Screw Ball

This film was one of the most fast paced films I've seen in awhile. I think that if it wasn't fast paced it would probably have been the worst movie I've ever seen because they never change the setting. This film is very diverse for it's times. Hildy is a very strong and powerful character in the film, and usually the women are secondary or soft spoken characters. Her relationships with Bruce and Walter are really weird. Normally girls would fall in love with people like Bruce, who want her to live a normal life. Walter just wanted Hildy to stay in the newspaper business even when she said she wanted a change. In the end I think Hildy should have chose Bruce because I think Hildy will go crazy with the pressures of the newspaper and Walter always pushing her to keep writing stories when she should be experiencing life.

Unforgivable.

Unforgiven wasn't a very good portrayal of normal old western movie heroes. Usually, the heroes in westerns are the hard core fighters but maintain a respectable image and they look out for the women. I think that Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) was too light hearted to match this profile. When Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) shot a cowboy, Bill Munny couldn't finish the job and hoped that the cowboy would survive his wound. Ever since his wife died he gained a soft spot. Maybe he used to be a killing machine, but he wasn't throughout most of the film.Toward the end of the film he turns around to his past and goes for Little Bill and kills a handful of other people. A normal hero would not have killed the innocent, just the killer of his best friend.

Also, I thought that this movie was really uneventful and I didn't really like it. Usually old cowboy westerns involve alot of action; shootings and battle scenes. This film had shootings for like two seconds throughout the film and there were no battle scenes. I was kind of dissapointed in this western because it was hyped up alot and known as one of the greatest movies and best picture but I really didn't think the pictures were that great and I deffinetly would not have this on my top 100. I also was dissapointed because this movie had a lot of potential to be a great movie because it has some of the greatest actors; Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman.

Babel

Babel is a story of four stories that come together in the end. The characters in each of the stories are totally different from the next story. I think the director chose each of the characters so that it was really easy to follow which story you were watching, and didn't mix any of them up.

Richard (Brad Pitt) is the older looking father figure in the movie. During the movie his wife gets shot and he found help as soon as he could and saved her life by getting a helicopter to come to the area where they were. He is caring and very responsible throughout the movie. I think Brad was chosen for this film because he is an actor that is known for doing good things and being a good person. I also think he was chosen because he's really famous and if people saw that Brad Pitt is in this movie, then they will want to watch it. He has played many other roles in movies that are the caring husband figure (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) and he has been in a lot of drama and action movies.

Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a young very disturbed girl. She is a bit of a whore throughout the movie and tries to hook up with many people, including her dentist. It was pretty gross. Her role was kind of random in the movie. I didn't really understand why she had to be a whore in the movie, it didn't really add to the plot line of the story at all. I guess it made the story more juicy and exciting. Chieko was related to Richard and his wife because her father was the one who selled the gun to the kids who shot Richards wife. I found it odd that it was her fathers fault that Susan got shot, yet we didn't see Chiekos father once. I think the director had Chieko in this film to bring some diversity in ethnicity because she was Asian. I have never seen Rinko Kikuchi in a movie before so I don't know if she usually plays a whore in movies.

Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal) is suppose to be a mid-aged Mexican in the story who causes a lot of problems. He is the niece of the woman who's watching the kids of Richard and Susan. He is the character who gets really drunk at the wedding and drives the kids across the border. When he gets pulled over and asked questions about the kids and if he was drinking, he drives away and drops off the kids in the middle of the desert. Due to his poor decisions his aunt is sent to jail and the kids are left in the desert for a long period of time by themselves. I think that he was chosen for this film because he is also a very attractive popular actor. Babel would not have been such a hit with the characters like Gael Garcia Bernal and Brad Pitt.

The director did a good job in bringing the characters together. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (the director) succeeded in making good stories of four very complex and different stories into one great movie.

Stagecoach

One of the most important scenes in Stagecoach is the introduction of Ringo. The scene starts with a blast from Ringos gun to bring excitement and suspision, then it zooms into Ringo and shows a shot of Ringos face close up. This scene is important because it introduces Ringo as the most important character in Stagecoach. Ringo is the character that always brings peace with the group. But most importantly Ringo is the character who falls in love with the hooker, Dallas. Nobody in town liked Dallas. Ringo didn't care what others thought, he fell in love with Dallas for her inner beauty. This love affair is very controversial because normally men don't fall in love with prostitutes, they just use them....

