Delvecchio 35'

The plot follows an Italian mobster family who uses they're power to control the elections so they can elect an official that would benefit their family business the most. George Raft plays the father of the family who is the mastermind behind all of their business, while the other stars of the film play his children who execute his plans. The message we are trying to make with this movie is that mobster families have a lot of power and they can use that power even to change highly regulated events such as an election.

Our studio is Warner Brothers because they made a lot of gangster films that were successful such as Little Ceaser, and Public Enemy. Also George Raft was signed with them and he did a great job at portraying tough gangsters in film. Our film's genre is crime fiction/action-adventure. Our director is Mervyn Leroy, because he has directed gangster movies before, and has done an excellent job with them.

The Hays code affects this movie dramatically. Gangster films usually have a lot of swearing, and violence but this code prevents that. So to get around it, when somebody needs to get shot the camera will pan away and you will only hear a gunshot since we cannot show you one. Also there cannot be any use of bad language as well in order to get around this code.

I agree with the choice my group and i have made towards this film. I think our selection of studio, actors, director, and the plot came out well. I think that if this film would have come out in 1935 that it would have done very well at the box office.

MYST Post #1: The Great Gatsby

I thought that The Great Gatsby was an excellent film. The movie followed the book's plot closely and did a great job making the characters come to life. The acting was great with Leonardo Dicaprio playing the leading role of Jay Gatsby. This film was about a rich businessman who bought a house near an ex-girlfriend who he still has feelings for, and he throws parties every weekend in hopes that she will one day come.

This film used many far away shots to portray the landscape of the area in each scene. For example, in the scenes of Gatsby’s parties, it would use far away shots to show the large numbers of people and to show the size of his house. This type of shot was also used to show the fireworks that were going off during parties. Close up shots were also used during many scenes where there would be extensive dialogue with the characters.

Something I find interesting about the characters that Dicaprio chooses to play is that something tragic always happens to them. In Titanic Jack Dawson froze to death, in Django:Unchained Calvin Candle is shot to death, and in The Great Gatsby Jay Gatsby is murdered. In many of his films when his character falls in love, bad things happen to him. In The Great Gatsby Jay dies, in Titanic he dies, in Wolf of Wall Street he gets divorced then goes to jail. Dicaprio has played the same character in so many of his films, that he has mastered this role and proved his mastery again in The Great Gatsby.

This film had many party scenes excellently directed for the era of the 1920's. The type of clothing, dancing, music, and even slang (old sport) is spot on. The film followed the book perfectly and had little differences with it, which made the movie literally a visual of the book. The editing was excellent and very smooth. I enjoyed this movie a lot; the only thing I did not like was that it was 2 hours and 22 minutes long. However, I still rate this movie a 4/5 stars.

Trailer

Review of the Reviews

I decided to write a review of the movie Oculus that I had recently seen, and also review some of the critic's thoughts on the film. One of these critics is Richard Roeper who gave the film an A rating on his website http://www.richardroeper.com/reviews/oculus.aspx . His A rating was mainly focused on the excellent young actors in this movie, and its plot. He argued how he liked the plot, due to how the director jumped through time from 11 years ago to the present. This made the viewer sometimes unsure of real and imagination, which made the viewing experience to be interesting.

The second critic is James Berardinelli who rated the film fresh on http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oculus/#contentReviews . He thought the plot was unusual because, it didn’t have many scare moments in the film, but was more of a puzzle. He did not like the acting, which he thought needed a bigger name actor in the film. Berardinelli mentioned how he thought the horror genre is becoming more and more predictable and he thinks that Oculus is a step in the right direction away from these types of horror films. He thought what the movie lacked in scaring the viewer, it made up with the suspense it created. 

Berardinelli had stated, "For a horror movie, Oculus is surprisingly lean on the scares. It's more interested in playing tricks with perception and bending reality. " I agree with this quote, throughout this film the characters continuously see things that are not there, or don't see things that are there. The haunted mirror distorts their reality and can even control the phone calls the characters receive. However, I do not agree with his opinion that the film is lean on scares. This film creates a suspense before some of the scare moments, which make them more effective, and some of those moments were very daunting and shocking, while others would make you jump up in fear. 

Meanwhile Roeper thought the film took a, "High level of confidence to make," due to the fact the plot consists of a haunted mirror. Roeper loved the directing and acting that took place in this film. He also discussed key points of the plot in great detail in his review.  I agree that the actors in this film were spectacular and the directing was phenomenal. They did a great job in portraying two timelines at the same time during the movie.

I thought that Roeper's review was much more convincing than Berardinelli's. I thought that his review 

had more of a voice than Berardinelli's review, mainly because it was a lot easier to read. I think that what wins over a viewer to the critic’s argument is if that critic had a similar stance on the movie that you did. If the viewer saw a movie that he enjoyed and he and a particular critic agreed on certain points, he would most likely side with that critic. I agreed more with Roepers stance on the movie than Berardinellis due to I had more ideas on the film in common with Roeper than Berardinelli.

I would absolutely have to include a plot summary, and other things I enjoyed about the film. I would need to be honest and discuss things I did not like very much while also not being too negative about a movie that I had enjoyed. I would leave out spoilers so that the viewer could still have the same viewing experience that I had. I would try to have a voice in my review to keep the reader interested. However I would not be too opinionistic because the reader might disagree with some of my points making them not like my review.