City of Death then Life

City of Life and Death was by far the most unpleasant movie we watched in class.  Rape is a subject that gets to me the most.  So, considering the movie was based around a mass raping and systematic murder, it defiantly takes the cake of most horrifying.  I feel in rape is worst then death.  It is the ultimate violation of the human body.  It takes something that makes the human experience amazing and turns it into something about control and dominance.  This absolutely sickens me.  I cannot begin to describe how my guts got twisted up when the Japanese soldiers rushed all of the women in the safety zone and just did what they wanted to them and the scene where Tang witnesses the gang-rape what just as intense.  

To imagine that an entire people can be organized and conditioned to exterminate another group is insane to me.  I mean, to be okay with placing people in fenced up areas and then just gunning them down like animals is just crazy.  To see that in real life must be so emotionally scaring that when it first happens you are just numb.  Similar to how it seemed to affect Kadokawa, who took his own life at the end of the movie because he felt so guilty over what he had done.  

This is the kind of movie that needs to be shown in theaters in the US.  Yet again, mainstream movies glorify war in some way, shape, or form.  They make them out to be stories of heroes, and forget to show you most the atrocities that happen.  We tend to forget that war does not just affect soldiers, it affects all of us.  It creates hate and pain for people who are not even directly involved.  This is something we must become more aware of if we are ever to put an end to it.  

Pan's Fantasy/Reality

Probably the best thing about this film, other than the story, is the creature designs.  I always like Del Torro's monsters.  His mind comes up with the most interesting and striking images I have seen on film.  This movie and Hellboy are proof of that.  I do not think there are any writers/directors that really use their imagination like he does.  His is very unbridled and open.  I think we are in a phase where most of the movies that come out are ultra realistic, and stray away from fairy tale like fantasy.  I don't want to say this bothers me, but I wish it was the other way around.  I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy more than most genres, and I think they provide the viewer with different perspectives and usually richer stories simply because of how open they are.  Movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are some of my favorite films.  One reason is because they provide me with an escape, and it is almost like you are leaving reality when you watch them.  Del Torro is actually doing work on the upcoming Hobit trilogy.  So I am excited about that. 

I think the characters were very rich in Pan's Labyrinth, especially Ofelia and Vidal.  I really liked the contrast between the two.  It was almost like night and day, and I feel you could really feel it through the movie.  It is almost like you had these two characters at the opposite ends of the spectrum and then a bunch of characters that filled in between the two.  It was the collision of ultimate control vs. child like freedom, arguably the most pure freedom.  I enjoyed how open to interpretation the end was.  It really depended on your own perspective if what she saw and experienced was real or not.  I always find it interesting how people interpret these kinds of endings.  It can say a lot about the person. 

Gangster, Gangster

Comparing the characters from Gomorrah to some from movies like The Godfather is very different.  In Gomorrah gangsters are shown as tasteless and ruthless thugs.  They dress in American brand t-shirts and sweat pants and kill whoever they must to make sure their plan unfold as they want them to.  They are fat and greasy, just generally unpleasant.

Characters in The Godfather portray gangsters in a different way.  Most of them are slim and clean cut; they wear suits and handle business in a much more organized way then their Gomorrah counter parts.  The Godfather makes them out to be family men.  Their actions, no matter how gruesome, are always somehow justified, like Michael's plan to execute all of the other rival families’ leaders.  By the end of the movie you are almost rooting for him to commit mass murder.  Gomorrah is not like this.  The film does not romanticize the role of a gangster.  They do not have a glories end like Tony Montana did in Scarface.  

     

We need to remember that gangsters are gangsters, and that movies are movies.  There is nothing pretty about organized crime.  You do not end up at the top of your game defending your mansion from enemy drug dealers; instead you end up floating face down in a river after being executed on your hands and knees like some kind of animal.  Gomorrah is a film you should show any fan-boy wanna-be of movies like Scarface.  It is the kind of movie that acts as a wakeup call.  It counters the images and ideas we are fed by mainstream films about gangsters and the mob.  We make everything look so good in Hollywood films; it is kind of crazy if you think about it.  I mean what is next?  Making rapists and child molesters out to be the good guys?

Cabin Life

I never got to see The Cabin in the Woods in theaters.  It was one I had plans to see and never got to.  I am a horror movie fan, and I had heard it was a movie that changed up the formula a bit.  I had no idea that it mixed the formula up so much that it literary combined every horror cliché and spits it right back in your face.  

The horror genre has a bad habit of going stale and running formulas into the ground.  They are similar to a drug.  The fans always come back looking to relive that first scare and adrenalin rush.  It is hard to do that now because so many boundaries have been broken when it comes to horror films.  We are use to the goriest and most shocking images.  It is refreshing to see Goddard taking a different approach to the genre.  He is making the movie itself over saturated with monsters, and just a general overload of everything horror.  It is a perfect representation of how the genre has become over saturated.  

