Author: Nathan-Giles

Gladiator (2000)

The Gladiator is the story of a soldier from Rome who became a slave. He is trained as a gladiator and escalated to challenge the empire. The Roman soldier is Spartacus. The Gladiator movie is set about 250 years after his death. The gladiator of the title is Russell Crowe who channels manliness for two and a half hours as Maximus. The film Gladiator (2000) is directed by Ridley Scott who was trying to portray the culture of Romans more accurately. However, there were some divergences from historical facts to enhance interest, to preserve narrative continuity, and for safety or practical reasons. The unbeaten gladiators were the movie stars. They were famous and consequently free men lined up to try their chance on the ground.

The imprecision’s are legion from the opening scene. The movie starts in the last part of Marcus Aurelius’s rule. He is renowned as one of the Five Good Emperors. He depicts what would happen when his son, Commodus, took his place. Marcus Aurelius is depicted as a great emperor who cared about his Republic. He looked forward to being the best monarch he could put his all and seeking to give the people of Rome their freedom. (Potter & David, 2010) The movie states that there was the last battle which was great on the eve of Aurelius’ death with the tribes from German. Nevertheless, in reality, there was a daylong battle in the campaigning season of 170 A.D., but the death of Marcus was on March 17,180 A.D, as he was almost launching another military campaign. The scriptwriters needed to shorten the chronology to save time in a lengthy movie, but they played loose and fast with some aspects of that battle. The movie has drastically squashed the chronology of the sovereign Commodus’ reign. He became the only emperor upon the death of his father in 180 AD and he was murdered thirteen years later on December 192 AD. Ward & Allen 2001, Even though the Gladiator has not precisely shown time covered, it appears Commodus was murdered not more than two years later.

Like its hero Maximus — the squinting, beefy, unassuming, indomitable Roman general-turned-gladiator — Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator is brave, impressive, ambitious, confident, competent, and commanding. Maximus’ story is epic in scope and expertly told; the world he inhabits is convincingly realized and vividly photographed; his enemy is unsettlingly dissolute and depraved; his defeats and setbacks are tragic and daunting; his struggle to overcome is heroic. If he has never heard of the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, he is, at any rate, an embodiment of the classical cardinal virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice; especially contrasted with his contemptible opponent, who explicitly avows lacking them all.

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

The plot of the film is an autobiography of Hollywood itself at the dawn of the talkies. The story is about a dashing, smug but romantic silent film star and swashbuckling matinee idol (Don Lockwood) and his glamorous blonde screen partner/diva (Lina Lamont) who are expected, by studio heads, to pretend to be romantically involved with each other. They are also pressured by the studio boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) to change their silent romantic drama (The Duelling Cavalier) and make their first sound picture, renamed as the musical The Dancing Cavalier. There’s one serious problem, however – the temperamental, narcissistic star has a shrill, screechy New York accent. The star’s ex-song-and-dance partner (Cosmo) proposes to turn the doomed film into a musical, and suggests that Don’s aspiring actress and ingenue dancer-girlfriend (Kathy Selden) dub in her singing voice behind the scenes for lip-synching Lina. The results of their scheming to expose the jealous Lina and put Kathy in revealing limelight provide the film’s expected happy resolution.

Surprisingly, this great film that was shot for a cost of $2.5 million (about $.5 million over-budget), was ignored by film critics when released and treated with indifference (with box-office of $7.7 worldwide). It received only two Academy Award nominations – Best Supporting Actress (Jean Hagen), and Best Musical Score (Lennie Hayton) and didn’t win any awards. The film’s musical score Oscar nomination lost to Alfred Newman’s score for With a Song in My Heart.

Now, after many accolades, television screenings, and its resurgence after the release of That are Entertainment (1974), it is often chosen as one of the all-time top ten American films and generally considered Hollywood’s greatest and finest screen musical. Great care was made to authenticate the costumes, the sound studio set, and other historical details in the film. The film’s title song was paid twisted homage (of sorts) in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) during the brutal rape scene. At the same time that Singin’ in the Rain was being filmed, another MGM film exposing and satirizing Hollywood’s foibles was also in production – director Vincente Minnelli’s melodramatic The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), starring Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner, and Oscar-stealing Gloria Grahame who defeated this film’s Jean Hagen for the Best Supporting Actress honor.

 

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

 

Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring premiered in theaters. The film opened to fanfare as the first installment of a long-awaited live-action adaptation of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series. But in the years since, it’s clear that it was more than that. Lord of the Rings wasn’t just a movie adaptation of a beloved series. It would set a template that Hollywood has followed for years since not just for epic fantasy, but the entire medium of film.

Since its release, there hasn’t been a production quite like The Lord of the Rings: an intense project that both adhered closely to the source material, but which also became an anchoring event in cinemas. Indeed, in the face of massive cinematic universe projects such as the Marvel, Harry Potter, or Star Wars films, a trilogy seems almost quaint.

