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.