Batman Returns

Batman Returns

Batman Returns opens with the birth of Penguin played by Danny DeVito who is seriously deformed.  Penguin’s parents fling their newborn baby into the sewers.  Flash-forward several years later, Selina Kyle played by Michelle Pfiffer a simple assistant who has the unpleasant job of working for Maxwell Shreck Christopher Walken  a corrupt business man.  One night, as Shreck realizes how smart Selina is, and decides she is too big a threat he murders her by pushing her out a window yet  Selina does not die.  Emerging as the new and improved version of herself named  Catwoman, she and Penguin begin to wreak havoc on Gotham City separately.  The resident on call superhero of Gotham, Batman played by Michael Keaton known as Bruce Wayne when he is not off fighting crime enters the scene to protect Gotham. Catwoman and Penguin devise plans to bring down Shreck as he is the mayor and murder all the first-born children of Gotham City, this all makes it very difficult on Batman to balance ffighting them both while holding a day job and a romantic relationship with Selina. A few film elements tha work towards making this film great is its overall gloomy tone which is signiture in many Time Burton films. Burton seems to enjoy making films which are centered around characters whose strange qualities place them too far outside the mainstream in worlds that owe everything to art direction and set design while sad for those characters completely intriguing for us the viewer. The main issue that I am many have had with Tim Burtons Batman Returns is that he created in a world of film noir but as we learned in this class superheroes and film noir just do not mix.  The whole point of  a film made in the noir style is that there are no heroes and Batman is clearly the hero of Batman Returns. Also Burtons uses the fact that most noirs have urban settings, but puts an emphasizes on realism in setting but Batman returns does not have that probably because he wanted to put his signature style on the film which was created by the fact that Batman Returns like all his films, is placed in a dystopian society which just does not work for the overall theme of this movie. Which even though I love Tim Burtons style is why I think he failed in the creation of Batman Returns.

500 Days of Summer

For my next film review I would like to discuss the film we watched in class called 500 Days of Summer. This film is about Tom played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Summer played by Zooey Deschanel who star in Marc Webb's romantic comedy about a man who falls in love with a woman who doesn't believe in love. Tom is an aspiring architect who pays the bills by writing greeting cards. After being introduced to Summer, it doesn’t take long to see that Tom is smitten and falling hard. All he can think about is Summer and he believes in the fact that everyone has a soul mate and he's found his. Sadly for Tom, Summer is not the same she sees true love as the stuff of fairy tales. But Tom does everything in his power to try and convince her that their love is real and lasting. A main film element that worked for this film is the use of a sort of flash forward. Webb used these time travel shifts to compare and contrast the varying different stages of Tom and summer's emotional rollercoaster of a relationship. I think this technique worked perfectly for this film as it was equal opportunity time shifts Webb did not simply show the happy times but also the bad times which every one who has ever been in a relationship will tell you are just as common. Also small things that helped create a wonderful film experience while watching this was the use of voice over as well as the use of mainly older architecture gave the film a sort of classical feel to it which I enjoyed. Webb really did a great job I think of not making a film that was just a sappy romantic comedy that would be pushed aside and forgotten about but making a classic coming of age story for my generation that we can all relate to.

Le Miserable

 

For my next film review I would like to review a film that we did not watch in our class, which is Tom Hooper’s Le Miserable. I am sort of biased because I loved the play based off of Victor Hugo’s book even before the film was a possibility. Musicals are the one category that we did not really touch on this semester, which is sad for me, as it is a favorite film genre of mine. This film is set among the poor in nineteenth century France and ends with the anti-monarchist Paris uprising of 1832. Les Misérables tells the story of Valjean played by Hugh Jackman, a decent man who was imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family. Once released, he is pursued by officer Javert played by Russell Crowe for breaking parole, but becomes a mayor and factory owner. He comes across his employee Fantine played by Anne Hathaway whose grownup daughter Cosette played by Amanda Seyfried falls in love with revolutionary Marius played by Eddie Redmayne just as Paris erupts in violence. There are many things that could be said of the film elements of Le Mis but I would say number one is Tom Hooper’s use of the close-up. Particularly in arguably the films best scene when Hathaway is singing I Dreamed a Dream. Also this film uses a combination of fast cutting, baroque time period costumes, as well as various wide-angle lenses shots, which help to create a sense of exaggerated realism. I would say Hooper’s biggest achievement that helped make this film successful was Hooper's decision to record the actors singing on set, rather than have them lip-sync. Actors were able to live in the moment creating a raw emotional impact which is simply breathtaking.

Jaws

I would like to start my film blog reviews with the film you had us watch two times over the coarse of this semester. I am actually very glad you chose to not only show this movie, but also have us watch it again with our newly acquired film knowledge at the end of the semester. To start I would like to say Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" is probably one of the closest to film perfection as a film major could hope of seeing and one day possibly creating. I would categorize Jaws as a cross between action and thriller that works so well because the characters in the film are people we can relate to. Brody played by Roy Scnieder he police chief, Quint played by Robert Shaw, an old seaman and Hooper played by Richard Dryfuss , the rich young oceanographer.  The story is simply centered around a series of attacks on swimmers by a great white shark on a resort island, which is desperate to attract people to its town when it starts to see its tourism rates go down. And this all results in the epic attempt by the three men to track the shark and kill it. Finally the greatest and probably most important character of the film is the shark itself. Partly they used shots of a real great white but mainly they used a mechanical creature modeled after the shark. "Jaws" is an adventure movie the likes of which we don’t get anymore. It has just the right amount of blood and guts to get the point across but no more than necessary. A few film elements that worked for this film I would say where the underwater "shark vision" and the perfect two-note music signaling the shark closing in on its prey. Jaws is nearly compositionally perfect utilizing strategically placed elements like color palettes, background and foreground staging, etc. For this only being one of Steven Spielberg’s very first jobs directing I think he nailed it.  He created a sense of fear of the water and what could be lurking in it with such minimal shots of the actual shark that it amplified the terror and for those of us who saw it when we were young can still conjure up those feelings when we visit any beach today.