Brick Screening Report

Rian Johnson's Brick is a neo-film noir film in the atypical high school setting. This puts a twist on the common aspects of the genre. The fact that such a grave and serious tale is set in a high school is a very interesting and deliberate choice that Rian Johnson made to make the audience think about how age and perspective go hand in hand. When looking back on high school, everything seems trivial. But while you are actually in high school, any issue is of the utmost importance at the time. Mixing the very real and grim aspect of murder with the immaturity of high school adolescence creates an interesting dynamic which I have never seen in another film before.

Miller's Crossing Screening Report

Miller's Crossing, like a typical mob movie, makes the mob groups out to be family units. The difference between Miller's Crossing and any typical mob movie is that it looks much closer at the personal relationships between the characters rather than focusing most on the crimes committed by one mob family or another.

This movie is also packed with symbolism, when most mobster movies convey the majority of their meanings directly through dialogue. The recurring symbol of the fedora symbolizes the quintessential gangster and his connection to something bigger than himself. We can see this through Tommy's attachment and need for the hat that evolves in his dream of his hat being blown off by the wind and him leaving it behind saying, "There's nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat".

Research Paper Proposal

I plan to write my film research paper on Luc Besson's film Leon:The Professional. It was my favorite movie for years before I saw what is now my favorite movie, Brick. I also think that it has a lot of interesting points to track and study for analysis, such as sexuality in adolescents vs. adults, justification of crime, following the evolution of Leon as a character, variations on love throughout the film, and many more. I don't think that it will be difficult to find information and critical pieces on the film because it was made in 1994 and received a lot of attention from critics at the time that it was made.

Dr. Strangelove Screening Report

The film Dr. Strangelove’s comedic value is rooted mostly in the clever, witty, and often suggestive dialogue. The type of comedy found in the dialogue changes from one character to another, but is mostly ironic comedy. Humor based on stereotypes is the most commonly used type of jokes in the film, rooting from stereotypes on gender, nationality, and occupation. It also draws humor from the fact that it is a film about a normally serious topic that is typically depicted in a dramatic style. Films about war are generally supposed to be emotionally gripping to the audience and glorify the heroes of war, whereas Dr. Strangelove pokes fun at the idea of war and those who fight in them.

The first and only woman we see in the film is dressed in a bikini, tanning indoors. She is also the secretary to General Buck Turgidson. Humor is shown through her attitude and her actions. It is made clear that she is not only a secretary to the General, but his mistress too. Scantily clad, she answers the phone in his house while he is in the bathroom and acts as though it is just another day at the office. This is poking fun at both the seriousness that is often associated with a military position as high as General and role that women played during times of war. Dr. Strangelove, who is said to be the one of the most intelligent scientist that work for the American government, hardly acts sane enough to have the intelligence that they claim he possesses. He is constantly and involuntarily moving his right arm into a “heil Hitler” salute. This is making fun of his nationality because he is German and humorously commenting on just how intelligent and moral high profile government officials are.

Dr. Strangelove causes its audience to take a different and more light-hearted look at war and humanity as a whole, going back to the roots of entertainment for entertainment’s sake.

Marnie Screening Report

Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie uses color as a very communicative symbol throughout the film. It is an especially important aspect of the film because of the time period in which it was made, when technicolor technology was being more widely used in film and television. Although several colors could be tracked throughout the film, I found that the two most important and commonly used symbolic colors in the movie are yellow and red.

From the very beginning of the film, yellow is meant to symbolize wealth and prosperity as a color that can the precious metal: gold. The first frame of the film is a shot of a yellow leather clutch in the crook of a woman's elbow. It is revealed that this clutch holds the key to the safe at her place of work and the money Marnie had just stolen from her employer. We even the safe key has a yellow cover on top of it as Marnie drops it into a sewer grate to get rid of the evidence. When Marnie breaks into the safe at Rutland's, she steals the key to a desk drawer from a co-worker and takes the combination to the company safe printed on a yellow index card. Marnie uses the money she steals to support her mother and try to buy her love. It is clear that Hitchcock wants us to see yellow as a color that acts as a driving force that symbolizes what Marnie sees as her growing success and power gained through her stolen wealth that might finally buy her her mother's love and affection.

The most important color that could be tracked throughout the film is red. Not only does it symbolize danger, evil, and fear, but more specifically, red is symbolically linked to blood. We first see Marnie's clear dislike and discomfort towards the color red when she sees a vase full of red gladiolas in her mother's house. Suddenly, Marnie gets a panicked look on her face and a red color wash saturates a close up shot of her face. This is a strong signal to the audience to watch out for this particular color usage in the film because this is the first time that this color wash is used in a shot and its background and meaning is not explained right away. The next most important color wash of red used in the film is during the a violent storm that happens while Marnie is working overtime in Mr. Rutland's office. As soon as lightning and thunder begin to strike, Marnie starts to panic. A wash of red is used in a shot showing the thunderstorm through the office window and Marnie says "The colors. Stop the colors." Mr. Rutland responds with "What colors?", leading the audience to believe that Marnie has a deep rooted psychological fear of the color red since she is the only one who sees the color. The color red is finally reveled to be connected to blood when Mr. Rutland confronts Marnie's mother and questions her about an alleged murder that she committed. Marnie slowly remembers her mother's past as a prostitute as an argument escalates between Mr. Rutland and Marnie's mother. She then remembers the night that Marnie's mother was attacked by a man during a thunderstorm outside and remembers all of the red blood gushing from the man's head after she uses a fire poker to hit him on the head after he fell on her mother in the violent struggle and crippled her. All of her fears are then connected and we learn that Marnie's mother really does love Marnie despite her stunted emotional capacity because of how she protected Marnie from knowing or remembering how she murdered a man to save her mother's life that night.

