Terminator 2- Judgement Day

Terminator 2 Judgement Day is a movie directed by James Cameron and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story starts off in the present where people are still alive and the city is well. There is a shot of a girl swinging on a swing that fades into a flashforward of the future in 2029, where Judgement Day has already happened. The first shot is of a skeleton in a blown up car and the camera pans across the scene to reveal more destruction. There is a voice-over narration explaining that Judgement Day has happened that continues until the camera zooms in on a skull on the ground. Then as she says Judgment Day, a terminator crushes the skull with his foot and the camera tilts up to reveal him. There is low key lighting that is interrupted with a splash of color due to an explosion in the distance. This opening scene really sets a grim mood. The special effects in the first scene include different explosions, laser blasts from the robots, and the robots themselves. The director frequently uses the overlap of shots which helps convey the characters emotions towards what is happening. The scene which introduces the different actors and producers serves as dramatic irony because it takes place against the playground showed in the first scene, except it is completely enflamed. The director includes shots from the terminators point of view, everything is electronic. He sees the world in a red tone where words are written across the shot as he analyzes his surroundings.
The scene that introduces John Connor, the character Schwarzenegger is sent to protect, has very high key lighting and the camera follows each character as the scenes go on. There is the diegetic sound of the music played from John stereo as he rides around on his motorcycle. The scene in the mental hospital where John's mother is has very high key lighting as well but in this setting, it looks sickly. The caretakers treat her very badly which makes the audience feel empathy towards her and want to root for her. In a later scene where Sarah is dreaming and the father of her child comes to comfort her and give her advice, the shot appears fuzzy and there is very soft lighting which contrasts with the earlier scene where she is being mistreated. There is a dolly shot of her running slow motion through the halls of the hospital. She runs to the end and opens the door and ends up in the playground of the first scene. There are very intense colors and you can tell something bad is going to happen. Sure enough, the whole place blows up and she wakes up from her dream. The camera cuts back and forth between medium shots of Sarah and her psychiatrist as she tries to get transferred to a minimum security wing.
 The director uses technology to move the story along especially since John has skills as a hacker. John and a friend hack into an ATM to steal some money and there is an extreme close up shot of all the equipment and things he does to get the cash out. There are shots in a tech lab where scientists are keeping all the evidence they have from the terminators first attack. There is a lot of use of the color blue and I believe its representative of the good that contrasts with the red of the terminators eyes. Except the bad terminator is dressed up as a cop, which is quite ironic since they are supposed to be the "good guys".

