Out of Africa is a good example of great cinematography. The story is somewhat of a love story. Personally, I found the story line to be okay at best. But, I always get captivated at the filming. The entire movie was shot on location in Kenya; and while more difficult to do it paid off in this movie. You get so caught up in looking at the scenery, that the slow advancement of the plot can be tolerated. There is a great scene where Robert Redford and Meryl Streep are out and there is a lion looking their way. He tells her not to worry because he will protect her. The next second, a lion heads their way, and she has one chance to shoot. Of course, she doesn’t miss. But the way this scene is filmed, you feel like you are there; you can see how you feel safe, and all at once, it changes. The movie also makes good use of three-dimensional arrangement of people. There are many scenes where there are several people in one scene. But, the way they are arranged makes it easy to look at and get a good sense of what Africa feels like. I would also mention that the costumes help to have a realistic feel of Africa. Meryl is in chinos and light-weighted cotton tops most of the time. This movie could be turned into a Banana Republic advertisement; and, that is exactly the feel costumes should have for a movie. 007 Casino Royale was a good continuation of the Bond series. This is the start of Bond’s career as a 007 agent. It had elements for the old Bond fans, as well as for the newcomers. Elements that you expected: cool car, drinking, card playing, and action. Casino Royale did not disappoint. In the opening scene, Bond is in an incredible foot chase. Not only do they run and jump over, through things, Bond uses all the construction equipment to his advantage. This has always been the case for Bond – a quick thinker on his feet. Even when poisoned, he calmly walked out and tried to use the defibrillator. And let’s talk about the cars. Ford obviously had some stake in the movie, since most of the cars were Ford (i.e. – the rental car and Jaguars). However, this movie did something clever. If you are a Bond fan, you recognized the Aston Martin Bond won in the card game. It is an Aston Martin DB5, which was featured in Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, and Tomorrow Never Dies. The best car featured in Royale had to be the unreleased Aston Martin DBS. That was completely disheartening, but absolutely awesome that Aston Martin gave this movie a car not on the market, just to crash it! Now I call that a real action scene. And if you are a car person like myself, you were in awe that Bond didn’t just wreck the car, but absolutely demolished it. I found this to be a great example for an action movie. This movie was just about 2.5 hours. There was so much going on, and the storyline moved so well, that you didn’t notice the length. I think this further shows what a great action movie this was. If you hear of a movie being over 2 hours, we typically stray from those; but this movie had something for everyone – which kept the audience’s attention. One of the greatest mysteries ever made has to be Maltese Falcon. The movie uses the falcon, as a MacGuffin. John Huston succeeds in using the black bird this way. All of the characters in the movie, in some way, want the falcon, even though Huston never explains what or why it is important. Yet, this object moves the storyline along. There is lots of conflict in this movie. Everyone is willing to sell out to get what they want. Everyone is deceitful, and corrupt. This leaves the audience not knowing who is on who’s side. A great example is when Sam Spade first meets Brigid. Brigid got Sam’s partner killed. This makes for a great dynamic between the two characters throughout the movie – is Sam helping her to cover up, is he framing her, or is he in love with her and doesn’t care about the consequences? All of these questions roll through your mind the entire movie. Besides all the conflict, there is the MacGuffin itself. All you know about it is that everyone wants it; it’s old, and because of this, priceless. This statue leads all the characters to betray on another, only to find out at the end that it’s a fake. And then Sam blames Brigid for replacing the real one with a fake. In turn, she blames the Russian guy she got from. Then Cairo blames his associate, Gutman. He says the Russians would have never known the value if it wasn’t for Gutman. Everything calms down, and Cairo is about to leave and the suspense doesn’t end. You wonder – does Sam and Brigid have something up their sleeves? Instead of focusing on the falcon, Sam turns back to the murder. He tells Brigid they only have minutes before the police show up. And while the audience is still wondering what has happened, Sam has it all figured out, convinces her to talk, and she confesses – she killed his partner. This movie had so many things going: conflict, misdirection, greed, murder and deceit; that there was just no way to know that ending. I think great mysteries are those whose endings you don’t expect and you watch over just to see if you missed anything. This is definitely one of those movies. Another great movie that uses the MacGuffin technique is North by Northwest. At the start of the movie, you see Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) as a busy businessman. He meets some clients for lunch, and then is kidnapped. He is kidnapped due to mistaken identity (Thornhill for Kaplan), which is the MacGuffin. The mistaken identity moves the plot along, but there is no Kaplan. Only Hitchcock can make a movie based on a character that doesn’t exist, and make it a suspenseful story. Thornhill throughout the movie really is in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the audience, you know (or you think you do) he’s innocent. But then there’s all the circumstantial evidence piling up, which leads to two things: (1) the bad guys will kill him or (2) he’s going to prison. Hitchcock does a fantastic job of creating sympathy for Thornhill. Even after Thornhill seems to have a friend, Eve, the audience finds out she’s the kidnapper’s girlfriend. This really makes the audience worried about the character, which works well in creating the suspense. Even after Thornhill finds out Eve’s identity, there is more of a twist – she works for the government and is pretending to be in love with the kidnapper. This really left me wondering what would happen: would Thornhill give her up, would they both die, or would she sacrifice him for the sake of her life/job. The reason I love this movie so much, is you now focus on the couple (Thornhill and Eve) not the MacGuffin. Hitchcock really knows how to take a simple story and completely twist it so that the ending is a complete mystery. Double Indemnity has to be one of the greatest film noir’s of all time. You have a great femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson played by Barbara Stanwyck. What makes her so great is you know she’s bad, but she tries to play innocent. In the first scene, Phyllis meets Walter, the insurance agent. By the end of the scene, the chemistry is already set. Walter asks what’s on her anklet and she says her name. Phyllis tells Walter to come by the next evening to speak to her husband. Then, they have one of the greatest banters I’ve heard; ending with Phyllis being present the next evening. With all that sexual tension, there is no doubt Phyllis and Walter will be seeing more of each other. This tension leads to Walter murdering Phyllis’ husband. The second thing a film noir needs is a hero (protagonist). Walter is the protagonist as he is the one narrating the story. Heroes are usually destroyed by the femme fatale. In this case, Walter is a murderer and he gets shot by his love, Phyllis; and he commits fraud against the company he works for. And in all film noirs, you know who is guilty at the beginning and how it will end. But, you are more interested in how they got there. This movie keeps your interest in that regard. Along with a protagonist, film noirs have an antagonist. In this movie, played by Walter’s boss, Barton Keyes. Keyes is the one keeping Walter from getting away with it. Keyes is also the only character that does not change throughout the movie. Keyes is sort of the conscience for the story. There are many other aspects to film noirs. However, these mentioned above are in all film noirs. I think Double Indemnity has done one of the best jobs executing these flawlessly, and would hold this movie as the film noir standard.

Double Indemnity does not have a linear plot. This works well in film noirs since most are narrated. The best non-linear movie I have seen that is not a film noir is Pulp Fiction. I think Pulp Fiction is rather clever, in that it takes a regular, mediocre story and just by making it non-linear turns it into something completely unexpected. While it is entertaining, the movie seems to jump around and have no meaning the first time you watch it. During the first viewing, you will swear you are not paying attention because the movie changes from one story line to another. There are four story lines: Vincent & Jules; Vincent and Mia; and Butch Coolidge; and Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. What makes all four stories connect is Vincent. All the storylines have something to do with Vincent’s week. Once you make it past the initial viewing, you will watch it over to hear and see the other parts to the story. For example, the opening scene is actually more towards the middle. If you watch Vincent and Jules having breakfast, you will hear the robbers in the background. I like this. Not only is there a connection, Quentin has taken the same scene and shown it from two different viewpoints. Which to me is what movies are all about; a scene can have a completely different meaning for people, depending upon what you focus on. Another thing this movie does that I have already mentioned, is the use of a MacGuffin. Vincent and Jules are sent to pick up a briefcase. You never know how much their boss spent for it, or what’s in the case; all you see is a yellow glow. This adds to the movie, since no time is spent setting up the history of the case. The case motivates the characters and moves along the plot, exactly what a MacGuffin is supposed to do. Vertigo is a great suspense movie. Hitchcock uses misdirection once again to make a great movie. This movie is similar to Rear Window in a few respects. One, the main actor is the same. Two, both movies are about voyeurism. And finally, in both movies, the