a sense of power, I just say it's for an ego boost but it's to the same effect). There's even a part where children run through the office. Light shines upon them. Then they're rushed right out. There is more of a symbolism there because they would have taken that out of the movie (since it doesn't contribute to the storyline) if it wasn't metaphorical.

Setting is integral to mise en scene and there are multiple examples of this that contrast one another. The classiness of the office where the Corleone family meets vastly contrasts the place where Sollozo is meeting with Tom (a more dingy part of town where the paint is falling off and the place looks like a mess). Everything seems to be more than precise when it comes to what is on the scene and how does everything contribute.

If there wasn't a need for preciseness then there would be no need for the costume designer so let's give Anna Hill Johnstone and Francis Ford Coppola (the director) some props(now I must say that was by far the worst pun). The rose on Don Vito Corleone was a metaphorical object used to foreshadow his death. That one I am certain of because they all used the same roses during his funeral to pile onto his grave. The color crimson is a symbol that's been used since the beginning of time to represent death. Even though I can say with certainty that the rose was symbolic I can't say the same for all the flowers worn during the wedding. Sonny and Fredo were both wearing white roses in their tuxedos and they had nothing to do with each other.

The other part of the costume design during the beginning of the movie that sort of betrays itself symbolically is the war uniform that Michael wears at the beginning. The costume establishes that he is a war hero but it also establishes how different he was at the beginning of the movie to the rest of his family. His wife even has a dress on that no one else wore. They were simply different and the things they wore told that tale. The thing that strikes me most is that Kay was wearing a red dress throughout the whole movie until she converts to being Michael's wife. It seems to tell a tale of how different she is to the family throughout the movie and then when Michael takes over both her life and the family business she changes into a more formal dress showing her own transformation.


Placement is another part of mise en scene and it's a subtle part of mise en scene that goes thoroughly unnoticed. During the meeting with Vito and Sollozo, we see that Tom is on one side while Vito is on the other. The point of this is to show that Tom has a more all-business no-heart sort of attitude while Vito has a more tenderhearted and more compassionate take on trying to kill people and beat up others. The fact that they are not side by side is not a coincidence at all and the fact that they are on opposite sides during the conversation conveys they are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

Body movement is also a subtle part of mise en scene. When discussing Sollozo and how his business is "dirty" we see Vito brushing off the seat that Sollozo touched, almost as if Sollozo is dirty himself. Another part where body movement or graphic blocking takes place is when Michael proposes to kill Sollozo and McClusky. He stands between Tom who is bent on selling the narcotics and joining with Sollozo and Sonny who must protect the honor of his father's reputation and business. He stands in between them figuratively and literally.

Mise en scene paints a picture. The picture of how business and family always gets muddled is shown throughout the movie and with the help of the costumes, the people, and the lighting, there is a grand picture, one that shows a message; a moving picture.

The Godfather Review (Non-Analytical Version 9.6/10)

We enter into the film in darkness. All we hear is the plea of a broken man sickened with rage and disgust towards the legal system. When the judge and the jury are dead to those that desire help, the godfather stands ready to give justice. As we pull out we see more into the dimly lit business room and peer through the eyes of the highly esteemed Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). Vito is the brains behind the operation, the hands behind the action, and also the face behind the masque of Red Death. If any oppose Red Death he shall give them "an offer they can't refuse."

Vito and his new client exit from the darkened business room and into the light. Outside we see the fruits of the Corleone clan. There is a wedding with dancing, drinking, a large and unnecessary cake (like most weddings have), and Italian festivities. Through the course of the wedding we see Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale), and Michael (Al Pacino) Corleone—or Vito’s three sons.

After all the festivities and all the joy and happiness and backdoor dealing we see a new face in town. He’s a narcotics dealer that goes by the name of Sollozzo (Al Lettieri). The narcotics dealer comes to Vito in hopes of money and protection. When Vito says that narcotics is a dirty business, there is bad blood and whenever there is bad blood there is sure to be blood. Hopes collide, gun fights come about, and a war erupts between the other families within the cities. All question the style of leadership Vito has and the only question left for the Corleone family is “What is the legacy of the clan going to look like?”

My personal opinion of this movie is that although the movie is wonderful but overhyped. There are many scenes that are well known that really didn’t impact me the way it seemed to have impacted everyone else. To me, the most beautiful part of the movie was the fade in towards the beginning but the iconic scene in [i]Godfather[/i] is the part where the horse head shows up at the end of the bed or the shooting scene near the end where there’s background music. The next part of this movie that strikes me as wonderful is the way the screenwriter reveals Vito and Michael to the audience. But there are some characters that feel so flat that we can’t connect. I feel like the lack of connection with Connie (Talia Shire) makes the audience not be able to connect with her when we should be connecting with her the most (or connecting with one of the brothers the most afterwards).

