Rear Window
I am impressed! This movie is an old Albert Hitchcock film and to my surprise I was actually entertained! It astonishes me that although the movie has outdated equipment and special effects, it managed to fill the room with suspense and even scare some of the people watching it. 
I have to say that there is one character in the movie whos acting blew me away completely. Thelma Ritter, or Stella was the best supporting actress I have ever seen in any movie. She was hysterical, strong willed and highly intelligent. He jokes were very soft and underplayed, and the fact that she was a BADASS (sorry no other way to say it) with no censorship to what came out of her mouth gave the character more charisma and caused me to fall in love with her. 
The film was about a photographer named Jeff who hurt himself in an accident and was locked in himself in his apartment with a cast as he waited to be healed. During this time, Jeff began to watch the neighbors around his block and essentially peeping on their lives. He came to know very well what each were doing and even gave some of them nicknames to match what he had seen (i.e Miss Lonely-Hearts). He later starts piecing things together to realize that the front neighbor, the one with the nagging wife, may have actually killed her and was trying to get away with it. Jeff feels powerless in his room not being able to help out or investigate himself. Later, with the help of his friend, a detective and old army friend named Tom, he got some insight but was eventually shut down for not having enough evidence. Taking matter into his hands he uses his girlfriend Lisa to break into the mans house and search for evidence, sadly she got caught and sent to jail, simultaneously the man also found out what Jeff was up to and came back to get revenge. I don’t want to give away the ending but lets just say that I was so into the movie and the climax truly made people go to the edge of their seats. I believe that this is what a timeless film should be! Albert Hitchcock is a mastermind.
------------------------------------------------------------
Atonement
The film is a masterpiece. So much detail went into the film that watching it only once does no justice to it.
The sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic played a huge part of the film and setting a tone to how the characters felt and communicated with one another. The typewriter is a main instrument throughout the film, sometimes slowly morphing into a beat adding to excitement and commotion of the scene. It also reveals to the audience how some of the scenes have been fabricated or remade through her memory as she is typing them.
Instrumentals like the violin, cello and piano gently graces the film, adding a softness and innocence to the feel of the film as well. Especially when outdoors, whimsical instruments are used the most. It felt that they stayed true to the area and used instruments that were well known and used throughout the time period to give the viewers more validity as to what was occurring.
Even when the characters themselves played a song in the film, it was more like an opera song that was very dramatic and slow. To add to the scene it was also not very clear, making it more realistic, making it seem as if one was in the room with Robbie, trying to figure out a way to apologies to Cecilia.
Lighting and Composition also played a huge part in the film. It seemed as if most of I was made with natural light. There was constantly shadows in people’s faces and not evenly lit. But I also think it was done on purpose because for most of the movie, emotions and lies are being hid, and the lighting shows how the characters elude each other. Another reason for all the shadows is also because Briony never knew all the truth and was always a bit in the dark with her stories, and for this reason I feel she’s constantly shrouded in shadows.
The composition was very simple, with many point of view shots from the characters perspective to show the viewers exactly what they were seeing. Something that stood out to me was the focus of the film. A lot of times, especially when focused on Cecilia, the camera would focus on certain parts of the frame and leave others blurry and unfocused, leaving the viewers themselves in the dark as well.
This film was amazing and I am looking forward to watching it again just so I could pick up even more detail that was so marvelously made throughout the film
Breathless
This movie did, truly breathless. Not because of its beauty, but solely because I was so utterly bored and slightly confused that I became breathless. Little things did catch my attention but I did not understand why. For example when Michel would rub his lips randomly, that always made me wonder if he needed chap stick, but then at the end of the movie when Patricia did it as well, so I suspected that it had to have meant something to him, the culture, or director. I like the feel of the movie because it did at some points feel like a documentary. But then again it was way too choppy and the scene cutting kept drawing you back to reality, reminding you it was a fiction film. For example when they are in the taxi cab, the background is so choppy that one can tell that its been edited, badly I may add. It was hard to even follow the dialog because of the choppiness; I kept being drawn to the background where people and cars jumped in and out of the scenes.
