Assignment One: Portfolio of work Maximum
Skyfall
Plot
A hard-drive that contains vital information about all the NATO operatives, who are undercover in the terrorist organizations, has been stolen and the head of British Intelligence – M is put under an embarrassing scrutiny by bureaucrats. After a near near-death incident, an out of colour 007 is sent out to retrieve the drive, as he is led to a man called Silva, who is out on a revenge mission to destroy both MI6 and M.
Review
Sam Mendes seems to be playing with the old themes, as well as the new ones with the return of 007 on its 50th anniversary. The Bond connoisseurs may say that this is not the kind of James Bond they grew up on, but as Q (played by Ben Whishaw) says – “exploding pens are a thing of the past”.
Throughout the movie, we find the characters in a conflict between the old and the new. Mendes even raises the question of whether we need an espionage system anymore, when we have such high-tech gizmos. I would be fair to say that Mendes has tried to add a slightly new flavor to the long line of Bond films.
The stand-out performance in the movie is not by Daniel Craig (who plays Bond), but by Javier Bardem, who plays the role of Silva, who wants to settle an old score with M. Mendes successfully moulds Bardem into an almost Nolanesque villain, with psychotic anecdotes, and actions to match. Although one of the biggest disappointments of this movie is that there is no major female character other than M, it does tend to add a new flavor to the series, as it seems to enter a new era.
Verdict
Though not the classic 007 movie that one has come to expect over the past five decades, Skyfall is a blend of the old and the new, and it is pretty much what one could come to expect of a 21st century James Bond.
Portfolio Task 2: Review of Sherlock Jr.
Sherlock Jr.
Country: United States
Production Year: 1924
Language: Silent Film with English Intertitles
Duration: 44 minutes
Director: Buster Keaton
Sherlock Jr. is considered by many critics as one of buster Keaton’s best works in the field of comic cinema. The sheer montage of techniques used in the film, at a stage when the film industry was still in its infancy, was simply staggering. Keaton ingeniously invented a few techniques, and revolutionized others.
Keaton had to cut the movie several times due to repeated criticism after its release in 1924, which is why its length is much shorter – 44 minutes to be exact. However, the film itself is way ahead of its times, which may explain the early criticism, as the critics back then may not have been able to fully comprehend Keaton’s genius.
Sherlock Jr. is the first Meta-Film, which means that there is a movie inside a movie. This might sound pretty common now, but back in 1924, this was very much a novel idea which influenced many other movies to come in the following decades.
Buster Keaton, with his stone faced comical portrayal of an aspiring detective has delivered brilliantly, both as an actor and as a director, using clever camera tricks in the plethora of action scenes that serve to make the movie quite entertaining.
As the characters movie in and out of the movie in the movie, it never really gets as confusing as one anticipates it to be. Also, the action sequences, though highly dangerous, were very comical indeed, which serves to sell the general concept of this brilliantly innovative production.
Portfolio Task 3: Review of The Night of the Hunter
The Night of the Hunter
Country: United States
Year: 1955
Language: English
Duration: 93 minutes
Director: Charles Laughton
Being actor Charles Laughton’s first and only venture as a Director The Night of the Hunter is arguably one of the best debut films made by any director till date. Using a montage of natural, as well as Biblical elements to intelligently portray the current scenario in the plot, Laughton almost adds a Shakespearean touch to this movie.
However, being Laughton’s debut film, it is not without its flaws. Although Robert Mitchum delivers a chilling performance as Preacher Harry Powell, the misogynistic villain, who endeavors to hunt down the young children Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) and John (Billy Chapin); it is perhaps the performance of the young duo that one might tend to question. Another negative aspect of the movie is that at the end, Laughton turns it into an old fashioned fight between Good and Evil, instead of the thriller that it was building up to be.
Of course, the dark and eerie setting in most of the film serves to heighten the tension as John and Pearl flee down the river and Powell follows them and their little bounty that their father had left hidden for them.
Lillian Gish gives a good performance as the stern yet loving Rachel Cooper, who adopts lost or orphaned children and looks after them. At certain points, she matches Mitchum step for step in terms of performance and the plot. It is a pity that Charles Laughton did not pursue his career as a director any further. The Night of the Hunter had promised much to come from him, and many great directors have started off with films that were much less accomplished.
