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. 

M

      I think M would be considered more of a horror movie 
myself. Mainly because it involves a serial killer on the lurk 
for little children. That is simply just terrifying to me. The way everything was filmed also gave it an erie feel. The creepiest part to me that almost gave me chills was when the little girl's place at the dinner table remained empty, her ball is shown rolling away across the grass, and her balloon is lost in the telephone lines. That made me feel so sad and scared because I would never ever want that to happen to anyone I know. I couldn’t imagine. I think this movie was meant to be horrifying. Anything having to do with children being murdered in quite terrifying in my opinion.

Sherlock Jr.

The man has fallen asleep behind the movie projector, and then we see two shots of the man stepping out of himself, one staying a solid figure and one looking like a ghostly figure. Both are Keaton. The real Keaton is sleeping there at the projector and the ghostly figure represents that he is dreaming. Keaton looks out at the movie screen and the camera follows his stare to show us what is being shown on the screen. He imagines that people on the screen are people that he knows in real life.  The camera changes to shows the ghost Keaton tapping on the sleeping Keaton to try and change what he is focusing on. Ghost Keaton grabs his hat and then he heads into the movie theater. The camera uses wide angle shots to let us see what Keaton is doing. He goes from the theater stage into the film. The effects used were good and believable because of the lighting that was used. It made the screen glow in the dark movie theater room. Then they show a shot back to Keaton for a moment where he still appears to be sleeping. They were using wide angle scenes at this point in the film and I think this was so they had an opportunity to throw in some comedy at this point in the film. He tries to lean against a disappearing tree and then sit on a disappearing bench. To me, these scenes were kind of irrelevant to what was happening in the rest of the movie.  

Introduction

Hello!
My name is Sophie Kroner and I am from Cincinnati Ohio. I am a third year at University of Cincinnati and my major is Social Work. 

My favorite genre of movies definitely is either comedy or a romantic film. I also like some documentaries because I find them very interesting. I love James Franco, especially in Pineapple Express, I think he is a really good actor and is very intelligent. My favorite female actor would have to be Jennifer Lawrence, I think she is just one of the most down to earth people in Hollywood and I like that she stays true to herself. 

My Top Ten Favorite Movies are:
1. SuperBad
2.Pineapple Express
3.The Notebook
4.The Last Song
5. Mean Girls
6.American Psycho
7.Planet Earth
8.Step Brothers
9.How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
10.Contraband