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.