Like the novels, The Lord of the Rings was essentially a single film split into smaller installments. Originally intended as a sequel to Tolkien’s debut The Hobbit, the novels are a story that grew in the telling, turning from a light-hearted fantasy adventure to a massive tome that would inspire almost every fantasy novel that followed it. The series has been adapted in the past with a series of animated films starting in 1977, but it wasn’t until the late-1990s that there was serious interest in doing a live-action version. 

Jackson had initially planned for the adaptation to run for two films, with studios pushing for it to be condensed down to one. When the project landed with New Line Cinemas, studio head Bob Shaye somewhat famously asked, “Why would I want to do two films? There are three books. Why not do three films?” The expansion to become a trilogy would allow Jackson to adapt each novel, and to adapt more of Tolkien’s original material. Production for the film started in October 1999, with Peter Jackson helming an ambitious project: all three films of the series would be shot at the same time in New Zealand over a 438-day shoot, with additional reshoots.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

 

The Film I decided to do my analysis on is the beginning scene to Saving Private Ryan (1998) by Steven Spielberg, the storming of Omaha beach.

The reason for picking this film is because I find that there was a lot of elements to the scene that was being played. Elements such as lighting, camera movement, camera settings, music, acting and the use of silence to form one of the most accurate depictions of war in film.

The scene starts with an establishing shot of the battlefield, then cuts to the boats and in this scene, we get to see the camera moving vertically in an aggressive way. This shows the strengths of the tides and how intense the war is going to become. The scene then starts off doors of the ships opens up and people getting killed, illustrating that the fight has begun.

Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński was Spielberg’s pick as a cinematographer for this film. Spielberg’s intentions for shooting this scene was not to glamorize war, but it was meant to let the audience understand the tragedy of war. The execution of the handheld camera shot magnifies the intensity of the film. Movement such as the camera walking and falling into the water shows the reality of war. Besides that, Janusz Kamiński also took off the coating from his camera lens to give a softer and a blur look to it, resulting in what looks like vertical lens flare.

After doing some research, I found out that this scene was shot with 45 degrees and 90-degree shutter angle and not the usual 180-degree shutter angle. This meant that there is less motion blur, and objects such as dust and smoke particles become more vivid and detailed. The decision to shoot at these settings is to give the film a much more realistic look to the film. Besides that, Spielberg wanted to make the film as real as possible, desaturating the color of the scene and also putting the camera up close to their faces, showing the reality of war. Little details such as vomiting due to seasickness, praying, hands shaking due to the thought of not coming back alive lets the audience relate that the soldier is too, humans as well.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

 

Most critics agree that the strength of To Kill a Mockingbird lies in Harper Lee’s use of the point of view of Scout. This point of view works in two ways: It is the voice of a perceptive, independent six-year-old girl and at the same time it is the mature voice of a woman telling about her childhood in retrospect. Lee skillfully blends these voices so that the reader recognizes that both are working at the same time but that neither detracts from the story. Through the voice of the child and the mature reflection of the adult, Lee can relate freshly the two powerful events in the novel: Atticus Finch’s doomed defense of Tom Robinson and the appearance of the town recluse, Boo Radley. The child’s voice gives a fresh approach to looking at the racism issue in the novel. Both Scout and Jem struggle with confusion over why some people are acceptable in the social strata of their community and others are not. As Scout wisely answers Jem, “There are just folks.” The mature adult voice serves to give the reader reflections on the events that a child could not yet see.

Regarding the plights of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley, Lee draws on the symbol of the mockingbird. Both Tom and Boo are victims of the prejudices of their community. Tom, who is an innocent black man accused of rape, is convicted by a white jury even though Atticus Finch proves that the evidence against Tom is false. Boo is another victim—first, of his father’s harsh religious views, and second, of the town’s ignorance and gossip. Both men are closely related to the symbol of the mockingbird. Atticus and Miss Maudie, their wise neighbor, tell the children it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because the bird brings only pleasure to humans. When Tom is killed trying to escape, the editor of Maycomb’s newspaper likens Tom’s death to the senseless killing of songbirds by hunters and children. Later, after Atticus and the sheriff decide not to tell anyone that Boo Radley killed Ewell in defense of the Finch children, Scout agrees and equates exposing Boo Radley to the curious town to killing a mockingbird.

Two major themes dominate the novel: that of growing from ignorance to knowledge and that of determining what is cowardice and what is heroism. The “ignorance-to-knowledge” theme is developed through the characterization of the maturing children. Scout and Jem both develop understanding and an awareness of the adult world as they grow through their experiences. Lee represents children as having a fairer sense of justice than adults. Thus, when Robinson is convicted, the children are the ones who cannot accept it. Atticus’ insistence that his children learn to be tolerant and not judge people only on appearances becomes one of the moral lessons of the book.