Heathers

Heathers was one of my favorite movies we have watched all semester. It was surprising to see all the violence included in the film in that context because it isn't that way today. Back then, suicide wasn't a reoccurring thing and a movie like this wouldn't do so well today because suicide has touched so many people. Too many bad things have happened in today's society that movies like this making a comedy out of something horrible wouldn't do well. I was surprised at how raw and honest the film was and it was one of the things I enjoyed most about it.

Comparing the film to Mean Girls is interesting because they are very similar yet very different. Besides the suicide, Mean Girls is more realistic to what happens today in high schools. Yet Heathers tackled issues in a similar way that Hollywood Shuffle did. Is it truly okay to laugh at the things in this movie? Because they actually are horrible things that everyone deals with, especially bullying and suicide and the struggle to fit in/be popular. When the very fat girl, Martha I believe, tried to kill herself because it is what the popular kids were doing, I was so mortified because it is very sad in reality to think that someone might think that way. The reading states "It’s the superficially flip manner with which it treats those subjects that really stands out. Heathers doesn’t do heartwarming messages." The film didn't do heartwarming messages, but showed the audience them in a different light, same as Hollywood Shuffle did with racism. 

I think Heathers is smart and original and it is a film that I would watch again. It kept me entertained the entire time wondering what was going to happen next because it is a movie that doesn't hold back. 

Wall Street

Wall Street was the typical movie that I expected to be. The young Wall Street broker gets into bed with the wrong people and it turns his life upside down. With the predictable story line however, it is interesting to watch these gentlemen fight and do horribly things all for the trading of practically nothing- just an image.

The film also explored interesting themes, such as the American Dream. The reading talks about testing one's moral flexibility when starting one's career. Bud starts the film out by saying "that's illegal" a few times, one of those being to Gordon Gekko. But Gekko encourages him that if he wants all the things he says he does, he has to bend the rules and cheat. Bud hopes that if he does what Gordon says, one day he'll be the one giving out the demands. And who wouldn't want to be as successful as Gordon Gekko? Except for the fact that he is successful off of crushing anyone and anything in his path along with trading this image. The one thing that bothers me most about this film is that these men are going to great lengths and doing ridiculous things all for the image that maybe a company is going to have a profitable year. It is somewhat sickening to watch, yet when I imagine myself after college trying to establish my career, I wonder if I would test my morals.

While watching this film I also was comparing it to this year's The Wolf of Wall Street, and the reason I liked that movie better was because of how it was almost satirical of Wall Street. You laugh while watching Jordan Belfort rile up his broker's and have ridiculous things happening inside of the office. I think Wall Street and everything these people do is disgusting, so to watch it put into a more comedic light made it more enjoyable for myself. With Wall Street I could see where the story was going and was just bored with the predictable-ness of it all. 

VS.

Hollywood Shuffle

Hollywood Shuffle was not what I expected it to be at all. I was surprised at how large of a role the stereotypical aspect of the film would be. Bobby Taylor's struggle to fulfill his dreams of becoming an actor was clouded by the stereotypes towards the black community.



The discussions in class comparing the film to Crash was something I didn't think of before. The stereotypes laced throughout the film Crash are intense, powerful and not put in there as a comedic aspect of the film. Hollywood Shuffle was pure comedy and therefore made the stereotypical message not as serious as the scenarios in Crash. As someone mentioned in class, we all laughed because it was true but we didn't get to see the severity of how the situation has affected lives, whereas in Crash, the film is a drama and every situation is serious and realistic. With Crash being somewhat over the top with it's stereotypes, it is effective in it's message. The comedic approach in Hollywood Shuffle was another way to appeal to it's audience.
 


Another thing that I didn't like about this film was the ending. Eddie Murphy was mentioned in this film, and the director and producers of the film wanted a guy that could act like him. Eddie Murphy was clearly famous and respected in this film's time period, so why did Bobby give up so easily because his VERY first movie role wasn't a majorly serious one? I wish that he hadn't given up and slumped over to the post office. If Bobby had stuck out the role, gotten his face and name out there as an actor, then he could be on his way to fulfilling his dreams and being a respected name such as Eddie Murphy was. Sure, maybe this is somewhat far-fetched, but Bobby accepted the stereotype and gave up after 5 minutes on his first film set. I don't think Eddie Murphy reached where he is today without a little hard work and dedication, however I'm trying not to take this ending or movie as a whole too seriously.

