Mira Nair - The Perez Family

Overall, I thought Mira Nair was a pretty good director. Her history of filming documentaries really did make her films seem more original. I also liked the fact that different languages were pretty equally used throughout her film, that is the first time I had ever seen a movie do that. My favorite movie probably had to be The Namesake, followed by the other two (which I thought to be near the same level of enjoyment). It was just interesting to see how the life cycle worked. There were a lot of different conflicts in her films, including those that involved the clashing of different cultures.

She grew up with two different cultures, so she knows the conflicts go that goes along with that. I actually also grew up with two different cultures, but I have yet to see the type of conflicts that she expresses, such as lost of identity. Some of the things she displayed made it seem like everyone that grew up with two cultures would have those problems. Personally, I think it was a bit dramatized. But I guess the movies would be a lot less interesting if those problems weren't exaggerated. I enjoyed watching Mira Nair's films and would recommend it to anyone that likes a mix of culture.

The film I watched was called The Perez Family, it is a comedy about a couple of Cuban immigrants that just happen to have the same last name, Perez. They realized that by pretending to be an actual family, they had a better chance of staying within the United States. This film was actually based off a book by Christine Bell. I chose this film randomly, I literally found a list of films that Mira Nair directed at the nearest video store and ran my finger down the list with my eyes closed. I think that was a bad choice, this movie wasn't all that great. Mira Nair was never shy about showing sexuality and swear words within her films. this film was not an exception. I didn't think that was really necessary for the film. This film does however have her signature theme of clashing cultures and how people cope with a new culture, as well as keep their own. I found it surprising that the film was about Cubans, and not Indians. All the films we had watched in class were about the culture of India in some way or another. There were some interesting things in the movie, such as the romance and some parts of the comedy. Watching the two main characters, the "husband", Juan Raul Perez and the "Wife", Dorita Evita Perez, was the way they interacted was very interesting. Even in this weird situation, love still seems to exist. Between a former aristocrat and former prostitute. This shows another one of Mira Nair's signature themes, a cross between class barriers. Christine Bell's book really had a lot of the themes that Mira Nair tended to have in her films, which is probably why she turned the book into a film. Overall I thought I should probably have chosen a better film to watch, but it had some good moments.

Coen Brothers

In my opinion, the Coen Brothers have been one of the best directors that we have studied in class. Their witty style has been very enjoyable to watch. One of the favorite things that I have seen in their movies, are the complete "badass" antagonists. They all seem to be larger than the average man in stature, and are willing to do anything to get what they want. For example, Sugure uses his "badass" shotgun with a silencer to kill so many people to look for the case of money. Then there is the protagonist, they always seem to be running away from something or someone. The Coen Brothers don't seem to be afraid of violence, they used guns in every film we watched in class. Even if it was a comedic part of the film, an example would be when Hi was running from the police after his failed attempt to steal some money and diapers. There were some things that I didn't find to be important, or add much to the film.

I don't really understand why they like the use of dreams in their movies. I guess it gives it a mysterious feeling to it, or maybe the idea that dreams can give you insight on things you wouldn't normally think about when awake. Personally, I didn't particularly like this aspect of their films. But overall, I thought the films created by the Coen Brothers were great, and very enjoyable to watch.

Robert Altman

The films created by Robert Altman seemed very different to me compared with other films. Typically films have clear indications as to what the plot is, or the general direction as to what the film is about. But there are just so many random things in some of his films, that it makes it confusing. I would say that out of the three directors that we have studied so far, Altman would probably placed second.

Then out of the three films that we watched, I liked The Long Goodbye the most. It had a sort of dark humor, while still stayed serious with a plot. There were pretty weird and confusing scenes in the movie, but it seemed as if all three films that we watched had those type of scenes. For example, strangely long shots of the half naked women or the humping dogs. The Player was an interesting story, but I lost interest quite quickly. The story moved too slowly in my opinion. Even though there was a murder, I just didn't take it very seriously. Though there were some funny scenes I liked that took place at the police station. Then the movie I really disliked was Nashville, I don't know what kind of movie that was. Random jumping from character to character. I assumed that they would eventually somehow all be closely involved in something with each other, but I was wrong. They didn't know each other, and the only connections they had were occasional conversations. If there was a plot or theme, I didn't understand it. So overall I didn't really like the films created by Altman, or his style of filming.

Akira Kurosawa

I personally thought he was my favorite director that I have seen so far in Art of Film II. His use of dark humor in his supposedly serious movies is just great. For example, the scene where the right hand man of Jiro plays dumb and brings back the head of a stone fox. Though sometimes he does take some shots too far and leave it on the character for too long in my opinion, but it is something new I hadn't seen before. The types of heroes is a bit different from the type I'm used to from American films, his heroes aren't invincible, they actually can get hurt pretty badly (Sanjuro for example in Yojimbo). His use of weather, strong winds, rain, nature is never weak in his films.

