Town Movie Reviews Samples For Students

“Winter’s Bone”, directed by Debra Granik, and released in 2010, is the story of a young family struggling to survive in the Ozarks. Ree, played by Jennifer Lawrence, desperately clings to the hope that her father will return from one of his many benders as she attempts to juggle caring for her mother and younger siblings while still attending school. Eventually, she learns that her father has become involved in meth and has himself become a drug dealer. The movie follows Ree, as she traverses challenging social terrain in the Ozark community, trying to find her father, while learning about ...

Urbanized is a documentary film directed by Gary Hustwit and a fine demonstrator of the challenges important cities face in both the present and the future. With insightful interviews and carefully selected images, viewers are projected the ways cities adapt to the continuous growth of the population and the climate change, among others. The third film of Hustwit’s trilogy attempts to dive into the deep waters of what is taken for granted and explores how cities are actually the physical manifestation of environmental, social and economic forces. The testimonies of professionals of their kind add a valuable stone in understanding urban ...

View and analyze the film "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" portraying a person with a disability. Write a meaningful critique of the film

Description of how the person's disability is portrayed within the contexts of family and community (Have an in depth analysis and discussion of the extent to which the film appears to be a reflection of life and is grounded in current "state of knowledge". Give appropriate evidences from the film to support each point)
Analysis onto what extent does this film address characteristics and effects of the cultural and environmental milieu of the individual with disabilities (Have an in depth ...

The film Do the right thing, was produced and directed by Spike Lee. It is elevated towards identifying with the life of a Brooklyn neighborhood. In addition, it also directed different notions that imply the presence of racial tensions. Ideally, this film makes an effort of highlighting the dynamics related to modern urban neighborhood. Ideally, this has been done by the use of casting differentiated personalities within the movie. The major theme that stands out in this film is the peace versus conflict. Ideally, there is a static race between the perspective of conflict and peace attributes. Accordingly, the outstanding performance ...

In the movie entitled, As It Is in Heaven directed by Kay Pollak, an efficacious international conductor suddenly abandons his career objectives and decides to return to his home village Norrland, in north Sweden, while at his home village, he is requested to come along and listen to fragment of the church choir as they practice at the parish Hall every Thursdays (Foley 166). Upon joining the choir in their daily practices, nothing in the village ever became the same henceforth. The church choir evident in the movie grow incredibly and the successful international conductor the main character in ...

Introduction:

Harper Lee’s classic novel is built on two main themes, racial injustice and the disruption of innocence which are skillfully interwoven together to create a complex web of intricacies that continually develop throughout the book. Coming from Alabama, Lee is a fine author who has the pulse of the state’s social injustice in her hands and the film brings out this incredible hatred especially well. The courtroom scene is particularly harrowing where we observe the segregation of the races as well as the rampant histrionics of the so called accused white woman compared to the stoic calmness of Jim ...

The lone gunslinger cowboy is one of the most iconic figures in American history – roguish and tough, with a pistol on his thigh and a checkered past, many Western films of the 50s and 60s feature such a character and their struggles with the chaotic and dangerous world of the Old West. In the case of the 1953 film Shane and the 1956 John Ford film The Searchers, their protagonists couldn’t be more alike while also taking somewhat different paths. Alan Ladd’s Shane and John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards are both mysterious figures who ride into the other character’s ...

Synopsis

An army space capsule brought back something to earth, a virus, a toxin, which is a live micro organism that killed many people in a town in New Mexico, the organism also killed the soldiers who were in the crash site. They all died in very unusual reason or have killed themselves because of the pain, but that did not affect an old man and a baby. Scientists are eager to find out the reasons behind this unusual event and how to stop this micro organism from spreading a worldwide catastrophe.

Microbes in the movie

Microbes were used in the movie as the main reason of potential global catastrophe, ...

(1).Typically, anyone one who has been injured because of the negligence of another is entitled to recover two types of damages, compensatory damages and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are meant to compensate for the emotional, financial, and physical damage that the victim has suffered. There are two types of compensatory damages, monetary losses (financial losses), and non-monetary losses (pain and suffering caused by injury, etc.). Punitive damages are meant to punish the person who has caused the injury, and these damages are only awarded under special circumstances. It is apparent that the damages that a plaintiff in a personal injury ...

One of the most intriguing facts about the dystopian genre is that it did not appear until humanity had almost reached its apex in terms of knowledge and technology. The horrors of the First and Second World Wars showed that humanity would use its very best in terms of technology to do its very worst to one another, as mustard gas, hand grenades, nuclear bombs, and death camps made their first appearances on the planet. Led by such writers as George Orwell, the early practitioners of dystopian literature showed us our own future as it would be if human ...

