Wes Anderson

I went into the Wes Anderson unit not really knowing much about his films and not really wanting to know anything about them. I thought he was a bad director and there was no reason to watch his movies. I am happy to say that I have completely changed my mind (Klobs should be happy with that). I watched The Darjeeling Limited, a film about three brothers who meet in India on a train after they haven't spoken to each other in a long time. They are a strange lot, the three of them, summarized perfectly in this review. The author talks about the strangeness of the three brothers and about how they never seem to quite fit in the world they live in. Also the "principles" of the movie never seem to fit, making the film a very "irritating and inconsequential" movie. Because I can't seem to make this image appear in underneath these next sentences, the image I am talking about it at the top of the page. This, shot from the movie shows all three brothers and how out of place they look in their environment. It also shows the idealized India, made to look picture perfect when it is definitely not.

Wes Anderson does many of the same things throughout his movies. He will always create strange characters with personalities that are incredibly unique. It could be Dignan in Bottle Rocket or Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic or any of the three brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, not to mention most of the characters in The Royal Tenenbaums, each person has such a unique personality that it leaves a lasting impression on your mind. Wes Anderson also uses these characters to fit his far out there plots and story lines, making the audience feel that the events that happen might have a change at being real. Anderson not only uses his characters to his advantage, but the way he uses sound (mainly music) and very intricate sets, makes him a master at his craft. I love the way that the sets in all of his movies are so very intricately created that they seem almost to over the top. And the way that he throws music in his films is masterful. All in all Wes Anderson has a very dry sense of humor (which I love) and he uses all of the elements of film to accent his dry humor. I now have a new found respect for Wes Anderson and the movies he makes

Call it...Friend-o

The Coen Brothers unit was by far my favorite one yet this year. I had never seen Fargo or Raising Arizona and I liked them both, even though the accents in Fargo were a bit much. The Coen Brothers do a lot of different things with their film making keeping the audience involved throughout the movie. One of my favorite things that the Coen Brothers did with their movies is the way that an "ultimate evil" was always portrayed in the movie. It took different forms in the movies, the big Swedish guy in Fargo, and Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, but it was always present and was always a focal point of the movie. The Coen Bros. always seemed to play off of the fact that the main characters had to battle this "ultimate evil" and the struggle was shown throughout the movie. The way I see it is that the Coen Bros. are trying to show you the true side of life that no one looks at and the way that ordinary good people have to confront it. It makes the audience think about how they would confront such a evil if they were in the situation that the characters were in.

The Coen Brothers also loved to play off the accents that people have in the places that their movies were set. Who knows why the accents they use are so over exaggerated but I think it is because they make fun of the people that are in the movies. It gives them a flaw, humanizing them, even making them seem less likely to be in such extraordinary situations and excel, even though they do. Along with the accents the Coen Bros. used desolate settings in the movies they created. This gives the feeling of such and isolated, hopeless feeling that the movies sometimes feel doomed, or at least that's how I felt. All in all I liked the Coen Bros. movies and liked how they created their films too.

Altman

Robert Altman was one of the most interesting directors I've ever encountered. The way he presented a story and the way he describes his story are all very original to just him. He never likes to use conventional techniques in his movies, loving new camera movements, interesting plots, and he is the only director I know of that has extras talking over the main characters in dialog. The only thing that I really didn't like about Altman was the plots in his movies. Sometimes it felt like he didn't have any plot at all, like in Nashville, which I thought was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I think he goes for too much satire during his films and that is what makes them so disconnected at times.
The part of Altman's film making that I really did like though was the way he incorporated the overlapping of conversations. I thought that brought a sense of reality to the movies that I had never seen before. He made his movies such that it never was necessary to know exactly what was being said, but the way it was being said. Altman uses his techniques so that the audience has to watch the scene as a whole, as one free flowing entity so that you can understand what Altman is trying to say.

AK

At the beginning of the unit I didn't know much about Akira Kurosawa. Mitch talked about his movies a lot and so I was excited form my own opinions on Kurosawa. Well now that we've watched his movies I can saw that I very much think of him as one of the greatest directors of all time. He is able to create a movie that always has some underlying theme to it, beautifully showing his measure through camera work, diolague, the set, and many other things. It is almost as if Kurosawa is trying to paint you a picture of his message in exactly the same way he sees it. This is what I love about his films and have made me want to see many more of them.

Another part of Kurosawa's films is the weather component. In each of his movies he uses extreme weather circumstances. If it is windy, it is very windy, if it is raining, its pouring, and if it is hot, it is the hottest day/week of the year. Using the weather in the way that he does, it heightens the mood of the film. It adds emphasis to the plot and the characters as they go through the movie. It also allows for the audience to feel for the characters more, and feel more connected to them also. Kurosawa is the only director that I have seen that uses natures, and by that I mean the weather, to add to his movies.

