Formal Film Study: Steven Spielberg

      For my first Formal Film Study, I decided to study the great director, Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg is very famous in the film industry and is well known for all of his work. There were three films of Spielberg’s that I decided to watch for my project. I watched the movies The Color Purple (1985), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).  These movies were very different from one another, but in my opinion, were all good films.

     There were some shots and angles that were used in all three of the movies. All three movies had some kind of close up shot at some point in the movie. Usually there were close ups when it was an important part of the movie. For example, in The Color Purple when the main character, Celie, finds out her sister has been writing letters to her for years, the camera zooms onto her face. I think this is done so the viewer can see all the emotion and hopefully feel what the character in the movie was feeling. In Catch Me If You Can, when the main character Frank is told there has been a death in his family, the camera moves in close to his eyes. He begins to cry and there is a lot of emotion displayed in just his eyes. Finally, in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, just before there was an extremely suspenseful part, there is a close up of Indiana Jones. Close ups are used in the three films to show emotion.

     Between these three films, the only one that really used special effects was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was an action and adventure movie, so special effects were needed to make the movie stand out. The special effects in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark were pretty good. Since it is a little older than the other action films that I have seen today, I thought they were pretty good for the time. Even though it has only been about 30 years since this movie came out, there are so many new technological advances that are used in films today. Towards the end of the movie, when the huge ghost came out, I thought that looked really fake. You could totally tell that it was not real. Other than that the special effects were good for the movie. Also, I thought this movie was very violent for a PG rated movie.

     The sound of these films was very important. The music in the background honestly made the films what they were. In The Color Purple, there were a lot of different kinds of music in the background. This music worked with the time period and made it seem like a more realistic time period. In the film Catch Me If You Can, the background music was older. There was classical and jazz music playing. I do not know the exact reasoning behind this, but it really worked for this movie. Finally in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark the sound is very powerful. The music tells what is happening and it gets louder with suspense. If there were no words, you could tell what parts were suspenseful. You could also tell which guys were the “good guys” and which guys were the “bad guys”. Finally, it has the famous Indiana Jones music that is known everywhere.

     One thing that I liked about all of these movies is how realistic the characters were. I think it is really important in movies that the viewer can relate or feel exactly what the main character feels. In these movies I connected with the main character. In The Color Purple, the characters Celie and Nettie are sisters who get separated. I have a sister and I would be lost without her. I could not even imagine what the girls had to go through. Their emotions seemed so real. In Catch Me If You Can, Frank rips people off like no other. He lies his way through his life and becomes successful until he gets caught. I just thought it was amazing how he could come up with lies in the moment when he needed to and het got away with them.  Then in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is prepared for anything and everything.  There is not one time when he cannot do something because he isn’t prepared.

     All in all, in these three movies there were a few things that really stuck out. The soundtrack was really important to these films. They played a huge role, almost as if a separate character. The shots and angles also were important because they showed emotion and set the scene. Finally, I could relate to all the main characters in the movies. I really liked this because I could enjoy the movies more if I could personally relate to the characters in the movie.

MYST POST #1: Taken Back: Finding Haley (2012)

      Taken Back: Finding Haley (2012) is a Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) movie. This movie was about a mother, Karen (Moira Kelly), who is completely obsessed about finding her lost daughter. Even though I thought this movie was really overdramatic and creepy, it was an ok movie. There were parts in the movie where I was actually laughing because I was like, “Is she really doing this right now?” . Other than that, this was supposed to be based on a real story, so the director, Mark Jean, couldn’t change the story line too much. 

       This was on over the weekend and I didn’t have much to do so I decided to watch it. Because this was a LMN movie, I was not expecting too much. In the past, I have seen many Lifetime movies. Most of the Lifetime movies I have seen have not had the greatest actors and actresses such as in, Girl, Positive and The Good Guy. This movie though, I thought had tolerable actors and actresses. The main actress, Moira Kelly, I thought did a pretty good job playing her part. She was very into the role and when she was crying it seemed like she actually meant it.

      The cinematic aspects of this film were pretty good in my opinion. There were many different kinds of shots and angles presented in this film. At one very dramatic time there was an extreme close up. I thought this made the scene so much more dramatic. The lighting and sound I thought also played a huge role in this film. When the scene was sad and the main character was crying, the light was dark behind her, but her eyes looked as if they were highlighted.  The background music was important as well. When the scene was happy and positive, the background music was fast and carnival like showing everything was fine… until, all of a sudden it stops and something is wrong in the movie. I thought that was really cool.

     I think people who really like Lifetime movies would like this movie because it is dramatic and full of Lifetime suspense. If you have nothing better to do, this is one of those movies that you would watch. It is nothing special, but it was watchable.  I would give it 2.5 stars.  

Review of the Reviews

     The Help is one of my favorite and one of the best movies that I have seen in the past few years. Getting the choice to pick any movie that I have ever seen to do for this project, I decided on The Help. I found one positive review and one negative review for this movie. Now it is my turn to be the critic on two reviews. 

     The positive review is from the New Orleans Times. The author, Mike Scott, is very organized in what he has to say about the The Help. He starts off the review with an overview of the film and what it is about. Then, he goes into talking about the main and supporting characters and their role in the film. The tone of this review seems to be very positive because he does not have many bad things to say. The author mainly focuses on the plot and stars of the movie. He also brought up the fact that this is a movie based off a book and a historical time period. He thinks that the history part of the movie is "soft" compared to what really happened. 

     The negative review is from Slant Magazine. This author, Andrew Schenker, I believe jumps around a little in his review. He starts off talking about something that happens during the middle of the movie, then starts talking about the historical part of the movie. Since this is a negative review, the tone feels heavy and more serious. He uses some different words that I have never heard I believe so he can get his point across that he didn't like the movie. This author focuses mainly on the historical information in the movie, but says that the movie was not all bad because it had good acting. 

  

   One point that I agreed with from the New Orleans Times is that in the film it, "open their own eyes and think a little bit more in-depth about what they've heretofore dismissed as "the color situation"  (New Orleans). In this case, the author is talking about the characters in the film but I think that this movie opened my eyes to what happen in the past. It showed how people were treated in the 1960's.  One thing I agreed with from the negative review is that, "The Help is almost always more successful relating black experience than either white brutality or magnanimity" (Slant). I think this is saying that the movie did a better job displaying what happened to the African Americans during this time, rather than what was going on with the whites. 

   If I had never seen this film and I had to choose which review was more convincing, I would believe the positive review from the New Orleans Times. I really liked how Mike Scott gave a summary of the movie without giving too much away. I also really liked how he talked about the historical references that this movie showed. This movie was not just a movie for enjoyment, but a movie that was able to demonstrate to us what the world was like at one time. 

   If I was to write a review on The Help, I would definitely make it a positive review. One thing that I would include about the movie would be the great actresses who played the characters. I think the director, Tate Taylor, did a really great job picking which actresses played which part. I thought they were chosen very well. Another thing I would include in my review would be that I enjoyed how it had a historical side to the film. Seeing how our world was not too long ago is very interesting and this is what I would write my review about.