Another things that I did not appreciate was the humor, or lack there of. It was very dry and I am guessing that one had to be French or know certain things to follow along. The scene where they are in bed and he keeps insulting her, then asking her to sleep with him was funny at first, but by the fourth time he asked her then called her ugly it just became pathetic in my eyes. The way in which the characters interacted did not seen genuine either, they were very cold with each other and even when Michel tells his friend that he is in love with Patricia, he says it so nonchalantly that one does not pay close attention, they can miss it. Another scene that is almost identical is when Patricia reveals she is pregnant. Once again its said as a side note and passed off so quickly that if I hadn’t written it in my notes I would have forgotten completely.
The end of the movie was weird and made no scene, Patricia had turned Michel in to the police because although she had become a fugitive with him and helped him avoid cops, she randomly decided that she no longer loved him, but instead of Michel running away, he stays there to be caught and is not even upset. Later dose one see that he gets shot and dies. To add to the corniness of the film his death lasts a good three minutes. I found it hard to believe that once shot in the back he manages to run away down three blocks while smoking a cigarette only to flop down on the ground, shut his own eyes, say his last words and die.
All in all this film may have been a masterpiece and a stepping-stone for modern cinematography in its day but at this day and age I find it completely irrelevant. The attempt was there and it had a plot, which one could follow, but it did nothing to further neither develop it nor bring to any resolutions. In addition to the plot, the character development was also horrid. Call me Americanized, wanting a Classical Paradigm structure, but I for one am a fan of closure.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Capturing the Friedmans
This documentary was eye opening. Granted, it did leave a lot of questions to the end, but it just made me more interested in documentary films.
The documentary was based on the recordings of the Friedman family in the 1980s. The father (Arnold) was accused of molesting children in his basement while he was teaching them computer skills.
The perverse thing about it all was the fact that his youngest child, Jesse, was also accused of doing the same thing WITH his father to the children. Now, the film never chooses a side and tells the viewer what they think is real or what they think is false. I believe it was very neutral and told both sides of the story. One side was the innocent family wrongly accused of a most horrendous act, and the other side was this sadistic old homosexual man that preyed on small boys and deceived the whole community for years.
Whether he was or was not, the facts remain that he did confess that he was a pedophiliac and had had relationships with young boys, although they were not the ones from the class he taught.
Its understanding for the other sons to feel so strongly that their dad was innocent but if he confessed to something like that, and even to having sexual relations with his younger brother at the age of 14, it’s not that far of a stretch to think that he may have molested some of the other boys in his class.
All and all I really enjoyed this movie. The fact that they got a hold of so many family owned movies made the events more real and it felt as if there was one mini documentary going with an larger one. I recommend that adult audiences watch this film and educate themselves about how perverse or strange people can be.
A Single Man
This movie brought many emotions up to the surface of my mind. Tom Ford has a way with looking at things from a whole different perspective in life, and showing that tiny detail of the world that we all tend to oversee. The mise-en-scene captivates the viewer and brings them closer to his world. Most of the movie was de-saturated, yet every time George felt something, either emotionally or sexually, his world slowly lit up, and so did ours in the form of more vibrant colors and deeply saturated images. The super close up also were amazing; mouth, lips and eyes were to focal point of his close ups, it showed the viewer how sensual these things can be, and the intense feeling someone can get from just one glace.
Although I do not what to say too much about the end of the film to give it away, I just want to state that I loved the ending contrary to what others may say. It needed to end the way it did, George was old and tired, missing his lover so much that he wanted to commit suicide, but lacked the strength to do so. As poetic as it sounds he longed to be with his lover, and was miserable without him, so death was his only escape from his sorrows. The reason I belief that the end is poetic is because after all he went through throughout the movie, he finally realized that it was not up to him to kill himself, that life had many things to offer and when it was his time to go it would be.