It's Johnny!

The Shining (1980) is one of Kubrick's best films. It is also one of the most messed up and weird films that I've ever seen, or that has ever been made. It depicts the story of a family whose father, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), is hired as the off-season caretaker of the haunted overlook hotel. He brings along with him his wife Wendy, and his son Danny. Danny possesses a very special psychic ability called shining. He uses this to contact others who have this gift and also see into the past from places that possess the shining.

The use of the Steadicam and tracking shots was something that everybody in our group noticed. Seemingly every shot was in some way a tracking shot, and definitely every important shot used the tracking shot. The most memorable use of the tracking shot is when Jack has lost his mind and starts after Wendy. Slowly the camera switches from a tracking shot in front of Jack to one from behind Wendy as she retreats from him. The camera keeps switching until the point when both Wendy and Jack are so close that Wendy can hit Jack with the bat in the head knocking him out. Since the Steadicam was fairly new, only 4 years before The Shining was it made, this movie had a tremendous effect on the rest of movie making forever.

Throughout the whole movie I was very confused. For one the plot kept you in the movie the whole time, but also what was going on. It was a very messed up confusing movie that ended very strangely. If you havn't seem the movie don't read on. After Jack goes insane, Danny realizes the evil that is about to happen and tries to signal the head chef form the hotel to come and help. He also had the shining gift and ended up coming up to the hotel to help. Jack kills him though and turns on his wife and son. In the end Danny evades his dad in the massive maze outside and overlook hotel and Danny and Wendy escape. But then we are cut to a scene where we see a picture of Jack from 1921. The only connection I can think of from this messed up movie is that the shining allows a portal to be opened from the past to allow for the evil from the past to become the future. This is a movie that will keep me thinking for a long time because of all the interesting turns it took. All in all a great movie

Hitchcock

I went into this unit not really knowing much about Hitchcock and what he was all about. But through watching 3 of his movies I have really found out that Hitchcock is definitely the master of suspense. A common theme through all 3 of the movies was that it was hard for me to pull my eyes away from the screen. I was caught up in the plot, feeling the ups and downs as the characters did. Hitchcock was able to do this through many cinematic tools, but the greatest one was subjective shots. By showing us what the characters see it makes the audience really feel connected to the character, or even be the character in some way. Rear Window does this the best out of the 3 movies we watched, because almost every shot in that movie was from within L.B.'s apartment.

Another thing that kept my attention throughout all 3 movies was the way that the characters were developed and created. In Rear Window and Vertigo especially the characters were obsessive and strange in some way. L.B. was obsessed with watching other people and Scotty was obsessed with Madeline/Judy. These characters really kept the audiences attention and added another huge dimension to the plot line of the movie.

Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket is said to be one of the greatest war movies of all time. It is shot in two half's. The first half depicts Vietnam marines in boot camp. It is a very powerful hour, going from the first day that they get there to the recruits graduation and their last day on "the island." The second half is in Vietnam, following around one of the recruits nicknamed Joker. It goes up until a final battle for Joker and his platoon.

Kubrick uses a cold sense of humor to depict a war that he feels is unnecessary. The first half where the recruits are in boot camp, I feel, is the most powerful part of the movie. The main characters in that part are Joker, Pyles, and the drill Sargent. Pyles is a very bad marine and is never doing anything right. The boot camp series progressively gets more and more out of control. You can see private Pyles start to get pushed to the edge and then right over it. The whole boot camp part ends with private Joker finding private Pyles in the bathroom loading his gun. "Leonard .. . if Hartman comes in here and catches us, we'll both be in a world of shit"- Joker. "I am .. . in a world . . . of shit!"- Pyles. This is the part of the movie where Pyles finally loses it, shooting the drill Sargent and then himself. This scene is perfect because it shows the way that the war dehumanizes people and changes them. The look in private Pyles eyes is the look of a crazy person, no where near the look of the happy recruit he came in as. The second part is a mishmash of the same type of thing, showing crazy gunman who kill women and children because the war has made them mad. But the ending shows the same murderous look in Joker's eyes as he executes a women sniper that they found in a building. Kubrick does a great job showing the way war can push people to do things that they would never before dream of.

Kubrick uses many techniques to get the point across in FMJ. He uses many reverse tracking shots, pulling the camera away from people as they walk toward it. Many of the boot camp part is shot like this. He also uses low angles to signify importance. This is especially clear when soldiers are saying their last words to some of their fallen comrades. The most effective thing that Kubrick uses is the way that the camera seems to get more and more out of control as the boot camp part goes on. The camera angles and cuts all seem to get faster and more crazy as the part goes on, showing the effect that the camp has on the privates, especially private Pyles.