I would definitely recommend this movie but I would say go into the movie with an open mind and don’t expect the greatest movie of all time that will blow your mind and send it just bowing at it because it’s just that good. It’s a great movie and if you like action, gore, and don’t mind a little verbal jousting then this is just the movie for you (there’s even a cute romance subplot to boot).

Final rating: 9.6/10

Apocalypse Now (Analytical/SPOILER Version)

For those that look at this blog be sure to know this post has major spoilers.

Within the movie Apocalypse Now there is a realism that deems it the title "great" instead of just impressive. Apocalypse Now does not show it's theme and central message through the dialog but rather through the actions and cinematography.

At the beginning, there is a battle in a village, and the theme of war and how destructive and terrible war is just lashes out at the audience. In order to encompass what war really is there had to be an element of terrible grandness. In the first battle scene there weren’t close ups, there was no main character just fighting on his own like a James Bond film, or Casablanca, or Saving Private Ryan, but rather there was a large fight. Explosions were everywhere. People were dying left and right and to see all of it was a terrifying but awe-inspiring shot. After that they prepare audience to react to Kilgore. Colonel Bill Kilgore is a man that is gun ho about killing and gung ho about gore and gung ho about the "smell of napalm in the morning." They prepare the audience to scowl and to wonder why he loves to fight and kill via this large scene of killing and destruction upon those that seem innocent (the Vietnamese women and children). As the war rages on, there is a broken church in the background. The depth of focus is not on the soldiers in this one scene, but rather on the church, making the brokenness and the sadness of war only a little more real.

Another part of this barbarism within war is not only within this small but symbolic picture but also there are more subliminal decisions (and I’m not talking about the two phallic symbols within the course of the film). The more subliminal decisions are the ones with the tiger stripes and the incorporation of that color scheme within the film. The tiger first appears in the scene where Chef and Willard are out of the boat. Within the jungle a tiger jumps out of the forest and starts to attack and at first they run away from the forest and barbarism and tiger. Later they embrace it and even Roach has a gun that has tiger stripes. There’s face paint with green stripes and there’s more animalistic qualities to each person as they enter into the jungle more and more. Purple haze is introduced as the haze between what is human and what is animalistic in war starts to get hairy and blurred.

At the end of this whole movie, camera angles also take a role in how the cinematography conveys the theme. The camera angles shows Kurtz, when Willard first finds him in the darkness, at a high angle so that Kurtz looks hunched like an animal. He rubs his head and mumbles and the whole time people want to see him but the camera angles and the lighting and the color of the whole frame prevents us from seeing him truly. As the movie progresses we see less darkness in him and we see more of his face. The movie ends at last with the camera angles showing Willard up high and Kurtz down low as Willard kills Kurtz like the natives kill a caribou ceremonially. The whole thing is bloody and barbaric and yet it conveys the theme so much. As much as the movie is unsettling, that was the main theme and the point of the movie in general. I love how elegantly Kurtz puts war in the end when Willard kills him via the knife.

“The horror…the horror…”

Apocolypse Now (Non-Analytical Review) 8.7/10

The next movie that I've watched is Apocalypse Now. The whole theme of the story is based loosely on a book by Joseph Conrad called Heart of Darkness. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is on a mission to assassinate a devout soldier of the military who has "lost himself" as the movie so eloquently phrases it. According to the reports Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an A class soldier, has been using that natives and asserting himself as a god to fulfill his own agendas.

Captain Willard experiences a dramatic change from within from sanity and civilization to madness and jungle and anarchy. The transfer from all this is smooth and the character of Willard might shock those who start to assume stuff from him. This movie shows the complete package of war. Through the movie we see that the more that Captain Willard learns about Kurtz, the more he understands the mindset of the jungle and the more he and the crew grows towards madness.

That is the only warning I give to those who want to view the movie. If you are looking for a Casablanca or a James Bond movie. This man is no hero or saint. This man is a soldier trained to kill and not to question those that have authority over him. There is killing of those that are innocent. There are those that seem normal but aren't. The stress and the decay of society and the tumult to chaos is completely evident within the movie. **A cow is literally butchered in a movie (it was filmed in the Philippines). If this makes you queasy then don't watch this movie--or turn away when you see a cow standing in the middle of a circle of natives**

The movie in short is wonderfully made and might make me feel uncomfortable, but in the end I would say that this story is very well written and the themes and the symbols are displayed elegantly throughout. I'd give it a 8.7/10 because it has great cinematography, the storyline is cohesive, the characters are somewhat frustrating but understandably so, and the gore is tasteful as well.