Prior Film Experience

Ryan Bowens                                             10/23/16

                          Prior Film Experience

When I watch a movie in the past I would either watch a movie because it looks cool or I think it going to be funny. I loved and still do love action, comedy, adventure movies. Some of my favorite movies are superhero movies like the Avengers or Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice. I like movies that make me laugh like Big Trouble in Little Chinatown. I like movies that make you feel like you're questioning the world like I Frankenstein or Odd Thomas. I even watch movies from different countries as long as it has something i'm interest in like Rurouni Kenshin or Drop. I never really thought about a hidden meaning or how much a character is colliding to a conflict. But now that I matured and thanks to this class. I can appreciate what happens in the movie more, look for the hidden message, putting the pieces together before the main character does. I can’t yell at the screen and expect the character to move but I could figure out what’s going before something happens.

Z Rogers Past film experinces

My favorite type of movie were action movies and anything comedic. My favorite movie to date is probably Toy story 2 just because  it’s something very nostalgic to me and I have yet to find any faults in the movie as of yet. I don't watch movies with any critical aspirations as doing that makes things seem boring very quickly, so I mostly avoid the view of critics or higher cinematography concepts  since it felt out of place to talk about something that I don't understand. My favorite movie so far is  an animated sequel. The reason for this is because I already like these characters from the original movie, so there is already a connection between the characters, and their personality doesn’t have to be developed and that’s what I personally  prefer this  in a lot of movies because it makes it easier to enjoy a story when I don’t have to be constantly be reminded of other people’s personality traits. The main characters were also toys hence the name of the title.  

Z Rogers Touch of Evil

Film Noir

Bordertown

Consensus: Corruption, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) even when you know someone is guilty you must still follow the proper legal procedures. IRONY: the outcome is opposite or near opposite of what you expect. For example, Quinlan’s downfall could have been avoided had he not ‘framed’ Sanchez, who was in fact guilty.

Opening shot is both famous for its technique and for its establishment of the plot. It was really long (continuous tracking shot before the bomb went off; before the development of the steadicam which was introduced in 1976 Rocky esp. training sequence when he runs up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art).

DRAMATIC IRONY: tension building device by which audience members are privy to knowledge that characters do not. “There is ticking in my head.”

THEME: undercurrent of racism; Quinlan is a racist cop, ‘You don’t talk like one, a Mexican I mean.’ ‘I don’t speak Mexican.’

Quinlan: has been planting evidence since [turning point] gets drunk/makes a deal or alliance with the mob boss Uncle Joe Grande. Q becomes brash and more aggressive when he drinks. [was on the wagon since wife was murdered]  claims that strangulation is the perfect murder; wife was strangled and then he strangles Grande. But since he is intoxicated/drunk he leaves his cane at the crime scene. Mise en scene- the close up shot of the sign on the door, “Stop! Leave anything?”

Vargas (Mexican), the head of the Pan-American Narcotics task force, played by Charlton Heston (white dude)

Z Rogers Rocky/Sugar Cross Analysis

The story of Rocky and Sugar both carry on the theme of the American dream in two ways that are different from each other and the general concept that comes from the American dream.

