Cool Hand Luke

I found Cool Hand Luke to be a little bit slow, bit overall a good movie. After Luke got into his fight with Dragline the plot picked up a little bit. Until then there wasn’t much going on, just the plot being set up really. I think everyone can relate to Luke a little bit by trying to push authority. You really start to like Luke throughout the movie. His personality is one that you can really look up to as someone you aspire to be. His never give up attitude and leadership qualities are really inspiring. You want him to knockout Dragline, to eat those 50 eggs and to escape. The egg scene was a pretty interesting scene I thought. If you really look at the whole scheme of the movie, it doesn’t seem to have any real significance to the movie, but yet it is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie. Another great scene is when all the inmates are tarring the road. Just the way Luke was able to pull them all together to complete the road was really cool. Even though I found myself rooting for Luke the whole movie, I thought the ending was pretty good. I think if Luke ending up escaping and living happily ever after it would have made the movie too cliché and cheesy. Paul Newman did a great job playing Luke too. He seemed like the perfect actor for the part.

Psyco

I was very excited to start watching this movie. I had never seen it before but I have heard many times that it is a very good movie and I was not disappointed. Although different than what we normally think of horror movies, it still is a classic. This just goes to show that you don't need lots of violence or gore to make a scary movie. Alfred Hitchcock really shone through in directing this film. Just like all of his other movies, it was suspenseful and had a bit of a twist. The acting was really really good too. Anthony Perkins did a great job not only playing one character but two. The last scene was easily the best scene in my opinion. The whole speech was very well done and his facial expressions just added to the creepiness. The ending of the skull superimposed over Norman’s face has to be one of the best closing scenes ever. Not only was that an amazing effect for its day, it is still considered very creepy and cool in the modern day. Probably the most well known scene from Psycho, the shower scene, really didn’t impress me all that much. It didn’t have any sense of realism to it. The lack of blood in the tub or on Marion and also the fact that you never see the knife actually stab her were the major faults.

I was surprised to learn about all the foreshadowing and symbolism this movie had. Everything from the shadows to the paintings had specific meaning to the movie. I think it is very interesting how the crew took the time to plan every single detail of almost every scene. It seemed like everything had significance.

Casablanca

I had never seen Casablanca before we watched it in class. I was excited to see it because I’ve heard many times that it’s a classic film. I was not very excited though when I found out it was supposed to be a love story. When we started watching the movie I was surprised because the romance wasn’t like I expected. There was more to the story and the romance almost seemed to be a background story. One thing I definitely didn’t like about the movie was the lack of settings. 95% of the movie seemed to take place in Rick’s club, which got old and boring fast. Also, I found that even though the song As Time Goes By was kind of a big part in building the relationship between Rick and Ilsa up, I found that it got annoying after the first few times. Ingrid Bergman did a good job of covering up the height issue, when she wasn’t standing in a trench. I never noticed throughout the movie the differing heights either. I did notice the part where Rick is about to get on the train and suddenly he is completely dry. The ending I must say, took me by surprise. It shows that Rick really still did love Ilsa and did what was best for her by sending Victor on the plane instead of himself. It is also pretty amazing how quickly they managed to take the film idea, shoot it and release it. I think it’s cool how they really wanted to take a real life event that happened only a few months ago and turn it into a love story.

King Kong 2005

I felt that the new King Kong was much better than the first one. One major reason for this is the special effects. It’s hard not to be amazed with a movie that uses special effects like this one did. The environment, creatures and action all seemed so real. One thing I also noticed while watching this movie was the influence of Peter Jackson on the film. What I noticed the most was the scenery and the natives. They for some reason gave me a feel of something that could be in the Lord of the Rings, which Jackson also directed. I not only liked the movie because of the special effects, but also because of the changes in the story Jackson made. The change that I really liked the most was the fact that Kong seemed more human and story between Anne and him was much more built up. I feel like this was the better way to do it because the movie is titled King Kong and I feel like, in the first movie, Kong didn’t play as big of a part as he should have; the first movie revolved more around Jack and Anne. One thing I found interesting was they changed Jack’s character around in this newer version. Now, he’s a playwright who gets tricked into staying on the boat by Jack Black. Choosing Jack Black to play Carl was a bit of a risky move in my opinion. He is known for doing more comical movies but I think in the end, he pulled off this more serious role fairly well. Although the movie was roughly three hours long, I didn’t mind all the extra action and scene, there really was never a dull moment throughout the whole movie. For example, I thought the whole storyline with Jimmy was worked into the movie well and also the extra dinosaur and spider scenes were great. Overall, this was a very good movie and much better than the first in my opinion.

King Kong Reaction

Before we started watching this movie, I was expecting too much. I honestly didn't think it would be a lot different than some of the first silent movies that we watched. I will admit that I was surprised though.This is definitely a revolutionary movie. Of course the effects weren’t nearly as good as modern ones but I didn’t expect them to be as advanced as they were. Learning how complicated making the scenery was for them was also pretty crazy. I couldn’t believe that those guys had that much patience to make all of the trees and bushes, then paint even more background scenery and then after that have to line up every shot to make it all appear to be on the same plane. Another thing that I thought was interesting was the fact that Kong changed so much throughout the movie. Not only did his height change, but his face was also constantly being remolded and touched up. The stop motion method of filming is really impressive. The fact that for every one second of film, 24 pictures had to be taken to create that one second of film is astounding. The patience it must have taken to take a picture and move Kong thousands of times really shows how into this film the directors were. I found the whole ordeal with the lost spider pit scene interesting. If it was anything like Peter Jackson’s adaptation of it, it would have been a great scene to add to the movie. Overall I enjoyed the first King Kong, which really surprised me. Normally I can’t seem to get into older movies that are black and white or don’t have very good special effects, but King Kong really impressed me.

1st blog

In this class, I'm looking forward to watching some of the old classic movies that I haven't seen before and also a few of my favorites (Boondock Saints, Avatar, The Godfather). After high school, I'm going to Arcadia University and majoring in global studies.