Gangster films

comes to mafia movies, the core values each film shares still stays true. The consistent rush of criminal activity and bad guys looking like good guys are all the same qualities that keep the content of the films strong. But, the genre itself has continued to grow, both through techniques as well as the expansion of subjects to be successful in. The mafia genre took off around 1931, with the film Little Caesar. Even though it was not the first mafia film ever released, Little Caesar brought a…

Ahjussi (아저씨), also known by it’s English title The Man from Nowhere, is an action packed, thriller film starring Won Bin as the movie’s protagonist, Cha Tae Sik. The movie was released on August 4, 2010 and was directed by Lee Jeong Bum. The story begin with Cha Tae Sik, the owner of a pawnshop, who lives by himself and leads a quiet life. He is a quiet man and does not have any friends except for a little girl, Somi, who lives next door with her mom. Somi frequents the pawn shop, often selling…

popular actor at the time, to play Duke Mantee in the film adaptation. However, Leslie Howard, a main cast member and production rights holder, was adamant on Bogart reprising his role as Mantee. Howard wouldn’t budge. Warner Brothers cast Humphrey Bogart and it turned out to be one of his most memorable roles in his career. The…

of gangster life to the big screen. It shows not only the criminal side, but also the emotions that the life comes with. Watching the movie may feel like being on a rollercoaster. With all the ups, downs, and surprising turns in every corner. Some turns leaving you rigor from shock, and others leaving you seduced by the lifestyle. While adding in the accurate depiction of life in West Philadelphia. Being from Philly myself, watching this film feels like a night out on the weekends. This film…

Back in Lesson Two, we discussed how film noir evolved from the Romance genre, and focused on obsessive love and femme fatales. The term “film noir”, however, is considered a cinematic term to encompass a whole genre of Hollywood crime dramas. There has been debate over the years about whether film noir is it’s own genre, or whether it’s simply a “style” of film, but I personally prefer to think of it as it’s own genre. The main reason for this is that there are so many different types of…

In film, a genre is a way of putting movies into categories where they share similar narrative elements. Auteurism, as previously mentioned, is when a filmmaker’s distinctive style and personal vision is reflected in their work. In the New Hollywood era genre and auteurism started to intersect due to the fact that auteurs were able to make their mark in genre films. They were able to put their personal spin on a formulaic genre film. Coppola did a lot of what we would call genre films over the…

the 1930’s are in black in white, this era was labeled “The Golden Age of HollyWood.” This was right after that of the 1920’s silent films. The 1930s were known for their sound and color revolutions. There also became more genres of films such as; musicals, historical biopics, comedies, western films, gangster films, newspaper- reporting films, social realism films, and horror to name a few. The advancements of 1930’s special effects in movies had a major influence on the movie industry. Some…

My topic, D.W Griffith, was a man that very few people know about. He was one of the founding fathers of modern film making and one of the first people to add camera effects to his work. However, he had humble beginnings because he was born on a farm in Kentucky on January 22, 1875. His full name was David Llewelyn Wark Griffith. His parents were Jacob and Mary Griffith, they met each other after the Civil War, but during the war his father fought on the side of the Confederates as a…

Film noir, in the most traditional sense, is a genre of cinematographic film notable by a tone of pessimism and fatalism. From the forties and fifties - when the genre was first identified with American detective or thriller films - film noir has since experienced a resurgence at the dawn of the new century, often dubbed as “neo-noir” films. One film in the neo-noir category is Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino. The title, “pulp fiction,” owes itself to the “cheap fiction magazines…

Dogs is Quentin Tarantino’s first film as a director and it became really huge. The film was made partly by reappropriating Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire, but it was better than City on Fire and became a classical one. While Ringo Lam’s film City on Fire was a typical Hong Kong feature film which included gangster loyalty, cops’ infighting and beauties, Reservoir Dogs was more like an artwork, a masterpiece. It jumped out of the threadbare pattern of a heist film by making dauntless innovations…