Going into the movie Rocky I was expecting lots of boxing and exercise and Rocky himself trying multiple times to climb the stairs to the museum until he finally gets there, but none of that happens for the vast majority of the movie. This detail that they took to almost never include Rocky’s previous fights made a lot of sense to me because the majority of the movie made it seem like Rocky is a loser who missed his chance to become something great. For example Rocky had all of his equipment put into a bag and on a hanger that everyone in the gym referred to as “Skid Row” which was explained to mean that the person on “Skid Row” was about to be kicked out the gym. This felt like Rocky was some sort of bum, but when the idea of him missing his chance entered my mind was when he went back out to confront Mickey, the owner of the gym, and Mickey replied by showing off a younger African American boxer and used the phrase “real potential” to describe the athlete. After this one engagement with Rocky and Mickey don’t meet until he gets the chance of his lifetime to fight Apollo Creed for the championship. Mickey coming to Rocky’s apartment and suggesting that he trains Rocky to stand a chance was an uncomfortable conversation in general because Rocky only ever added in half-assed comments into the conversation until Mickey adds in that it would be his greatest moment, which got Rocky upset because he never actually got a chance himself to be great, but Mickey was a very popular boxer before he became a gym instructor, and that idea is what pissed Rocky off and he went off on a tangent on how his situation stinks, his apartment stinks, and his life stinks, and there’s  hardly any chance in any of this actually changing in his life. The conversation did get so tense that while Rocky was yelling Mickey just slowly slipped out the door and left the apartment almost as if he was disgraced of himself for not considering how Rocky could profit but only how Mickey could profit off of it, thankfully Rocky chased him outside the house and apologized and they walked off into the next day of Rocky waking and starting his training regimen, which the ending of the scene felt good to me because something as important as the championship should be given the most amount of effort possible which Mickey would help Rocky achieve.

I think that’s a fundamental difference between the two American dream films because while Rocky was thought to be past his prime with no talents until the fight with Apollo Creed made the people who disrespected Rocky to think he had a shot. Sugar, on the other hand was very well respected since the beginning of the movie and people would flock around him in his homeland of the Dominican Republic, talking about how he one the greatest pitchers in baseball. It’s reasonable to believe this because all we see for the vast majority of the games he plays is him striking out people with little effort. When Sugar finally gets a chance to play in a higher league of baseball in America he rejoices and everyone throws a party telling him to remember each and every one of the party participants for various reasons.

Once sugar finally gets on a team and actually starts pitching he performs the same type of magic for the start of the games ,then the head coach would always switch him out much to Sugar confusion. This also confused me because I knew there had to be a good reason to switch out someone that good. This consistency frustrates Sugar even further when an old friend of Sugar from the D.R joins the same team and proves to better than Sugar. This is where I felt one of  the highest contrast in the two movies. Sugar had his talent seen early on and many helped him perfect it turning something that started as a hobby into a real passion, however Rocky was never given that type of acknowledgement for the  vast majority of the movie with Mikey claiming Rocky rarely loses a fight, but being too barbaric and having no style in the ring  makes Rocky a crappy fighter.

I felt it was incredibly interesting was all the time the two protagonists spent away from their sports. Between boxing Matches we see Rocky work for a loan shark as a thug, is awful at it shown being way too nice to those without the money the pay back the loan, he also develops a  love interest in Adrian, Paulie’s,his  best friend's sister. The pair goes on one and hit it off after that Rocky and Adrian are always close together in scenes following. In “Sugar” we see him with large groups of people whether he’s in the D.R or America and they most conversations are about baseball and in spanish which makes conversation in America difficult for him because no one spoke spanish as fluently as him except his friends and the end of the movie. When in America Sugar constantly distance himself from non spanish speaking people, Rocky never experiences a language barrier in his movie, Sugar leaves all of his family to pursue something great only to leave it behind in the end, and Sugar felt enough regret he called his uncle to try and get back on the team, but that never happens instead he runs across a  hispanic carpenter while looking for a job to support himself and his family and at this moment I was reminded that Sugar was building furniture and parts a house for his mother and Sugar was apparently really good at it the craft. He is then re-introduced to another old friend from the D.R and a baseball team full of “rejects” of the professional baseball world and the movie closes with Sugar smiling while reciting his name and his former professional baseball team. I think that was the most important moment in the movie because the sport started off as a hobby and we see it end as a hobby and it felt great watching him finally enjoying the sport he loves and not have to worry about being good for his family since his income comes from a different source and I enjoy how they presented the American dream here: happy and stable.

