The Cohen Brothers

For this unit we watched No Country for Old Men, Fargo, and Raising Arizona all directed by the Cohens. So far this has been my favorite directors unit that we have studied and I can say that I was actually interested in what was going on throughout all three of these films. The Cohen's have a distinct type of personality in all of their movies that is especially brought out through Fargo and Raising Arizona. The characters are all a little strange and don't really resemble normal everyday people that you would find walking on the street. We discussed how this could be a case of the Cohens not respecting their actors and just trying to make them look stupid, but I felt that these unique characters were really interesting to watch and added to the movie. However for this post I want to write about a theme that I found to be very important in all three of the movies.

Throughout all three of these movies money is the main thing that drives the characters to doing whatever it is they do. For example in No Country for Old Men the entire plot revolves around Anton chasing down Moss for stealing the briefcase full of money from the Mexicans. While we learn that Anton isn't really all that greedy and doesn't care as much about the money but rather his principles, none of this would have occurred in the first place if it hadn't been for Moss finding the briefcase. Another example of money being the plot of the the entire film was in Fargo. The entire movie revolves around Jerry Lundergard's plot to make a load of money from an insurance plan on his wife. The movie then unfolds by showing all the consequences of Jerry's plan and all the innocent people that end up getting killed in the process. If he hadn't wanted the money from the insurance plan there wouldn't be anything to make a movie about. Finally money is important in Raising Arizona because if Ed and H.I. would have had money to begin with they wouldn't have had to steal a baby but rather could have bought one illegally form Mexico or something instead.

Because of all these examples I really think money is a huge focus in the Cohen's films and that the plot's of the three movies we watched all revolved around money and people wanting it.

Bobby Altman

After seeing three of Altman's movies, I really enjoyed The Player the most. I thought he did a great job again of character development and showing us right of the bat how the main characters were going to act and what we should expect out of them throughout the movie. A lot of the camera movements in this film reminded me of what I had previously seen when we watched The Last Goodbye. He used a lot of long (time not distance) shots that would track all the way from one area on the screen to a completely different area. By doing this the movie seemed to have more of a natural flow to it and I really enjoyed this aspect of his work. Another trait that I noticed after watching Nashville and The Player is Altman's use of overlapping dialogue. This is something that we read about in the packet about him and I noticed it quite a bit of during Nashville. After seeing these two movies I can say that I do appreciate his work and have enjoyed watching two of the three, but probably won't pursue watching to many more of his movies just because Nashville made me angry.

Yo' Jimbo and Big K

Going into this unit I wasn't sure I would enjoy watching these foreign films where I would have to read subtitles all the time and not understand exactly what being a Samurai was all about. After seeing Stray Dog I wasn't really looking forward to watching Yojimbo because I really thought the plot was very dull in Stray Dog and didn't see how this was going to be any different. After watching Yojimbo however I was pleasantly surprised to find a movie that I could really get into and actually care about what happens to the characters. The plot was 100 times better than the previous and I have now gained respect for Kurosawa's work. For this blog post I want to comment on one of the scenes from Yojimbo that really stuck out to me and I felt was a very interesting way to start a movie.

The scene that I want to comment on was the opening scene of the movie that involved a tracking shot of a Samurai walking down a dusty road. We don't know who the Samurai is and Kurosawa doesn't show us his face until later. Throughout this shot Kurosawa focuses on the back of Sanjuro's head and back while not letting us see his face or the expression he has on it. I thought that this was really a memorable scene in the movie because it showed us a mysterious main character that we would learn about throughout the film. By not starting off by showing everything, I was more drawn to Sanjaro as this scene seemed to have given his character a lot more importance.

I also enjoyed the battle scenes in Ran where we would see many men all in the same field on horses or feet. I really appreciated these types of scenes in the movie because after watching a lot of today's movies that involve big battles, ie. Lord of the Rings, I get tired of seeing computer generated people instead of actual men fighting. I think the way that Kurosawa did his battle scenes in Ran took a lot of planning and patience to be able to get them right and show us something really special. Just knowing that everything was actual actors instead of CGI characters made this movie's battle scenes in my mind better than those of Lord of the Rings or any other movie that uses CGI people (which I can't stand anyway).