Aliens

I usually love sci-fi movies but Aliens wasn't all I thought it was going to be. It did entertain me for the 2 hours and 15 minutes of screen time but I don't think it is a movie I would wanna watch over and over again. However, after hearing what happens to Ripley in the next movie, I would want to watch that. I wonder how they would get her to go back into space for a third time especially after these first two experiences.

I didn't make a connection between Ripley and "The Final Girl" that we explored earlier when watching A Nightmare on Elm Street, yet after it being mentioned in the reading and in class discussion, I can see how the two relate. This movie is very similar to a horror film. Its a group of people being attacked by these terrifying monster species, same as the teenagers being attacked in their sleep by Freddy Krueger. Ripley was not only the final girl but the final human in the first Alien movie, and in this one she fights off all the Zenomorphs, including the powerful "queen bee" mother.

I thought the class's discussion on the final 15 minutes of the movie was interesting because how could they not agree that the gender of the final Zenomorph mattered? I thought it was a very intense moment when we watch Ripley and the Zenomorph staring at each other, and Ripley shows her her flame thrower weapon and what it can do, and she tells the other two approaching Zenomorphs to back down. As Ripley was protecting Newt, the Zenomorph was protecting all of her eggs. I believe Ripley and Newt would have walked away fine after that moment, however Ripley couldn't not light those eggs up on fire, and the movie did need a powerful climax ending (duh).

It is obvious in this scene that the most powerful Zenomorph is a female. We can see the tubes connected to her body, producing these large eggs, and seeing a female villain wasn't popular at this time, and it hardly is today as well. Female heroes and villains are still something rare in film today, yet it has increased greatly. Ripley paved the way for other movies to follow suit and see how powerful a female hero can be. The female heroes of today's films are ones such as Katniss in The Hunger Games (go Katniss!) or unfortunately Bella Swan from Twilight (terrible female heroine role model). I also thought it was provoking to watch the female Zenomorph literally rip off her uterus (so to speak) aka those tubes to chase after Ripley. It made me question the species because how can she return to those tubes and keep producing eggs (if the planet wasn't going to be blown up). It was an interesting scene to watch and definitely my favorite moment of the film.

Blue Velvet

Oh David Lynch. I have seen Mulholland Drive, a very famous film by David Lynch, so I knew what to expect when I heard we were watching Blue Velvet. David Lynch is considered one of the great filmmakers of our time, and I can see why, yet I am not a huge fan of his films (sorry!) His films can just be too weird for me and my liking's.

I did really like the way this film was put together however. The reading discusses how Lynch uses the 50's pretense to mess with the audience's head. The postmodernism of the film where Lynch toyed with the time period in which the film took place was clever. The opening of the film couldn't have been more 1950's America. We see perfect little houses, a smiling happy firemen, and a white picket fence with red roses and a beautiful clear blue sky behind it. Then, some guy collapses in his yard while watering it while a little boy looks on. Immediately the audience knows that the film isn't what it seems like it's going to be. Bye bye to the happy images we saw because the movie was about to get weird--real weird.


The characters in this film also intrigued me. Jeffrey was an interesting lead and its hard to know what his motivation was for things he did in the film. We don't get a back story on any of our characters, and by the end of the film we don't know much more about their lives then we did before. That's one part of the film that made me not like it as much; I didn't care about the characters I was watching and there was no connection to them. Dorothy was a messed up woman because of what this Frank Booth character was doing to her, yet we don't know how she was before all this happened. The dry humping scene was by far the weirdest thing I have ever watched. Afterwards, we can see Dorothy is shook up from this, yet 5 minutes before she was victimizing Jeffrey. I don't know if Dorothy just wanted to treat someone the way she was being treated, as almost a release, or if she just enjoys weird rough sex like that. I think Jeffrey was drawn to that because it was a new experience (or so we believe since we don't know about his previous sex life) and what 20 something year old college man wouldn't be intrigued to try that with an older woman? Frank Booth was an interesting villain to say the least, but somehow I wasn't afraid of him. His weird mannerisms just took away from his villain persona. He clearly loves to say the word fuck and he just sounds idiotic while doing it. His weird obsession with blue velvet reminded me of Crispin Glover's character in Charlie's Angels and his weird obsession with female hair. And then the whole lipstick scene just didn't make sense. It was just weird thing after weird thing. And the fact that his weird oxygen breathing wasn't explained either just frustrated me. This film left me with not knowing enough about the characters I was watching.