Tsotsi

Tsotsi is an independent film by director Gavin Hood that tells the story of a wannabe thug young man who kills a woman and steals her car, only to find a baby in the backseat, who he then actually cares for as he becomes a better man. At the beginning of the film, there is almost no dialogue, which only makes everything that happens so intense. It starts off with a group of men betting on die. There are different extreme close up shots of what is going on, a shot of the dice, of the beer, a joint, money on the table, and a newspaper. It gives the many different aspects of their culture. Right after this, diegetic, African dance music plays as the "gang" walks through the village. Their is a medium shot of the gang that dollys forward as the gang does. It cross-cuts occasionally to pan across the different people in the village that have different reactions to the gang.
The next scene involves the gangs first crime. There are shots of each member, but especially of Tsotsi, we don't know his name yet but we can infer he is the main character. There is the non-diegetic sound of a lady's voice over an intercom so we can assume the scene takes place in a subway. The shot quickly pans to a man speaking to a vendor. It cuts back to Tsotsi and then back to a close up of the man pulling out his wallet. The shot cuts back to an extreme close up of just Tsotsi's eyes as he sees the cash. Throughout the film, the same technique is used. When Tsotsi sees something he likes, there is an extreme close up of it, which cuts back to his face. The gang then follows the man, stabs him in the subway full of hundreds of people and take the money. The next shot is so ironic because the subway goes from being completely full, to completely empty with only the man laying dead on the floor, in a matter of seconds.
The scene that introduces Tsotsi is also an interesting one. You find out that Tsotsi means thug and  gang member, Boston, questions Tsotsi about his real name and he remains completely silent, perhaps foreshadowing that there is something about his past he is running from. There's an over the shoulder shot showing light only on Tsotsi's face, slowly zooming in as Boston asks more personal questions. It immediately cross cuts to an over the shoulder shot of Tsotsi punching Boston. There are a lot of intense color in this scene, especially the blood on Boston's face, which contrasts with the dark, desert landscape outside when Tsotsi runs out of the bar.
Another interesting shot is of Tsotsi running away from a fight in the rain. The shot is a medium shot of him, but then it cross cuts with a shot of a younger, crying Tsotsi running. This makes the audience think, what happened in Tsotsi's past?
My favorite shot is one of where the gang sleeps. There are huge drain pipes outside, stacked on top of one another and there is a long shot of the cross sectional view of the pipes and you can see a gang member in each. It reminded me of Rear Window, where you can see each neighbor in their window, except they are in drain pipes instead.
Throughout the film, Tsotsi starts to change as he starts to care more and more about the baby and as an audience we come to like him. There is a scene of him in his room with the baby he is now responsible for who won't stop crying. Tsotsi starts playing dance music (non-diegetic) and starts dancing, hoping to calm the baby down and cover the sound of his cries. It cross cuts between medium shots of Tsotsi dancing and closeups of his hands as he tries to caress the baby or feed him condensed milk.  This scene alone already changes the audiences view of Tsotsi, the music is so cheerful and the effort he makes for the baby is so unlike the thug he appears to be, we start to see him as a good guy. Gavin Hood uses music frequently throughout the film to enlighten the mood and the situation, since the film takes place in a small village in South Africa that isn't doing so well. Hood's use of color and music are what made the film so enjoyable for me and would definitely recommend it.

RoboCop

Today I watched the 2014 remake of RoboCop. From the very beginning, there is a lot of action. A t.v. crew is in Tehran filming a routine search by drones and huge machines in a small village. There are cross cutting shots between the film crew thinking everything is going well and a man in one of the homes strapping himself with bombs and machine guns. It also goes back to a pan of the TV host back in America speaking to one of the generals about how much better this sort of military and police is. Back in the village, the bombers go out and the drones respond. It cuts back to the bombers son, who we see from a dutch angle as if we are following him as he goes after his father. The camera bounces around as if we are with him. Right as the news reporter says, "You'll notice children in the streets as well, this is everyday life happening in perfect harmony-" explosion. Then it becomes not so perfect. Because of the dust from the rubble, there is a lot of low key lighting. There is one scene where we appear to be on top of one of the camera guys cameras as he does a 360 shot of the street. The next scene is sad because a teenage boy runs out the house and a drone sees him. We see through the eyes of the drone as he zooms in and examines the boy and sees he has a pocket knife and labels him a threat and the words ENGAGE appear, and it is cut and we see his mother scream, cut again to the news report where the drone fires in the background. The tv host then cuts the feed. The next interesting scene is when Alex Murphy, the cop who was blown up and died, is turned into "robocop". There is very high key lighting in large rooms in the lab where he is. Alex has no idea that he died and doesn't actually have a body anymore. He goes throughout the factory and the camera is very shaky and it cuts to shots within his new mask as he analyzes things. As he gets outside, there is a really cool shot through his mask where he analyzes the wall he is about to jump. We see the lines marking the height and angle at which he has to jump. They shut him down however and bring him back to the laboratory where they show him what is left of him. This is where I do not think Joel Kinnaman did a very good job of reacting to just having found out he has nothing left except for a left hand, his lungs, heart and his head. I screamed louder than he did when I saw it. I honestly don't even know how he was still alive. You could see the brain and the lungs pumping, his throat pumping. Very intense special effects. Another cool method the director uses is when Alex video chats with his wife. You see her on the big computer screen, him in the little window and reflecting off the screen, and beside the computer, there is a photo of Alex's son. Another awesome scene is when RoboCop is trying to get past these bad guys in a dark tunnel. He is on his silver motorcycle and all you can see is some reflection from the red accents on his armor. When shots are fired, the scene is illuminated because of the shots and you see the light reflect off of RoboCop and his motorcycle. It is almost as if it was black and silver instead of black and white.

Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction is a movie starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close that tells the story of a weekend affair that turns into a dangerously clingy obsession for a man who considered it just a fling. Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, an attorney, who lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter, Ellen. He meets Alex, a beautiful editor for a publishing company, one weekend his wife and Ellen are away and they have an affair. Gallagher spends the night in her apartment one night, the fact that they slept together is implied by the way a long shot of them entering her apartment is cross cut with an establishing shot of the street with the sun rising in the morning the next day. The camera pans across the street until we see Dan's shadow walking down the street, getting smaller and smaller. I think this was a kind of way of demonstrating how Dan was "walking out" on the affair, he doesn't wait for her to get up, but rather just leaves her a note. When he walks in the door, his first missing call is from his wife telling him to call him, the camera zooms in on a close up of his face and you can tell he is contemplating what to do and he actually takes a shower before actually talking to her. This symbolizes him washing away the sin of what he did. The irony is that right after he talks to her, Alex calls. This is where Dan makes his first mistake, he sees Alex again, and not just to hook up, but to have a lovely afternoon in the park. The shot cuts from him on the phone with her to a subjective point of view as if we were running behind them and the dog in the park. It cuts to a long establishing shot of the park that zooms in on them wrestling in the field. They have lunch in Alex's apartment and although there is obviously light outside, the inside of her apartment appears hazy, and there is lowkey lighting, representative of the fact that she is shady. There is foreshadowing as to what comes next as Dan tells the story of an opera he once saw where a sailor left a woman who then wanted to kill herself. FORESHADOWING AND DRAMATIC IRONY for those who like to guess the twists in movies. Later on when Dan is explaining to Alex how their affair must end, Alex doesn't appear to care, she just seems angry. She has this big blonde hair that makes her look super pretty, but she has very dark makeup around her eyes that accentuate how creepy she looks when she is looking at Dan. They argue about the fact that Dan took it as just fun and she thought it was more, but we don't expect the drastic measures she will take. Dan is about to walk out the door but she calls out to him, "Why don't you come over here and say goodbye nicely". There is a medium shot of her on the other side of the room with her hands behind her back. She is wearing a white dress that looks like one a patient in a mental hospital would wear. She starts to cry as Dan hugs her and then starts kissing him passionately with her hands all over her face. This is where we starts to see the blood coming from her hands onto his face and he looks down at her wrists, and immediately, a close up of slashed wrists, and a blast of intense non-diegetic music. This is when we start to think, this chick is crazy. Thankfully, Dan handles the situation and she turns out alright. The director does a good job with the juxtaposition of light shots when showing Dan and dark shots when showing Alex to show how she is like a plague to him . One shot of Dan on the phone in the kitchen is really light, and it pans across to show Alex in bed, completely in darkness but still creepily listening to Dan's conversation. Alex starts to show up in random places and Dan has to become more and more firm with her. It starts to really get crazy when Dan's wife goes to pick up Ellen from school, and Alex has already taken her from school and to the carnival. The director makes a point of cross cutting between Dan's wife frantically searching for Alex in the neighborhood, whether a long shot of her running around in the house or her frantic point of view while driving, and the cheery carnival where Alex and Ellen are, where it is bright and cheerful diegetic music is playing. Close-ups of Alex and Ellen on a ride show how uncomfortable Ellen looks and how creepy Alex is because she starts off looking mad, and then smiles like a maniac. The bumpy ride of the rollercoaster describes what she is doing to their marriage and is cross cut between shots of Dan's wife getting in a crash because of all the stress. His wife ends up in the hospital and Ellen comes home and Dan has finally had it. He goes to their apartment and they get in their second to last fight (not to spoil the film). This is one where one of my favorite shots of the movie is. Dan is able to pin alex to the ground and starts to choke up. The camera cuts between shots from Dan's point of view of Alex on the floor, and Alex's point of view of Dan above her. The kitchen light is swinging back and forth above them and the lights seems to flash as she is being choked, representative of her life slipping away. He lets her go and she goes for a knife but he is able to wrestle it away. There is an extreme close up of the knife as he slowly puts it down on the counter and he starts to slowly back away. The next shot is so scary because it is a medium shot of her doing her creepy smile that slowly zooms out and nothing is said as Dan walks out the door and we don't see her again until the very end, where everything must end.