Portfolio Task 4: Review of a Superhero movie
The Dark Knight
Director: Christopher Nolan
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” This seems to be the central theme that Director Christopher Nolan was playing with in The Dark Knight (2008), along with the usual duel between the good and the evil, as he and his brother and co-writer managed to weave their distinctly subtle humor with their philosophy.
The Dark Knight seems to revolve around three main characters – Batman/ Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), The Joker (Heath Ledger) and Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). The latter, has probably made his best performance yet, under Nolan. Yes, Harvey Dent gets overshadowed by the Joker, but in all fairness, Dent is the only round character in the plot, and Eckhart successfully portrays the young and ambitious DA, who gradually turns into a villain. While Christian Bale, Gary Oldman (Lieutenant Jim Gordon), Sir Michael Caine (Alfred), and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) performed as usual to their high standards, Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over the role of Rachel Dawes brilliantly from Katie Holmes.
But Heath Ledger seems to demand everyone’s attention with his portrayal of the Joker. Of course, his untimely death does tend to amplify the buzz around his performance, but nobody would even dare to deny Ledger an academy award for playing the Joker. There is nothing cartoony about Ledger’s Joker, as Nolan was wise enough to let him shine in the actor’s own uniquely perverse and psychotic way.
Unfortunately, this was Ledger’s last performance, but it was one hell of a eulogy. Much like Harvey Dent in the movie, Ledger “died a hero.”
Portfolio Task 5: Review of a film that typifies a specific genre.
Genre: Crime Thriller
The Rear Window
Director: Sir Alfred Hitchcock
Often regarded as one of Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, The Rear Window could even be dubbed as one of the best Crime Thrillers ever made – not just for the technique and the innovation used by Hitchcock, but also for the general cinematic or even voyeur philosophy that the film is based upon. Through this movie, Sir Alfred shows us how the movie screen is a “rear window” for us, the audience. This philosophy is reflected in the very first scene, where we see the blinds of the window being opened one by one. This is almost reminiscent of the famous dialogue – “All the world’s a stage” (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1623).
Indeed, some may even say that Hitchcock is the Shakespeare of Cinema. Some of his ideas, though they seem new to us, have by (by his own admission) been around for some time. The place where he was successful is to uphold his ideas, his techniques, and his philosophy in such a lucid manner, that they may unfold even the most complicated of plots to the simplest of minds.
The beauty of The Rear Window is that the whole movie is shot through one window. Even the events that take place outside the window, and are within a visible range from it are shown through either a long shot or through a key-hole shot from the window. Much like the audience of a cinema, L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), an incapacitated (by a car accident) photojournalist watches the lives of his neighbors unfold before him through the rear window, although he himself does not take any part in their lives. He has to resort to prying on his neighbors like this for his own amusement, which is not necessarily sexual.
He is accompanied by the lovely Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), who lights up the screen with her dazzling performance; Stella (Thelma Ritter), Jeff’s nurse; and Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey).
Portfolio Task 6: Review of “Barton Fink”
Barton Fink
Barton Fink is not merely a dig at the crass and unintelligent men behind the desk that hold all the money and power, when it comes to distributing a work of art to the masses. It is a full fledged satire – on the producers, their yes men, and even the writers. Written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, Barton Fink is probably a statement on all the blocks that they have had to face in the film industry, most important of which is the writer’s block that Barton Fink (John Turturro), the protagonist faces as he looks to make the switch from being a playwright in Broadway to being a screenplay writer at Hollywood.
Barton Fink is probably one of the most flawed protagonists that one may wish to find. He starts off as a successful playwright in Broadway, where he is much appreciated, and receives a lot of applause from the audience, and plaudits from the critics. He calls himself a writer of the “common man”, but as the film rolls on we find that he is more interested in showing off his ideology to a common insurance agent, Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) in a series of high spirited monologues, than listening to what an actual “common man” has to say. What is even more interesting is the fact that it does not take much his advisor, Garland (David Warrilow) to convince him to make the big money move to Hollywood. One would think it would take a lot more to move a left-minded writer to work for Czar-like employer. And yet the Coen Brothers have successfully won our sympathy for the protagonist, as we know that he is just another aspiring writer, trying to make a big difference.
