12 Years a Slave: Did not dissapoint

While anxiously awaiting my arrival into the UK for spring break, I was given the option to watch several movies on the plane. I sat next to two girls from Whales and while scrolling through what movies to watch, we all stopped at 12 Years a Slave. We all said we have never seen it before but wanted to watch it since we heard nothing but great things and I personally wanted to since it won an Oscar. At first we were not sure because we didn't really want to watch such a depressing movie. We then all looked at each other and said it is ok, we can cry together...and together we did.

12 Years a Slave imparts the cruelty of slavery with full force and tells the story of one man and his fight to stay alive. He fights for his life and is taken into the hands of a malevolent slave owner. This film is in no way shape or form an easy film to watch. In fact it is the complete opposite. The storyline is heartbreaking and violent. But the storyline is not what made this film so unbearable to the eye. What made it unbearable was the different camera techniques and editing that was used. One scene in particular was when a main character was being whipped by her own people. The way the shots were produced and the actors expressions were just brutal. I couldn't help but drop my jaw and cry. It was one of the most powerful scenes I have ever watched. Another was when he is writing a letter to his family, the extreme close up shot and the expression on his face makes the viewer feel his pain. Not only is it the way the shot is framed but it is also the duration of the shot. It is extremely long and you are just stuck there staring at his face and seeing the expression in his eyes. It happens for a few scenes. I don't want to give anything away because I strongly believe everyone should see this movie. It is painful, yet beautifully done. The cinematography, acting, directing, editing, everything was none other than brilliant and got the story across incredibly well.

I went into this movie with incredibly high expectations, and I can definitely say it lived up to them and deserved that Oscar for sure.

Django Unchained and Christoph Waltz

Over the holidays, I managed to make it to the movies three times. Two of those three times were to see the new Quentin Tarantino spaghetti western flick “Django Unchained”. Django was an absolutely brilliant film, combining all the qualities you expect from a Tarantino flick and then some. You were given the proverbial Tarantino gore, witty banter, and slew of absolute brilliantly written characters, but also saw the intertwining of an unforeseen amount of humor (the KKK scene? BRILLIANT) with a compelling love story that drove the film’s protagonist throughout this entire elaborate and entertaining plot. All while taking place in the cruel and slavery infested era that is the 1850’s south.

What made “Django Unchained” even more incredible, and what I personally loved about it, was the absolute exceptional casting and performance by the actors. While they were all brilliant, Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Shultz) was on another level as far as I’m concerned. What astounded me about Waltz’s performance was that he was not only able to portray this very intellectual character so fluidly with his unconditional charm and enunciated vocabulary, but also capture the roughness and danger that is the bounty hunter. As you know, he won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor for this performance and still awaiting to see if he can go for two for two with his Oscar nomination in the same category. Waltz won the Oscar two years ago for his role as “Hans Landa” in Inglorious Basterds. I think it’s safe to say that if Waltz should work exclusively on Tarantino films for the rest of his career, well he’d be just fine.

The Longest Two and a Half Hours of My Life.

Okay. Maybe not the longest. But it was pretty close. I saw Amber's post on Lincoln and thought I would respond with what I thought of the movie. Over the semester there's been a lot of things that Amber has posted and talked about in class that I completely agree with, and we seem to share a lot of the same tastes in some things. I think it's safe to say this movie was not one of them.

When I went to this movie I went in with high expectations. I went with a pretty large group of people on Thanksgiving night, and my group came out split in half. Half were on Amber's side, and the other half found it mildly painful.

I have to admit, the story was solid and the actors did a good job. Daniel Day-Lewis was a fantastic Lewis. While I'm getting somewhat tired of seeing Sally Field as the same crying mother over and over again, I'll even give an a-okay to her performance. My problem with the movie stemmed from other aspects of the film.

In class, we spent a lot of time talking about how camera movement should help tell the story. You want reasons for everything that's in frame and every movement you make. However, during the long stretches of dialogue the camera would slowly pan and move up and down the table. I found this movement more distracting than anything else. Not only that, but it made the five+ minute stretches of dialogue feel even longer. I felt that if you are confident in your dialogue you shouldn't need to lean on painfully slow pans to add some interest to the piece.

Another aspect that I found distracting throughout the whole thing, which kept me from paying attention to the story, was the continuity...or lack thereof. Throughout the entire film, the piece is battling with constant smoke filling every room. Between cigars, furnaces, lamp, etc...the stuff is everywhere. However, there were a few different part in the film where the smoke would completely disappear in an instant. In one shot a character is faced head on and he takes a puff of the cigar, and a giant plume comes out. The next shot, where less than a second has past, looks at his back towards Lincoln across the room...no smoke to be found. In another scene a we find Lincoln's son outside by a flag that's blowing in the breeze. The next shot, also where less than a second has past, we see the same flag this time looking out of a window, and it's completely still. While these things don't seem that significant in the long-run, when you have a movie that is very dialogue heavy with very long scenes, little things like that can be very distracting. My brother's girlfriend who's never taken a film class in her life also mentioned these things, so I know I can't be the only one.

I would still recommend seeing this movie. I didn't absolutely despise it, and David Strathairn's role as Seward is enough to keep the movie afloat. I do think it did a good job at giving a bit of insight to a president that many people think is one of the best presidents to have ever led America, without really knowing much about him. I just think there were some...or many things that could have been better.

Spielberg's Lincoln

For many years as I can remember I have always been a fan of Steven Spielberg's films including Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, E.T, Indiana Jones, Artificial Intelligence, The Goonies, and many other great films. He has been a great inspiration to me as well as many other people. He has directed, and produced some of the greatest American films that most people watch today.

His newest movie "Lincoln" stars three Academy Award winners including Daniel-Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens.

One reason this movie was attractive to me was because it's about Abe Lincoln, one of America's most influential presidents and surely one of my favorites. I remember as a kid in high school loving to learn about Lincoln in the Civil War and what he did to abolish slavery. This movie takes place some time near the end of the Civil War which is sometime in 1865. As the movie progresses it explores Lincoln's tactics and techniques as he works with his cabinet attempts to abolish slavery.

I also chose to post about this movie because it is another movie that is based on a true story, movies I tend to watch more than others. Like I mentioned earlier, in school, i loved learning about wars, presidents, and other moments in history. One of my favorite topics was the Civil War and how our country worked to abolish slavery in the south.

From the love of this historical moment, I am interested to learn more from this film and see it on the big screen.