Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

Translated into The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, this film is probably one of the most impressionable ones I have ever seen.  The fact that the entire movie is in french made me hesitant to watch it, but I remembered the name from being nominated for oscars a few years ago so i decided to give it a try.  It quickly held my attention more than most english speaking movies ever can.  This incredible true story is about a man named Jean-Do.  He is the editor in chief of Elle magazine and has suffered a massive stroke that leaves him completely paralyzed and unable to speak which is known as "locked in syndrome".  The only thing he has control over is his left eye.  We hear his thoughts in his head as he can think clearly and rationally.  He states that other then his eye there are two things that are not paralyzed, his imagination and his memory.  Almost 80 percent of the movie is entirely through the view of his left eye.  As he lays motionless in the hospital bed, his speech therapist teaches him a method to communicate using his eye by blinking.  She recites every letter in the alphabet and he blinks when she says the letter and repeats this until he spells out what he wants to say.  They also tell him to blink once for yes and twice for no.  After a few months, he decides to use this method to write a memoir (which this movie is based on).  A young woman named Claude was sent to dictate and write down what he spells.  The process of him spelling out every word was extremely tedious and painstaking and only half a page was completed a day.  She would go to him every day, recite the alphabet repeatedly, and wait for him to blink and write down letters that develop sentences.  Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of his life where he is with his father or playing with his three children.  Two days after his memoir is published, he dies from pneumonia.  This film was very moving and the cinematography was incredible.  The fact that it is all in french is completely irrelevant.  

Freaks

I have to say, the title sums up the movie.  Freaks is truly about the sideshow freaks in a circus which ironically, you never see them actually perform in front of an audience.  The entire movie takes place off stage.  The plot focuses on a beautiful woman who works in the circus and the midget Hans who is in love with her.  Hans' fiance Frieda tell Hans that she is only after his money and nothing more.  This is in fact the case and after Cleo marries him, she tries to kill him with poison to inherit his money.  The other freaks include a man with no legs, a torso man, siamese twins, pinheads, and an armless girl.  When they catch onto Cleo's plan, they rebel on a stormy night.  It was actually a very disturbing scene watching them crawl through the mud toward her.  It is revealed that she is somehow transformed into a chicken type person that is the new act in the sideshow.  The film has a history of being rejected and banned because all of the freaks are really sideshow acts, which i guess was too much for people to handle watching. 

Rear Window

I have been a long fan of Alfred Hitchcock and his film Rear Window did not disappoint.  Although it starts off a little slow, it pretty much has to in order to get an idea of who his neighbors are that he is watching.  Jeff is a photographer who brakes his leg while photographing a race car which goes out of control (this is explained silently while the camera passes a series of pictures of the accident).  Jeff is confined to his wheelchair where his only form of entertainment is to observe the lives of his neighbors out his rear window.  The concept is extremely interesting where you basically only see what Jeff is seeing and can only hear what he can hear.  Throughout the movie you follow the lives of very different people.  Miss Loneyhearts seems to be depressed without a man, a songwriter struggles on his piano, Miss Torso prances around her apartment and has men over at night, the newlyweds immediately close the blinds to keep their privacy, and then there's the Thorwalds.  Their constant fighting makes Lars Thorwald a very suspicious man in Jeff's eyes when his wife mysteriously disappears.  There were points in the movie where I was sure Thorwald killed his wife, and others where I thought that Jeff was just misunderstanding the situation.  The one thing that amazed me was knowing the entire setting was a set and not real apartments.  The sets were so real, each room had running water and electricity.  Hitchcock makes the ending ironic in a way when Jeff sits again at the window like in the beginning but this time with two broken legs.

The Night They Raided Minsky's

Overall, i thought Minsky's was a cute film about a naive amish girl wanting to be a dancer on stage.  At first I was a little confused on the plot of why they wanted her to perform her dances from the bible as the main act.  The small skits they showed with the two main male characters, Chick and Raymond, were humorous and actually had me laughing.  One of the songs they sung was catchy and entertaining.  Most of the movie takes place either on stage or backstage.  The one thing that stood out was the couples times for a few seconds, a few frames were black and white then would go back to color.  This was actually an accident by the editor.

Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing captures the tension between different races in a predominantly African American Brooklyn neighborhood.  At the height of hip-hop culture, teenagers of the neighborhood blast their music through the streets.  The local pizzeria owner Sal and his two sons make it clear that they are not very tolerant of their African American customers.  Sal denies the request for putting up pictures of black people even though they keep his business going.  The tension is not only with the Italian family, but also with an Asian couple at a local market, a latino group, and a white man driving through the street.  One scene that I thought was powerful is when some characters each get a turn to yell at the camera every derogatory and racial slur they can name towards a group of people.  In a matter of seconds, the ending of the movie takes a huge sharp turn where absolute chaos breaks loose.  The movie suddenly becomes violent and shows what racism and intolerance can lead to.

Traffic

The one thing that truly stood out was the color changes from the scenes in Mexico with Benicio Del Toro and in America with Michael Douglas.  The shade of yellow in Mexico was perfect in representing the dry deserts and seriousness of the scenes.  The blue tint gave a solemn and dark feeling.  The sadness is brought out more when Michael Douglas's character is trying to deal with his drug addicted daughter.  Although I enjoyed the film, it was honestly a little hard to follow watching it over a four day period trying to remember the story line between about three different yet connected people.  I also thought it was interesting how most scenes in Tijuana were shot with a hand held camera.

Robin Hood

Learning about the beginning of Technicolor, watching The Adventures of Robin Hood was a perfect example.  The film completely utilizes every color so brightly.  The actor who played Robin Hood, Errol Flynn, portrayed the hero with confidence and the relaxed demeanor that you envision Robin Hood would have.  After watching a few films in black and white, I imagined this film without color and I believe the whole feeling you get from watching it would be different.  Not necessarily in a bad way, but the vast colors contributes so much to this particular film.

THE ROAD

A couple days ago, I was lucky enough to go to a private screening of The Road.  Reading the novel a year ago, I have been not very patient to see this movie (especially because the original release date was last November).  Since the film was pushed back an entire year, I had my doubts on how it would turn out.  I was not disappointed in the least bit.  With a cast of Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and brilliant newcomer Kodi Smit-Mcphee, you can expect perfection and not be let down.  The overall concept is so poetic yet dark.  It will break your heart and move you to tears.  The cinematography captures the sorrow and sadness that the world has succumb to after an unexplained apocalyptic event.  The relationship between the boy and the father is incredibly powerful.  They walk through a dying Earth with each day a struggle to survive.  The film is nothing short of a masterpiece.  Most of the dialogue is taken right out of the novel written by the genius Cormac McCarthy (author of '08 best picture No Country for Old Men) and is thankfully faithful to the book.  The Road comes out in theaters in about a month, and i will most definitely see it again.  I also cannot stress enough how this is not just another apocalypse, "what will happen when the world ends" movie.  It is so much more.