The Review of the century

The Best Review

Rebel Without a Cause is the film I choose to watch for my review. The film was directed by Nicholas Ray and was set in the 1950’s. Reading Roger Ebert’s review opened my eyes to see how much I agreed with him and some points were I disagreed. For example when the reviewer said, “ if he had the guts to knock mom cold one, then maybe she’d be happy and she’d stop picking on me”. I agree with this totally because it portrays Jim as a big scare cat and that he cant step up and do what he really wants. The main characters in the are Jim stark played by James Dean, Natalie Wood plays Judy and last but not least Sal Mineo as Plato. I thought the characters played their roles very well and they convinced me that it was the 19050’s and that is how they acted back then.
The movie takes place in a small town in mid America in the 1950’s. The rumble in the film is revolving around Buzz (Corey Allen) who just does not like Jim. Buzz challenges Jim to a chicken run and Jim being the dumb new kid aggress. The film seemed realistic to me but as Ebert states “ The film has not aged well, and Dean’s performance seems more like marked down Brando than the birth of an important talent”. I did agree with this statement because Dean just seemed really bad for this role or maybe his acting was just terrible ho knows. Judy did a great job I thought she really pulled the movie together with her acting and helped the film out a lot.
The acting throughout the film was more funny then believable. They just seemed to be trying too hard too to betray their characters. So I really thought most of them could have done a lot better. I did not believe the actors were the characters. Was a big disappointment? The reviewer better explains my point in saying “Rebel Without a Cause" plays like a Todd Solondz movie, in which characters with bizarre problems perform a charade of normal behavior”. The sets of the film I thought were very well put together and they made the film easier to believe when watching and critiquing. I thought the costumes could have been a little better for the time but they were actually pretty believable for the time period I enjoyed them.
The director employed a couple of camera angles I noticed as a viewer. The first one a noticed a lot was the long shot in most of the action shots. It gives the viewer a better angle too sees what’s actually going on and get a better since of the film. He also used the close-up more it seemed then any other to show the expressions of the character’s in the scenes. I thought this was a good idea because it gave you a different aspect and was just a good technique in the movie. I thought the films shots were a little dragged on for some god-awful reason. Just do the shot and get out of there don’t just drag it on It got really boring after a while.

After reading a review on the new movie, “American Gangster”, by Roger Ebert, it obvious that our views on the movie are similar. This movie is set back in the Vietnam War; the director (Ridley Scott) does a great job with set designs and costumes to make it clear at what time the story takes place. The director also places within the movie some shots of the war which adds to the realism. The main actors both did a stellar job as the critic points out. Russell Crowe plays the lead detective and Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas, the main drug liaison.
As Ebert points out it is in Denzel’s calm demeanor and “Brooks Brother’s” image that he is not suspected right away. On top of this, his ethnicity (being African American) aids in the cover up of him taking over the Harlem drug trade form the Mafia. Also he is not as obvious as a gangster, because he is not wearing modern day “bling.” Just as the reviewer states, “...Denzel Washington is in another one of those performances where he is affable and smooth on the outside, yet ruthless enough to set an enemy on fire” (Ebert, 1). Ebert then goes further to point out that while he is a gangster he still has class.
Roger Ebert points out something about the female lead that I really agree with. Too often we have women playing the same roles over and over again in the movies. In this particular movie it is the image of the wife forcing the husband to choose between his job and his family. This is seen in many modern films of today, be it Lord of War or The God Father. Which is way Ebert says, “But that doesn’t save us from the stock female character who are becoming increasingly tiresome in the movies” (1) and also “Their obligatory scenes together are recycled from a dozen or a hundred other plots” (1). As the critic points put, “Roberts’ domestic crisis is not what the movie is about” (1). This part of the movie felt like a filler. Furthermore, it was hard to feel empathetic, since this image keeps getting recycled.
I must agree with the critic when he stated that the ending of the movie was surprising. With your typical or comparable movies the end is a huge blow out. “The film ends not with a ‘Scarface’ style shot out, but with Frank and Richie sitting down for a long intelligent conversation” (2). This ending seemed refreshing, especially after some of the roles (as mentioned above) were tiresome.
The last thing I noticed was the critic never commented on the length of the movie. I found that some scenes had been dragged on and that it could have been cut down. Overall, he hit the nail on the head with his review. In the future, I would read more of Roger Ebert’s reviews, it seems like he knows what he is talking about.

Introduction

I decided to sign up for this class because I have an interest in movies. This interest continues to expand and I want to learn specifics about them. This includes: camera angles, a more developed sense of taste, as well as terminology to discuss movies. I have to be honest and say I also signed up because I heard we got to watch movies in class. I am looking forward to this experience and I am excited to see everything I will learn.