Crispin Glover from Charlie's Angels

Overall, Blue Velvet follows David Lynch's auteur style. If we watched this film and I didn't know who the director was, I would guess Lynch because I would immediately recognize his auteur from Mulholland Drive. Lynch creates something on screen that makes people talk and enjoy his films, but I am just not a fan of his style.

The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is one of the most revered teen films of all time. Targeted toward a young audience, and even to adults, it brings a lot of parts about growing up in a certain society into one movie. It's the typical high school movie. As the reading says "The Breakfast Club's focus on cliques that come together seems like stating the obvious in today's multi-culty teen world".


Molly Ringwald's character in the film is very interesting. Everyone connects John Hughes and Molly Ringwald, especially because in the 80's they made 3 teen films together. "These are exceptional films because it is the figure of a young woman-Ringwald's character in all three- who struggles within or against the class constraints erected within their narratives. In all three films, Molly Ringwald does tend to play somewhat of the same character. In Pretty in Pink, Ringwald's character, Andie, is in a lower class than that of a popular boy, Blane. The two start a cross-class relationship, and Blane struggles with pressure from his jealous friend Steff. While in The Breakfast Club, Ringwald's character Claire is very wealthy and upper-class and she "struggles" with being so popular. Claire's character isn't as willing as Blane's to step outside her social class, and mentions that one of the reasons is because of her friends.



What angers me about The Breakfast Club is that you have faith that these 5 kids have realized something important during their 9 hour detention session together where they reveal a lot about their internal struggles with themselves and their parents. The reading says it perfectly: "The plot of the film is really that simple: after 9 hours of sharing soul-baring dialogue about sex, parents, school, and the future-not to mention dope smoking, spontaneous dancing, and evading and insulting the principal- the five go home." Yet this ambiguous ending is what makes the film somewhat exceptional. You can interpret that they've gone home and that the events of the day didn't alter their lives, and that stereotypes are inescapable, or you can have hope that maybe these kids will be different people on Monday when they walk down the hallway. Or you can realize that years and years into the future, the one day in detention isn't even remember-able (although in the magic of the film I hope this last one isn't true). I like to believe that when the 5 characters leave, they have realized something, yet I still am frustrated by the ending. After the intense circle where most of the secrets and dialogue happens, Claire asks Brian to write 1 paper for all of them-the popular girl asks the brain to do the homework-and then goes off to give Allison a makeover, because they way she looked wasn't good enough. And once Allison has her makeover, Andy seems to finally realize her beauty, while Claire goes and kisses John on the neck because "he wouldn't". At the end, Brian gets to kiss the paper, Andy kisses Allison, Claire kisses John, and you are like what the heck?! 4 of the characters leave in relationships and Brian is still stuck with academics? Frustrating. Just frustrating. Yet it all works.

 

I love John Bender.


I always wondered why he puts his fist in the air. Yes it is great but what makes him do that haha?

Desperately Seeking Susan

Desperately Seeking Susan wasn't similar to Purple Rain as I expected. This was actually a film with a story and no musical performances. One of Madonna's songs can be heard playing in a club, but that is the only reference to her musical career. Madonna's character of Susan isn't supposed to be her playing herself. The only aspect of that character that Madonna brought to it was the fashion, same as Prince as The Kid. I loved Madonna's wardrobe in this movie. It was punk chic and totally 80's fashion.




The fashion didn't surprise me, and I think that's because I expected it due to the time period and these days, Miley Cyrus is running around in jumpsuits and her underwear. Many stars have tried to attract attention through their fashion, and it works. People will talk about what they are wearing and why, and nit-pick outfits apart. This is how myself and society is used to seeing Lady Gaga:


Back in the 80's when Madonna was the first to use her sexuality as apart of her music and her career, it was big and shocking and it unsettled people. Now, its a normal thing, and its kind of sad that mostly women in the music industry believe they have to do things like this to be popular.

The storyline however did not impress me. It was so unrealistic and the irony of everything sorta pissed me off. The fact that everyone was just barely missing each other and missing solving this issue frustrated the hell out of me. But then you wouldn't have an hour and a half- to 2 hour film entertaining you. The only part of the film that kept me interested was watching Madonna on screen, and that was why this film worked.

Purple Rain

Purple Rain was a tactic for the music industry, and I can say that it was a success because it worked on me. The point of this film is to promote the music of Prince, and after watching this film, I went home and purchased multiple songs on iTunes. I couldn't get the music out of my head, and in the 80's with this film being broadcast in theaters, the soundtrack and Prince's career skyrocketed.


