Law Abiding Citizen

In the essay Casablanca:cult movies and intertextual collage, from the collection of essays titled Travels of Hyper Reality,Umberto Eco has taken the case of the 1940’s popular American movie Casablanca,directed by Michael Curtis to explain how and why it gained the status of a ‘cult’ movie.He has given a number of reasons in the essay as to why people liked it so much.Eco begins by making it clear that the movie according to him is not a very artistic movie and that despite that the movie has…

Imperfect movies: example Dogma 95 – The Idiots and other perfect imperfections. Are planned imperfect movies still imperfect? Rankings and Top 100's of the best movies of all time are very popular. Many sites on the internet offer statistics and numbers about box office takings and cinema attendance. But not only numbers are important. Besides questions of taste, there are a few characteristics for a successful movie. Costumes, camera handling, scenery and acting are just a few of this…

On February 26th, 2017, Barry Jenkins' sophomoric feature, Moonlight, received the highest accolade of Best Picture, from one of the most prestigious ceremonies to celebrate film, the Academy Awards. In accomplishing two inaugural milestones, the first all-black cast to win such high regard, and the first LGBTQ-topic to be awarded Best Picture, Moonlight in context proves to be a memorable classic in performance, box office (for an independent feature), and universal critical acclaim. However,…

The film, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” directed by Sergio Leone, the father of Spaghetti Westerns, is considered one of the best Westerns of all time. It launched Clint Eastwood into stardom as, “The Man with No Name” also known as Blondie “The Good”, through his interactions with his co-stars Lee Van Cleef, Angel Eyes “The Bad”, and Eli Wallach, Tuco “The Ugly”. The hero here, Blondie, is not the typical hero that you would expect, but through an analysis of several scenes, one begins to…

In Cléo de 5 à 7, Varda follows more closely to the filmmaking techniques that are used by most classic Hollywood cinema. The only major difference, other than the context of the film, would be Varda’s use of temporality by having a film set in a two hour time period and of trying to keep the action of the film almost in the exact lifetime of two hours. It takes the idea of Classical Hollywood continuity to an extreme. Another difference is that Cléo takes on more French political issues such as…

Citizen Kane is a drama film about a reporter’s venture into finding out the meaning behind the word “rosebud” which is the last word of Charles Foster Kane before he died. This film is considered as one of the greatest films ever. This masterpiece was created with $839,727 as its estimated budget. Citizen Kane was directed by Orson Welles and was released in 1941. Welles also produced and wrote the screenplay of this film. He also starred as the main character in Citizen Kane. The film starts…

The movie “Gone with the Wind”, released in 1939, is considered one of the greatest love stories and even one of the best movies of all time. The story adapted from the novel written by Margaret Mitchell won ten academy awards, became the highest earning film and is still technically the greatest grossing film in the cinema history. Hattie McDaniel even became the first african american oscar winner thanks to this classic of the romantic genre. In a way, “Gone with the Wind” seems like one of…

It is not often that I find myself cheering for the liars and thieves of the world in the same way that I would a superhero. Nevertheless, director Steven Soderbergh’s hit film, “Ocean’s Eleven” accomplishes this feat in a 2001 remake of the original 1960's film which starred Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. The modern take stays true to suave Hollywood glamour in using today’s brightest stars; a list that includes George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts in the leading roles. The…

The movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, directed by John Ford seems to greatly stand out from other movies released during this era. Many elements were compiled to make this movie unique. The backbone of the film stems from camera elements. John Ford used the camera elements of camera work as well as costumes and make-up to accurately portray his vision of the film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, incorporates several different varieties of…

ideas are, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin and “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden. In both pieces the author brings out a situation where a person is unhappy with their life and how the people around them live. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” tells an amazing story of a perfect city that gets all the great things in life at the cost of a little boy suffering. As well in the “Unknown Citizen” Auden tells a story about a government official reviewing a unhappy man’s…