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.