Being a film major, it's hard for me to not analyze the plot, even though many claim there is no plot point or characterization in this movie. I have to disagree with that. I understand the film being used as one big music video, however, there is a story line and there are characters who grow and change. The plot is about a young musician struggling to grow up and into his own. He struggles with his music career, his love life, and his family and personal drama. The plot is plenty complicated to me. The Kid had everything on the line and had to deal with it all at once. The family drama is the main source of the plot, being the one thing that domino affects onto his music career and love life. The Kid changes from the beginning of the film to the end, and it was nice and entertaining to watch. The quality of the film however is not it's strong suit. The music does carry the film, and those were the parts I enjoyed the most. The acting and production quality was not up to par and was often comedic to watch where you couldn't take most of the scenes too seriously.


Haha, I love this ^ An example of one of those ridiculous scenes.

Overall, I enjoyed this film very much and like I said, it had a job to due and it succeeded very well in that.

A Nightmare On Elm Street

FINALLY! First film we watched in this class that I had seen before and first film that I absolutely love. I might be alone in that category but there is something about this original Nightmare On Elm Street that makes me extremely happy (teenage Johnny Depp's butt in those jeans though). Through all its quirks it manages to captivate my attention for it's hour and a half run time and this is a horror film that never gets old.

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE:

^ NEVER GETS OLD :)

With this film being in the horror genre, it does follow stereotypes that can be seen in all horror films. Sex is a big one. EVERY horror film I have seen involves some scene of sex- and this one does just that. The sex scenes are always in the beginning of the films, and it's between two secondary characters. You will never see the main characters (aka the Final Girl) involved in a sexual act. One reason I always believed that there was sex in a horror film was because they already had an R rating for the scary scenes/blood/gore that came along with the genre. So hey let's throw some topless chick in there too since we can. But there are obvious underlying reasons to this when you think about the role of the Final Girl. Like we discussed in class, the Final Girl is supposed to be some pure virginal spirit, and one of the reasons she is the Final Girl and lives till the end is because she is smarter than the rest- aka she won't be having premarital sex because she's too intelligent and busy worrying about defeating the killer. While the "sluttier" friend is busy distracting herself with sex, she usually gets offed by the killer, including her boyfriend or her choice for one night stand. It also portrays the message that this secondary female character gets killed because she is having sex, telling the audience she deserved to die for doing that. Kind of a scary message to send to a young audience when it comes to sex.



When it comes to our Final Girl, Nancy, she has all the qualities that the Final Girl is supposed to, according to our reading: "she's intelligent, watchful, level-headed; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the patterns and extent of the threat; whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation. We register her horror as she stumbles upon the corpses of her friends. She is by any measure the slasher film's hero". This is true of every Final Girl in any horror film I have seen. The character to survive until the end is almost always a female, not a male, because the killer is male and terrorizes the female in sexual ways. Hence Nancy in the bathtub and the phone with Freddy's tongue coming through it:


 Truly disgusting, as it's supposed to be.
Nancy is the typical Final Girl, and takes on masculinity to outsmart Freddy in the end (setting him on fire and locking him in the basement, yet still screaming to her father for help, telling Freddy she takes back all the energy she gave him). What I thought was interesting is when Nancy figures out that the way she can defeat Freddy is by taking her energy back from him that she put into him, it's an idea that Glen (Johnny Depp in all his sexiness eating a cheeseburger) gave to her in the midst of the film. Instead of listening to his idea, she continues to try to solve the mystery and defeat Freddy on her own. I love the open ending of the film, where you think Nancy has succeeded, yet she seems to be stuck in the dream world of Freddy. It doesn't leave the audience with a straightforward answer, which is something a horror film should do because it increases how uncomfortable we are with the situation, while also leaving it open to making sequels (which is what happened although they all suck compared to the original).

One of the things I love most about this film is that it is hardly scary, and mostly just fun to watch. I enjoy Nancy's hair a lot:

Check out all the puffiness !

And I enjoy this first full picture we see of Freddy in the film with his stilt like arms:



This film is always fun to watch around Halloween and truly gets me into the spirit, along with the 1, 2 Freddy's coming for you song.

WarGames

It's entertaining to watch a film such as WarGames in the year 2014 due to it being centered around the internet. In 2014, the internet is something we all carry around in our pockets and is the size of one's hand, instead of being these big bulky machines with tons of wires and connections. There were a few things about the film that I found interesting, but other than that I think the film is quite absurd.