Overall I can't say that I love all of big K's work and want to see a ton more of his films, but have come to respect his work and the movies that he was able to make with the technology he had at that time. It seems like he was a director that really cared what he produced and wanted everything to look as good as they could make it before releasing a movie - and this is what I think is needed most in becoming a great director of all time.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia is the third and final movie that our group chose to watch for our director assignment on Jonathan Demme. While this movie's genre/plot was not very similar to either of the last two movies that I've seen, there were some cinematographic elements that I found very similar in both movies.

One thing that I noticed Demme did a lot of in this movie was showing characters at different angles. For example he would always show Joe's face (Denzel Wacshington) at a higher angle making him look like he is confident in himself, while on the other hand Andrew was often shot from a higher angle showing his defeat from his illness, AIDS. One really good example of this was when Andrew is in the court room and is starting to get very ill. He eventually gets up and collapses in front of the whole court, the entire time his face was shown from a high angle all the way through the very end while he's lying on the floor with the people in the room trying to save him. Another example of the angles that Demme uses include whenever he would show the lawyers from the big law firm that he was suing. Whenever they would show them it would always be at a low angle, followed by a high angle shot of Andrew. This really made it look like he was helpless and would be unable to win the trial against such a powerful law firm.

Another really interesting thing I noticed Demme did later in the movie (around 1hr40 in ) was the scene after Andrew collapsed in the court room and following the scene of him looking like he was about to die in the hospital. This scene starts in the court room from behind the back of Joe (Andrews attorney) looking forward to the judge and witness. The camera then either did a tracking shot/pan shot from behind joe's head all around the back of the courtroom going behind the heads of all the lawyers there. During the whole shot we are listening to the witness speaking while not knowing whether or not Andrew is even alive or present at the trial. Even though in the end this isn't that important to the plot, I won't say what happens next to not spoil the movie for anyone reading this. But the shot that he used at this time was really a interesting way to build some suspense/questions as to what had exactly happened to Andrew.

In the end I went into this movie thinking that it was simply going to be another boring good lawyer vs. bad lawyers case that I really wouldn't be able to enjoy and simply wanting to watch it to get this blog done, but have since then realized that I really liked this movie and it points out some very strong "social commentary" issues about AIDS and being gay that are realistic issues in today's society. This movie was less about the action and suspense of a trial but rather an example of some of the un-justices that we still face in our society and how people need to keep fighting for what they believe in. I have also come to realize, after seeing two movies by the same director with D-Washington in them, that he is a very believable actor that just does a really good job of playing his role.

Alfred Hitchcock

Ever since I was little I had always heard old people talking about how Alfred Hitchcock was one of the best directors of all time and that all of his movies are simply amazing. Due to this I was going into the movie Rear Window with rather high expectations. In my mind Hitchcock was great at creating suspense and interest with the capabilities that he had. Obviously his budget wasn't near as high as a lot of the Hollywood directors that we see today but the movies he made were very interesting.

For this blog I want to comment on the second movie that we watched directed by him being Rear Window. I am choosing this one because I really enjoyed it and thought it was a pretty good picture. While the plot is quite simple and the story certainly doesn't move around very much, the sense of "neighborhood" and togetherness that he makes with all the neighbors in the apartments without them even knowing it is very interesting. Hitchcock shows us mainly an entire movie from the point of view of a man looking out his window because of a broken leg and what mysteries he discovers in his neighborhood. The entire murder case that unfolds throughout this movie is almost more of a side story to the love story that becomes of L.B. and Lisa. The attention to all the characters in this small neighborhood make the viewer really feel like he/she is almost a part of it and very interested in knowing what is going to happen next. He also makes some good suspense scenes such as when Lisa is in the house and from LB's perspective we see the killer returning to his apartment with us not knowing how she is going to get out of it. The mixture of suspense and story that Hitchcock puts into this film make it something that is really work watching and while it seems boring at first, once it gets going you start to enjoy it more and more.

