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Updates will be few and far between for a while. It isn’t that I have stopped watching films on a daily basis, it is that now they are of a decidedly homogeneous variety. I have been approved to write an honors thesis, something I am very excited about. It is about America’s cultural memory of Vietnam, which includes historical events, campaigns, memorials, books, comic books, music, and, of course, film. Therefore, since I was approved for this thesis about a week ago, I have only been watching Vietnam films – a genre I was already familiar with, one I will soon be very knowledgeable about. So, in an effort to keep this blog alive, I have decided to use my recent fixation as an entry. The first widely viewed Vietnam film was John Wayne’s 1968 The Green Berets . Filmed during the war, it has the feeling of a World War II movie more than a Vietnam movie – the Vietnamese are portrayed very similar to the Japanese in The Bridge Over the River Kwai , and John Wayne’s patriarchal figure ...

Although summer does not technically end for another three weeks, I am back at college and working like a dog, so, as far as I am concerned, it is over. The summertime is typically when the biggest films of the year are released – not the award winning films, but definitely the films that justify Hollywood’s bloated budgets. This was a summer of sequels – another Harry Potter, Planet of the Apes, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Scream, Hangover, Fast and the Furious… not really my thing but definitely movies that you probably heard much about. My favorite two films of the summer were not sequels, they were the rarity in the summer film scene – original, highbrow auteur pieces that still managed to bring in profits. As in, the kind only Woody Allen or Terrence Malick can create. It was a tough decade for Woody Allen. After a frighteningly prolific career, it seems as if he ran out of steam in the 00’s. I for one enjoyed most of the movies he directed in the decade, but admit they do n...

War films are a dime a dozen, so much so that even individual wars are now their own genre of film. There is a distinction between World War II films, Vietnam Films, the wars of old, and even fictional conflict. As a history major I am required to write a long essay for my degree and give a presentation, and mine will involve Vietnam films – I might dedicate a whole entry to that later. I am a big fan of the war genre, and could probably turn this entry into a top ten list if I really wanted to. My favorites are the ones with the best photography of the wars – All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, and The Thin Red Line. These films instill the fear and despair in the audience that is felt by the soldiers during battle. As a student of history, I am also a big fan of war films that recount stories, such as Joyeaux Noel, Downfall, and Gallipoli. Although dramatized, they offer a bit of insight into the events in a way that differs from a primary source. Thirdly, I love war f...

Note: I originally wrote this article in 2011, and in July 2015 accidentally deleted it. When I reinstated it I decided to revise a lot of it. I find that I miss Roger Ebert whenever a great film is released, as I would love to be able to read his thoughts on films like Birdman or Boyhood. I highly recommend the documentary about his life, titled Life Itself.   The film critic – perhaps, in many ways, the most useless job on the planet. Nobody lives or dies, goes hungry or starves, or makes any important life change whatsoever based on the opinion of a film critic. I decided not to go to film school because I could not see myself doing anything important with a film degree. Most audiences pay no attention to these journalists, and often critics are the butt of a joke for poorly rated popular filmmakers. Still I am very grateful for those who have taken up the occupation – I personally read film criticism and, obviously, write it for my own enjoyment. I am a fan of AO Scott, Pe...

I have alluded to being a student of history, and not film, a number of times, and this fact becomes especially relevant when I watch old movies – for our purposes, 1939 and before. To most film buffs, an old movie is appreciated for everything it achieved with its limitations, and for how well the story has stood up over time. While I would agree with them, I get a little something more out of it as well. An old movie is a relic of its time; we, the viewer, can see a contemporary portrayal of the great depression thanks to Frank Capra, we can see German innovation thanks to Fritz Lang, and we can laugh with the long deceased Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. The actors and directors are long dead by now, yet we are forever linked to them through this wonderful medium. Many young people today think this man launched the world into the biggest war in history What really sets my generation apart is that we will be the first generation without a single living link to these old films. Soo...

When I was a kid I used to watch Home Movies on Adult Swim, a show about kids who try to make movies with a hand held camera. I remember the main character, who was the director, saying at one point that he was going to switch roles with his friend and become the actor, because every director wants to act, and every actor wants to direct. Hollywood keeps proving this statement true. Spike Lee regularly appears in his own movies, Tarantino has done it, Kevin Smith wrote Silent Bob for himself, David Lynch acted in Twin Peaks, Martin Scorsese, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Fritz Lang, the list goes on of directors who have appeared in their own films. Then there are those who have had full time jobs as both actors and directors, most notably Orson Welles and Clint Eastwood. Both of them can be studied in either context, and often appear in their own work. But what I’m getting to are the actors, who make it big in Hollywood, and then try their hand at directing. These films are what interest...