1) I love the way they characterized David Lightman as a typical "computer nerd" stereotype that we all follow. Just as in E.T., the name of the main characters reflects the plot of the film. The last name Lightman just sounds technological and reminds me of the word 'light speed'. The official definition of light speed is: the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. Not exactly computer related but I think of that every time I read the name David Lightman. Here is a picture of light speed: 
To me, this picture reminds me so much of all the different color cables and wires that used to be involved with computer technology back in the 80's.

 Also, as stated in the reading "The WarGames Scenario", "Lightman spent much of his life exiled in his locked room, unsupervised by his parents, playing on his home computing system, unmotivated by high school academic and extracurricular activities." These are all stereotypical characteristics of a computer nerd. David doesn't have any friends, is late to school because he's busy playing an arcade game and then receives an F on a test, and his parents are so clueless to everything going on in David's room.

2) The film foreshadowed the ending which angers me! When David first comes across Joshua and the computer "games", he types in Global Thermonuclear War, and Joshua replies with "Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?" In the ending, after Joshua learns that there is no way to win the global thermonuclear war game, he suggests again a nice game of chess. This computer system is supposed to be so complex and so it is during the film, constantly learning from it's mistakes and it seems impossible to stop. But then the way to stop the machine and save the world is through a game! It angers me that the solution is so easy yet no one thinks of it right away.


3) The reading also points out that WarGames famously concluded that the "only winning move" in Global Thermonuclear War was "not to play". I thought this to be quite interesting that they threw this message into the film, considering the time this movie came out was when Reagan was president and a lot was at stake with nuclear war. While WarGames introduced many to the world of the internet, it also was influencing audience's thoughts on war.

That being said, I never felt the danger from this film. While watching it, I was never unsure about the conclusion of the film, that David would somehow stop Joshua from creating World War III and everyone would live happily ever after. That took the excitement out of the film for me as well. I didn't like these characters or sympathize with them ever, so I honestly didn't care what was to happen to them. I related to Falken in the movie when at first he really did not care that Joshua was going to blow everything up. In many ways I didn't like this film, and thought that overall it was stupid and that the events occuring in the film were stupid. As I stated, WarGames just seems too absurd to make an impact on me.

Blade Runner: Tourists off the bus visiting a film noir ride

This was my first time viewing Blade Runner and as a video production major I loved the cinematography and set design of the entire film as everyone else seems to be impressed with. The film takes place in a world that looks pretty badass, and I wouldn't mind taking a visit to that world. But to live there permanently as Harrison Ford has to? That, I'm not so sure about.

The reading discusses the motivation behind the city, and some people actually hope that one day L.A. will look like Blade Runner. The city is a work of art, and many artists, environmental designers, illustrators, photographers and filmmakers all tend to use this film as a means for future designs and developments. The reading states "But the hum of that Vangelis score against the skyline of L.A. in 2019, as the film opens, continues to leave a strange impact on artists and filmmakers". The score against the cinematography was my favorite aspect of this film. The story didn't impress me so much, as there have been many robot movies before and the pace of the film was slow. But I enjoyed looking at the film and just taking in the entire look and feel of the world it's set in, over what was actually happening between the characters.



The only part of the story line that interests me is that fact that we never actually know who is a Replicant and who is human. In many ways, Harrison Ford's character is the most "robotic" of them all, and that most of the replicants have more human feelings than he does. I don't think the replicants were exact robots, but I do think that they are clones of other people, seeing as they bleed and could feel and do many of the things that humans can do. The glint in their eyes every now and then is one of the only suggestions of actual mechanics being under their skin. I could see Harrison Ford's character being either replicant or human. As the hero in the film, he is a pretty dark and depth character, and I think people take that as he is a bad guy and isn't human. Just because he isn't the nicest, warmest person, does not mean he is not human. The love scene between him and Rachel showed me the internal struggle he was having with himself and his feelings. He clearly was conflicted about his job and his emotions towards this replicant. His job is to kill all replicants and instead he is falling in love with this one. That makes a guy become a little angry within himself and his conflictions came across in his aggresive actions. I don't think he forced Rachel to do anything that she didn't want to, as some others seemed to believe that. Also, if you have seen Harrison Ford in his other films, he is never portrayed as a romantic guy so don't set those standards up for him.



Blade Runner is a beautiful film, but that is one of the only things it has going for it. The story isn't that impressive, but the set design, lighting, and cinematography is one to never forget.