You can compare the organization pulling all the strings to the government if you wanted to.  They control the fate of the group of teenagers similar to how the government does ours.  They answer to some shadowy figure, and I feel that is easily comparable to the US government.  The shadowy figure could be symbolism for corporate control.  The organization makes "sacrifices" of teenagers in order to keep the "Ancient Ones" at bay.  They do what they must for the great good of mankind in their eyes.  Our own government does the same thing in war.  What do you call collateral damage?  Either way, it was a fun movie with a lot of layers; it takes you on more of a comedy/sci-fi ride then a scary one.  

A for Vendetta

I actually read the V for Vendetta comic books before I ever saw the movie.  Just like the article talks about, the comics and the movie have a very different feel.  Personally, I prefer the comics over the film, but I do not think it was a terrible movie.  The movie has more a Bush-era/terrorist spin on it where the comic is straighter up anarchy vs. fascism.  V wasn't as much of a hero or freedom fighter as he was painted up to be in movie either.  He wasn't really a good guy; he was more of an anti-hero.  He was more twisted and vengeful. V in the comics would kill whoever he had to in order for his plans to succeed.  Plus they changed key events in the movie, like V being killed by Creedy and his men and not by Finch.  

Evey was also a young prostitute when V finds her in the comics.  She didn't work a TV station like the movie portrayed.  Their relationship was different as well.  It was not as romanticized as the movie made it out to be, and they also left several chunks of her story out.  They failed to mention she was taken in by another character named Gordon, who she got intimately involved with after she left V for the first time.

The most though provoking part of the movie and comic was when V staged Evey's imprisonment.  This was a part that reflected the more comic book version of V.  He shows his twisted logic.  Even though putting Evey through hell was not the correct choice, V did it anyway to get the end he wanted.  He needed someone else to eventually take up his title. Evey becomes the new "V" and that is what happened at the end of the comic, where in the movie it shows everyone wearing V's mask, as a message that "everyone can be part of the revolution".  

    

Sex/Sex

Short Bus turns the subject of sex in movies on top of its head.  It was a fun movie to watch.  I mean, it involved sex so if had to be fun.  It was extremely straightforward with its explicit subject matter.  I liked that it was because it pushes the viewer outside of their comfort zone and makes them face sex for what it is.  We live in a culture that treats sex as something to be ashamed of.  Yet this culture also uses sex to sell anything and everything from music, movies, and anything in between.  So many mix signals are sent from our societies use and views on sex that it can pollute what it really is, and that is that it is just sex.  It can be done for different reasons between people, but the important thing is that it is a huge part of what makes us human.  It something that shapes our identities, makes or breaks our relationships, and is sometimes just done for fun.

We brought this up in class, but it is always funny to think how we can show extreme violence in movies and video games, but when it comes to sex it is a no-no.  Sometime I wonder if the reason for so much excess violence comes from this suppression of sex.  It makes sense, I know I am a lot more aggravated when I am haven't gotten laid.  Maybe it is the same idea on a larger deeper scale.  Religion and government have created the death of logic.  This has killed the proper way of how we should handle sex.  We make ourselves blind with these orders and rules, than it makes us miss the little steps that build up to the big ones.  It all gets so embedded into us that we start to neglect our own human nature.  Our nature is something we need to learn to control and master, not suppress.    

True Hunger

Hunger was a very uncomfortable movie.  I enjoyed the fact that the only real dialog in the film was during the middle, between Father Dominic and Bobby.  I think there being less talking in the film made it feel more gritty and inhuman.  This is something that helped create the atmosphere that the movie had.  It was also impressive that this scene was done without being broken up.  The actors were able to keep the feel and tone of the scene very well.  I would actually like to see this done more, simply to see how talented some of the actors in Hollywood actually are.  Consider it a challenge.

This idea of non-violent protest by fasting and starving yourself is very powerful to me.  It is striving for revolution by turning all of the pain and violence in on yourself.  To watch this happen is a very intense experience.  The best thing about the movie was that it did not paint the act up to be something it wasn't.  It was gruesome and vile.  They did not make Bobby out to be some Jesus figure.  The way he was portrayed was very human and real.  You watch someone wither away as they actually would, no uplifting speeches or images.  He just dies at the end.  That simple.

We are very use to war and revolution being sugar coated in mainstream films, so that makes it refreshing to see it portrayed as it actually is in Hunger.  People need to be exposed to disturbing works like this.  People need to be re-acquainted with what suffering looks like and what it actually does to people.  We get to use to "pretty deaths" in Hollywood movies.  Our culture in general needs to remember how brutal and disturbing death and pain really are.  I think this helps people become more in tune with the world around them and the human condition.