Unforgiven

Unforgiven was allot better than stagecoach was; I just have to say that now. It was much more realistic and it had a better story line. The storyline had more emotion in it over the killing and it did not have the Indian stereotype in it. It being a revisionist Western it made the audience think allot more about what was going on in the movie vs. the classical Westerns just made the hero good in every way and made it so thats all you really needed to know. When Will started drinking towards the end he went back to his old ways and he started killing again and killed Bill for what he did to Ned. He did it purely because of revenge and as the movie pointed out not at all for what he "deserved" even though in some ways he very well may have. This is where the movie gets its title, it is because Will (and others) are never forgiven for their pasts.

Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo, as I am sure most of you know, is about a clown fish named Nemo whose mother and siblings were eaten at the beginning of the film and who was raised by his dad. He is captured by a human diver and brought to a dentist who plans on giving him to his fish killer of a niece. His dad Marlin is trying throughout the movie to find and save his son and be reunited and in the process goes through bunch of adventures.

The thing that brought real humor and belief into the story was the voice acting. Marlin’s Voice actor did a wonderful job of portraying an over protective father and Dory’s voice actor (Ellen Degeneres) played a very forgetful and borderline psychotic fish. Nemo’s Voice actor did a good job of being a fearful yet still optimistic kid. Marlin wouldn’t let his son do anything fun for fear he would loose him like his mother and so his voice was always whiney the entire film. Dory on the other hand, you couldn’t have an entire conversation with and her voice always seemed loopy and out of it which added most of the humor and some frustration to the movie.

The set in the movie also greatly added to the story. The exec producer John Lasseter had all of the staff get certified to go scuba diving. He wanted the set to be as realistic as possible so he had them all go to the coral reefs and look around to get an idea of what the environment was so they could copy it virtually. They really worked on the water simulator to get the ripple effects and splashes to work right by making the water react with itself. They modified the simulator used in the Monster’s Inc. movie named Fizt used for the fur movement on the monsters and renamed it Splasht for the water effects. At some point during the movie though, the background looked completely realistic while there was cartoon fish swimming in it and the contrast was not necessarily a good thing. There were really only 4 types of fish skins that covered all of the fish in the movie; iridescent, velvet, metallic, and gummy. The colors were just modified depending on the fish they were trying to mimic. There were 2 types of fins in the movie as well; there was Marlin’s type of fin called the rower and Dory’s type called the flapper(because the flap them like a birds wings).

Finding Nemo was a good movie for the most part but lacked believability if you know anything about how sea turtles work and the fact that if the sharks were to not eat fish they would dye. Sorry to say but for the sharks fish are not friends but in fact, food. For any of the ones that have not seen this movie I would recommend seeing it just as a right of passage if nothing else.

Stagecoach

I have never been much of a fan of westerns but as far as they go this one wasn't that bad. Stagecoach had some more modern day themes in it then your other westerns. For one, in other westerns the hero would fall in love with the "lady" in the movie and not the whore. The fact that Ringo treated Dallas with such respect was contrary to what society would have liked back when westerns were first starting to be made. With a more conservative attitude previous generations may have frowned upon the whore wining over the hero.
Something that wasn't necessarily from this day in age though, was that throughout the entire movie Ringo was very docile and only tried to escape once. This is coming from todays viewpoint where in every movie the criminal is always trying to escape every chance he gets and is never docile at all. Ringo had the "good old fashioned honor" which is typical for most westerns. The hero has to have some honor in order to be the person we sympathize with them. This goes with many movie genres as well but somewhat more so for westerns because of the classic idea that is a western.

Citizen Kane

In Citizen Kane they showed the audience more things than the characters in the film knew about and to make a point using different camera angles. They showed the sled in the end to solve the mystery of what "rosebud" was. They showed the 2 different sides of Susan’s debut when they opened once from the back showing all of the audience that Susan had to face knowing her voice was not good and once from the front showing her facial expression as it did so. Also the entering and leaving as they traveled up and down respectively at the gate of his castle was a way to provide closure. All these things made the film more complete for the audience in that it helped them see the bigger picture even if the movie characters did not.

The Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai was over all a good movie. It had some noticeable flaws though and I would not necessarily put it in a best movie category. The plot had a lot of potential but did not deliver all of it. The movie was slightly lacking in some important story development aspects.

The characters were very dynamic but underdeveloped. They hinted at some of their background but they did not elaborate on much of it, especially with Kambei and Kikuchiyo. Kambei never gave any information on his past and his relations with some of the other samurai. They acknowledged that he knew them and that they were friends but never went deeper. Kikuchiyo had a past with adapting a samurai’s persona but not truly being one that was not explained as well. Kurosawa concentrated more on the philosophy of the story than the characters in it.

The acting was pretty good but there were a few moments where the emotion just did not seem believable but the dialog in the movie was pretty good throughout. The costumes and the setting were authentic to Japan in that time. They were a little too revealing for my liking though (basically men in thongs). The music was generally slow and authentic but had some faster points in the battle scenes. There were not many special effects when this movie was made in 1954 and very few if any were used. It was very slow moving in some scenes and the movie reaches almost 3 ½ hours in length and there was not that much action and the action that was there was toward the end.

On the more positive side, the movie did a great job of showing the difference in classes. It creates struggles with the town and trying to get help and it also causes Kikuchiyo problems when trying to becoming one of the group. The class problems also create tension when the father of Shino does not want her to fall in love with a samurai because of the class difference and it eventually leads to a love conflict in the end that is never resolved.

Much of this movie I could probably understand better if I knew more about the Japanese culture. Many of the things in here were cultural and it was assumed that the watcher would know what is going on. I did not understand many of the characters’ gestures and phrases to each other because of this. It may have made the acting, especially, more believable if I had known these things. For the most part the movie was good and I would recommend that you see it but just expect it to be a little slow in some parts and there to be missing some of the background information.