voyeur is convinced of the story he think he sees. What makes Vertigo different, is the woman being followed, Madeleine, seems crazy, whereas in Rear Window, the voyeur seems crazy. Throughout the movie, Madeleine does lots of strange things. She visits a grave, attempts suicide, and appears to be in a trance. The audience becomes involved with the character, you want to know if she will be all right. What you really want to know is what’s causing Madeleine to behave this way. Just as the audience is sucked in this way, so is the voyeur, Scottie. This is an interesting twist, the audience and the character both being on the same page. Neither knows what’s going on or why; and both want to know more. Hitchcock here does a great job of making the audience feel like Scottie (empathy). Another point that makes this movie great is the flaws in all the characters. Scottie is deathly afraid of heights, Midge is still in love with Scottie, Gavin kills his wife, and Scottie falls in love with his friend’s wife. These flaws are all things the audience can relate to, it makes the characters seem human, seem real. We all have fears, we have all loved someone that didn’t love us back, and we relate to falling in love with someone we shouldn’t. Hitchcock makes the suspense by misdirection. We become so involved with Scottie and Judy and their weird dynamic, that we don’t realize there was a murder committed. The way Hitchcock made Scottie/Judy so creepy was great distraction. You never suspected Judy and Gavin to be involved in Madeleine’s murder. Presumed Innocent is a movie with a great twister ending. It starts out with Rusty and Barbara being married and having a happy home life. Rusty is an assistant state’s attorney. The state hires an attractive woman, Caroline. Caroline is found murdered in her apartment, and now the question is, who is the murderer? As one of the prosecutors, Rusty gets handed the case. During the investigation, the affair (Rusty & Caroline) comes out, as well as the bitter breakup. There is also DNA evidence and a thumbprint on a glass that put Rusty there the night of the murder. What makes the movie interesting is Rusty admits to his faults, but not to the murder. We relate to this. Maybe he did murder her, but just because he had an affair, doesn’t make him a murderer. As you watch Rusty’s trial, you hope Caroline’s murderer is found and a just decision is made for Rusty. Rusty gets found not-guilty since the glass with the finger print is missing. (You find out that his friend on the police had it.) When Rusty returns home, it seems like you’ll never know who killed Caroline. While Rusty is working in the yard, he stops to clean blood off his tool. At that moment, you can’t believe he did it. Then, Barbara walks in and says, “I did it.” For a second, you are shocked until you realize she’s talking about her job. Then, you become afraid for her life. And here’s the twist, Rusty didn’t do it, Barbara did and she framed Rusty. Her explanation? Rusty would have to live the rest of his life knowing she did it. I have never seen another movie where bitter revenge is played out better. Barbara was willing to make Rusty sick over the possibility of life in prison for something he didn’t do, just to prove she was mad about an affair. I never suspected her of this. The ending changed an okay story into a nightmare. How could you live with her? He does because she’s his son’s mother. Now that’s a believable story. Office Space is a hilarious movie about what it is like at work. The movie revolves around people who work in office cubicles. Peter hates his job, has an annoying boss, and a seemingly meaningless work life, is the focus of the story. We all relate to this movie. We all have worked with quirky associates. We’ve all seen that overbearing girlfriend that your friend just won’t dump. In this case, Peter’s girlfriend wants to save the relationship by going to an occupational hypno-therapist. The therapist hypnotizes Peter. Peter ends up super laid back and stress free. Peter now does not care anymore about his girlfriend, even when she breaks up with him. What makes this movie great, is that anyone who's seen this movie, and worked in an office, can relate to it on some level or another; from the irritating woman answering the phone to the printer that mysteriously refuses to print. Ultimately, Peter and his coworkers bungle a scheme to embezzle from the company by writing a program that extracts fractions of pennies per transaction. Instead of producing many very small checks, the program winds up producing one huge check that is bound to attract attention. What makes this scheme so funny is the rationale. Peter’s new girlfriend thinks it is wrong. But, as Peter explains, they are just taking pennies from the take a penny jar. They just happen to do it repeatedly and from a bigger jar. Plus, Initech is an evil corporation anyway, so it can’t be stealing. Somehow, we all relate to this too, even though it’s wrong. We all have had jobs where we really hate the company or just quit caring. It’s a great comedy because it takes what’s frustrating about work, and makes it funny. Surprisingly, I found Walk the Line to be very entertaining. I would say this is a good movie, because it appeals to all. I don’t like