Pleasantville, a 1998 dramedy written and directed by Gary Ross, tells the story of two modern-day teenagers (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) who are sucked into the world of the fictional 1950s sitcom of the same name. While they try to make the best of their new surroundings, their own values and attitudes start to clash with the idyllic town, as they start to open up the characters' eyes to new ways of looking at the world. However, this brings them into conflict with forces that want to keep the town as safe and comfortable (and pleasant) as it always ...

In 1965 at the St. Marks Playhouse, a play directed and written by Douglas Turner Ward was staged. The play was titled Day of Absence. The staging of this play very well with the heightened plight of the black community. The black population was being undermined and they were a target of racial abuse. The play by Ward served the purpose of highlighting the importance of the black people in the society. What if one day all black people in the society disappeared? What are the changes would the society face if the black population was no more? These are the ...

The Night the Prowler

The Night The Prowler is an Australian film written by Patrick White and directed by Jim Sharman. The film describes suburban life, which has permanent flaws characterized by an unappealing subdivision. Prowler reserves its admiration for unobtrusive predictability, inviting its audience to discover something deeper in the tininess of routine happenings. Apart from portraying suburban life, the characters in the film play gendered roles.
Prowler portrays the ordinary day-to-day activities of the suburban life. The movie is a fierce sarcasm on the psychoneuroses of Sydney’s eastern environs, the place where White lives. Most of the sarcasm borders on ...

Wong's exploration of Hong Kong through his use of cinematography and storytelling in Chungking Express is an example of the director-flaneur. The film displays an urban landscape depicting Hong Kong as an increasingly globalized city, a command-post city that is constantly changing. Wong shows Hong Kong to be a very dreamlike, impressionistic place, as characters wander through it nearly marooned in this global city mirage (Berry, 2008).

Time-space compression is exemplified through the myriad landscapes that the two characters wander through, from fast food shops to lonely streets. These policemen show just how globalization limits the potential of the flaneur and ...

Introduction

A documentary is a movie that attempts to present events, people and places in real life for purposes of instructing or maintaining historical records (Aitken). Documentaries are characterized by carefully chosen and arranged scenes just like movies. Unlike movies, documentaries are not scripted and the people in a documentary are not actors. In most cases, documentaries rely on voice-over narration to explain events in a given footage. In other cases, the story in the documentary is told through interviews with the people featured.

Documentary analysis

The 1929 film, Man with a Movie camera by Vertov Dziga fits the description of a documentary for several reasons. First, ...

Before Sunset

A city is a natural habitation for people in the 21st century. People are born, they study, work and die in cities. A place, wherein people spend most of their time should be both multi-functional and convenient. Thus, city planning is of outmost importance for people to live in a comfortable and friendly environment. There have been numerous attempts to improve urban planning and to create a dream city. Some of such attempts remained to be theoretical developments only, while others were realized, for example, such utopian projects as Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow or Le Corbusier’s ...

The Bagdad Taxi, a documentary movie directed by Frederic Tonnoli sends chills down the spine of everyone who watches it, at least mine had chills. The setting of the film was months after the end of the tenure of the American troops in Iraq. The movie revolves around a filmmaker who sojourns the country of Iraq right from one far end to the other, in a taxi with Khalid, who doubled as both his friend and a cab driver. The journey covered over ten Iraqi towns with a good number of over a hundred police checks, as the filmmaker ...

Probably killed by life's adversities, everybody has at least once dreamed about how it would be nice if Paradise and prosperity reigned on the Earth. Only a few of us thought about the fact than it can be troublesome. Paradise is not a panacea and living in it would be boringWhy? Everything is simple: constant satisfaction and the quiet tends to simply annoy the man so that he wants adventure and adrenaline. There is no good without evil and evil without good. If everything is so good, how do people distinguish good from evil, if the second simply will ...

Critical review of the movie “The Help”

Synopsis of the movie
The Help is a 2011 motion picture directed by Taylor Tate and based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestseller under the same title. The movie’s setting is Jackson, Mississippi which was one of the most violent and dangerous towns for African Americans and consequently vehemently resisted the civil rights movement. The movie is based on the untold lives of African American women in their service to their Caucasian counterparts. The movie’s main characters are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan and Aibileen Clark. Skeeter is an idealistic young lady who has just returned to her home from ...

Lone Star Movie (1995) directed by John Sayles
Cornado was Spanish conquistador and he explored the continent from Mexico to Kansas. Another point is that some people in the community like Pilar’s mother, Mercedes identifies herself as Spanish claiming that her family ancestors are from the Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Pilar pins up a picture of the Alamo to the classroom bulletin board. The Alamo is an important reference point in history to the community. The Alamo is viewed from different perspectives depending on their culture. Pilar’s students are whites (European-American), African-America, Mexican and Native Americans and ...

