Homework Movie - Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966)

The French Heist movie Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) has everything you can ask for in a film noir heist film. A criminal that has escaped prison, police following the moves of the major players with such a cool attitude, a femme fatale who's in love with the hardened criminal, and a score that's worth the risk. It's the way the Jean-Pierre Melville crafted this movie that makes it a must see for anyone that enjoys crime stories.

In beautiful black & white film, Melville composes wonderfully long scenes of flight from prison, sets the mood in both planning scenes with the gangsters and the romantic interlude with Gu (our main protagonist played by Lino Ventura) and Manouche (his love interest played by Christine Fabrega). The cool Inspector Blot doesn't skip a beat when in the room with criminals covering for their partners in crime nor does he break a sweat when interrogating them once he's got them in custody.

Melville cleverly goes between the criminals telling what they are going to do and the police showing where things might be happening to give a duel narrative for the audience to follow the story along without seeming to spoon feed the material. The whole time line for the story takes a little over a months time and the title cards tell us when everything's going down to keep track. The added time on the departure is worth the risk for Gu as he needs the money to travel, so he decides to do one last score for a large sum of money. However, he doesn't know all the players until it's too late.

We watched another Melville movie in class that had similar subject matter. In Le Doulos every character in it was two faced. Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot showed the desperation of a man that was released from prison and couldn't find any other work but manual labor. The struggles he had to make ends meet were the least of his worries in the field. Every turn he had issues from the co-workers to the location itself being dangerous.

Homework Movie - Suspiria

I think the legend of Suspiria is much larger than the movie itself as a horror film. Looking at it today with more advanced FX technology and a wider perspective of the horror genre, there really isn't much to be terrified about in this movie. Directed by Dario Argento, it's rather campy nature makes it all the more entertaining and fun, more so than scary. A new student getting adjusted to dance school life and then the stories she's told perpetuate the myth of the school's infamy. As the story unfolds, Suzy Banyon, played by Jessica Harper finds out there's much more to her school than was in the brochure. Cat fights and gossip about other students is a pre-requisite and a tough head instructor a given. Creepy staff and the weird nephew are a different touch but don't hold much weight in scaring.

The atmospheric music by Goblin makes the movie suspenseful and moody, but the weird dubbing of the dialogue makes it a little choppy most of the time. Telling most of the story in exposition seems to be the norm from this generation of movie making, so this movie isn't alone in doing this. The staff and doctors outside of the school tell most of what is going to happen rather than showing the audience in a different cut that would have to be longer of this film.

Much to my dismay, this film doesn't live up to the reports of friends that have seen it before. I've given it more than one viewing before making this review. It has elements that would work in another film and it has things that I have seen in other movies, such as the students having something that ruins their rooms and then having to put up a makeshift living quarters in the Dance studio (Much like in Revenge of the Nerds) where all the girls are tossing and turning overnight and our subject/victim notices a strange visitor that plays a part later on in the story.

We watched several movies that had similar efforts for the time period they were filmed in. Cheesy dialogue, blood that was obvious it wasn't blood, and somewhat interesting soundtrack design. The stand out film from class was Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night of the Living Dead by horror master craftsman George A. Romero. He was given a place to stay with Suspiria's Argento to write the script for DoD, which he did in three weeks. Although not a masterpiece worthy of AFI top praises for best films ever, DoD does exemplify the genre and with it's comic book feel, doesn't diminish like Suspiria does, taking its story too seriously.

Homework Movie - Written on the Wind (1956)

"A whiskey bottle is about all you'd kill"

For our examination of the Suburbs Gone Haywire, we took a look at some movies that showed how house wives sleep with their bosses or husbands friends, guys that are stepping out on their wives, spending their family's inheritance before the parents are dead, and a lot of the mixed bag of other Noir topics. Written on the Wind is a family of wealthy siblings and their relationships with the parents, and themselves. We've got an alcoholic, a straying wife, a frisky sister and the best friend that has to endure it all with a strong sense of friendship.

