The Fighter (2010) directed by David O’Russell is a captivating and passionate sports drama. The film was easily able to portray the journey that the Eklund-Ward family took on Micky’s road to success in a realistic way which made it easy for me to understand and develop emotions towards the film and the characters in it. It was an exceptional watch which captured my full attention. The film made me realise there is always a struggle with success. I saw and experience this while watching the film and I am able to take this new found awareness with me into the real world when the film is over. The performance of the characters and the realistic portrayal of drugs in this film are major aspects that make this film so beguiling.
In the film the main character Micky Ward is a very promising boxer. Being a boxer is a family thing, his mother, Alice Ward, is his manager and his stepbrother brother, Dicky Eklund, is his trainer. Dicky is unreliable and Alice is very resilient. The two were very controlling over Micky and feel they have some sense of supremacy of him. However, even though Micky is working hard to try and make the best of his situation, he keeps getting blows that knock him down. They come in from the left, the right and all other directions, the hits that he receives seem to be the consequences of having Dicky and Alice as part of team. Despite this and his latest fight being unsuccessful, Micky still gets back in the ring.
The performance by Melissa Leo as Alice
The movie Napoleon Dynamite directed by Jared Hess and released June 11, 2004 is a comedy about an awkward teen that has trouble fitting in. Napoleon (Jon Heder) the main character, lives with his grandma until she gets into an accident and his life is immediately made worse when his uncle Rico (Jon Gries) who is stuck in his high school football “superstar” days knocks on their door and is there to keep an eye on Napoleon while his grandma is getting hospitalized. Napoleon has a red afro, wears moon boots, and is constantly practicing his atrocious ninja moves. Napoleon has a best friend in high school names Pedro (Efren Ramirez) who decides to run for class president, and it is up to Napoleon to step out of his comfort zone to help Pedro win, and get his information out around school. Napoleon Dynamite was excellent because it met the criteria of humor, acting, and the profound message.
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick is the story of a special friendship between two boys.The movie version titled “the Mighty” stars Kieran Culkin(Kevin) & Elden Henson(Maxwell) & is a good visual repetition of their adventure. They meet differently and the ornithopter is used in a different way they also show Kevin’s journey to save Max. They deleted the part where Kevin calls Max earthing. They added where Max finds a picture of his dad with his mom and Iggy and Loretta.
The 1946 film The Killers is a renowned film noir based off of Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same title, focusing on the detailed backstory and investigation for the motive of the murder of Pete Lund/Ole Anderson, commonly known and referred to as “The Swede.” A film noir is a term made originally to describe American mystery and thriller movies produced in the time period from 1944-1954, primarily marked by moods of menace, pessimism, and fatalism. Although the film does not focus on the war itself at all, it still puts forth interesting new ways in how gender relations can be stereotypical as well as divergent proceeding the Second World War.
The film “Cool Hand Luke” Directed by Stuart Rosenberg was released in 1967. It was about how Luke goes through his time in prison. The other film that relates to this film is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” directed by Miloš Forman was released in 1975. It was about how Randle was put in a psych ward because everyone thinks he’s crazy but helps the other patients and like Luke, Randle both films had Propp's theory on narrative structure where there are the traditional seven characters and the main characters were “heroes” but they don’t seem like heroes. They use camera angles to show how the characters in both films can be known as role models and not heros.
Boxing, an official sanctioned sport in the early 20th century, is a sport that is known as one of the most violent and physically demanding sports on the earth. Professional boxers that get paid to fight must be in top shape in order to preform at the highest level. Being a professional boxer is a tough life. Boxers train hard for many months leading up to one fight and either win, lose, knock out the opponent or even get knocked out. The sport has been around for centuries, but has most recently taken off over the last 100 years. It is a multibillion dollar industry with fighters taking home hundreds of thousands of dollars if not even millions of dollars for big matches. In his novel Papa Jack, Roberts tells the story of the famous African American boxer Jack Johnson. He details the boxers rise to fame and fortune and his downward spiral that would soon follow. In Papa Jack, Roberts displays life of a professional boxer through firsthand accounts with events that happened during Johnson’s life and shows how boxing not only influenced his life but also how he influenced the African American community.
The title of the film that I watched was Flyboys. It was Directed by Tony Bill and was released on September 22, 2006 in the United States. Some of the main cast members were James Franco as Blaine Rawlings, Jean Reno as Captain Thenault, Jennifer Decker as Lucienne, Martin Henderson as Reed Cassidy, and David Ellison as Eddie Beagle. The genre of the movie is action, adventure, and drama. It was based on a true story. This movie takes place in 1916 in France before America joins World War I. The Americans go over to France to learn how to become fighter pilots to help France against Germany. Their squadron is known as Lafayette Escadrille.