Movie Review: A Civil Action

Movie Review: A Civil Action
Based on a novel of Jonathan Harr, this movie called “A Civil Action” depicts the story of two lawyers who are at loggerheads—Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta) and Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall). The issue revolves around the death of 12 children who suffered from leukemia. In this movie, Jan Schlichtmann contends that the death of the 12 children could be attributed to the pollution caused by the two major corporations called W. R. Grace and Beatrice. However, Jerome Facher takes the opposite side, and presents his counterarguments against Schlichtmann that neither the pollution nor ...

Prejudice and discrimination

Summary of the movie
A very rich and powerful man known as Philip Colbert who comes from Chicago and who had plans to construct a factory in a rural southern town called Sparta in Mississippi was found murdered. The regional police boss Chief Bill is under pressurre to investigate the murder of Philip quickly. A well-dressed African-American northerner named Virgil Tibbs, who was waiting for a train in a deserted station, is picked up by a police officer who is a racist. Virgil is found with a lot of money in his pocket. After being arrested, he is brought ...

Jagte Raho is a black and white film which describes the lifestyle of a villager who had travelled in an urban city full of evil acts. The film takes place over one long, bizarre night in a block apartment in the midst of the city. Raj Kapoor, a thirty villager, was seeking for water to quench his thirst. When heading to the direction with piped water in an apartment, he is hastily spotted and suspected of being a burglar. The accusations makes the villager run dearly for his life and hide in the safest apartments. In the process, Kapoor ...

Introduction

Much of the human suffering and economic disadvantages that occurred during the Great Depression (1929-1933) were a result of the boom mentality and unregulated business practices of the 1920s. People with a corrupt kind of business acumen exploited the weakest segments of society in the poorest regions. Praying on a naïve boom psychology, businessmen led a devastating attack on the Midwest that ultimately was not curbed by politicians or financial institutions until the middle 1930s. New businesses exploited weak government controls and took on many of the same exploitative practices as the Robber Baron businessmen of the 19th ...

Introduction

Although decades of numerous incarnations have slightly diminished the stature of the vampire, the horror, seductiveness and mystery associated with it remains. Over the years, several themes have been associated with the vampires depicted in various films. The dominant metaphorical representations have been animal appetite, sex, evil and venereal disease. In F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, the vampire, unlike those in similar films, is unattractive and ghastly yet the fascination that grips those around him is remarkably disturbing. In this context, several metaphors emerge. This paper presents the metaphoric functions of the vampire in the film Nosferatu.
The ...

Management

The first video (Urban), the speaker developed how the mind of a procrastinator works; that is the person waits until the last day (or minute) to make a planned work having a high stress in the execution. Urban says the high stress is accompanied by an innovation explosion. He explains the procrastination process with a "rational" human and an "irrational" monkey. The monkey looks for the short term gratification (easy and fun) and the "rational" human the long term strategy (makes sense). Both worlds are possible to match, but in several cases, students and professionals locate in the excluded ...

3. Analyze the relationship(s) between Dina, Tewfiq, and Haled in The Band's Visit. Be sure to work from specific scenes. Think about the different ways (besides spoken language) that communication functions in the film.
The film the Band's Visit is a story of the universality of human emotions. Elan Kolirin introduces us to two diverse cultures that are by fate united together. In their interaction, the Egyptians and the Israeli's come to terms with their similarities and look beyond their national differences. The characters get to know that they have had almost similar experiences in life and fight ...

1) Set in the 1990s, well after his death in 1976, how does the film portray post-Mao China compared to that of Maoist China?
The Story of Qiu Ju is a story of a village lady who struggles in the attempt of making the village chief apologize for kicking her husband. However, the case develops complications that end up including the government in the issue. Upon dragging of the government into the issue, the policeman where Qiu Ju launched her complaints demands that the village chief should pay 200 Yuan for assaulting Qinglai. The things don’t ogre well with ...

Films have developed out of dramatic and narrative tradition in which storytelling is used as a central concern. The filmmakers have challenged the manipulative and seductive power of narratives by using playful resistance to the convention of narratives, or by exploring other forms of medium. For example, filmmakers have used the interplays of gesture and rhythm, sound and image rather than relying on character psychology and plot mechanics. However, non-narrative film has a smaller audience than narrative films. A good example is aircraft passengers watching the direction of the nearest exit pointed out by flight attendants, which reminds the audience the ...