country music, and I liked it. Usually, you find movies based on a famous person to be somewhat boring. Either you know a lot about them, or the details given in the movie, like in Ray, you’d rather not know, so your image of them is not ruined. I felt that Walk the Line should Johnny Cash to be human. He didn’t have a great job, but dreamed of something bigger. He had a talent that he wanted to use, but found it hard to do so. We all can relate to these things. We can even relate to his love for June. How can he not like her more than his wife? He sees June all day, everyday on tour; not his wife. You expect this to happen. What you don’t expect is for June to fight so hard for it not to. This is a great conflict between Johnny and June. It also creates a great internal conflict for Johnny. He loves his family, but wants June. We all know what that feels like. I like the fact too, that while Johnny does do drugs, it’s not stylized, nor do you graphically have to see it as in Ray. The drug use creates some sympathy for Johnny. He is a depressed person and uses drugs more while he’s down. You just feel sorry for him. I also like the music. I thought it was pretty amazing Joaquin Phoenix sang those songs. In fact, there were several songs I liked better than the original. I also thought Joaquin Phoenix did a great job in recreating Johnny Cash. Since Joaquin Phoenix is smaller than Johnny Cash, it looks funny the way he holds the guitar, but that’s just how Johnny did it. It seemed to me that Joaquin studied Johnny and got him down well. That would be the most challenging part to a biography – getting people to believe you are that person. I thought Joaquin did a fantastic job. I thought Shrek was a nice change in children’s movies. It was entertaining for the kids, but all the humor was directed towards the adults. I found the way the movie was put together to be ingenious. Shrek is about fairy creatures. We all know the stories: The Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, Snow White, etc. But what makes Shrek clever is incorporating all these children’s stories into one movie that makes sense. Shrek does this flawlessly. One example is Shrek traveling through the forest. As a kid, we heard of Robin Hood and Little John and what they did in the forest. That’s who Shrek runs into in the forest. When the prince is looking to become king, the Mirror on the Wall (from Snow White) tells him about three fairy tale princesses. I think taking all these different characters and putting them into one theme is a difficult chore, especially to target it towards children while not making it boring. I think Shrek again does a great job. Shrek has his own job to do. He doesn’t want the fairy tale creatures in his swamp, so he will help them. That’s good use of irony; a fairy tale creature that doesn’t like fairy tale creatures. Even though Shrek uses old stories, the concept and plot of Shrek is new. The characters of the children’s stories aren’t always happy with the outcome. Fiona isn’t happy she stays an ogre. Shrek doesn’t like people, not because he’s an ugly, smelly ogre, but because the stories depict him this way and people take it seriously. Shrek has something for everyone, which is hard to do. The children will be entertained. But more importantly, adults will find the cleverness, humor and conflict amusing. Film makers are getting better at not just animation, but at making the storyline appealing to all ages.
I, Robot is an adaptation of an Isaac Asimov short story. I have to tell you that I don’t think Isaac Asimov is that good of a writer. The screenplay writers of I, Robot have done a brilliant job of rewriting the short story on which it was based. The story deviates from the simplicity of Asimov quite quickly, but the details they have added are humanizing in their way. Basically, the robots have three rules or laws that govern them: (1) through action or inaction, a robot may not harm a human being; (2) robots must follow all instruction given by humans unless it countermands law one; and (3) a robot may function autonomously as long as it does not countermand laws one and two. There's this big brain robot named VIKI that realizes humans are killing themselves through the usual ills of war, pollution, etc. So, it looks to law one, specifically the part about robot inaction and decides to take action--saving humans from themselves. I really liked how the robots looked not exactly human, but, they could emote and they weren't very clunky, which I liked. I also liked Will Smith in I, Robot, he does not play his normal, wise cracking, ethnic, streetwise character. He is a paranoid, kind of weird outcast and I thought that he did a very good job in that role. I also thought the animation and SFX are top-notch - some of the fights involving Sonny (a robot who is acting like a human) are awesome. This film thoroughly entertained me and I am not really a Sci-Fi fan.