Film Ratings

El Topo

3 stars. weirded me out a little bit but overall a good movie. 

Sherlock Jr.

4 stars. I thought it was a funny and clever film

Blancanieves

4 stars. I thought it was pretty good, maybe one of my favorites. 

The Devil’s Backbone

4 stars. Great storyline overall I liked this a lot. 

Zero Dark Thirty

3 stars. I liked her strong female character and her determination. 

Fritz Lang’s M

2 stars. Good, but too slow of a movie for me

Do the Right Thing

3 stars. Liked this film but wasn't my favorite

Double Indemnity

3 stars. Kind of got boring in a lot of parts. 

The Piano

4 1/2 stars.  I loved this movie and the love story that came along with it 

The Hitch-Hiker

3 stars. I liked the storyline but again very slow.

Seconds

3 Stars. Good movie but got confusing

2 stars. Had a lot of potential but turned out to be very dull

Zero Dark Thirty

In Zero Dark Thirty the main character, Maya is a very strong and powerful woman who is determined to find Bin Laden. Some may say she has man-like qualities, but I choose to look at it is strong and powerful. In the beginning of the film Maya experiences the torture of her enemy face to face. She is with a man who doesn’t show any emotions to the humiliation he is putting on his prisoner. He is very abusive to the man, he pushes him around into small areas and he chokes him. You can tell that Maya is very disturbed by what is going on in front of her, but over time her feelings towards this man and torture begin to change.  She starts to feel really alone as she sees her friends begin to die around her. Her boss is always talking down to her and she feels as though she is alone. She puts that all aside though, and she hides all of her emotions and goes onto fight and find the man that is killing all of her friends and country. When they get to the possible location to where Bin Laden is, Maya’s transformation is really noticeable. In the meeting that was being held with a bunch of executives, Maya really let her voice be heard. When one of the executives asks who she was, she responded with “I’m the mother fucker who found this place, sir.” I thought that was really a powerful moment because it was then that everyone realizes just how serious and strong she really is. She was standing up for what she believed in and was not afraid to stick up for herself.  I think by saying “I’m the motherfucker who found this place sir” really put her on the map with the men that she is working with. They have more respect for her because she wasn’t afraid to put her foot down. This is all based on gender stereo types because if Maya hadn’t have said that, then would the men would probably still have looked at her as lesser than them, but she showed that she deserves respect just like everyone else.

The Piano

Ada and Baines relationship was very complicated from the beginning. She goes to Baines for help, but he turns her down at first. He finally agrees to help her and he takes her to the piano. It’s there that he realizes that he likes her and also likes hearing her play the piano. Baines makes a deal with Ada’s husband that if Alisdair gives him the piano and lessons from Ada that he would give him some of his land. So Alidair agrees and the lessons with Ada and Baines soon begin. At first the lessons are innocent and nothing really goes on, but quicker than you know it, they become something more. Baines wants to see Ada and he wants to touch her.  He makes another deal with her that if she comes to his place and does as he says, then he will giver her the piano back, but she has to come one day for each black key on the piano. She agrees with the deal. You can tell that she soon doesn’t care about getting the piano back, she’s just doing it because she wants to do it.

Although Baines is rough at times, I don’t think anything they did was rape. Ada agreed to everything and when Baines was asking too much from her, she would say that it would cost him more than one key. Baines didn’t hesitate and would agree right away. I would say that he was blackmailing her though, but she could have walked away even if it meant leaving her piano behind. If she would have said no in the beginning then none of this would have happened, but Baines ends up showing her love and compassion, which is what she was looking for and what she needed. I don’t think there was any rape involved because Ada had some control over the situation, but she chose to stay.

Do The Right Thing

   

     When you think of New York City, you think of taxis and bunches of people walking everywhere on the streets. But in the film, this isn't the vision that we see. We see different parts to the city of New York, which give a whole new vision of New York City.
     Lee shows the city in a way that is portrayed as worn down and a broken city. You can tell the city is worn down because of the buildings that don't have paint and the sidewalks with cracks and bumps. The alleyways are covered in graffiti and the stores are chained closed.
     I think Lee decided to portray the city in this way because he wanted to represent it in a way that fit the characters and story line. The characters in this film have no way to  run from their problems, they are forced to deal with them. He decided  that the issues the characters are facing in the film are rugged and hard just like the city of New York.
       

El Topo

In this scene, El Topo and his son are riding on their house. They keep getting harassed by three men. They keep circling around them and touching them and messing around with their horse. They continue on to a mountain side where there is water and the three men get off their horses and drink the water. The camera view is from a distance and they capture the whole scenery. Then get back on their horses and one of them blows a balloon.  He hands the balloon over and then the other man gets off his horse and sets the balloon on the ground letting off a high screeching noise while the air lets out. They stare back and forth at each other and then as soon as the balloon goes out El topo shoots two of the men. Then it is a deul between el topo and this man. El Topo shoots the man in the leg and he doesn't back down. He follows the man and then shoots him in the other leg. He says to the man "get up" and then El Topo shoots him again in the chest and the camera focuses in on El Topo's face and then shoots the man again. The man is In a pool of water. The camera is from higher up letting you get all the scene around them in. He asks who killed all the people in the town and the man in the water tells him who it was. He puts something in the mans mouth and then walks away. Then he continues on to find the people who massacred the village.
This scene was interesting for me because it showed a a strong fighter El Topo is. He knew as soon as the balloon ran out of air that they ere going to shoot him so he fired first and killed two of the three men which was very impressive. This showed great authority in his part.

