Seven Psychopaths

The Australian film industry is currently in a point of crisis due to the lack of audiences attending Australian films, hence creating a decline in the revenue received towards our national industry. However, this is not due to the lack of creative talent, it is rather the many underlying issues that don?t allow the Australian public with the awareness and accessibility of these films. These problems are within the distribution, marketing and funding of these Australian films, allowing the national Australian community to not seek for films made by people within their nation due to negative pre-conceived notions and the convenience of going to see a Hollywood Blockbuster. These issues are seen through the poor release of both critically received films, Jennifer Kent?s The Babadook (2014) and Hugh Sullivan?s The Infinite Man (2014), both not gaining a wide audience. Through these issues within the industry, Australian filmmakers have not been able to create the revenue needed for these films to branch out to be easily attained by the public.

Throughout this course, you have been compiling a blog and writing essays that analyze various elements of film such as theme, cinematic techniques, and genre. It is now time to combine those elements into a comprehensive analysis of one movie.

At a young age of eight, David Fincher’s passion for cinema grew when he saw the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Born in 1962 Denver, Colorado, David Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. Much of his time here, he directed plays, designed sets, and managed lighting after school. Until one summer, he and a friend attended the Berkley Film Institute’s summer program, where he hoped to learn film as a true art form but instead learned only the technical production. Either way he was happy to engage is this and as his early film industry career started, he was a production assistant at his local television news station. Years went by as he directed propaganda films then moving on to becoming a well-known music director before his first movie feature debut Aliens 3 in 1992. However, the American director David Fincher didn’t become a modern 21st century visionary until his creation of the film Se7en (1995). The huge success after this film started Fincher’s popularity in the film industry. From there he continued to make ironic movies we know today, such as: Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

How many times has Hollywood taken a true story and turned it into something different? Hollywood took Chris McCandless’s story and turned it into an overdramatic work of art. Unlike Krakauer’s nonfiction best seller Into the Wild, the movie Into the Wild by Sean Penn overemphasizes ideas or fails to include crucial evidence which twists the viewers understanding of Chris McCandless’s life. The movie overemphasizes Chris’s parents’ relationship and the effect it has on him, creates a love interest for him in “Slab City”, and fails to mention Chris’s knowledge of the wild. Sean Penn’s film skews how people will remember Chris

Die Hard, a film directed by John McTiernan, successfully utilized several aesthetics, which offered viewers various meanings throughout the duration of the film. Although the diverse meanings grasped by viewers may differ, it was clear to me that McTiernan effectively applied elements of cinematography and mise-en-scene that resulted in viewers being allowed to interpret a range of different meanings or functions of the elements.

At a very young age of eight, David Fincher’s passion for cinema grew when he was inspired by the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Born in 1962 Denver, Colorado, David Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. During high school, he directed plays, designed sets, and managed lighting after school. One summer, he and a friend attended the Berkley Film Institute’s summer program, where he hoped to learn film as a true art form but instead was taught the technical production. Either way he was happy to engage is this and as his early film industry career started, he was a production assistant at his local television news station. Years went by as he directed propaganda films followed by becoming a well-known music director until his first movie feature debut Aliens 3 in 1992. However, the American director David Fincher didn’t become a modern 21st century visionary until his creation of the film Se7en (1995). The huge success from this film started Fincher’s popularity in the film industry. From there he continued to make ironic movies we know today such as: Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by enduring diminished empathy, remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavioring antisocial behavior, A psychopath is a person with a psychopathic personality,which manifests as a moral and antisocial behavior. They lack the ability to love or establish meaningful relationships. Psychopaths fail to learn from experience. Psychopathy is among one of the most difficult disorders to recognize. A psychopath can appear normal or even charming. Underneath, they lack conscience and empathy. This makes them manipulative, volatile and sometimes (but by no means always) criminal. There are many symptoms associated with psychopaths.

Psychopathy; a term used to describe an individual with the ability to differentiate between right and wrong and acknowledge the rules of society, but are impervious to the moral foundation of these rules. Unlike other mental disorders such as sociopathy and schizophrenia, psychopathic individuals are able to understand actions that violate the law or go against social norms (Glenn 1). Although, they may be able to accurately judge moral and/or legal violations, one major factor that they lack is – emotional capacity. It is estimated that about 1% of the general population is made up of psychopaths, which is a considerable risk when it comes to crimes (Parry n.p). Therefore, the way in which the law responses to psychopathic individuals is an important moral and empirical issue. With that being said, should psychopaths be held criminally responsible for their behavior? Due to psychopathic individuals failure to meet criteria necessary for moral responsibility, such as the lack of understanding of the human race, predetermined biological structures of the brain and the fact that psychopathy is

The Departed, a film written by William Monahan, Alan Mak, and Felix Chong, directed by Martin Scorsese, was in my opinion a spectacular crime-thriller deserving of less criticism from overly sentimental viewers. Though this film is in some scenes brutal and vicious, I praise Martin Scorsese’s refusal to cower away from the undeniable truth that organized crime in the United States is murderous in nature just to satisfy certain viewers as critics advocated he should. Being a four time Oscar winning film with sixty-three other awards for numerous aspects in the movie industry, I don’t believe anyone can contradict that The Departed is profoundly unforgettable to masses of moviegoers.

Based on Filmsite.org, a website that interprets and explains the history of cinemas, mentions that cinemas in the 1960s had more daring films with darker themes, horror, violence, rock ‘n’ roll and crime. There were also an influx of foreign movies and british movies. This decade in film history, was a period struggling to stay afloat as there was a decline in movies. There was a spike in reinvention of cinemas - change of styles to keep up with television and social changes.

The film I picked for my critique is Red Tails, a historical World War II drama. The movie starred Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard and Gerald Mcraney, was written by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, better known as the creator of the comic strip “the boondocks”, from a book by John B. Holway, directed by Anthony Hemingway and produced by George Lucas . In this paper the author will show how all elements of filmmaking

For more than fifty years, Clint Eastwood has been actively defining and redefining cinema as an art form. His experiences as an actor on television and in film have greatly influenced his directing style. Across his films, Eastwood incorporates several issues and techniques that help the audience to identify said films with Eastwood's directorial style. Eastwood's aim in his films is to tell stories of the human experience. Francois Truffaut and Andrew Sarris have aimed to define the qualities that make a director an auteur whose works stand out above the rest. The qualities defined by Truffaut and Sarris can be seen in Eastwood films including Unforgiven (1992), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and Changeling (2008) and help to establish Eastwood as an auteur.

It is very rare to study something that is as fascinating yet as bewildering as the distinctive paradox, that is the human brain. Every individuals conflicting behaviour and elaborate character that make them the person they are must have a justification. I originally established a fascination in forensic psychology as I read about a sequence of homicides committed by Gary Ridgway, otherwise known as the “Green River Killer”. Upon discovery of this case, questions began to pervade in my head about what may be the cause for an individual to execute such things, and just how someone’s mind could be so peculiarly dissimilar to my own.

When it comes to movies, many directors are good at their jobs. However, other directors are great in the art of film making. There is no doubt such statement is considered utterly subjective, but what would life be without subjectivity, for it is our differences that make us thrive against a monotonic existence. By the same token, Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan utilize their singularities to create films that for decades have impacted the movie making universe. In fact, it is their differences that provide us with a high contrast to compare and scrutinize their job and find what made them great at it.

Article Three – Author: David Bordwell / Title of Article: The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film