Star Wars fans tend to think of their films in a bubble, separated from the narrative of film history. That’s fine really, they know more about these films and the story than any other. It’s a fun and fleshed out universe, and if your willing to suspend your disbelief to the fullest extent, it can give you unlimited pleasure debating plot points, motives, back stories, or revision (Han Shot First! see above) What I want to do though is different from a regular fanboy blog, and contextualize A New Hope in film history, and underline its importance there.         I, unlike most fans, prefer A New Hope to The Empire Strikes Back . I love meeting the characters, the quotable dialogue, Luke’s realizations, the rescue of Princess Leia, and the explosion of the death star. I have always maintained that if the film had failed and no sequels had been made, the first film is self contained enough to stand on its own. However, in 1977, it did not fail. In fact, the oppo...

There is a lot of symbolism in film that people tend to overlook, the most obvious example being rain. Rain scenes are a pain in the ass to film; it doesn’t show up unless properly colored or backlit, it can be costly depending on the severity, it requires extra resources, can be noisy, and, obviously, makes the actors wet. Yet, several famous and beloved films go through the hassle of creating rain scenes. Spiderman, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Seven Samurai, Minority Report, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Raising Arizona, Millers Crossing, Platoon, Inception, and, most famously, Singing in the Rain, all have well known rain scenes in them. Hell, David Fincher even uses rain as a supporting character in most of his films. So, what’s the point, you might ask, if it is such a problem creating rain sequences? Why should directors bother? Well, different films use weather differently, so here are a few examples and how the effect works in each. So far in this blog I have been over...

        Being in England during the NBA playoffs is hard for me. I was okay with not being able to watch the regular season, but as the Lakers and the Celtics are both being driven out I find myself desperate to watch these games. I’ve been a big basketball fan for a couple of years now, so to hold me over in these difficult times I watched two films about the sport. The first was Spike Lee’s He Got Game , starring Denzel Washington and, one of my favourite players, Ray Allen. The film is centers around a father son relationship between the two; Denzel’s character is imprisoned and is allowed out for a week to convince his estranged son to play for Big State University. Although the plot sounds a little iffy, the film is in regular Spike Lee top form. However, it was the second film I watched that I want to talk about now.         In 1988 PBS sponsored a couple of filmmakers to make a half hour television special about two kids from Chicag...

As I have mentioned before, I am a History major at Drew University doing six months abroad in England, and it is History, above film, which is my true passion. As a lover of both, it is often difficult to reconcile the two together. Films can be a great teacher of history, as they have explored Rome, Vietnam, both World Wars and the lives of several leaders and events in depth and from multiple angles. On the other hand, history is often inconvenient for filmmakers, so they take great liberties with rewriting it for their benefit. Directors like Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg are notorious for this. JFK, while undoubtedly a well-constructed film, is an appalling dishonor to American history. Shindler’s List, which the American Film Institute put in its top ten American films of all time list, packages the Holocaust, one of the greatest failures in human history, as a success story, choosing to focus on 6,000 people who are saved rather than the 6,000,000+ people who died. I simpl...

During the entire decade of the 1980’s Martin Scorsese chased after the success of his earlier years. He released Raging Bull in 1980, generally agreed upon to be one of the best films ever made, but failed to achieve another success on the same level until Goodfellas in 1990. The King of Comedy bombed hard at the box office, After Hours also failed to live up to commercial expectations, The Color of Money saw him jump into mainstream film making, and The Last Temptation of Christ barely succeeded in making back its budget, but very successfully pissed a lot of people off. It’s arguable that the most successful thing Scorsese created during the 80’s was the Michael Jackson Bad music video, although I won’t be the one making that argument. What I find most influential of this decade of work is the film After Hours. Starring Griffin Dune, the film marks the first time in over ten years a Scorsese film was not headlined by Robert De Niro. Dune, for his part, plays the part in way similar...