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a normal Chinese hero saga with the aging hero who does not want to be a warrior anymore (Li Mu Bai). So he asks aging heroine, Yu Shu Lien, to deliver his magical sword to a friend. Sword is then stolen by thieving upstart (Jiao Long) and aging hero and aging heroine come looking for it. Along the way thieving upstart is taken under the wing of aging heroine, while at the same time secretly being in league with an ancient enemy. During the movie you learn the fact that Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien have been in love with each other all their lives, but unable to show it because of the Chinese morality code. Li Mu Bai has been hunting an ancient enemy who killed his master and this ends up being Jiao’s martial arts teacher and nanny. Everyone practices this weird form of martial arts that lets them fly, and there is a lot of fighting. Li Mu Bai exacts revenge for his master’s death in the end but at the cost of his own life. The film was very cool. I heard different people and critics complain about how unrealistic it was, with all the flying and stuff. In my opinion this is one place where the mystical, fairytale quality of the film completely justifies the lack of gravity and common sense. Plus, the movie isn’t about the flying, it’s about honor, dignity, code and tradition. I think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a difficult movie for average Americans to love. Americans have no real sense of tradition or honor. Part of this is due to America’s young age. China is old and has a sense of mysticism surrounding it. Li Mu Bai makes this a movie to remember with his strict adherence to the code of morality which costs him the love of his life and his incredible fighting abilities; something that would never been seen in American films. I find it entertaining as well as a good example of Chinese tradition.
The Usual Suspects is another film that I can watch over and over. It too is another movie with a surprise ending. But this movie, encourages you to watch it over and over again to see all the hidden clues. It’s like The Sixth Sense, once you know the ending and watch it over, there is a new meaning. To me, this preserves a movie’s timelessness. No matter when it is, or how often you have seen it, you can always find something you missed. It’s really like watching two completely different movies. Kevin Spacey plays Verbal Kint, a cripple whose forced police confession serves as the narration for the story. The story itself involves five criminals that get mixed up with a most ruthless man named Keyser Soze and a plot to earn $81 million dollars. It starts out as a kind of whodunit type film, cops looking for stolen guns, but it quickly becomes so much more and when you reach the end you wonder what you just saw. I have rarely heard anything bad about this movie from people I know who have seen it. The characters are great, and Benicio Del Toro has a character that you can hardly understand what in the world he is saying, but everything he says is funny, because of the way he says it. Gabriel Byrne has a good character too. He was a criminal who is trying to go straight and become a legitimate business man. But, he has just too good of a criminal at heart to go legit completely. I loved the end when they showed the bulletin board and things start to come together for you. I think this is another movie with a creative ending. It changes the movie. I would go so far as to say this movie uses a MacGuffin as well. It really doesn’t matter who Soze is, that’s what motivates the characters. I would say the entire setup is a MacGuffin. You never really know what happened on that boat, or anything else. The only thing that mattered was the characters believed Soze existed. I think another movie similar to Usual Suspects is The Sixth Sense. The ending is no so much a twist, but more of the audience not picking up on clues. We have in our mind what is happening and that blinds us to any other explanation. Dr. Malcolm Crowe was dead the entire movie, but we choose not to see it, until it is physically shown to us at the end. Even then, we have to go back and watch to make sure the ending is true. That is what makes this movie great. Each time you watch it, you see something new that you didn’t pick up on before. I like this movie because it shows how our impressions and expectations shape a movie. If we believed Malcolm was dead, we would have seen everything that proved it. Since most of us believe he’s alive, we interpret the actions and clues as such. I love the fact that Malcolm does not have any contact with characters other than Cole. Oh, we think he does, but we have assumed that. We never see him actually talk with, touch or really interact with any character – even his wife. We see him talk at people, but never do we see him engaged in a two-way conversation. Shyamalan does a great job of playing to the senses, we want to believe Malcolm is alive. I didn’t pick up on it until the second time watching. But, Malcolm is dead, so he only has the clothes he’s interacted with in the first scene. What a great touch. Shyamalan didn’t make clothing a focal point. Usually, we would notice a character wearing the same clothes. We don’t in this movie since the character wears a tie, wears a sweater . . . it seems that he is changing clothes. What I love most is that this movie really shows interpretation is everything in a movie. It plays to our sense of wanting things to be okay. This is one of the more powerful movies I’ve seen because Shyamalan understands how to manipulate our senses.