Film Studies

1.Yojimbo (1961) and Jidaigeki (Period Drama)
Yojimbo is one of my absolute favorite Kurosawa films; I’m just so impressed by its incredible energy and pep. Toshiro Mifune seems to have a tremendous amount of fun as the ronin who marches into town and quickly ends up solving its problems. He is literally the archetype for Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, and Yojimbo lends itself well to the Western format. In the space of a few minutes, we are told the stakes of the town, the different factions in it, and Sanjuro chooses to take down both sides ...

1. PERSEPOLIS (2007) & GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).
*How does the theme of survival and having a female protagonist relate in these two films?
In the film gone with the wind, Scarlet O’Hara, the daughter of Gerald O’Hara is the major character, and she carries most of the burden of the characters, who are related to her in one way or the other. Scarlet struggles with marriage throughout the film since she cannot find her ideal man. In the beginning, she is surrounded by many admirers. On the contrary, she is not interested in these men ...

The study of irony is rather broad and studying irony in film is as challenging as studying irony in drama or literature. Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman falls in a range of humorist tradition in which small-town culture is treated with irony and nostalgia (Frye 122). Through representations of small-town culture, irony in the film asks the audience where they stand on the issues of meaning, knowledge, subjectivity and values. Waiting for Guffman is full of implicit and ironic messages, and the goal of this critical analysis is to give thoughtful consideration to them.
The film does not ...

The Coen Brothers have, one may say created an absolute masterpiece of a movie, which some may say is an amalgamation of the Wild West movies of old and a horror story. “The wide open plains, cowboys, Texas, guns and horses but has the syntax of a film noir even sometimes a horror movie. There is a murderer, one could even call him an unstoppable force, he kills without mercy and with a semi-novelty killing device. It deals with a man who finds a loot of money and must escape his pursuers who are a bunch of dirty business men, corrupted by greed and the lust for power ...

Rabbit proof fence is a film that portrays a measured gaze toward a shameful history of the Australians. The film is showing who is wrong or right while portraying the countries awful treatment to its aboriginal population. On the right side are the aborigine families who are torn apart by the government policy which intends to forcefully separate children of mixed race from their communities, and transport them to a settlement camp hundreds of miles away from home. In the settlement camps, the children are restricted from using their native language, and they are introduced to a new religion, customs and culture. Later they ...

The video “Slum Cities: A Shifting World” is among the most viewed films on YouTube, given its ability to provide real information regarding some of the world’s largest slums. Fundamentally, the film looks at the move of masses from the rural settings to urban centres and the manner in which such cities deal with the transitions. Directed by CBC News Canada, the film “Slum Cities: A Shifting World” provides a report of two mega slums; the Dharavi in India, and another one in Rio de Janeiro. As noted in the film, millions of people across the world often ...

The movie Straight Outta Compton was released in 2015. The movie is based on the life and struggles of hip-hop and rap music in the town of Compton. The movies portrayed how the music industry changed because of the rappers who made the music a sensation. The stories the rappers such as Dr. Dre and Eazy-E had created were lyrics of truth. The controversies that were brought forth regarding the lyrics that were being recorded caused an outrage in society. The trials and tribulations that had to be overcome for these rising stars to beat all odds and finish ...

Both Fargo and Mr. Robot have been discussed in the media spotlight as two television shows being ground-breaking, not only for their storytelling and scriptwriting, but due to the sophisticated cinematography and sound that they incorporate. These elements add a dramatic flair to the shows, which infuses them with meaningful depth. In order to emphasize the importance of these characteristics, the current paper explores the cinematography and sound design present in both Fargo and Mr. Robot.
Considering the plot of the show, it is worth stating that the protagonist of it is a young technical engineer, responsible for cyber ...

At the point when a youthful lady named Meryem (Özgü Namal) was assaulted, her town custom obliges that she was murdered in place for the disrespect to be erased from her crew. A junior man named Cemal (Murat Han), the child of the town pioneer, is given the undertaking yet ultimately he has questions. The pair goes on the run, emulated close behind by nearby hooligans expectation on murdering the young lady. Fortunately enough, Cemal and Meryem get together with an appealing man named Irfan, an ex-college educator who is leaving on a cruising outing, and needs a group. Appears Irfan tries ...

Waiting for “Superman”

Waiting for “Superman” is a documentary film produced by Lesley Chilcott and directed by Davis Guggenheim. This documentary produced in 2010 analyzes the shortcomings of the American public school system by following the struggles of several students and their families to gain access into a charter school (Guggenheim, 2012). It features students from across America that has been negatively affected by the public school system. These students together with their families have numerous hardships to overcome yet show a strong determination to succeed and an attitude of never giving up (Spina, 2011). The producer says that the problem lies with the public schools ...