The Manchurian Candidate - Jonathan Demme

This movie was yet another one of Demme's movies that I have come to appreciate. The way the movie starts reminded me somewhat of Apocalypse Now with its colors and great war scenes, and while it did get dull at some points in the middle, the last thirty minutes of this picture are truly something to enjoy. While this movie was completely different from the previous I watched, Silence of the Lambs, there were numerous characteristics of Demme's work that I noticed in both. One being how he creates suspense and the other the cinematography that is used in both movies.

Like in the previous movie I really enjoyed the way that Demme played suspense into this film. While there was in my mind quite a bit of boring stuff until I was actually intrigued, once it started to get good I was into the movie more than most other movies I've seen. The biggest point of suspense in this picture in my mind is when Denzel Washington is supposed to assassinate the president during the presidents victory party. This simple idea is played out for several minutes and a lot of suspense and mystery is put on whether or not he is going to do it and if he doesn't what's going to happen and what will happen to him. I think all these questions that I found myself asking myself during this sequence were really what makes the suspense so good. Because I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it, I don't want to go into any more detail as to what happens but the big twist that is put in the movie at this point is really eye opening.

As far as the cinematography goes the main thing that I noticed in both movies are a lot of close up shots of the actors faces. This occurs primarily when they are talking to each other but also throughout the movie by themselves and at other times. These shots add a sense of "better understanding" as to what is going through the characters mind and his emotions at that point in time. Demme would do this a lot with Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs making him look crazy and he also did it quite a bit with Ben Marco, the ex-army Captain played by Denzel Washington. There were also other close ups that involved the second most important character being Raymond Shaw played by Liev Shrieber.

With the cinematography and the way that Demme orchestrates suspense into his movies, I can't wait to see if the last film of his I choose to watch is similar, or falls short of my new found expectations of this director.

The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme

The Silence of the Lambs is a great horror movie directed by Jonathan Demme. The first thing that I want to analyze in this movie is the different ways that Demme creates suspense and mystery throughout his movie. The first way he created suspense in this movie was done at the beginning and again in the middle with the same effects during both sequences. At the start of the movie the viewer is left on the edge of their seat as we watch the main character, Clarice, walk through several security gates to speak with the crazy canabal killer locked away in a mental institute. Throughout this entire scene, Demme shows only Clarice's actions and a few other security guards but doesn't show the face of the killer until the very end. This type of suspense is repeated later in the middle of the movie when they find the body of a girl that was murdered and thrown into a river. When they finally open up the bag to examine the dead girl, we see close ups on all the characters standing around the body's faces but Demme again doesn't show us what they are all looking at until the very end. In my opinion this technique that he used to created mystery and suspense worked very well and made me really want to find out what these people were looking at.

Another time in this movie where I felt Demme did an amazing job of keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat was during the final scenes when Clarice is walking through the house in the dark with the second crazy killer right behind her with night vision on. This scene is quite hard to explain if you haven't seen the movie (why we are doing this assignment in groups I'm guessing) but it really shows just how vulnerable Clarice is as the second serial killer, Bill, waves his hand around her face in the dark without her even knowing it. You get a sense of the fear that must be going through Clarice's mind during this entire scene and the complete control that Bill has over her. In my mind this scene was the most suspenseful and interesting part of the entire movie.

The last thing I want to comment on is the great ending that I felt Demme put in to conclude this film. While it's kind of obvious that he's setting it up for a sequel, the ending really makes me think, and is one of those things that can give someone nightmares during their sleep. It's hard to explain why this ending is so great without completely ruining it for anyone who hasn't seen the film, so I won't, but if you have seen this movie I think you can relate. Overall I really enjoyed watching this movie and can't wait to see what happens in the next one.