Fight Club

Not in the course, but David Finchers' "Fight Club" is one of my favourite films, if not my number one favorite film of all time. I think the film is utter genius, and it has two of my favourite actors in it, Edward Norton, and Brad Pitt. If you haven't seen Fight Club, please make sure you do see it. It has one of the greatest twists ever, the humour in it is great, everyone acts perfectly, and just the idea of Fight Club is amazing. I feel really cool when I watch this film, and sometimes want to take Tyler Durdens advice and get rid of my possessions, start a Fight Club, and cause Mayhem.

"Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler"

Did I say it's amazingly clever? There are so many little clever things, and big clever things, it's just amazingly clever! Go here to read some of the awesomely cool and clever things in the movie.

I think the storyline is one of the best, and I don't think the film got the recognition it deserved. The film, the actors, the crew, everyone who worked on or in this film deserves Oscars.

I've changed my mind, don't just see this film, buy it, live it even! It's just so good!

Best scenes in the movie-
1. All of them

Best lines -
1. All of them

Possibly the greatest movie ever.


"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." - Tyler Durden

Three Kings

"Three Kings" is an American film directed by David O. Russell. It stars good ol' George Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and Spike Jonze. It is set in Iraq during the first Gulf War. The movie picks up after Saddam Hussein has signed the ceasefire agreement and America are on their way out. George and his crew come across a map leading to Saddams' gold in someones bottom, and they set out to get the gold. Along the way they find some people who really need their help and Clooneys' character Major Gates makes a choice to help them. They shoot a number of Iraqi Rebuplican guards, ending the ceasefire. We then see their struggle to get the civilians across the border, whilst keeping the gold, rescue Troy Barlow (Wahlberg) and get out alive.

I enjoyed this film, despite the fact I dislike America and their invasions deeply, I found it entertaining. As my lecturer Fred Goldsworthy said, it's nice that the film leads up to the action, rather than the action sequences being the backbone of the movie. It was a refreshing change. I had never seen the movie until tuesday, I hired it out and watched it that night.

The only critiscm I have is I didn't like the areas where they had made the frame-rate slow and jittery, and that I feel some of the violence like the exploding cow was taken a little too far and became unnecessary.

I really liked how they had altered the colours on the film, it gave the film a really nice look. I also think that the cinematography was good, and captured what it would have been like, especially in areas like the scene towards the end of the film after the helicopter had been destroyed and there were two Republican Guards left who snipe Troy and Conrad, and also the scene where the Republican Guard gas the fleeing soldiers and they lose all visibility.

I felt all of the actors in the film performed very well, especially Clooney and Wahlberg.

A good film.

Scoop

'Scoop' - Woody Allens' latest. A murder-mystery comedy about how a student (Scarlett Johansson) and a bumbling magician (Woody Allen) trying to expose a serial killer in London. Scarlett Johanssons' character Sondra suspects the Aristocrat Peter(Hugh Jackman) and they fall in love.

I thought Woody Allens' last film 'Match Point', a tragic thriller was a good movie. So I went to his movie expecting another good film. I did enjoy it, but I don't think it was anything special. It does have some good Woody humour, and Hugh Jackman is great in it, but I think it was weak in areas. I don't think Scarlett Johansson did as well as she could have, she especially seemed to make some lines lose some of their funniness.

The cinematography is really good, especially in some of the scenes that show the cityscape of London. The images are just really nice. Also some of the movie is quite clever, like towards the end when Peter tries to drown Sondra, and believes he has it all figured out, she can't swim, he knows about her fake ID, but there's one more twist, something he overlooked....(I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it).

I do think that people should hire it and see it, but I don't think people should expect anything as good as his better works.

As it is in Heaven

'As it is in Heaven' is a Swedish film directed by Kay Pollack. It is about a famous conductor who suffers a heart attack and then retires from his work. He moves to the town he lived in as a young boy and buys the school he went to, where he had been bullied a lot. He rekindles his love for music and takes over the school choir, then falls in love with a young girl in the choir. Soon he realises he has become surrounded with other people's problems. The movie continues....

Being a musician and someone who was bullied at primary school (for being fat - like one of the characters in this film) I felt this movie had a lot of emotions and themes that I could relate to. I think that Michael Nyqvist (who plays the main character, Daniel) delivers a really good performance. I felt that I could feel as he was feeling during the movie, and that was really nice. I think all of the actors in the film were great as well, especially Helen Sjöholm who played Gabriella. I think Nyqvists' final scene in the film was really wonderful (not for sadistic reasons), as he was so blissfully happy despite his situation.

The film has had much success, bringing in more money than 'Titanic' at one cinema, and has been playing for over 27 weeks, despite being originally released in 2004. It was nominated for 'Best Foreign Film' at the Academy Awards, beaten by 'The Sea Inside'. I feel if it had been released a year earlier or later, it would have won. 'As it is in Heaven' is a really wonderful film.