Douglas Sirk directed Written on the Wind about half way through his career, and it shows. The whole movie is very well crafted from the story to the settings and the casting. This was done for Universal Studios, which might mean that he was able to have a larger budget. With the cast he had, Including Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall which both already had very successful movie careers before starting this picture, led this wonderful yet tragic look into people with more money than sense.

Movies like this one prove that even when times were supposed to be simpler, there was understandings that people didn’t all have it together. Along with movies like Crime of Passion, where a young woman leaves the family business to find love with a detective then to feel unsatisfied when he's not moving up in his career, Written on the wind shares a look into complacency or the lack thereof.

Be careful not to take a slug to the belly, be happy with what you

Homework Movie - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

"What if they make a monster in their dreams?"

"They turn their back on it. Take away its energy, it disappears"

Falling asleep is never a good thing in the theaters, but I can only imagine that when audiences across America saw this movie, sales in coffee and NoDoz shot up quickly! A Nightmare on Elm Street takes the typical horror monster and puts him inside his victim's head. The story centers around four teenagers, and more specifically Nancy Thompson Played by Heather Langenkamp, and their quest to find out who's killing their friends while they are asleep.

In the waking world of Nightmare, the adults are clueless to what's happening to their own children due to the parents mistakes earlier in life when they murdered a man tried of murdering children, but due to a technicality, let go. His lynching brought on this story's killer spirit to exact revenge on the families, including a young Johnny Depp in his first role as Glen Lantz. The special FX are creative and the way the deaths are designed is also.

Wes Craven directed this movie in 1948 after several others in the horror genre that he both wrote and directed. This movie was such a success that it spawned several others in the series with the same characters, but the only other directed by Craven was the New Nightmare a decade later. As a master writer in the horror genre, Craven later designed the Scream series to make fun of the supposed rules of the style he helped define for a generation of moviegoers.

This movie not only created a series that is still popular today, but had also elevated the career of Robert Enguland, who had been acting for 10 years before this series made him a household name as Fred (or Freddy) Kruger. Along with Friday the 13th, this movie stands as a new generation of horror that sees both the good and evil sides of life in the genre. Mrs. Vorhees is a distraught parent that saw her child neglected in Friday, however her actions were a bit extreme in justification.

Recently there was a remake of the popular Nightmare franchise produced by controversial producer/director Michael Bay, that has butchered not only Nightmare on Elm Street, but Texas Chainsaw and he's gotten his hands on TMNT for the 2014 calendar.

"He's dead, honey, cause mommy killed him"

Homework Movie - Chinatown (Revised review)

When someone wants to get dirt on his or her spouse affairs or someone they are doing business with that they don't trust, the call Jake Gittes. So when JJ is confronted by not one, but two woman as Evelyn Mulwray, he gets just a bit confused and wants to get to the bottom of this. So begins Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Solving that case of mistaken identity wraps Jake up into a messy case of murder and politics.

Roman Polanski directed this movie in 1974, twenty years after making his first movies. By this time Polanski had crafted a great storytelling technique and a great visual style that was very imaginative. The use of long camera shots and mirror tricks gives the audience the impression that they too are watching someone as a detective.

When everyone's a suspect, there's no one to trust. Everyone in this movie has an agenda involving the water and Gittes has to sort it all out before he loses his whole nose. Fingers are being pointed in every which direction and Gittes complicates things when he get personal with the real Mrs. Mulwray late in the story.

Detectives and reporters work in the same way in the movies we've watched this week. They check their facts against news clips and photos, talk to the right (or wrong) people, and then they get their big payoff in either a check from their employer (people of interest), or by capturing the correct person for the now solved murder. Each protagonist is obsessed with solving their crime (Chinatown) or getting their story (Shock corridor) so much that it takes over their life.

Homework Movie - Don't Look Now (1973)

Looking over one's shoulder isn't the best idea to do when the title of the movie is Don't look now, however Donald Sutherland was constantly doing so as John Baxter in Venice. He's on an assignment to restore a building for the Church. At first I thought that he too was seeing things but wasn't telling his wife. Then, like so many other movies directed by Nicolas Roeg, the mood and story shifted to John Baxter's search for his wife who seems to have run off with some women that she met in town that communicate with the Baxter's deceased daughter.

