The Godfather

The Godfather was a very interesting movie. However, I did not enjoy this movie because I found it gorry and boring. I did not like how they used gore in the movie. One instance of gore is when they chopped off the horses head and placed it in the mobster's bed while he was sleeping. I found this too gruesome because it portrays cruelty towards animals.
The Godfather bored me because the plotline was too hard to follow. There was too much dialogue. I also thought there could be more action in this movie. There was very little action, which made it hard to focus and enjoy the film, also making it hard to capture my attention towards the film.
I do, however, realize that this movie was made to depict life in mafia families, and, in that respect it was well done.

Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke was a very good movie. First of all, one thing I liked about was that it was in color. Almost every movie we have watched so far, except for Peter Jackson's King Kong, was in black and white. It was nice to actually see an older movie in color. Plus the story line was very good, so it helped to keep the class focused and made it easier to understand what was going on in the movie. In the beginning Luke was found cutting off the heads of parking meters drunk by a policeman. He was then taken to do two years in prison. While Luke was in prison he had to call all the prison guards "boss." At first Luke stayed calm and cool while in prison. He would do all the work he was told to do without argument. He was also taking bets a lot no matter how impossible they seemed. He ate 50 raw eggs in only one hour. But after he started spending time in the box for no reason he started running away multiple times. The guards then kept beating up Luke and making him work extra hard to make sure he wouldn't try to escape again. After the second time Luke tried to escape they beat him up and warned him that he wouldn't try to escape anymore. But Luke tried to run away for a third time and this time there was no warning. Luke was shot in a church and killed. This movie was a very good movie overall, and I think the ending to the movie is the biggest reason it was so great.

Sound Vs. No Sound

There are major differences in watching the shower scene with sound and without sound. With sound the scene has so much more emotion than without it. Sound has the ability to influence the audience's emotions in a movie. In a scary scene, such as the shower scene in Psycho, the sound and music are what create the suspense. Without sound a movie is so much more boring and there is no suspense at all. What makes a movie good is the tension added by music and sound, otherwise a movie is hard to follow and gives the audience no emotion at all. For instance, the class viewed the shower scene in Psycho first without sound, then without sound. There were major differences in this scene when sound is added. The thrilling music gave the shower scene the thrill and suspense for the audience the way the musics volume was increasing higher and higher to make the attack from Norman more shocking to the audience. Plus, when Marion is getting stabbed in the shower, the sound of her getting stabbed also gives it thrill. When the class viewed the scene without sound the thrill and suspense were lost. There was no music to change your emotion, and you couldn't hear the noise of the knife stabbing Marion. Without music this scene would not have been the same and the audience would have been lost, especially since this is the turning point of the movie.

Psycho 1960

I think the movie, Psycho is the best movie we've seen so far. Compared to the other two movies we have watched, King Kong and Casablanca, Psycho is much better. Psycho may be in black and white and not color, but it was much easier to understand the plot of the story than King Kong and Casablanca. In the beginning Marion stole $40,000 hoping to get away. She went to trade her car in for a new car and was running away not letting anybody know where she was running to and that she was running away. In this movie Marion started it off wearing all white clothing. But once she stole the money she changed from wearing white clothing to wearing all black clothing. She was feeling guilty and looking at herself in a mirror trying to decide whether or not to go through with taking the $40,000 and running. She eventually decides to go through with it and she goes right away before changing her mind. While she was driving along there was a bad rain storm, and she decides to turn into a motel for the night and continue in the morning. The motel was in a quiet area and was very small. The owner of the motel was Norman Bates, who seems like a nice person at first. The name of the motel was Bates Motel. The motel was sitting right next to Norman and his mother's house. When Marion checks in to the motel she is placed in room number one and Norman asks her to have dinner with him. He goes to make sandwiches and you can here him arguing with his mother about having dinner with Marion. He does go through with having dinner with Marion and they eat in the parlor. During the conversation Norman seems like a nice normal guy until he says that a Mother is a son's best friend. That's when you start to learn that Norman has issues and is not normal at all. While Marion and Norman are talking the camera angle is eye level with Marion and the camera has an angle pointing upwards at Norman to show Norman having power and Marion being threatened. Then when Marion goes to her room to take a shower and go to sleep Norman spies on her as she is getting into the shower. Next a person goes into the bathroom while Marion is taking a shower, who you are supposed to think is Norman's Mother. This person then stabs her multiple times, although you never see the knife go into Marion. Marion falls to the floor and bleeds to death. Norman then goes and wraps the body and puts it in the car and pushes it into the swamp. They send a detective to find Marion and he ends up getting stabbed too. Again at this point you are supposed to believe it is Norman's Mother that stabs the man. Then finally Marion's sister and boyfriend go to the motel to find out what happened to Marion. Marion's sister tries to find Norman's mother in the house and finds out it's his mother's skeleton and Norman tries to stab her, the boyfriend saves her. This movie is a great horror movie for this time period.