Bicycle Thief

De Sicas' "Bicycle Thief" is a really great movie in my opinion. It was made in 1949, and is about Ricci and his family in post war Italy, which was suffering from Depression at the time. When Ricci gets a job which relies on a bicycle, he is overwhelmed with relief and dreams of finally being able to get his family back on its feet. He and his wife sell some of their belongings so Ricci is able to afford to get his bicycle out of the repair shop. Life seems like it is about to change, but Ricci’s only hope of a new and improved future for his family is taken from him - by a bicycle thief. We then see Ricci spiral downward on his day long journey with his young son to find the bike, until he resorts to trying to steal someone else's bike, lowering himself down to the level of the man who stole away his last chance.

I thought that this movie was really good. It doesn't suprise me that it is constantly voted one of the greatest movies of all time. The themes and desparation of the movie are things that most people (except for the wealthy) can relate to, as most of us have been desperate for something at some stage in our lives. It is very tragic watching Ricci and his boy on their seemingly hopeless quest, and you do feel happier at the points in the film Ricci and his son are happy, like in the restaurant scene, but ultimately it is a tradgedy. I was very interested to hear that the actors in the film weren't really actors at all, they were people in the situations that their characters were in for the film.

I think that this is a masterpiece of cinema.

Double Indemnity

'Double Indemnity' is a film by Billy Wilder. The plot is about a successful insurance salesman, Walter, who finds himself being talked into murder by a beautiful woman, Phyllis. They commit the murder hoping to profit from an ingeniously set up double indemnity insurance policy on the life of Phyllis' husband. The plan works perfectly until Walter and Phyllis lose their cool and everything falls apart.

I thought this film was great, it was really well thought out, it got me thinking.... hmmm that plan could work. I thought it was a really clever film, and I loved the 'Shut-up baby' lines. It was nice to see a film from that era so I could see why people make parodies of them in the way they do. I thought the film had some really good tense, anxious moments, and I loved the voice over narration. The film had me captivated for its entirety, and I really enjoyed it.

An old movie, but still one I wouldn't mind watching again.

The Grand Illusion

A french masterpiece of film by Jean Renoir. The films story takes place in World War One, where french soldiers are captured by the Germans. The film follows De Boldieu, Marechal, and Rosenthal as they try to escape from numerous German camps and prisons, before eventually escaping and taking refuge in a cottage.

I liked the fact that this was a war movie but had little violence, and it was nice to see the light hearted and witty humour that has been lost over the years. That being said, I do think that the film was a little long, and the story could either have been trimmed down, or ended at different points throughout the film.

The acting is great by all of the actors, I liked the relationship between Stroheim and De Boldieu, and how Marechal felt distant from the people so close to him because they had a higher social standing. It was nice to see some real issues. The scenery, being filmed in Europe, is really beautiful, and this beauty compliments the fact that the characters in the film are trying to find beauty in their situation and their lives, against the odds.

A nice film, but I did lose interest a couple of times.

Fantasmagorie

If you haven't seen this - WATCH IT!

It is the first animation film, made in 1908 by Emile Cohl. It contains a number of sequences of things metamorphisising into other things, and is very funny and entertaining. Just like Melies', 'A trip to the moon', I think anyone should be able to watch it and be entertained, and if not entertained, I would hope that they can at least appreciated it for what it is. The founding of animation as we know it today. An animation 100 years old should be enough to entice any viewer. It really is a wonderful experience to see this film.

A trip to the Moon

'A trip to the Moon' by Georges Melies is amazing. I still love this film purely because it is from 1902, which I think is absolutely amazing! I also love it because it is a series of short comedy sketches, all following a main storyline - a bunch of scientists build a way of getting to the moon, land in the moons eye, see some amazing moon sights, are attacked and taken hostage by some selenites, before fighting their way out and escaping back to Earth where they are greeted as heroes.

Made in 1902!!! Genius!!!

I think that this movie should be seen by anyone with any interest whatsoever in film, because it really is amazing that we have a film from such a long time ago, and it is entertaining as a bonus.

The Great Train Robbery

'The Great Train Robbery' is a film from 1903 by Edwin S. Porter, who was an 'Edison cameraman'. The film is the first narrative film in history, and could also be called the first ever action film (and boy, does it have some action)!

The film follows a group of highwaymen as they stop a train, take over the train, throw some people off the train, steal the loot from the train, and ride off to what they thought was a safe wood. However, the local village police have been alerted and a fast paced shoot-out and chase scene shoot-out ensues.

I thought that this was wonderful because of how old it was, and I thought it was really cool to see action sequences and stunts, as well as trick photography done so long ago. I found this film immensely entertaining and it should be seen by people with an interest in film.