Which leads to the movie Unforgiven. This movie is all about a man who cut up a whore, and the whore's revenge to kill the man who cut up a whore. Unforgiven portrays whores in a better way how they were treated back in the day in old westerns. William is the hero in the movie Unforgiven. He is the brave man who kills Little Bill for killing Ned. William and Ringo were both heroes fighting for whores. But their characters are nothing alike. William is the hard core killing cowboy without a care in the world. Ringo is the type of hero in a fairy tale.

Citizen Kane

Orson Welles and his collaborators played with cinematography to make the film far more interesting. He did an excellent job of using deep focus to let the viewer see what was going on far away and near and lets you in on what is more important. One example of how he used deep focus is at the very beginning of the story when Kanes parents were debating over giving Kane away to live in a rich world with Mr. Thatcher. Kanes parents and Thatcher are divided on both sides of the screen in the shot and Kane is in the middle. You can still hear Kane in the background. Mr. Welles was showing that Kane is still the most important character eventhough he's not in the room with them. Another place where Orson Welles uses deep focus is when Kane is speaking with Leland and Thatcher and walks to the window. He's shot in the middle of them and is further away, but still in focus to show his superiority over them. Orson Welles also uses camera movement in the right way to make the story flow. For example, he uses the tilt method when they are in the big auditorium and Kane is giving his speech. It's showing all the people he is speaking to (eventhough it's a painting).

"Say hello to my lil' friend"

Scarface, one of the "best movies of all time", is about a man named Tony Montana (aka Scarface), a refugee from Cuba who killed Fidel Castro so he could get a green card and come to Miami, Florida by the Mariel Boatlift to conquer the "American Dream". When he gets to America he starts by working at a small food store with his friend, Manny Ray (Steven Bauer). His first drug deal was with Hector (Al Isreal) and a bunch of Colombians that didn't go so well. Montana refuses to bring the money to them, and the Colombians refuse to give them the cocaine. In conclusion, Angel is brutally killed, and Montana gets saved by his two other friends, Chi Chi and Manny. They get their coke money and kill Hector. Overtime Tony Montana (Al Pacino) goes from being dirt poor to the king of the drug world. It is a very violent film filled with cocaine and money. Tony is introduced to a drug lord, Lopez, and ends up stealing his wife and gets married to Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer) and buys an enormous house of his own. In the end Montana kills his ex partner, Manny, due to sleeping with his younger sister, Gina. Gina, heartbroken, comes to Tony to seek revenge...

Brian DePalma did a good job of making the characters believable for their roles. This kind of story is very unlikely for the drug world today. The police would catch them right away and they would have no time to become so wealthy. I really liked the way that Tony Montana talked, it was very amusing. I don't think that Michelle Pfeiffer did a very good job for her role as the drug-addicted wife. She was very serious and she didn't seem the type for Al Pacino.

There were a lot of close-ups when the actors were doing coke. Long shots were used in Montanas new home to show how big his house was. Cuts were used to go from scene to scene. There weren't very many special effects.

At the beginning the actors were wearing their orange jumpsuits when they were in prison, they looked very dirty and poor. Then the costumes of the actors were clean, proper looking gowns and dresses for the women and dress suits for the men to show their wealth.

I don't know if I would consider Scarface as one of the best movies of all time. I did enjoy the movie, but I have seen way better. My expectations were very high also, so that could have played a role. Before you watch a movie, especially one of the "best movies of all time" you should go into watching it with no expectations, then you will probably like it. There was barely any special effects, well at least noticeable ones. The plot was like a lot of movies I've seen lately. Man is poor and goes to America to get the American dream, becomes a huge drug dealer, gets really rich, gets married, gets too egotistic, then in the end loses everything. It was also way too long for my liking. If it was cut down an hour shorter I think I would have liked it a lot more. I felt like it just kept dragging on and on. I enjoyed the action and there were many famous quotes in this movie. I didn't like one of the very first scenes when they come to America and they have their first drug deal. It was way too bloody and unrealistic. The antagonist sawed off Manny Rays arm and leg. It was absolutely disgusting.