Rocky’s ending is a little different because while the title fight between Apollo and himself is the next day Rocky visits the stage of the fight and comes under the conclusion he can’t win and he confides in Adrian that as long as he can do what no else has , last a full fifteen rounds, then he would consider himself a winner, and that’s just what happens Rocky and Apollo trade blows for an entire fifteen rounds, with the maximum number of rounds reached the ring is filled with reporters and Adrian slips into the ring while Rocky calls for her and the winner is announced under muffled screams as the two embraces. Now it can be assumed that Rocky did lose because nobody was facing the two embracing as if to take pictures of the winner of the fight  or holding up Rocky’s arm as if he won the fight by the judges vote, however that doesn’t matter because Rocky completes his goal and the movie displays the American dream in the form of acknowledgement because even though he lost the fight he completed his objective, which would be self-acknowledgement, and Adrian is proud of him which is the acknowledgement of the most important person in his life.  

Z Rogers Psycho

The movie Psycho got me so mad in  the confusing nature of the story being told. The movie’s protagonist  Marion Crane finishes sleeping with Sam claiming that this would be the last time this would happen unless the relationship was official because sneaking to met him  during her break at work felt demeaning to her which Sam goes out of his way to provide exposition to the audience and let her know again it will be the second he gets out of his debt. This small detail leads the movie into something I couldn't have predicted,but if you tell me the whole plot it actually makes sense between point A to point B. Anyways Marion goes back to work and very conveniently someone of incredible wealth comes  in and closes a deal of sort in real estate and her boss wants the money in the bank for safekeeping, but that doesn’t happen Marion actually steals the money. Shortly after she becomes very paranoid since a cop car started following her, so she switches cars and begins to imagine a handful of scenarios that could happen. With this information I had reason to believe she was going to go “Psycho” and start killing people who might turn her in or change her mind, so the police officer who was following her was supposed to be dead in his cop car in my mind and the same with the car dealer who kept asking all those questions about her being sure of Marion’s decision.

It is  later revealed that Marion stole the money to pay off her boyfriend’s debt, which is a completely selfless act in my opinion, so she is established as a person with zero ill intentions which annoyed me since I thought she was going to be a serial killer, but the alternative was just as good. Marion was on her way to a small motel to avoid the cop that she was being paranoid about. Even the day turns to night and starts to rain as she arrive to the the motel dubbed the Bates Motel. This created an atmosphere where I as the  viewer felt more claustrophobic in the motel since when it rains in a movie people stay in a single location until the rain stops. The inside of the motel was very small and the decorations on the walls themselves were pressed extremely closed together as if to make everything seem so much smaller on the inside than the outside. When Marion first met Norman I was convinced Norman was going to find the money in her room when she was trying to leave and Norman was going to die. However Marion has a conversation with Norman about his hobbies and the mistakes that Norman made previously and the mistake that Marion is currently making.  I found the conversation taking place was very human or genuine considering the conversation was very fast and fluid when the conversation was talking about Norman love of stuffing animals and his feelings of them being helpless and how that wasn’t really his fault and Marion seemed interested in his ideals on the topic, however when said topic changes to the types of mistakes the two has made then everything becomes more slow and even the camera recognizes this when it spends an increasingly long time for it to change from person to person. In this long scene many ideas are given and it all ends when Marion finally comes under the conclusion that what she does is wrong and decides to return the money before anyone  notice that it’s gone.