My favorite movie out of the three we watched would probably have to be Yojimbo, just because of the loads of dark humor in that film. Kurosawa never made a comedy but Yojimbo was pretty close. It was interesting to see an action film incorporate so many jokes and laughs, I had never seen that before in any American films. Sanjuro as a character seems to be very likable as well, he has the skill of any great samurai, but he still acts and looks like a commoner, and pretty carefree as well. I think foreign films bring a lot of new ideas to movie making that Americans just don't seem to be able to create once they are stuck in their film making norms. They can sometimes bring a new experience to viewers.

Spirited Away

This film is one of the most recent films created by Hayao Miyazaki. I really liked this one too, but the story was a little hard to follow. The film just made take up some much random information about the spirit world, but I did like the creativity. I think my favorite part of the film is when the giant baby and the evil bird get turned into a baby and a little bird. Then the bird flies around carrying the mouse around for a lot of the movie. I thought that was just very funny and creative of Miyazaki. The animation was better than ever before, everything looked so real, yet still animated, I especially liked the water in this film. Once again, a film from studio Ghibli can not go without a great soundtrack, and this film has a nice soundtrack.

There were so many random things that happened in this movie. For example, a giant water spirit leaves a brown ball of something when it leaves, and she thinks it is medicine? I would have thought it to be something else... but that might just be me. The boiler man and the little coal guys were pretty cool, the little coal guys look just like the dust bunnies from Totoro. There were many random events, but not enough to lose the storyline. I still liked them for their creativity and just for fun. But it sort of takes a little away from the movie itself. The ending had nothing to do with the movie at all, where Haku reveals who he really was. We never knew she almost drowned as a kid in a lake, I do not remember the film ever mentioning it even once before revealing it in that scene. The theme of "Don't judge a book by its cover" is also in this film and it fits in really well. But overall I really liked this movie, another great job by Miyazaki.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was pretty unique when he started making his own films. His use of montage with sound to tell a story was very original back in his time. He also had his typical story lines full of suspense rather than surprise, this included the wrongly accused man or knowing a man has committed murder but just following him to see get caught. His fear of police and obsession with blonde women was pretty clear in many of his films. He always had the police ending up seen as weak and useless, and having a blonde woman as one of the main characters. Out of the three films that we had watched in class, I liked Vertigo. I liked the twists and turns throughout the movie, and when we were actually told the truth about everything was pretty satisfying. Then allowing the movie to progress after the point of us knowing the truth allowed us not to be left asking as many questions as we would have if it had just ended with us finding out what happened. There was still the last scene with the main character just standing there after the woman had fallen off the tower and fell to her death, we never found out what happened to him.

Overall I did not find myself to like Hitchcock as much as I thought I would. I think it is mostly because his style of film making has been copied over and over throughout the years by other directors. It just seems like I have seen his techniques used too many times already. At first I liked his background stories that were full of suspense, but those too had been copied and used countless time by other people. Even though they were original at the time, it just seemed a bit boring to me. The endings were typically predictable, with the exception of Vertigo in my opinion, which was why I liked it the most out of the three we watched in class.

Princess Mononoke

This is probably my favorite movie out of all the other movies that were created by Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli Studios. This movie had everything, action, suspense, romance, and even his trademark concern for nature. The film is about a boy that had been living peacefully in his village when a demon boar attacks. In order to save his village, the boy becomes infected with what drove the boar to become a demon (pollution). He is told to leave his village, and he begins his journey. He meets a family of wolves and a human girl (Princess Mononoke) that lives with them, but they are hostile towards the boy. He also discovers that there is an iron mining village that is polluting the environment, but befriends the people that live there. He must then choose who to side with, the iron town or Princess Mononoke, industrialization or the environment. The main reason why I liked this movie so much was because, it felt like Miyazaki wanted to really just tell people that we should be concerned about the environment instead of just hiding it in the background of most of his other movies. He basically comes out and says that the environment is dying due to our pollution and irresponsibility.

The fight between industrialization and the environment is very much real, both in the film and in the real world. Miyazaki just shows us how he sees how industrialization and the environment are interacting with each other in this film. He seems to believe that the environment will strike back if industrialization goes too far and pollutes too much. We can see the results of green house gases and global warming today. Miyazaki shows that humans can not abuse the environment as much as they want without consequences and that humans must respect the environment if they plan to take things from it.

Once again I was amazed at the detail of the animation and the wonderful music made specifically for this film. Then there are things that surprised me when I first say the movie, so much violence and gore from Miyazaki. The film has a lot of violence and gore. For example, the boy accidentally shoots off a samurai's arms with an arrow. I thought that was pretty entertaining, but I believe many people were like me and suspected a more tame movie. I feel bad for those parents that brought their children to watch this movie and finding out that it was nothing like Totoro. It was unexpected, but I think the violence and gore was a nice change by Miyazaki. Any fan of Miyazaki should really watch this film if they haven't already done so.