The Omen

Richard Donner's 1976 "The Omen" is one of my favorite scary movies and I watched it again after not having seen it for a couple years and each time I watch it, I notice something new. It's about diplomat Robert Thorn and his son, who seems to be possessed by the devil. The introduction lists the actors names against a black screen with dark satanic opera music playing with a boy and his shadow, that takes the shape of a cross, in the right hand corner. This non-diegetic, opera-like music plays each time something bad happens or someone dies throughout the film. Gregory Peck, who plays Robert, does a good job of appearing worried and anxious throughout the film as more horrors unfold, starting with the first scene that shows Robert in a cab being rushed to the hospital with the overlap of a priest talking, telling him that his son was stillborn. Later in the church, a shot through the banister frames a priest telling Peck their son has past. There are lots of shots like this throughout the movie that are framed using the setting, such as the shot of the orphan baby Robert takes home in place of his actual son. You see the orphan baby, Damien, through hospital glass and Robert and a priests' reflection overlapping the baby, with soft suspenseful music playing in the background. There are shots through the gate of the mansion they live in every time they come and go. Most shots start with a view of the architecture of wherever they are, whether in Rome or back in London. The director made sure to show famous landmarks that make the setting recognizable, especially churches and religious statues.
Non-diegetic, suspenseful music plays throughout the film, often covering up the diegetic sounds in the scene. Rottweilers were used as a symbol in the movie, as they hypnotized characters, leading them to do bad things, and each time one was shown, "trippy", hypnotic music played, as the camera zoomed in on both the dog and characters eyes as it cut back and forth. The dog first appears at Damien's birthday party and hypnotizes his nanny, who then climbs to the top floor window and hangs herself, after yelling "I love you Damien look at me, its all for you" at the children playing happily at the party below. It is a total contrast, as the jubilant music cuts off as soon as she jumps. The camera then zooms in on Damien, smiling at the Rottweiler. Later, they get a new nanny except no one knows where she came from, she just kind of showed up, but the Thorns decide to keep her anyway. Her makeup exaggerates her wrinkles and crooked, yellow teeth and she just looks creepy. There is a long shot of the door to Damiens room and the shadow of the new nanny as she shuts herself in with him slowly.
The Thorns put up with a lot before actually doing anything, it seems to be a theme of the movie. At one point, the new, creepy nanny refuses to let Damien go to church until Katherine, Roberts wife, raises her voice and insists. When they do bring Damien to church, he goes crazy and throws a fit, screaming and scratching and hitting his mother. Yet they still do nothing. Next, the nanny brings the Rottweiler in the house without their permission, saying it needs to protect Damien, and Robert doesn't even seem mad that this random lady has brought this dangerous dog into his house. While Robert is at work at the embassy, a new priest comes in and starts talking about the Devil and accepting the Lord Jesus and drinking his blood, saying "I witnessed the birth of your son, I beg you, he will kill all you love!". Suspenseful music plays that rises in volume and the priest yells "His mother was a jackal!" right as the security guard comes into the room. The final straw for me would've been when Katherine brings Damien to the zoo and all the animals run away from him and at one point, they are attacked in their car by baboons, as the shot cuts from Kathy scared and Damien smiling and the scared, aggressive baboons. The scene of them driving away is from the subjective point of view of Kathy and you see the monkeys disappearing in the distance. "What could be wrong? We're beautiful people aren't we?" Kathy says after the attack, when back at home with Robert. They seem to avoid their problems because since they have everything they think they should lead a perfect life and it's not all actually happening. They are in denial which is why they put up with so much before taking action.
Throughout the film, there is this one photographer, Keith, that is always there, following the family around. Medium shots in his darkroom, washed in red (like blood) show his pictures developing. First, photos of the priest develop with weird slashes through his neck on which serve as foreshadowing, because later on in the film, a storm breaks loose as the camera takes a dolly shot of the priest running to get into the church and lightning strikes the churches lightning rod and it breaks off impaling the priest, and you see a wide shot of him surrounded by graves with the rod through his body. Keith looks back at pictures he took of the old nanny at Damien's wedding and sees shadows around her neck, symbolizing the way she died (hanged). Later on, Keith takes a mirror picture while at the priests apartment and there is a slash through his neck as well. He is later decapitated by a sheet of glass. His photos frame the way people died in the film.
Before his death, Keith and Robert travel to Rome and put together that Robert's son was born on 6/6 at 6 am and the hospital he was born in burned down after he left. Finally everything is starting to make sense. The two go to the grave of Damien's real mother and sure enough as they open it, they find the skeleton of a jackal.
I don't want to spoil the rest of the film but I liked the way the director used events and different objects as symbols. Throughout the film, the viewer begins to understand what's going to happen, say certain music is playing or there are shadows on a developing picture. These all serve as omens, thus why the film may have been named The Omen.

