Kurt's Blog

     Do you ever have a moment where you see a person's name listed on your favorite movie, and you go online to look into who this person is, and you come to find out they've been involved in many movies and shows that you love? This is what happened with me when looking up film producer McG. Going through his IMDB page, I enjoy so many movies and shows he's worked on, such as The Babysitter, Love Hard, Holidate, The DUFF, The O.C., and Chuck.     Now there is something all these pieces have in common: they are made to be very approachable. They are mostly comedy driven movies that are meant to be taken lightly and purely enjoyed. For example, look at The DUFF. It's a movie that is meant to be a playful and lighthearted story of a teen girl going through insecurities about her appearance and popularity. Here is a scene in particular that really shows the movie's lightheartedness and willingness to have fun with its creativity:     The film...

    Lost in Translation seems to be a very divisive movie. Reviews from the movie's release and everywhere online seem to be overwhelmingly positive, yet it seems our film class did not like the movie, and I would have to say I relate to being underwhelmed by it. Now I would usually just move on and forget a movie I did not like, but since this is a film class, my job is to figure out what made the movie not speak to me, and figure out what technical elements might have caused me to miss the message and enjoyment of the movie that so many others had.      As an amateur film analyst myself, I decided to search for reviews online that might be able to piece together the elements of this film and how effective they were. In this search, I found a review that really was able to analyze everything how I saw it. I'll discuss the parts that struck me most, but the full review can be found here .     I'd like to start off with what actually worked for thi...

     Jordan Peele has been of my favorite creators of film for a long time. I have been a fan of his dating back to the beginning of his skit-show Key and Peele. The fandom has continued with his development of great horror movies, with Get Out being the best of them in my mind. But what's really interesting, especially with the idea of Peele as an Auteur in mind, is how different these two projects are for Peele. First, Key and Peele is a comedy-skit show, which stars Peele as an actor and writer, and is largely a lighthearted (but well thought out) show full of jokes. Meanwhile, Get Out is a serious horror movie, containing deep themes of race and our justice system, as well as being a well-written and enjoyable scary film. On the surface, it seems the two could be made by two totally different people, but there are actually many similarities upon a deeper look.     Probably the most obvious comparison between the two is Peele's inclusion in each of race and i...

     David Fincher, for those who do not know, is a famous movie director who has directed many popular films over the years. Some of my favorites include The Social Network, Gone Girl, and Fight Club. One of the biggest things he's known for is forcing his actors to do many, many takes of every scene in his movies. Andrew Garfield explains his struggles and understanding of Fincher's methods in this video:     Andrew Garfield stars in maybe my favorite Fincher movie, The Social Network. The film is about the creators of Facebook and the sometimes immoral journey they took to turn it into the mega company it is today. The film has many great qualities, such as the screenplay, editing, but for many, the standout is the actors' performances. There are many emotional and genuinely moving scenes in the movie, such as this one: I can't help but feel like David Fincher's directing style is what causes this scene to be so great and emotional. Fincher believes that a...

    Rear window seems to be described as a classic. That's part of why I was excited to watch it. However, I found myself a little unsatisfied after finishing the movie. I wouldn't say it was a bad movie by any means, but I just felt like I was expecting more from the plot of the movie. There are a couple reasons I have for feeling this way.     Mainly, I felt like I expected more of a surprise at the end. Jeffries is shown throughout the whole movie to potentially be losing his mind, so it's a little disappointing to just see the movie end with him simply being exactly right. And this would be fine if it felt earned, but in this situation it doesn't. Jeffries doesn't really solve anything himself. He figures out that Thorwald's garden is different, but no evidence is ever found with that until Thorwald just flat out admits at the end of the movie that he hid his wife there. No, Jeffries just has Lisa sneak into the apartment, where she just finds a ring, and Th...

     In the reading for the week on narrative, I came across the concept of an anti-hero. Basically, it is a form of a protagonist who is not necessarily morally perfect. They have questionable motives and often are complex characters, yet they're still presented as the main character of the story. I think this is such an effective element for a story to have, and personally I love any sort of cinema that has an anti-hero. I think it leads to just more complex characters and therefore more complex plot and themes.     One show in particular that I think has used this very effectively recently is House of the Dragon. The show focuses heavily on a King named Viserys, who seems to mean well, but also makes questionable decisions and doesn't always do the right thing.       There is also heavy focus on a character named Daemon. Daemon is criticized by many people in the show and he definitely can be described as hostile and maybe immature. Y...

     Weirdly, I was excited to watch Dr. Caligari. No, I did not think it would be a super great movie, but I thought it would be so fascinating to see the strategies and techniques that a century old movie would use. They had so little to work with then, yet still could make movies that so many people loved to watch. The thing that struck me most was how slow the movie's pace was. First of all, every scene took longer because they needed to add a separate text screen to show the audience what was being said, due to there being no live audio. With this, and just the movie going at a slower pace than I am used to, it felt like not much of a plot really happened for a movie that was over an hour long. Also, it was interesting to see the acting and special effects, both of which were admittedly low quality but were probably very strong for the time. Overall, despite not believing the movie would be great, I had an enjoyable experience. Especially from an academic perspectiv...