Kill Bill: Volume 2

Screening Report

Kill Bill Volume 2 is the continuation of a story of bloody revenge. Much like the first installment, our heroine is on a journey to slay those who have betrayed her on her hit list. Although the second installment in the Kill Bill series follows the same main character on the same journey that she had already begun, it does so in a more revealing and explanatory fashion. Volume 2 focuses quite heavily on flashback scenes that further explain The Bride’s beginnings as an assassin and literally make her less of a mystery by revealing her real name as Beatrix Kiddo. The film utilizes a mixture of black and white and color scenes in order to make the viewer aware of changes in the broken timeline of the movie, a timing technique that Quentin Tarantino is well known for. Physical changes in the characters can also be tracked in order to identify the time in which any given scene is taking place.

The audience comes into the movie, assuming that they have seen the first installment of the series, knowing that The Bride has already killed two of the people on her original hit list that were part of The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad that stormed her wedding: O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green. What the film explains is why this squad of killers attempted to kill The Bride and the entire wedding party in the first place. It explores the complicated romantic and business relationship between Beatrix and Bill that has taken her down the path of becoming both an assassin and a mother and how the surrounding events lead up to the massacre at Two Pines. When Beatrix finds out she is pregnant with Bill’s baby while on a mission he sent her on, she faces the decision of leaving her life as an assassin behind for her child or staying with Bill and raising her child in an environment of violence and constant danger. She decides to leave the killing business behind and take up an alias in a new state, get married, and forget her life before. Bill, believing she has been killed on her mission, looks for her killers in order to get his own brand of revenge. He searches only to find that she is alive and pregnant with his child, getting married to another man. His rage felt upon making this discovery is what sparks him to get his squad of assassins together and murder her and everyone else in the chapel. This backstory that is based in the past intertwines with the murders that Beatrix has left to commit on her hit list in present time in order to gain her bloody satisfaction and revenge, eventually ending with a final showdown in which Bill is killed and Beatrix is then reunited with her four year old daughter, B.B.

Movie Review

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 2 is a brilliant continuation of the Kill Bill series. In the first volume of the story, we see a nameless assassin who kills to avenge the attacks made on her and her unborn daughter by The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and has an end goal to kill the man responsible for it all, Bill. While the first installment is by no means a bad film, Kill Bill: Volume 2 shows us a different side of the story with the emotional charge and conflicted past behind the sheer fury of this woman scorned. While this is certainly an action film, it is also a very beautifully executed love story that is not typical of the genre. Not only are flashbacks of better times between Beatrix and Bill shown as their love story, but their present complicated love for each other is also shown, even as Beatrix faces killing the man she still loves.

Tarantino also very artistically contrasts the first film’s very eastern influences with the very recognizable western influences in the second film. This contrast can be observed in the cinematography, dialogue, and symbolic set location of the desert. In the first film, we see the honor and tradition associated with the east in battle and in social situations. In this film, we see the romance and self-sufficiency of the spirit of the west. In this sequel, the struggle to fight for vengeance is more human and thought provoking because of the love for a man and her child and pain that we clearly see he has caused her as her reasoning for chasing after her revenge. It is a beautiful tale that tells the story of first a woman, then an assassin, and finally, a mother on her quest for closure and happiness.

Critical Essay

Kill Bill: Volume 2 follows the evolution of a woman as she struggles to play multiple roles in her life. In the early flashbacks of the past, we see Beatrix as a very dependent and dedicated lover to Bill. Not only is she his woman, she is his assassin in training. When she is separated from Bill during her training, she becomes more independent and much more confident in herself. She asks fewer questions of her superiors and relies more on her instinct and her teachings than she ever did before.

In the scene where Beatrix discovers that she is a mother, we see her at her most vulnerable and pivotal point in womanhood. Doing something as commonplace as a pregnancy test while on a hired mission to kill shows her human side. She waits nervously for the results just as anyone else would and panics just as much as any woman would when she becomes aware of an unplanned pregnancy. Beatrix is suddenly faced with the decision to stay with Bill and raise her child in the world of assassins or leave Bill behind in order to raise her child in a better environment. Her choice to leave Bill and start off with a clean slate for the sake of her child shows her growth and maturity as a woman, while still holding on to her identity as an assassin by adopting an alias and letting Bill believe that she has been killed while on the mission.

After Bill discovers that she is still alive and pregnant with his child, he takes violent ownership of her. Even at the moment that he shoots her in the head, he says “This is me at my most masochistic.” This attack is what re-ignites the fire of a killer within Beatrix as she fights to avenge her daughter. Only after all of Bill’s accomplices are defeated does she discover that her daughter is still alive. When she comes to Bill’s house to kill him, she finds her daughter in the doorway instead, playing a game of toy guns with “Daddy”. Her tenderness and human vulnerability is seen once again as she cries both in sadness and pure joy in finally being reunited with her daughter. Even after killing Bill, we see that he is the only member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad that she cries for as he dies. By the end of the film, Beatrix has finally found the balance in her life as a woman: being a bride, a “black mamba”, Beatrix Kiddo, and Mommy.