MYST- A Beautiful Mind

So I watched this movie in Psychology because it deals with Schizophrenia. I have been told that it was a really good movie, one of the best in a long time. Russell Crowe plays John Nash a brilliant mathematician at Princeton who lives with Schizophrenia for 10 years without realizing it. It tells the "true" story of his life and what he accomplished and the struggles he had to go through to become sane once again. It won best picture and best director at the 2001 Academy Awards.

I have to say that I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I thought I would. It was a very compelling story and very well acted but I thought it would be less cheesy and Hollywood at the end. Ron Howard who directed the film did win best director, however he doesn't do anything interesting with the shots until the back half of the movie, when he starts to go through treatment and when he relapses. That being said I hope the reason that he didn't do anything out of the ordinary for the first half of the film is because he is trying to make us feel like everything is normally, so that when the shift happens the audience is caught off guard.

I must say that Russell Crowe plays this character very well because not only does he have to be brilliant, absolutely crazy and carry an accent, but he also has to portray the development of this character from college to near the end of his life and all of the stages of his mental illness in between. The best scene of his performance and of Howard's directing is when Nash relapses and begins to believe that people are still there. There is a very cool pulsing light with a constantly spinning camera as Nash tries to protect his wife and child from a non existent government agent. Crowe's conviction that this person is there really is aided by those two affects because it makes the audience feel uncomfortable and confused. The whole scene is very well done, as is the rest of the movie despite feeling a little cheesy in portions. Overall I give it a 7.5 out of 10

1975 - Poison Trail

A group of left thinking anti-government hippies living on a commune find out that the government is
putting chemicals into the water supply. These hippie’s try to alert the public on their radio station but
before they can get the word out, a government agent kills the majority of the compound. Three escape
alive. This is the story of three hippies trying to escape the government agent and alert the public of the
fiendish ways of the government as they run from the man through the woods of Virginia.

My group did Poison Trail as our movie. We chose Dennis Hopper as our director because he had a connection with a major studio Columbia after "Easy Rider" which made lots of money while still going against the grain by making heroes out of the outcasts of traditional American society, but he also was an artsy anti-government type of person who could work wonders with this type of of the beaten path 70's Anti-hero and mixed elements of good and evil.

All of our actors were kind of unknown except for Jack Nicholson, but that made sense because Dennis Hopper had worked with him before. We chose new actors because we wanted to keep the movie low budget, so the actors didn't need to be big name guys.

We wanted to focus on costuming because Hopper did this in "Easy Rider" and because it seemed like the right idea for a movie about hippies and Anti-government. Having the hippies dress colorful and the government be dressed in all black seemed to make a lot of sense, it would be low budget, it would be easily spotted by almost all audiences, and it would still carry a subtle message. The reason we picked a new college graduate who happens to also be female is that she would be low budget but also she would be talented based on her later works.

MYST- Memento

  So we watched the first part of this movie in class last quarter, but some of you may not remember the plot. Here is a quick summary: A man named Lenard has a mental condition where he is unable to make new memories and he is trying to find the man who murdered and killed his wife. We view the first half of the story in black in white going forwards, and the second half in color going backwards, ending at the starting point of the last scene. This creates a lot of mystery and confusion on what is going on as well as defining the morality of all the characters. The story takes a crazy amount of twists and terns, by the end of the movie you will be scratching your head but you will be sufficiently satisfied in you movie experience.

This is a Christopher Nolan film, who also did the Dark Knight movies and Inception. This movie was very intriguing in terms of cinematic qualities and character development. I have now watched the movie two times and I have picked up on so much more, not only in the plot but also in what Nolan does with the camera. Something that caught my attention this time was the tight camera work the entire way through the film. We only see a long shot 2 or 3 times the entire movie. This choice actually plays up the intensity of the film because we seem to experience everything as Lenard does, we never can see the whole picture. This theme is also highlighted by the color scenes that run backwards. Just like Lenard we have no idea how we get to the place in which this scene is starting.

As was mentioned in class this does have a lot of Film Noir elements to it. All of the characters have done something wrong in some way. Even the guy who manages the motel checks him into two rooms because Lenard can't remember. The black and white scenes add a lot to the Film Noir feel and it also has the post modern style of many truths. But I think the most notable and obvious feature of the movie is the femme fatale. I will spoil this for anyone who actually is interested in seeing the movie, so stop reading if you think that you might actually see this film. The girl who is the femme fatale you think you trust because the first four scenes that you see her she is nothing but loving and helpful. So when she turns on him and says to his face that his wife was a whore and that she is going to enjoy taking advantage of him because he is such a freak, you are blown away by how much of an absolute B***h she is.