I thought the movie was over with a person having psychotic thoughts and mannerisms, but that wasn’t at all what happens, but instead Norman leaves her company and Marion decides to take a shower, which is symbolic of Marion washing away her pass “sins”, and at this moment the music starts to actually becomes a factor in creating tension instead of being background noise and while the music starts to pick up we see Marion get stabbed and the music  dies down with Norman discovering the body and claiming there’s a lot of blood to his mother in a disappointing manner, which immediately meant to me that the mother did it. Norman hesitantly cleans the blood takes Marion’s body into her car with all her luggage and the money that was stolen from the real estate agency, it all goes into a nearby swamp and we wait with Norman to watch everything sink. This was extremely surprising because the movie felt incomplete with the death of the assumed main character. I have never seen the character the camera followed the most die off halfway through because the question that follows afterwards is “Who are we going to follow in the story now?” and “Why should we care about the movie now?” Five seconds later and we see the answer to those exact two questions and the answers are Marion’s sister and boyfriend and to discover to find the evidence to put Ms.Bates into jail for murdering Marion. A private detective is hired to investigate Marion’s disappearance, but not on the murder like I  thought ,but on the money she stole during the opening scenes of the movie. The detective questions Sam,the boyfriend, and Lyla, the sister, and they both don’t where she is because she’s dead. The detective finds out she was at the Bates Motel and after questioning Norman, who is more than okay with that, but refuses to actually identify her as being there for dramatic irony since we know there is no evidence of her being there and the detective would stay for longer if Norman let that information slip which he doesn’t, but he does let it slip that he lives with his mother who could have saw Marion leave with the cash. Norman is incredibly protective of her mother and forces the detective to come back with a warrant.

The detective Notifies Lyla of the information and then walks up into the house and he walks up a flight of stairs and is stabbed by a figure that Norman later identifies as his mother.  When the detective doesn’t show up the next morning Lyla and Sam got very worried and decided to check the motel out themselves. After various distractions, lies, and schemes Lyla concludes the detective has to be in the house and that’s where she goes, but Norman is in pursuit releasing they were lying about their intentions on just staying the night. Lyla feels unsafe so she hides in the fruit cellar and coincidentally the mother was hidden there too ,so no one can find her, however she is shown to be a skeleton and Lyla screams , and Norman appears behind her wearing the same gown as his mother, the skeleton. After this tense scene follows a  lengthy exposition that devolves into Norman killing his mother and her boyfriend, steals her skeleton and finally assumes her identity whenever he’s alone. The reason why he killed Marion was because he felt a similar type of jealousy and assumed his mother would do the same, even though previous evidence suggests Ms.Bates doesn’t like Norman anywhere as much as Norman loves Ms.Bates.                 

Psycho

     Director: Alfred Hitchcock

    Screenplay: Joseph Stefano

   Writer: Robert Bloch                    

The movie Psycho is truly one of the best horror/mystery movies of all time. I don't even like horror movies, but I really enjoyed this movie! The film starts off with Marion Crane, who originally I believed was the main character of the story, steals a lot of money [$40,000 to be exact; ironically the same amount that Anthony Perkins was paid for his role in the film] from her boss at the real estate job and decides to run away with it.

SPOILER ALERT!!! On a dark and stormy night she ends up at Bates Motel, and orders a room so she can get some rest for the next morning but ends up talking to Norman Bates. Norman comes off as nice but weird like he has some secret. He later gets in trouble by his mother for talking to the woman, but the mother is never shown to us the audience. Marion gets ready for bed and decides to take a shower which is where she is killed.

I had a thought that his mother died, and he was wearing his mother's clothes and killed Marion. I had two reasons for this idea: one when she talked it sounded like someone trying to sound like a woman and my other reason when we got to see the silhouette it looked more like someone wearing a costume. I was right but didn't know how crazy Norman really was.

To me this was an actually great horror movie I didn't expect it to be this great in the beginning. Alfred Hitchcock really did a great job in the creation of this movie. It was suspenseful and really well made, and this is the best movie from 60's and will remain a classic for years to come.

A Touch of Evil Justin Law

A Touch of Evil. A suspenseful seat hanger type of film. This movie will have you thinking whats going to happen next. a touch of Evil is a film. A touch of evil is about a Hispanic and white detective who are trying to solve a case of a car explosion that killed two people. The white detective was behind the murder the whole time , but was trying to hide the evidence of him doing it. He was trying to frame a Hispanic man who wasn't part of the crime. The Hispanic detective was on the other Hispanics side knowing that he didn't do the crime. Throughout the movie he try to find evidence to show that he didn't do the crime and to show that the white detective was responsible for the crime.