I felt the camera and the plot itself was intertwined with that of George’s. In the beginning, he is disoriented, has no perception of time, and is numb to the world. But as time goes by he has tiny moments of clarity, and so does the viewer, they see things clearer, bigger and with more vibrancy. So at the end, when he realizes that he cannot kill himself and finally accepts his lover’s death and is at peace, his story ends for us, but so does his life. Death is very bittersweet in this film, but I felt it to be appropriate to achieve a realistic and happy ending. He could not go on living his life as happy as he was with his lover, but accepted the challenge to do so, and by finally doing so; he was awarded peace… in the form of a heart attack. Maybe it was the fact that Valentine’s Day just occurred, but I loved it and thought it was a very romantic and poetic ending to a spectacularly visual film.
------------------------------------------------------------
Gosford Park (2001)
Personal insight of film;
I particularly enjoyed this film quite a bit. It was a tad bit slow at the beginning but I felt it necessary for the plot to develop properly and build the anticipation for the rest of the film. I honestly was shocked when the climax revealed that the head house maid, Mrs. Wilson was the mother of Mr. Robert Parks. The accents were sometimes hard to understand just because English is not my first language and whispering in that manner of speaking became difficult for me to understand at some points.
One thing I noticed about the mise-en-scene is the difference between the upper and lower classes in the house.Upstairs, the rooms were very big with a lot of space filled with golden frames and books and portraits of people in every possible surface. The colors; pastels, with red, green, gold, pink, orange, and light blues adorned the walls and decor of the upper class members of the house.
On the other hand, downstairs, where the help worked, were crammed, small rooms with bare walls that looked worn out and old. The only colors down there were dull, lifeless colors like beige, gray, yellow and brown. It was an accurate representation on how dull and meaningless life was for most of the servants, nothing interesting ever occurred in their lives and the lives of the people they worked for were more important than their own. They looked up to them and lived vicariously through the rich upper-class, worrying and being engulfed in the matters of the rich that pertained to them not.
The film was created as if we were a servant, carefully maneuvering through the halls, eaves dropping on the events that were occurring. We could never get the whole story all at once, but that’s what kept us interested throughout the film. The camera would pan slowly through a room and catch little glimmers of gossip was we “walked” along the rooms with the lords and ladies. Even the echoes of the voices down the hall or in the next room gave us a false sense that we were in the house with the characters.
All in all, I would watch this film over. You can tell how the director uses the French Poetic Realism exquisitely. So much detail was put into the film, every character added their own touch and the fact that there were 7 different stories going on all at once made it interesting to watch and attempt to keep up with all of them. Also the way the director used the space was fascinating to me. The deep space made it more interesting for the viewer, we had the option to look at anything… and most of the time something was occurring where one would look.
-------------------------------------------S
There’s not much to say about this movie. Its not what we are use to but its something that we each can watch and interpret it in our own way. This is my interpretation on it:
I think the director is making a commentary about how this movie (and life itself), is not like the classical Hollywood movie, using the Classical Paradigm. People in America tend to think that movies are an accurate representation on life and are always waiting for “the happy ending” but this film shows us that most of the time life is actually just life, random, confusing and sporadic.
We all need to stop and realize that life is not a movie, but that’s what makes it interesting and beautiful, one day we can be caught in a dark, cold, horrible rain, but then the next second a beautiful woman in red comes and changes our perspective on the day.
I think we tend to not really take in what is meaningful and unique and forget to enjoy life because we are fixated on looking to see if THAT moment is the true moment where our Hollywood movie will start…and for most, it will never start.
=====================
Personal Thoughts and Notes
Follow me this way...
All these things made the film feel very intrusive and it was a constant reminder that we were not in their world, nor could be a part of it, but just a viewer. The lack of clarity and unity called the viewers attention to the unorthodox way of sequencing the events, and although the movie was great, I can honestly say that I would have to watch it again before I can tell you EXACTLY what the film was about.
To start of the summary and critique of the movie I would love to say that Momento is a cluster-f*#k of a movie.