As a resident of New Jersey, New York City has always been within easy distance of me. There was a time two years ago when I would visit the city weekly. Now that I live in Old York, three thousand miles away, I realize how lucky I was to be so close to such an amazing city. As of now my only connection to the city is through the films I watch, and it is amazing what different directors make out of the city. I’m not talking about Marvel Superhero films that blow up the city in every film or hacks like Oliver Stone who film it in an outright pedestrian manner; instead, I’d like to highlight three directors and the diverse ways they shoot the city. As expressed in my last full-length entry, I am a huge fan of Woody Allen. And seriously, when discussing the way directors use New York City in film there’s no better place to start than him. He has continuously lived in New York City his entire life, and with the exception of Love and Death and Sleeper all of his finest films are New York f...

There is one thing that every big name director has in common– they all at one point made their first film. In some cases the directors were experimenting, seeing how they could push cinema to its edges, because they had everything to gain and nothing to lose. David Lynch’s Eraserhead is probably the definitive example. Other times, directors make their debut with something safe and mainstream, such as David Fincher’s Aliens 3 . The directorial debut can go on to define their careers, such as Kevin Smith’s Clerks , or these films can be completely forgotten- Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire remains virtually unseen. What makes these films special is that their directors do not have a defined style to fall back on, they are usually not receiving funds from studios, and the director is filling more jobs than they would if they had the resources. This morning I watched Joel and Ethan Coen’s first feature film, Blood Simple . This was before the Best Picture Oscar for No Country for ...

Confession time: Robin Williams has always been one of my favorite actors. As a kid I could watch and rewatch his quick wit and crude manner in Popeye, Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, Flubber, and, my favorite, Aladdin. As I’ve grown up, his serious films have continued to impressed me, such as Good Morning Vietnam, The Fisher King, Insomnia, Death to Smoochy, One Hour Photo, Good Will Hunting, and his smaller roles in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Deconstructing Harry. Williams largely avoids the hit or miss factor that plague so many other actors – if he’s in it, the films probably good, and probably because he is in it. So here is my homage to one of the best actors of all time. Robin Williams’ big acting debut was the character of Mork in Happy Days, and its spin off Mork and Mindy. His show ran for four seasons, and Williams earned a Golden Globe for his performance – his first of four. While Mork and Mindy was on the air, Williams starred as the titular character in Robert Altman’...

About a month ago I was watching Arsenic and Old Lace with a few friends when one of them had asked me if I had seen the Alfred Hitchcock film Rope. At the time I hadn’t seen much Hitchcock at all, but the film sounded intriguing – like Arsenic and Old Lace, it was a story about a dead man hidden in a box in the living room. A few days ago I found out that Jimmy Stewart starred in the movie and I was sold. There’s something about Jimmy Stewart that’s very approachable and familiar, kind of like an uncle or a neighbor, and I, as mentioned in a previous entry, am a huge fan of his work with Frank Capra. Hitchcock is, of course, legendary, so the combination of these two in the 1940’s film Rope makes it extremely appealing. What surprised me most was how experimental this film was. As I lay in bed watching the film this morning I noticed that although the camera was moving, the box containing the dead man was almost always in view, and the camera was focusing on pretty much one shot f...

I am aware that my first few posts have been quite long winded, but there is an easy explanation for that – the first two were copy and pasted essays I wrote for my film class and the last was me geeking out about Stanley Kubrick. From these entries on I promise more concise and readable essays, starting today with (drumroll)… Taxi Driver! I was in a taxi last night when Frank Sinatra came on the radio, which prompted a conversation about Frankie, which inevitably led to his films. While talking about films I asked the cabbie if he had ever seen Taxi Driver and, while laughing, he said that he has not since before he got into the profession. I then asked the cabbie if he has ever hit another car while on duty and that changed the subject completely. Anyway, the film. Taxi Driver is sort of an adaptation of Catcher and the Rye, in the sense that it is the story of an extremely lonely individual walking around the New York City judging people. Unlike Holden Caulfield, who my new adopt...

“When I have the Map, I will be free, and the world will be different, because I have understanding...of digital watches. And soon I shall have understanding of videocassette recorders and car telephones. And when I have understanding of them, I shall have understanding of computers. And when I have understanding of computers, I shall be the Supreme Being! God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty-three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs!! He created slugs. They can't hear! They can't speak! They can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one!” -The personification of evil in Time Bandits Terrence Vance Gilliam was born in Medicine Lake, Minnesota, on November 22 1940. As a child, Gilli...