P.S. The bandit at the end firing the pistol was a really nice touch! I can see how it would have shocked audiences back in its day.

Spiderman 3

The most expensive movie ever made. Embarrasing. I really enjoyed the first 2 movies in the Spiderman series, and I have always been a fan of the Marvel comics and cartoons, but I really feel that this one wasn't up to scratch.

The storyline of this one involves Harry/Green Goblin losing his memory and becoming the friend he once was, then regaining his memory and becoming evil again, then going back to good, the love triangle and abusive love between Harry, Peter and MJ, the black goo/venom taking over Peter, and then Eddie Brock, and the newly emerged 'Sandman'. With so much going on you'd assume the movie was very exciting, and don't get me wrong, the fight scenes had some exciting moments, and the special effects WERE amazing, but it goes to show that your audience doesn't always get what you pay for - money doesn't buy happiness - money isn't everything etc etc....

The acting was irritating. People laughed when characters cried, and cried when actors tried to act. The storyline was really dissapointing on the whole, sadly I think the thing that most people remember most about this movie was the 'emo' haircut and dodgy dance scene, sorry, dodgy dancing scenes.

Really disappointing, sorry Sam Raimi (director).

The Valet

'The Valet' is a french comedy by Francois Veber. The basic plot is that Pierre, a successful businessman is photographed with his lover Elena, a supermodel, and in order to save his marriage he tells his wife that the woman isn't his lover, but the lover of the main character Francois Pignon. This in turn is a problem because all Francois wants to do is marry his sweetheart Emilie.

Being a comedy, it did have a lot of jokes, some which I found funny, some I didn't, this may have something to do with the fact that I'm not French, or perhaps they just weren't that funny. I did like the storyline and I think it was very well acted and on the whole it was quite an enjoyable film. I understand that the movie is a sequel, and I would be interested to see the first film. I liked this movie, but I wouldn't buy it and I probably wouldn't see it again.

Bobby

'Bobby' by Emilio Estevez has some big names attached to it, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore and Lawrence Fishburne to name a few (unfortunately Lindsay Lohan is one of them).

I think that this is an extremely important film, a reminder of a terrible decade that saw America lose all of their last hopes, and their hopes ended with Robert F. Kennedys' murder.

I enjoy that Estevez shows us something different on the subject, whilst the film is about Bobby, its main view is that on the lives of people in the hotel that night, and how Bobby and his death affected them. The film makes you feel as if you are in the excitement of the night, and my own emotions swayed with those of the characters in the film. It was great to see archive footage in the film and this helped the overall emotions and feel of the film. The scene towards end of the film created a lot of confusion and anxiety, and this was excellent, as it captured what the atmosphere would have been like at the actual event.

I thought this was a great movie, generally I do love movies of this type (eg- movies about the tragedies of the Martin Luther King, Malcom X and JFK murders), and I feel that this is one of the greats in the genre.

Time to Leave

Francois Ozon's 'Time to Leave' is, in my opinion, a touching film. Firstly, the theme of terminal cancer is enough to make anyone uncomfortable, with the disease affecting so many people. When Romain rejected treatment in exchange of comfortable last days, I felt veyr sympathetic, but at the same time I was thinking, "Why not give it a go??? Try and live!"

The main points of emotion in the film, such as Romain giving up his boyfriend, Romain's last talk with his Grandmother and Romain giving the couple the child they could not have are all heart warming or heart wrenching, and you really do go through the emotions as Romain does.

I found the final scene really great (where Romain is at the beach) and his last sunset is beautiful and I didn't know if I should feel happy or sad, either way I was touched. The setting sun leaving earth for the day, metaphoric for Romains 'setting life' and depature for the world - touching.

I think it is a really wonderful french film.

The Caiman

Ok, well my opinion seems to be different from everyone elses in the COM123 class, so without any further ado...

- I enjoyed Nanni Moretti's 'The Caiman'.

I thought it was quite a clever film. The way that it was made to criticize Berlusconi but always stays slightly to the side of doing it directly, I found very entertaining. Moretti never set out to show all of the facts about Berlusconi because all Italians already knew them. The movie is almost about itself, ie- Bruno Bunomo in the film, is almost like Nanni Moretti would have been when he made the film (except Moretti wasn't washed up and is still respected).

I thought the film had some great moments, including the gelato shop outburst scene, and also the beach scene where Bruno finds he has been lied to, the cast he hired weren't really 'taking a break', they were quitting to film a Columbus movie.

So, sorry guys, but I thought it was a good movie.

Road to Guantanamo

Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's 'Road to Guantanamo' is a documentary about four boys (in the end three) who journey to Pakistan, then Afghanistan and are captured by the Northern Alliance before being handed over to American forces. They then spend two years being abused, mistreated and tortured by the American army in Guantanamo Bay.

