The Dark Knight rises is a last movie of the batman trilolgy.  This movie is directed by Christopher Nolan, and stairs Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine.  The story takes place in gotham city years after the batman had killed mayor Harvey Dent.  Batman is know seen as an outlaw because the city was unaware of what really happened to dent.  Throughout all of this, an international terrorist named Bane rises.  Bane eventually captures Bruce Wayne and imprisons him.  He uses Wayne's resources to control the city.  Bane also takes Wayne's nuclear reactor.  After escaping the Batman steals the bomb and releases it in far in the ocean.  This act saved the city.



One thing that really stood out in this movie was the action scenes.  The first example of this is the opening scene with Bane.  Bane was captured by FBI agents, but Bane orders his men to crash the plane,  This scene was shot in a very interesting way.  The viewer was unaware of how Bane was going to escape.  Then the camera pans out and you see Bane's men taking the plane down.  This scene was a good way to start the movie.  Another good action scene is when Bane is robbing the stock exchange.  Once again it seems that its impossible for Bane to escape.  Bane was surrounded and he comes out of the bank in a motorcycle.  The hostages he's holding prevents the police from shooting him,  This scene was also shot in an interesting way.  The camera followed the bank robbers on the bike.  This allowed the viewers to see a car chase and see Batman come out of no where,  How the movie was shot impacted the drama in the scenes.

Another thing that I liked in this movie was how they portrayed the characters.  I thought they did a good job with Bane and Catwoman.  There characters were similar to the characters in the comics.  Catwoman was a great thief.  The movie shows her breaking into batman's house and stealing Bruce's mom jewels.  Anne Hathaway breaks into the safe and then does many acrobatic flips to escape.  This established Catwoman as a ligament character.  Bane was also a good character.  Bane caused terror successfully in many ways.  His character was feared throughout the whole movie.

Moneyball
Recently I have watched the movie Moneyball.  This is the story based of the Michael Lewis book about the 2002 Oakland Athletic's.  This team went to deep into the playoffs, but lost many superstars.  They lost many players because Oakland has a very low salary cap.  Billy Bean had to find a way to create a good team, with not a lot of money.  He accomplished this by using a system that relied only on stats.  By doing this he created a team that set the American Record for consecutive wins, and went to the A.L.D.S.

One thing that I liked about this movie was Brad Pitt's acting.  I thought that Pitt did a good Job displaying emotion throughout the movie.  He really made you feel the stress that he had.  At the beginning of the season Oakland was doing bad, and you can really see how invested Pitt was in the part.  His character was consistently battling the feeling of failing in the major leagues.  Sometimes he would freak out and have emotional breakdowns, but at the same time he was strategical throughout the movie.  At points in the movie Pitt seemed more like a coach than a general manager of the team. Pitt taught his players little things about technique, this really changed how the team played.  Pitt played bean in a perfect way.

Another great thing about this movie was Beans relationship with his daughter.  I thought that this was interesting because bean had to have poise.  Bean would consistently have to deal with his stress around her.  She would ask him questions like "are you going to get fired."  Pitt had to show how difficult times were while creating a good relationship.  He also had to deal with the fact that he and his wife were divorced.  Bennet Miller always had Bean picking up her daughter from his Ex wife.  Once again the viewer saw the poised emotion in Beans character.  He had to deal with many challenging things, and he became successful again.

2) The first draft of the title for Citizen Kane was "The American."  What can we make of this?  In what ways does the movie comment on America or the American Dream?  


I think that "The American" would be a good title for this movie.  I think this would be a good title because the movie represents american culture, and the American dream.  I think this represents american culture because of the drama.  In Citizen Kane you see affairs, death, and competitive politics.  All of these things are still in dramas today.  Also you see Kane live the American Dream.  He begins poor, but then works hard and earns wealth.  This shows that America is the land of opportunity.  Kane lived the life of a good american.  

A movie that I have watched recently is Killing Them Softly.  This movie is a noir crime film with Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, and Ray Liotta.  This movie is about an illegal poker game that gets robbed by two poor criminals. It all fails when Johnny's partner later reveals that they robbed the game.  This movie had some good aspects, and some bad.

The main thing that annoyed me about this movie was the acting of the main characters.  Johnny Amato (Vincent Curatola) didn't do a good job playing this role.  Throughout the movie it was hard to tell what kind of character he was trying to be.  At some points it seemed like he was a nervous wreck, and other times he seemed under control.  Also his dialogue seemed very scripted, and not authentic.  Also the character Russel (I don't know if it was intentional) was so annoying.  He made a ton of pointless lines and was an eye sore to the viewer.