Overall, it was mind-bending, action packed, confusing, philosophical and thoroughly entertaining. I would recommend having the clicker on hand just in case you miss some dialogue. Almost everything they say is deceptively important.  The acting is fairly good across the board, which is good because there are only 5 or 6 significant  characters in the entire thing and one bad actor would more than likely ruin it. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

Formal Film Study Vietnam War Films

    

I picked three films that I had heard were all very good in their own way. Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon. All of them had star studded casts and all of them had won many Academy Awards, and all of them were very disturbing. Now personally I thought that the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now were better films than Platoon because I think they did a lot more with cinematography and they had a more enjoyable story because they were much longer. Some things that connected these films were their political stance on the war and the way each film used sound to enhance the film.

First a quick summary of all three movies:

Apocalypse Now: The Protagonist Capitan Willard (Martin Sheen), is sent on a mission up the Nung River to eliminate an insane Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The story follows him on his wild adventures with his team to find Kurtz. Things become stranger and stranger the farther they go. Other big actors are Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, and Robert Duvall. It won the Academy award for sound and cinematography.

The Deer Hunter: We follow a group of friends before, during and after Vietnam. They experience a lot of emotionally shocking things in Nam and have struggles readjusting following service. The Leader Michael is played by Robert De Niro and the best friend Nick is played by Christopher Walken who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for this role. Other Academy Awards were Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino), Best Editing, and Best Sound.

Platoon: We follow a year of service in Nam by our protagonist Chris (Charlie Sheen). After losing some men the Platoon has a civil war with itself over who they should follow, the honorable Elias (Willem Dafoe) or the dirty Barnes (Tom Berenger). Things go to hell when the men are more focused on who to kill in their own Army and not the VCA. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Oliver Stone), Best Sound and Best Film Editing.

Each movie either through dialogue or cinema said something about our Nation and the war. All of these movies were against the war certainly, which makes sense because they are all post 1975. Each have different arguments against the war. In Apocalypse Now there is a lot of dialogue and events that make the war seem ludicrous and that the Americans have no purpose to their fighting. For example, Robert Duvall’s character Kilgore is trying to surf in the middle of an attack on the VC. This kind of shows that the American soldiers were not fighting for something they believed was important. As we move farther and farther up the river less and less people are in charge. No CO’s are found and people are killing with no direction. At one point Playboy Bunnies give a show for the USO that ends in a sexual riot by the Soldiers trying to get at the girls. After that a voice over by Capitan Willard again showed that the Americans weren’t going to win because they didn’t have enough drive to fight. “Charlie didn’t get USO. His idea of R and R was cold rice and maybe some rat meat. He had only two ways home, Death or Victory.” And then during the visit to the French Plantation where we see the owner explain why the French don’t want to leave. They built the place into a civilization. They had lived there for hundreds of years and they called it home. But the Americans were fighting for nothing but control over people’s minds which he says is impossible.

 

In the Deer Hunter, we see that Americans do not understand how hard the war was on those who were actually in it.  They didn’t understand that these are not the same people they were when they left even physically but more so mentally. All of this is mostly through action shots and is aided by the lighting in certain scenes. When Michael first returns, he skips seeing all his friends and stays at a motel instead because he is unable to be happy at that moment, with his concerns about Nick and Steve. Then again when Michael flips out on Stanley in the woods because of the pistol he carries around. We see it in Steve when he refuses to leave the hospital for wounded warriors and he refuses to see his wife and child. And worst of all Nick, who is still in Saigon unable to cope with the amount of trauma that he has been through. The other criticism is that American excitement over sending our boys to war is foolish. Pre war we get almost an hour of Patriotic people at a wedding before the boys go off to war. But after all the intense things that happen in Vietnam that same Patriotism is there and it looks absolutely silly.

  

Platoon is not as focused as the other movies on the issues of the Vietnam war. Platoon has a lot to say about what is wrong with our military. There is a scene of dialogue about how the people who are fighting for this society are given nothing by this society. They have no jobs waiting for them at home, most didn’t graduate high school and almost all of them are poor.  The lowest people on the totem pole go to war but they have the least to fight for. It talks about how rich people always screw over poor people and they always will. I thought that that was a different take on the war and why it was bad. Money isn’t mentioned in the other two movies so it jumped out at me when he said it.