The film Warrior was released September 9, 2011 by director, writer and producer Gavin O’Connor. O’Connor takes us through a story of two former MMA fighting brothers dealing with a harsh family past (“Warrior”). Gavin has also directed the 2000 film, Tumbleweeds, and the winner of the Best Sports Movie Award in 2004, Miracle (“Gavin O’Connor”). Tom Hardy (Tommy Conlon) was also featured in a major 2010 film, Inception, and This Means War in 2012. He also played one of the main roles in The Dark Knight Rises as villain Bane (“Tom Hardy”). Joel Edgerton is most recognized for his role as a main character in an Australian Television show, The Secret Life of Us, but is also famous for his role as Uncle Owen in Star
Ex Machina goes above and beyond when it comes to science fiction and philosophy, if anything the movie leaves us with more question than answers. In the movie we are introduced to Caleb, a person we think has won the lottery only to find out he was chosen to be a participant for a Turing Test against AI, Ava, to see if she can pass as human. We are also introduced to Nathan who is the AI’s father of some sorts, he is wild, crazy genius that throughout the movie we are never sure if he is trustable or not. Nathan represents humanity at its darkest state; he is a self-destructive drunk who seeks his own demise. When he talks about the future and how the robots he created will take over the world, he talks about with awe like he can’t wait for
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.
Fight Club: every white man’s favorite movie and my worst nightmare turned reality. Much of the novel version of Fight Club struggles with this issues of toxic masculinity, feminization, and emotional constipation. No character addresses these topics better than Robert Paulson, better known as Big Bob; it is his character that serves as a catalyst for both The Narrator, and Project Mayhem.
Pulp Fiction is a black comedy crime film written and directed Quentin Tarantino (1994). The film’s “narrative follows the unpredictable actions and reflections of two hit men who philosophically meditate out loud about the Bible, loyalty, and McDonald’s hamburgers” (Corrigan, White, 368). The movie goes against the three-act structure of classic films as the story is told out of chronological order making the film so memorable to its viewers. Tarantino’s film begins in a coffee shop and also ends in the same shop. In the beginning of the film, it appears to be a soft, moist, shapeless matter of mass but as the movie progresses the audience can take away much more from the mundane acts they view on screen. The film’s odd narrative
I am planning to write about the 1999 film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher. This movie is about a nameless insomniac office worker (the narrator) who has become, as he views, a slave to consumer culture. He begins attending support groups for diseases he doesn’t have to subdue his emotional state, and he begins to sleep again. He meets Marla Singer, another fake attendee of support groups, she is an incredibly mysterious woman who is obviously a bit crazy, yet the narrator seems drawn to her. On a flight for his job, the narrator meets the character Tyler Durden, a hip, stylish man who sells soap for a living. When the narrator's apartment blows up, he calls Tyler and begins to live
When it comes to the film industry, entertainment is the tool used to acquire what is desired, money. The main goal for filmmakers when they create a film is to attain money in addition to the money spent to make the movie. Therefore, in some films that they like to base off of true accounts, it is somewhat necessary to dramatize or embellish the story to really tug at the heartstrings of the films audience. They achieve this goal by the use of dramatic music, ambient lighting, and a small amount of tweaked diction. The Fighter is an excellent example of this dramatization in action because throughout the film the characters are faced with a multitude of decisions that must be made. The choices they make require the characters to choose
Director Matthew Vaughn has a very accomplished track record; Kick-Ass is a breath of fresh air amid the abundance of Marvel superhero flicks, X-Men: First Class is a hugely entertaining romp that serves as the franchise’s finest, and Stardust, despite being rarely mentioned, is a competent and non-formulaic addition to the fantasy genre. You can imagine my disappointment, then, at Kingsman: The Secret Service, a spy caper devoid of any heart or wit that we have come to expect of the director.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder that is associated with reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and uncontrollable thoughts that drives the patients to repeat something over and over again. The Aviator movie is trying to depict this disorder through the character Howard Hughes. The story captures the real-life experience of Hughes who was a successful filmmaker and aeronautic engineer in Hollywood between 1920s and 1940s. He was both rich, talented and notoriously eccentric. Hughes showed symptoms of OCD which were very severe and incapacitating at some points. His conditions deteriorated progressively from bad to worst throughout his lifetime, though in most parts of the film he is depicted as functioning relatively normally. This paper will focus on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and how it has been depicted in The Aviator movie through the character Howard Hughes.