Casablanca

I did not enjoy watching the movie, Casablanca. It was a very boring and very slow moving movie. There was not much action at all, and I do not like romance movies. It is just like every other romance movie in the past and seen today. There was way too much drama, and very little and very fake action. This movie was very boring and hard to pay attention to. The drama made it boring, and Rick's quote: "Here's looking at you kid," got old after hearing it for the second time. I don't understand how that quote is so famous and such a great quote. I didn't find anything special about that quote. I understand it is the beginning of love and drama movies, but it was a movie I would not recommend to anyone except for people that are older. I also did not like that the movie was in black and white. I do not like movies in black and white, and I don't understand how anyone can like movies in black and white. Black and white movies are too plain and boring to me. This movie was difficult for me to pay attention to, especially since it is a drama movie and I don't like drama movies. The movie, Casablanca, started off with a long shot of the cafe sign, then the camera tilts down and goes into the restaurant as if you are a customer. I thought they did a great job with the beginning with the camera shots and dolly movement. I also like the way they introduced Rick by showing him signing a form with a close-up on his hand, then moving to his cigarette being brought to his face, and then finally showing Rick's face. Plus I thought they did a good job of making Ilsa look shorter than Rick, even though she is taller than him in real life. I did not realize this until it was pointed out because of the way she slouches down when she sits down. I also thought they did a good job with the plane because it is actually a small sized model of a plane and they had to use midgets in the scene to make the plane look like an average sized plane. I also did not notice this until it was pointed out, so they did a great job of making the plane look like an average sized plane. And even though the ending brought closure to the film, I did not like it. It ended with Ilsa going off with Victor on the plane with Victor completely blind about how Ilsa actually loves Rick, then Rick getting away with murder. This film was the beginning of drama movies and is a classic, but I did not enjoy it at all and I do not recommend it to anyone my age.

new king kong review

I enjoyed Peter Jackson's film, King Kong. I enjoyed it because it had a very gripping plot. The plot was very interesting because there was a lot of action in the movie. They did a great job with the special effects. It was very realistic, especially after watching the 1933 version of King Kong. The 2005 version of King Kong was terrific. Even though it was a remake of the old version of King Kong, the new version was also made as his own version with the modern technology of today. The beginning of Peter Jackson's King Kong was boring and slow, though. In the 1933 version of King Kong, they got to the action quicker than in Peter Jackson's King Kong. In the beginning Peter Jackson was trying to show what that era was like and introduce the characters, but it was slow and boring. But once they boarded the ship the movie got more interesting to me and I was ready for a breathtaking adventure. The next scenes were action-packed and spectacular. The way King Kong fought the Tyrannosaurus Rexes, the huge bats, and especially the airplanes was amazing. Peter Jackson did a great job directing this movie. The acting was very good, special effects were great, and the way the movie sucked you right in and got you interested. It was a great way to recreate the original King Kong and make it better with todays technology. I don't think their is a director out there that could've done a better job recreating King Kong than Peter Jackson. He was the perfect director for the new King Kong. I hope that sometime in the future another director can try to recreate one of Peter Jackson's great movies to honor the way Peter Jackson did with King Kong.

King Kong Review

I thought the original movie of King Kong was a terrible movie overall. I wasn't interested in the movie from the start, especially because it was in black and white. The special effects were so crude. But then I had to stop and think this was film making in its original form. It was easy to tell that King Kong was a miniature figurine. The visualization of his movements were choppy due to having to take pictures of the figure for every millimeter they moved it, but that was the best technology for film making that they had at the time. Plus the gas bombs and bullets being fired out of guns were so fake because the gas bombs just had ordinary smoke come out when they threw them. And you did not see any bullets being fired because it just showed smoke whenever they fired a weapon and they used sound effects when the planes were firing their weapons at King Kong on top of the building. It does show you, though, how far technology has come for film making since the 1930s. It was obvious whenever they were in front of a background screen. You could tell by the way the background looked and the way the props and people looked whenever a background screen was used. You could also tell when a scene was filmed separately. When Anne was going to be sacrificed to King Kong you could tell that was filmed separately. I also thought the acting was terrible. The actors were overly dramatic. It was like they took stage acting and brought it into film making. They used dramatic gestures, and were too dramatic with the way they talked and spoke to each other. But this movie helped to start special effects that led to how great special effects are today. At this time period people probably thought the special effects were amazing and were probably sucked into watching the movie. Even though I didn't like this movie, it is a great movie for this time period. One thing I thought they did a great job with were the shot angles they used in this movie. They pointed the camera up to show fear and intimidation, they pointed the camera down to show whatever is looking down is bigger and more powerful. Plus whatever they look down at is shown as smaller, weaker, or possibly even a character with a smaller and weaker personality. Overall I did not like the movie, but the technology in that movie was the latest and greatest of its time.