 

The one film element that stood out to me in all three films, also stood out to the Academy. All three movies won the Academy Award for best sound in their respective release year. All of them manipulate sound and music extremely well. In Apocalypse Now, the strange high pitched whine every time something strange is occurring gives the audience an uneasy feeling. It makes everything seem chaotic and dangerous. Perhaps the best use of sound is during Willard’s final encounter with Kurtz, you have this wild song by the Doors playing, Kurtz final recording “We train men to drop fire on people, but their officers won’t allow them to write fuck on their Airplanes because it’s obscene”, and then a tribal chant from a ritual being performed outside. It creates this feeling of total anarchy and chaos. Then it all cuts out as we hear Kurtz’s famous final words echo in the temple “the horror, the horror”.

  

In the Deer Hunter it was the music following Vietnam. After watching Russian roulette and people explode, the action moves back to Michael returning to the states. The music is this nice soothing piano with pleasant harmonies. The reason that this is so effective is because it gives the audience the same experience that Michael is going through. Jumping from high intensity music and action to soothing music and shots of small town America are too different. It doesn’t feel important or really filling because all of our minds are still in Vietnam just like Michael’s. Platoon’s sound really does a great job of helping the audience experience the anxiety and stress that a soldier in Nam would go through. When the action is in the jungle something is always happening in the sound, we always here shots or explosions or even just the sound of vegetation moving.  You always feel like something big could happen at any second. The sound creates this constant sense that so much more is happening than we can see. That must have been how soldiers felt in the thick jungle when they heard leaves move or shots in the distance but having no idea who caused them.

  

The final thing that I think should be noted about these films is that they range in believability. Apocalypse Now would never happen ever. It’s way too far fetched to think that this could actually happen. The Deer Hunter has some parts that are very unlikely but are still plausible, but it still feels very fictional. Platoon makes you feel like you experienced what war really was like in Vietnam. A lot of waiting, a lot of pain and anxiety, and a lot of displaced hostility. But overall I think everyone should see these three fantastic films. 

MYST-Casablanca

Casablanca tells the tail of an American man played by Humphrey Bogart, who own a bar in Casablanca. This place is the hot spot in Morocco for all of the people looking to escape the horrors in Europe, fly to Lisbon and then to America. The Nazis currently control the people who get in and out of Morocco, so most of the refugees are stuck. Then a famous French escapee of the concentration camps and his wife turn up (Ingrid Bergman). Bogart's character has an unknown past with Bergman, as she asks to get her and her husband out of the country. Its a love story that is also very political in nature, with each character representing the politics of their birth nation. 

This is probably Bogart's most known performance and in my opinion one of his best. Although he is great in the African Queen and iconic in The Maltese Falcon, in Casablanca Bogart plays a very complex character who represents America's political stance during world war two. Also, he has so many memorable lines in this movie that are still used and quoted today. I think those two features make this performance one of his best, and probably one of the best of all time. 

Now one of my  favorite scenes from this movie is a little cheesy but still moving. At one point the Nazis are singing a German song in the bar in front of these French refugees. Then the French escapee asks the band to play the French song "Les Marseillaise". The band looks at Bogie and he gives them a nod. Then the band plays it and the whole crowd stands up and sings until the Germans sit down. It is a beautiful metaphor for how the Americans acted in the war, and how the war would turn out if the Americans helped. 

I thought it was great. 5/5 stars.