Some of the double exposure shots in this movie are really impressive. I'm sure that at the time the movie was released for the first time it was really innovative. I'm sure Roeg's time as a cinematographer helped in choosing the locations and shot selections for this movie to compel the suspenseful tone and the disconnected feeling of the film.

I was surprised to see how well Donald Sutherland's character changed over the course of the movie. His crass dismissal of the two women as crazy and non-sense was later revealed to him as something he was afraid to understand. When he took the blind sister home it was a really nice gesture.

Of the movies we watched in class and Don't Look Now, there was some veiled attempt to place some sexual encounter in the story for what seemed a random scene. It didn't lead to anything in Don't Look Now, other than to follow in some unwritten rule that if you have sex in a horror movie, you would die. Sex in films show the immorality of the culture with men chasing their secretaries or friends of wives in some way. If it has no other bearing on the story, why put in in? This helps ticket sales and recognition of the actresses, right?! Yes, Julie Christie has had a wonderful career in film, however this film came 10 years after Julie's first movie and by then she was already in her 30's. She has gone onto a long and varied career in film, only returning to horror/thriller territory a handful of times.

Homework Movie - Vertigo

When your old friend asks you to watch his wife to find out where she's going, you know something's going to end up all wrong. Such is the case for detective John "Scotty" Ferguson played by James Stewart in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958. I've had such a hard time following the muddled plot to this movie, now matter how many times I've watched it, it still takes too long to get the point across why Galvin Elster has his friend watch his wife to observe her behaviors. Is it a plot to rid Ferguson of his Vertigo issues? Does Galvin's wife really die?

Making a duel appearance is Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster, the wife of Ferguson's friend and then later as Judy the plant that looks exactly like Madeleine. In the climax of the film I was not sure if it was Madeleine or Judy that threw herself off the bell tower. No matter who it was, it sure made an impression on Mr. Ferguson, as he was completely infatuated with her looks, despite having to figure out which woman she is.

His quest was doomed from the beginning as his friend knew his condition would impair his ability to travel to anywhere with heights. On top of that, his relationship with his best friend and former fiancé was more than enough female interaction he should have needed, however his attraction to Mrs. Elster led her to her ultimate demise.

I've enjoyed more of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, but for some reason this doomed man story just doesn't hold up like the others. As for the other clips we watched in class, I was more interested in how the doomed character was involved with artistic choices in The Big Knife than Stewart's obsession with someone

Homework Movie - Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Up until the early 70's the horror genre had been mostly creatures from another place that have come to take over the humans. It was in this time period that films took to the streets, local communities, and neighborhoods that the audience grew up in. With movies like Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Rosemery's Baby, the audience was getting into peoples homes to see what goes on when the doors are closed. In Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, we're seeing a group of friends on a road trip that come across a home that they shouldn't have been anywhere near them.

This movie didn't have any well-known names as stars and most of them have done few movies after this. The star of the show was the story about a demented family catching their meal for the evening. That meal would be comprised of several college aged kids going to visit a family member's grave in connection to a recent grave robbery in town. Once there, the group find they are stranded and out of gas to get home. It continues to get worse from there, but all the while, there isn't a bit of gratuitous sex or violence much like today's "Torture porn" style movies such as Saw or House of 1,000 Corpses which were inspired in part by Chain Saw. The sole survivor is never naked, and for a horror genre movie that's a completely rare occurrence.

For future films, there is a reverence for films like Chain Saw that shows a side to the horror genre that most people don't realize. These movies are also funny if you think about them for any length of time. Who runs up stairs when you've got a sadistic, chain saw wielding killer on your tail? Right. But in movies like Shaun of the Dead or my favorite of recent European horror Severance, these scenarios are usually one or two people being chased that go somewhere that they would end up being caught.

This movie had inspired so many others to create films, even some comedy writers in the 90's had to put a reference to Chain Saw in a movie called Summer School. The two characters that were horror geeks were determined to share this great film with the foreign exchange student and one of them went by the name Chainsaw in the whole movie. Not to mention the three sequels before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise. His big budgeted version hold no candle to the classic.