‘A Story of Floating Weeds’ was a film produced in 1934. The film was directed by Yasujiro Ozu and was later replayed in the year, 1954. The 86 minutes long film creates an atmosphere filled with strong and deep emotions. Much of the running time of this film is used up on routine activities, but every scene serves its own purpose in bringing out the themes of this film.
The story is about a travelling troupe of Kabuki actors and their leader Komajuro. It explores on the relationships of Komajuro with his troupe, former mistress, and his unknowing son. The setting ...

Ernst Lubitsch (1942): To be or not to be
Ernst Lubitsch, a Jewish-German, directed the film to be or not to be in 1942 together with Jack Benny, and Carole Lombard, who act the couple Torra. This is a couple of actors who had led a theatre team in Warsaw and were busy in rehearsing an anti-Nazi play a time when Germans had invaded Poland. In the film, the group becomes an active secretive participant and through their costumes they manage to deceive the Nazis together with their cooperators. The film illustrates the Nazis racism and violence instead of the military ...

The film ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence,’ is the story of three young Aborigines who dared to challenge the extreme and hostile terrains of the Australian bush country and desert to escape from captivity to freedom. The movie is touching and deals with cultural anthropology to the hilt. Right from the onset when the camera runs across a spectrum of barren land and reaches the eyes of an innocent girl who looks at the distant mountains and the bird in the sky with an emerging smile, the viewers are quickly moved to understanding that the eyes talk of the crave for freedom. On ...

The Appalachian Mountains can be seen to be a barrier and divide between developed and rural America. The people who live in the region are certainly steeped in past rural traditions and are stuck in their lot with not much hope for improvement. Since the settlements and towns here are cut off from the regional towns and cities in West Virginia such as Wheeling and Charleston, they are also in a sense detached from reality. In the short documentary, The Hollow we can observe this sense of detachment and as such the society here is deviant from the norms which we ...

Introduction

There are several sociological processes that are exhibited in the movie, Remember the Titans. These processes have the aim of exposing the poor relationship that exists between the thought of the humans and the social context provided. The extent and the limits of the social influence which is displayed on the people’s lives in the movie and the social-cultural basics are also displayed. In achieving to put across all this information, several theories have been employed in an intertwining manner. Among the theories that have been employed are the conflict theory and the critical theory (Bankston, 2000). Several ...

Movie review Hoosiers

Based on a true story of the Milan High School basketball team that won the state championships in 1954, the movie Hoosiers is a sports film that recounts the story of achievement in a small town basketball team in Indiana High School. The group of underdogs the ‘Hickory Huskers’, was able to become champion under the leadership of a hardworking basketball coach, Norman Dale. From the movie, significant lessons are learned on the importance of effective leadership and management for the successful coordination of groups, organizations and teams. Although Dale faces resentment from within the team and the town, he is still able ...

“What happens when wrong feels right and right feels wrong? When situations that appear to be black and white turn out to be gray?” (The Literary Analyst).The bygone philosophy of novelists writing what they desire stands firm. For me, a director holds the same status when it comes to films, in fact all artists irrespective of their desired form of art should have the liberty to think and make people do the same. This perfectly sounds true of Ben Affleck’s triumphant and remarkable debut in Gone Baby Gone (2007), which is an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s heavily ...

‘Startup.com’ is a 2001 documentary film that features Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman. The film documents the rise and fall of GovWorks, an e-commerce website founded by the above mentioned characters. Kaleil and Tom created the website GovWorks just when the internet phenomenon had begun to pick up speed around the globe. The purpose of their creation was to allow the government to carry out business transactions such as filing building permits and payment of parking tickets with its constituents. The business idea aimed at making it easier for constituents to avoid the hassles of interacting with their governments ...

Japanese horror films through the years had made astounding contribution to the movie industry and to the horror genre in particular. One of the notable directors of great Japanese horror flicks is Kurosawa Kiyoshi who is often compared to Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick in terms of directing style and influence. Most of his films are focused on ho a general society affects an individual and how the society also reacts to adverse irrational and disintegrated social mechanisms. Japanese horror movies are not typical to the usual western made fright movies. As observed from many western horrors movies, they incorporate ...

The movie is in a town set up whereby the characters are discussing something in the living room. The group is made up of women most of them with identical eating disorder and almost the same physical characteristics except for some few women who are trying to advise them on what they did to have a better shape. The sitting room has much furniture that enabled the women to sit in a conference like manner and have a mutual talk. At the background of the living room, there are various hangings and photos as well as paintings on the wall. Since this is a ...