1935 Hooked on You

1. Synopsis: Essentially, our lead played by Frank Sinatra is the son of an immigrant in New Jersey. He falls in love with the daughter of an immigrant played by the wife of Harry Cohn. Sinatra is very sleezy trying to get this classy girl. Then after that Sinatra looses his hand and it is replaced by a hook. Then in the end she falls in love with him despite his disability and the morale is to treat people with disabilities and immigrants better.
2. Genre: Musical Drama, we wanted to have more than just songs to entertain.
3. Studio: We chose Columbia because we really wanted to have Frank Capra direct because he is my personal favorite from this time period. Also, this gave us the excuse to use Cohn's wife as an actress.
4. Cast and Crew: We all liked Capra because we liked his style and he also could be our cinematographer which was nice. We took Joan Perry, Cohn's Wife, because she would be something that Cohn made Capra do as a gesture of loyalty almost. So then we decided on Sinatra because he is the son of a Sicilian immigrant and Capra is from Sicily. It all made sense, putting people into each of these roles. Also, this is early in both Sinatra's and Capra's career,  so it seemed like a good match in that sense as well.
5. Hays Code/ Technology: We decided that it would be better to have a hook hand instead of just a stump because that might offend some people at the Catholic Legion of Decency. Also, Capra would show his fluid camera style in this movie with lots of swooping shots.
6. Changes: We argued a lot about the plot, I wanted it just to be a money maker to start Capra's career before he did his other works. Kevin wanted it to be called Opium Den and have it be all about junkies and Harry wasn't wild about the idea of a musical. We all figured it out in the end but I don't love that it isn't a pure musical thing and that they only sing three time. Sinatra's appeal is in his looks and voice, he is a pretty poor actor so this movie might have been a complete bust.

FFS- Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is no doubt one of the greatest film makers of all time based on awards, critiques and film fans alike. Three of Scorsese’s films made it onto the American Film Institute’s “The 100 Best Films of All Time” list (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas). Now obviously many things make him a great, his plots are deep and enthralling, he always seems to get the most out of his actors and his staging of shots are unbelievably good. However of all of the things Scorsese does well, I am going to talk about his use of lighting and staging of shots in Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and The Departed.

Now the focus/point of all three films are very different however Scorsese uses the same elements to achieve these effects. In Raging Bull, the point is to depict the emotional trauma of Jake La Matta’s life. Taxi Driver deals with social issues of Prostitution, Mental health, and the scum that inhabits the night life in the rough parts of NYC. And The Departed shows the workings of organized crime and the holes in our justice system.

Scorsese’s use of shading and lighting throughout all of his works is more than just a way to depict the emotions in each scene; they display deeper meanings in the overall theme of the story. I think that the most evident of these is in The Departed. In the final shot we see the justice building of Boston glowing in the vast sunlight and a rat on a rail covered in shadow perfectly in line with the dome of the building. In a story all about rats in crime and the law, its sums up the movie. But the lighting ads more than that, it becomes slightly political in nature just based on the shading. We see the Police as a place that stands for clean, wholesome, law-abiding people by definition. Hence the building is bathed in sunlight. However, organized crime doesn’t survive without rats in the government and that is what you don’t know about. The rat is bathed in shadow, hidden from plain view. Light is also probably the most important feature of Raging Bull. Probably some of the most obvious is Vicky especially early in the film. Everything about her is white when she first appears, from her hair to her dress to the bed that Jake seduces her on. This highlights her youth, her innocence and her standing in Jake’s mind as the girl who “you don’t just bang and forget about”. But let’s not forget Taxi Driver and all of its focus on night and day. Just as Travis says everything comes out at night. The strange red lighting during his conversations at night, when his mental state is rapidly deteriorating, is to alert the viewer of the way that this conversation is actually affecting him.

Now, let’s look at Scorsese staging in each film. In Taxi Driver, when Travis goes to see Palantine arriving in his limo and he talks to the Secret Service man, Scorsese stages the shot so perfectly to emphasize Travis’ lack of appeal and his inability to fit in society. He has an inspiring campaign poster of Palantine in the foreground, a very tall clean cut Secret Service man in the middle ground, and an awkward Travis looking very undersized and uncomfortable in the background. This shows the importance of each of these characters but also the roles and their importance in the mind of Americans. People like Senators are talked about all the time, government looks out for your average Joe but little attention is given to those like Travis who really need it. In The Departed we have so many of really interesting shots but the two I want to focus on are of Damon before he enters the force and just after Nicolson dies. In the first shot Damon is inside a circle, the circle then expands out to show Damon alone outside with a lot of sunshine in the center of the street in the city of Boston.  The second time we see Damon alone in the dark in his office with busy people crossing back and forth with many things around him, the shot then moves to the circle we first saw him in at the beginning. The flipping of these shots is ironic because at that time in the movie Damon has a lot of support, in fact he has the entire mafia behind him. But in the final shot he is all alone, the leaders of the mob have been killed and the only tie to the organization he just burned. The shot symbolized not only the switch of him standing alone among the mob to being just another cop but also his incredible isolation now.