I thought this was a really good eye opening documentary. Although being anti-war and anti-american it is a very different type of film then those of Michael Moore. I liked the way that they had actors as well as the actual boys, so that their story was acted out as they narrated it, I think this was a really clever way to tell the story.

I was interested for the whole movie, but I must say that one thing that disappointed me was that throughout the movie we are shown horrific images and told about horrible acts of cruelty, but the boys were so dismissive of the whole experience. I am aware it would have been horrendous but they really seemed to shrug it off as nothing, and this felt like a slight contradiction. It would have been nice to see some more emotion from them about the issue.

Overall though, a really good documentary that anyone other than strong american supporters could enjoy.

A Scanner Darkly

Richard Linklaters "A Scanner Darkly", is one of the coolest films I have seen this year. It is based on a Phillip K. Dick novel by the same name. The film is expressionistic in nature, and we see a lot of crazy images and colours representing different aspects of the affected and unaffected human mind. The premise of the film is the struggle of law enforcement agent Bob Arctor to complete his assignment, but remain undercover as a drug abuser, and also Neurological and Psychological damage, and confusion.

This is realised through something called substance D, a highly potent drug that has poisoned the society in the film. We see the expressionist feel realised and extended through the animations of the effects of substance D -changing reality, the world moving faster or slower than possible around Arctor and bugs that aren't really there to name a few. The animations not only look fantastic but also makes viewers feel as if they too were suffering from the effects of drugs.

The film looks as cool as it does because the movie was digitally filmed in live action as standard, and then later in post-production the footage was cel shaded and animated with an interpolated rotoscope (basically animators traced over the movement in each frame of footage and shaded the images with a limited number of shades to give them a flat, animated look). The ‘Scramble Suits’ used by the law enforcement agencies in the film are really cool, and it was really hard to look at them without having a single aspect of identity to focus on with each feature of the face and body of the wearer changing constantly.

I found the film captivating in its entirety, and it was great to be able to relate the drug problems in the movie to the drug problems in the real world, because it is a serious problem, and the consequences are the same as those shown in the film.

It was a nice touch at the end of the film to have the list of people known by the cast and crew of the film who had been killed or affected by drugs because it showed how real the themes in the movie are.

Unfolding Florence

Gillian Armstrongs' "Unfolding Florence" is an Australian documentary on the life and death of Florence Broadhurst, a charistmatic person who seems was either loved or hated, but respected for her determination and dedication to her work. Her life ended in her brutal murder, and the killer is still unknown. However it is certain that she had lived an amazing life, constantly reinventing herself to make her life more interesting to others.


The film was the only Australian film selected for the 2006 Sundance film festival, and interestingly tells the story of Florence Broadhursts life with regular flashbacks to her walk to her factory, where she was killed, on the last day of her life.

I feel that the film catches the audiences attention initially, although I believe this may have something to do with Florence Broadhurst herself, and how interesting she was, rather than production techniques and structure. The interviews can become slightly uninteresting after some time, but they have been nicely been broken up with flashbacks, and cute stop frame style animations in between. I found the interviews with the son most interesting, because it was odd to see how Florence, who was so involved in her work, and so lively in most aspects of her life, had in a way completely neglected her own son.

Some parts of the film are humorous or interesting, but I feel overall, the film lacked pace and interestingness that I feel Florence Broadhurst would have deserved. This is because I feel that even though her past life was completley different then what she would have you believe, and she probably took credit for things that she shouldn't have, she was still an incredibly interesting person, and this documentary wasn't an incredibly interesting film. That said, it did however have some nice production elements to it.

Birthday Boy

'Birthday Boy' is an animation by Sejong Park. This is the only animation of the animation program I am writing about, because I thought it was the best one. We see Manuk in the streets of his homeland Korea, dreaming about his father on the war front, and playing around. When he gets home he finds a parcel which he thinks is a birthday present from his father, but it is from the military, containing his fathers belongings -he has been killed in action.

The animation in this film is really different, and it was nice to see something unusual in an animation. I thought it looked really cool, one of my favourite scenes visually is where Manuk is at the temple that a plane has crashed through. Manuk has so much energy and life and this enhanced the film, as well as the emotions associated with war related films. I felt great sadness at the realisation of the fathers death, imagining what it would have been like. The contents of the parcel were touching.

I found this to be a really good short film.

What is this blog about?

This blog is a journal I am keeping for my COM 123 class, otherwise known as Screen Studies, for university.

It contains reviews of films I have seen for the class, as well as reviews of other films I have seen outside class.

Everything I write will be my opinion on the subject I write about, so please don't be offended if you disagree with something I have said.