Team America: World Police

            I want to start off by saying that Team America: World Police is one of those movies that is meant to be dumb and was hilarious. Since the whole movie was a joke there were no serious themes however, the film contained many elements of satirical comedy, as well as being made entirely with marionettes. The opening scene is set in Paris and very “Inception-like” because the first scene is a shot of a puppet in front of the Arc de Triomphe wearing the stereotypical striped black and white shirt and beret, screaming “Sacre bleue!”, but then pans out to show the bigger picture and you see it’s actually a street performer marionette controlling an even smaller marionette. I think they did this to show that they could make a puppet movie look good, because when you see the first puppet it looks very fake and the background is painted but when it pans out and becomes the wider shot, you see the intricacy of the puppets and the set. This is also wear you see the theme of stereotyping in satirical films. All the French puppets are wearing berets or carrying baguettes, there are statues of French poodles, and mimes in the streets, which are paved with croissants. In this scene, terrorists plan to destroy Paris but Team America intervenes and “saves the day” but also destroys the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, and Arc de Triomphe. There is a long shot of the city completely destroyed and Team America is saying “Don’t worry guys, we’ve saved the day!” as the French people look around in horror. There was lots of irony in this film. The dramatic element I found the most impressive in the film was the set because of how well things were replicated and how detailed it was and I know that takes a lot of time. They replicated the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, the Louvre, and Times Square. The scene that introduces the main characters Gary mocks the movie “Lease” and all the actors keep repeating and singing is “Everyone has AIDS”. And it is from this performance that team leader Spottswoode decides he would be the perfect man to infiltrate a terrorist organization. Every decision made is just so stupid and cliché. The terrorists in the film come from the made up country of Derkaderkastan and speak jibberish and are being supplied weapons by Kim Jong Il, who is impersonated with a totally over the top Asian accent. There are several archetypes present. There is the “Barbie” which is Lisa. She wears pink camo and when she is introduced to Gerry, dreamy non-diegetic music is playing and there is a camera tilt up from the floor to show off her body. Chris is the veteran, wise guy who is the best team member and doesn’t like Gary at the beginning of the film until he proves himself at the end. There are lots of clichés like when Lisa goes to take down a terrorist and says “Hey terrorist, terrorize this!” or when Chris corners a terrorist who ran out of bullets so Chris puts down his gun to fight him with his hands to “make it more interesting”. Directors also made a point to make it as stereotypically “’Merica” as possible. Their theme song is “America, America, f*** yeah” and songs like “Freedom isn’t free” play throughout the film. There is a part of the movie when Gary is deciding whether he will work with Team America and goes to visit national landmarks in DC, that were not remade. They actually shot the real Lincoln memorial with the doll posing next to it all small, which added some humor. They pretty much made fun of as much stuff as they could. They imitated actors like George Clooney, Sean Penn, and Alec Baldwin and made a joke of liberal actors wanting to be activists and in the end it turns out they’re the bad guys.  90% of the movie didn’t make sense but that’s what made it so funny and just classic satirical comedy.