The lack of unity was only slightly fixed once the movie was complete and one could reflect on the actions of the characters to come up with the proper conclusions. But as for it being there in the movie I would have to say there was none. The causes and effects were completely rearranged throughout the movie and hints were given here and there as to if the scene was a cause or effect of Leonard’s actions.
The narrator (Leonard) had the same information that we had, and he was as lost as we were in the movie so, so this unconventional characterization made it difficult to feel as if we were omnipotent viewers, knowing exactly what was occurring.
Coming back to reality and the assignment I would have to say many people would have problems with the lack of clarity, lack of unity, unconventional characteristization, and even the intrusion of the film.
For almost three-fourths of the movie one is wondering what exactly is happening, and if something is the present or past. In one scene Natalie would be crying and say that she needed his help, yet on the next one she was cursing at Leonard calling him stupid and then using him to kill someone. The lack of clarity was a something I feel most people came out feeling.
This film is not to be taken lightly and watching it multiple times may be the key to actually gathering all the clues (in correct order) and finally cracking the giant conundrum that is, in fact, the plot.
I, personally, was left with one sole question at the end of it all. “ how does someone create something so deep and complex yet easy enough for most to follow, and did Leonard kill his wife???”. In retrospect it was more like two questions in one fluid thought but it still amazed me how deep into the human mind the film takes us.
================================================================================
Psycho
Screening Notes
- First slasher film
- Sam and Marion are in love but Sam has no money and they can't be together (he just got divorced)
- At her job as an assistant to a realter she was trusted with $40, 000 to give to the bank, she takes it and runs
- Ends up at a hotel and meets Norman Bates, a kind hearted, shy man who seems to like her.
- She goes to the shower to get cleaned up and someone comes inside and butchers her with a knife.
- A private detective (detective Milton) shows up at the Motel looking for Marion.
- He goes inside the house to talk to the mother, but also gets killed
-Sam and Marion's sister ( Lila) go after the detective and end up at the same motel
- Pretend to be a couple and snoop around
- Lila runs into the house to talk to the mother but cant find her (while Sam distracts Norman)
-She runs into the cellar and finds the skeleton of Normans mother
-Norman dressed as his mother (believing that he IS his mother) killed all those people out of jealousy.
-Sam saves Lila right at the perfect time and they see the truth, and take his to jail.
-Norman goes to jail, with the personality of his mother permanently taken over.
Promise of an answer: When Lila and Sam make a plan to talk to the mother and uncover the truth.
Fraud:When Lila goes in the Cellar and sees the mother sitting in the chair
Equivocation: the detective goes into the mother's room.
Partial answer: seeing Norman dressed as his mom.
Personal thoughts of Film
After hearing the background story of Psycho I was able to follow the movie very well. I can see how it broke boundaries in that time but for today standards, this movie would only kill us with boredom. There were times when the suspense would get to you, and when mother would jump out with a knife that would definitely make one or two people gasp and jump, all in all, I was not too impressed, specially since I could already tell that the man was the mother.
===========================================================================
Full Metal Jacket Screening Notes
Summary
-Marine Core
-Pile and joker are main characters
-Fat one (lenard/pile) is slow and childlike
-Sergeant punished the whole squad for piles mistakes
-The squad attacks and beat pile for his mistakes
-pile is hurt and changes, becomes dark and follows instruction
-after graduation on the last day pile goes crazy, kills the sergeant and himself while joker sees
-jumps ahead to Vietnam
-joker is the narrator
-hes the main character
-hes a journalist for the military and gets sent out to war
- looks for his friend in the war
-finds “cowboy”
-people start dying off left and right
-their leader dies, then cowboy dies
-go in for revenge
-find th killer, and it’s a young girl.
-joker kills her and they sing Mickey mouse club
notes
the movie was chronological and well put.
Was made in two big sections
Non-diogetic music is very milirary-ish or funny songs
Diagetic sound is mostly guns and helicopters
The movie is like two small movies
I likes the concept of the “duality of man”
Dark comedy and very slow
The frame of the movie was two movies
