Drunken Master 2
(1994)
directed by Chia-Liang Liu, Jackie Chan!
I chose this movie because in my opinion Jackie Chan is one of the most enjoyable and most respected asian crime fighting actors that we have today. I really enjoyed how the camera just completely attracted Jackie Chans way of movement especially during important and entertainng fight scenes. the camera captured the other peoples emotions and reactions during the fight scenes. it represent pain and amazement and almost disappointment. I also noticed that during fight scenes the camera was either placed high or low to get the effect of the whole thing. for instense during one scene were Jackie Chan is fightin this guy in some sort of a warehouse Jackie has hit him at least 3 times and the camera is set low looking upwards at them to get the effect of the hits and get the expression of the hits from the guy that he in than fighting.

Another really awesome thing that i discovered by watching this movie is that during the fight scenes the amount of hits seem counted and timed and completely layed out almost with the music. Every hit or shot that was made during the movie was set at a louder sound to get the full power and passion behind every hit that had been performed. I counted some of the hits and the hits were almost sets in set of 3 or 4. 3 was the number that i got most often

The music that is played during the movie is your ancient chinese music very smooth and interesting to listen to. To me its interestng to listen to because i feel like it tells a story and it represents the right mood no matter what pace its going on. even during like a normal scene the music doesnt exaclty need to speed up or slow down and during the fight scenes it seems like it doesnt need to do change a thing. For that i seriously admire the music. The music in this movie made me pay attention more to certain aspects of the movie. Even when Jackie Chan is drunk all the time it still fits Jackie chan just still being a drunk and beating the crap out of everyone without any problems or anything just makes it one of the best type of action films that you could watch in my opinion. I mean come on now what guy do you know who is completely drunk and still have the technique and endurance to beat the mess out of everyone.

I couldnt just chose one certain thing for this movie because there wasnt exactly just one thing that i liked/ enjoyed. But i give serious thumbs up for this movie@!

~!sam!~

StageCoach. In my opinion this movie was not as interesting and i thought it would be. I think tat the action themes in western movies are pretty dang entertaining. In the movie during the battle scene this movie made it play out to see that Indians (Native Americans) are evil blood thirsty people that are completely and utterly disliked and she be destroyed but as a audience i dont exactly think we are supposed to sit and understand the history behind this actual scene, i think that we are supposed to see within the characters eyes and not yet our own. Also in the movie i noticed that during the end we would expect an awesome and riveting battle scene with Ringo but it turns out that you dont actually see the real shooting lke the man dying or anything and i thought that kind of took the greatness of the movie out. Critics say that this movie is the start of all the great Western American Films. In some ways i can understand that and in other ways it puzzles me. Is it maybe that i have seen so many diff versions of western movies that im not used to this kind? But overall i give it 3 stars out of 5. We will see if my attitude changes when we see Unforgiven


~!sam!`

Citizen Kane

I think the two biggest things that i noticed in Citizen Kane was the Editing and the Low key and sometimes High Key Lighting. I really like how the director used this. The part whne Kanes opera singing wife complains to him about how she doesnt actually want to sing anymore and she is yelling and screaming and soon after Kane stands over her while she is sitting on the floor and a huge dark shadow takes over her face and at the point she is powerless and she is done trying to argue about the matter. she will sing if Kane tells her too. The Dark shadow def. shows Kane power over her and as a matter a fact it shows his power over anyone. When she becomes sick later in they put her in dark lightening to sort of recognize what sort of pain she is in. Later on we get a close up of her in higher lightening and you can see even more what sort of pain she is in. Towards the end of the movie Kane of course gets older and the director puts in darker lighting which i think that that represents how he is feeling on the inside. He is very lonely and really keeps to himself at times. During the movie i sort of the felt the same way just because how the movie was set up. But the very end of it when Kane says "Rosebud" right before he dies, only his mouth is showne and th rest of the his face is pitch dark, this makes the effect even greater. I think the film was a great movie just by how the director used lighting and editing in the movie.

~!sam!`

Casablanca

In Roger Eberts Review on Casablanca in way he is very brutal but at the same time he gives me some inspiration on seeing the old film again and viewing it on a sort of different level. Like in the part where he Robert says :

"In her closeups during this scene, Bergman's face reflects confusing emotions. And well she might have been confused, since neither she nor anyone else on the film knew for sure until the final day who would get on the plane. Bergman played the whole movie without knowing how it would end, and this had the subtle effect of making all of her scenes more emotionally convincing; she could not tilt in the direction she knew the wind was blowing."As much as i disslike love stories this is probably one of the few that i actually enjoy. To me is not one of those cheesy drama romantic comedy movies that people nowadays think is soo cute and romantic and so enjoyable to watch.. To me i think that romantic movies nowadays have aged greatly. Old romantic movies are completely different than the ones we have today.

What goes Ebert mean by an "A list" movie. By definition what is an "A list" movie?

I think its really good that Ebert takes the time to look over this movie and see it in different ways. But at the same time i sort of disagree with how he said that color nowadays has some what aged.. maybe i just dont quite understand what he means by aged. Does he mean its been used in a different way than it actually should be used.

There i somethign i actually agree withEbert on which is think in my opinion is amazing.

Much of the emotional effect of ``Casablanca'' is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans.

If i had to chose between old love movies and new love movies i would most likely chose old ones because i feel like the love is actually there compared to the ones today. I think part of that has to do with the characters. The Characters in the older ones i have exactly heard of so it makes the experience different. In the new ones we have seen most of the actors before in different love movies or action movie and etc.

sam