Seconds

Seconds used a lot of close ups and a lot of gory scenes throughout the film. For me, Arthur’s surgery was one of the scenes that had my stomach feeling queasy. Just the way the surgeons were so rough with his body during it freaked me out. The first surgery scene resumes the hectic feeling that we get from the beginning of the movie. An eerie feeling that we don’t know if we are watching dreams occur or if this is actually happening. The surgery begins with organ music playing and they show a mark on Arthur’s face that the surgeons made. They show Arthur’s covered body from a medium close up view and we hear the sound of scissors cutting and all we see are the surgeons’ hands. While Arthur is being worked on we get to see a few close ups of him in between shots of what his new face is going to look like. This scene had me a little freaked out because it reminded me that Arthur was no longer going to be Arthur. He is going to look completely different and he will never be able to be traced by anyone from his old life.

Through the surgery the surgeons are really rough with Arthur, it’s like that don’t care about him as a human at all. They are so rough with him when they are wiping his face or forcing things into his mouth. They don’t seem to care at all while performing surgery. At one point during the surgery Arthur starts making a small choking noise, the organ music that was playing starts getting rough as well. The camera starts rolling to show that this isn’t going so well. The surgeons then use scissors to put clamps and gauze in Arthur’s chest. The last scene shows all the instruments that were used during Arthur’s surgery in a pan of water. The main point of the scene was to show that these surgeons have achieved the role in taking the short route. They weren’t there to help people, all they cared about was making money.

Hitch Hiker

The film Hitch Hiker starts off by showing a man that is the hitchhiker killer. He has been killing people who pick him up off the road. He is on a journey to escape the country. It shows all the newspaper headlines and all of them are about the killer. It asks if anyone has information about him. Then the movie switches to two friends, Collins and Bowen. They are headed to California for a weekend with just them two. They told their families that they are going fishing and that they weren’t sure what they were going to get themselves into. One of the things that they hadn’t planned on their trip was picking up a hitchhiker. As soon as the hitchhiker gets in the car, he pulls a gun on them and forces them to drive across the border.

         The hitchhiker controls Collins and Bowen’s every move and watches them night and day. They start messing around with their car because they realize it’s not going to be easy to escape this guy, so they’re trying to slow down the whole process. The car officially breaks down and then the hitchhiker forces them to walk across the desert with him. Luckily for Collins and Bowen, the hitchhiker is caught while trying to escape the boat. He is arrested in Mexico and Collins and Bowen are free from him. The movie fades out on the two walking away from the situation.

            Film Noir is dark and shadowy and usually there isn’t a happy ending, but luckily in this film there was. Collins and Bowen leave alive and the hitchhiker gets caught. I’m glad that this movie had a good ending because usually we are left with someone dead. I was happy to see the hitchhiker caught and that Collins and Bowen made it out alive, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen while watching the film.  The happy ending makes this film noir different from the others because usually there isn’t a happy ending in the films. 

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity shows a woman named Mrs. Dietrichson and at first she is shown as a housewife. She’s not allowed to make any decisions regarding money, which is one of the factors to her and her husband’s marital problems. We find out that she would rather consider killing someone rather than fix her marriage with her husband. She claims she never loved her husband in the first place, so then why would she want to try and fix things with him?

            We learn that Mrs. Dietrichson did get rid of the first Mrs. Dietrichson, she guilts Neff into helping her. It seems that she loves Neff and wants him to get ride of her husband as quickly as possible, so that she can be with him. We end up later finding out that she never really loved Neff, she was just using him. After the murder has been done, Mrs. Dietrichson becomes even colder. The insurance soon becomes a problem because she would rather risk exposing them and get the money instead of letting it go so that she can be with Neff, but then in the end she shows how truly mean she is when she shoots him.

            Lola Dietrichson is seen as a typical teenaged girl who is in a slight rebellious stage. Her dad doesn’t get her and her step-mom doesn’t like her. Little did we know that Lola has a good reason to think that her step-mom doesn’t like her.  Lola has a boyfriend named Nino, she likes being able to have a man there that she can go to when she’s having hard times. Later on, when Nino and Lola are having problems, Lola runs to Neff.  Just like Mrs. Dietrichson, She is very cold when it comes to Neff.  When Neff asked her what was going on between her and Nino, she got very unpleasant.

            In this film, women are shown as lesser than their significant other. It also shows that women need and want a man that can be there to take care of them no matter what. They need someone there in times of need, and even if there isn’t anything.