Other than that the movie was pretty solid.  Brad Pitt was a BA character.  His character was sharp and knew what he was doing.  It was entertaining watching his character investigate what happened.  Also watching him interact with James Gandolfini was good.  Seeing these two successful actors work well defanitly made the movie better.  The best scene of the movie was when they were robbing the game.  I liked this scene because I liked seeing all these characters being taken from.  The players witnessing the game added fuel to the fire.


Overall, I liked this movie.  I thought it had a lot of potential, it could of been better.  I would give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

I recently watched the Movie Django Unchained, and thought it was a very good movie.  It is similar to most of Tarantino movies.  It included many of his signature violent scenes, and crazy plot twist.  This movie's cast was also stacked with actors like Jamie Fox, Leonardo Decaprio, Christoph Waltz, and Samuel L. Jackson.  I enjoyed watching this movie for many reasons.


The first reason why I liked this movie was because of the images Tarantino created.  This interesting western had many shots of the big plantations in the south.  The plantations seemed very realistic, and it made you understand the anger of Django's Character.  Also the action scenes were very entertaining.  Waltz and Foxx worked together well going through the country catching criminals.  It was interesting to see Django become a precise shooter.



Another reason why I was of a fan of this movie was the supporting characters.  Leonardo Decaprio did an awesome job being the plantation owner.  His character as Calvin J. Candie was cool because even though he was evil, he seemed happy.  This attitude angered Waltz's character and led to both of their deaths.  Also Samuel L Jackson's character was hilarious.  He made the audience laugh with his funny voice.

I think this is Tarantino's second best movie behind Pulp Fiction.  I would give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars, and think everyone should watch it.

Formal Film Study

For my formal Film Study I Have chosen to do Martin Scorsese movies involving crime.

The first movie that I looked at was the movie Goodfellas.  This film is the story of Henry Hill and his rise and fall in the Lucchese crime family.  This movie accurately shows how gangsters lived their life, and showed real crimes that they pulled off.  The movie was based of a book called "wiseguys" and accurately portrayed these interesting characters.



The second film that I watched was the Wolf of Wallstreet.  This movie is the story of Jordan Belfort who became a stockbroker, and then started his own firm.  He became extremely rich, because his company used penny stocks.  This is just one of the illegal ways that he made his fortune.  Eventually Jordan becomes greedy, and the drugs and police eventually put him in jail.



The third film that I viewed for my film study was Casino.  This is story of Sam Rothstein, and his control of the day to day operations in the Tangiers Casinos.  He ran these company similar to how a mob runs his gang.  The mob owned all of these casinos illegally, and Sam and his crew ran the operation.  The FBI eventaully gets involved, and Sam ends his career.




One big characteristic of these Scorsese movies are the pace.  All of these movies are clearly fast paced, and get through a lot of scenes.  One reason why Scorsese might have done this is because he wanted to show how fast these characters rose to power.  The characters talk fast, a lot of things are going on, and the editing has many many short scenes that make the movie fly by.  Another reason why Scorsese might do this is because the fast pace of the movie works well with the criminal activity. Theres a scene in casino that shows this well.  This scene shows Rothstein going through his day to day operations.  The camera follows him around, and you understand quickly how Sam works these complicated Casinos.  You really understand his character better when you see this scence.  Scorseses movies are also known for their music, so the music blends together well when the movie is seeming to go fast.  Another reason Scorsese might go so fast is because the criminals he was portraying went through life fast.  These characters all wanted money and power, and did whatever they had to do quickly to get it.  The fast pace of these movies really helped you understand the characters lives well.




Another common theme in all of these movies was a clear dramatic downfall of the protagonist in the films.  This makes sense because all of these movies were based of real events.  Scorsese does this so well because he makes you understand the drama in all the situations.  He makes you fell the stress and anxiety that the character is going through.  One scene that represents this well is when Jordan Belfort gets in an Explosive fight with his wife, while on house arrest.  You could really start to see this successful character losing it in this scene.  He was on drugs, beating his wife, and yelling and screaming.  Not only was Belfort in a lot of trouble, but you could clearly see him going crazy.  This is similar to a scene in Goodfellas.  When Henry gets bailed out of jail he knows that he going to die if he does not sell a big bag of cocaine.  When he finds out that his wife threw it away, he starts to yell and scream.  These scenes very similar, and made the viewer feel the same way.  The viewer feels a lot of emotion when they see these interesting characters lose it.