There is of course the obvious satirizing on the crass cigar-smoking producers, who do not care for a good work of art, but rather are always chasing a pot of gold. They do not have the capability to distinguish between an artistic genius, and a person who merely goes through the motions of writing up a clever plot that would look good on the screen. Even Lou (John Polito), Jack Lipnick’s (Michael Lerner) yes-man knows when Barton is stalling, but his boss does not. Lipnick aptly says “I run this dump, and I don’t know the technical mumbo jumbo” on his first meeting with Fink. While stalling, when asked about the progress of his work, Fink is warned in no uncertain terms by Lou about letting Lipnick down. But instead of listening to his subordinate, Lipnick decides to fire him and kiss the budding writer’s feet. All this goes to show the absolute brainlessness of the brutes that runs the show from behind a large mahogany desk or on a hammock by a pool, smoking a cigar.
The cinematography of the movie is quite astounding to say the least. Certain transitions between scenes have an almost Shakespearean quality, in terms of significance and relevance to the plot, or where the plot may be leading to from that particular point onwards. For example, when Fink arrives at the Hotel Earle, we see him being taken up to the sixth floor and the steward at the elevator saying – “Next stopsix!” in such a showman-like manner that it is almost reminiscent of Barton’s rise from Broadway to Hollywood. There is also a montage of symmetrical shots of the empty hallway of the hotel Earle, which serves to heighten its eeriness. It would not be very wrong to say that Roger Deakins (Director of Photography), Ethan Coen (Scriptwriter) and Joel Coen (Scriptwriter and Director) had put their heads brilliantly together to create this dark, yet slightly comical story that would amaze one and all.
Portfolio Task 7: Review of a Documentary with a general cinematic release (Moviemaker Magazine).
Man of Aran
Being one of the very pioneers of bringing documentaries into the mainstream cinema, Robert J. Flaherty has been able to bring to us the vivid role that the almighty sea has to play in the lives of the people of the Aran Islands. Being a little off from the western shores of the mainland Ireland, the Aran Islands are directly in the way of choppy waves coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. It is an arid place, with hardly any soil or edible vegetation, and even the sea seems to bear down upon the Islands with all the force it has got. Yet the people of the Aran Islands have managed to eke out a bare existence over the centuries.
Flaherty successfully documents the hardships of the man of Aran, through this silent documentary, where the sea is constantly shown in its different moods. One is almost reminded of J.M. Synge’s drama Riders to the Sea (1904), where references to the sea are constantly drawn.
Unlike modern documentaries, most of the action in Man of Aran is simulated. Indeed, the members of the family shown in the film are not even related in real life. Even the sequence where we are shown a basking shark being hunted is simulated to some extent, as basking shark hunting had been stopped about fifty years before the film was shot.
Flaherty does not seem to be interested in capturing the actual life of the Araners of the 1930’s. Instead, he seemed more interested in documenting the poetry in the Aran Islands and in the lives of its people.
Reference List:
Vats, R., 2012, Skyfall Tweet Review: First Day First Show, IBN Live, [online] Available at: <http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm> [Accessed on 2 November, 2012]
Anonymous, Sherlock Jr: Review, TV Guide, [online] Available at: <http://movies.tvguide.com/sherlock-jr/review/132164> [Accessed on 1 November, 2012]
Ebert, R., 1996, The Night of the Hunter, Chicago Sun-Times, [online] Available at: <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19961124/REVIEWS08/401010344/1023> [Accessed on 31 October, 2012]
Ebert, R., 2008, The Dark Knight, Chicago Sun-Times, [online] Available at: <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20080716/reviews/55996637> [Accessed on 30 October, 2012]
Ebert, R., 2000, The Rear Window (1954), Chicago Sun-Times, [online] Available at: <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000220/REVIEWS08/2200301/1023> [Accessed on 29 October, 2012]
Ebert, R., 1991, Barton Fink, Chicago Sun-Times, [online] Available at: <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19910823/REVIEWS/108230301/1023> [Accessed on 3 November, 2012]
Marshall, L., 2011, Man of Aran Review, The Film Pilgrim, [online] Available at: < http://www.thefilmpilgrim.com/reviews/man-of-aran-review/2151> [Accessed on 4 November, 2012]
