The Princess Bride

This is an excellent movie.  It's full of romance, action, and comedy.  It's a family favorite.  It's hard to believe that when it originally was released it didn't do well.  It's become a classic.  The story is great.  The camera work is excellent.  The acting is superb.  There are so many wonderful lines in the script.  My personal favorite, "Have fun stormin' the castle!"  The movie is a classic fairy tale and yet it's not an ordinary fairy tale.  This is a movie that will live on through generations.

The Camera Buff

The camera buff is a film about an amateur documentary filmmaker.  The movie is roughly based on the experinces of the director Krzystof Kieslowski.  The main character Filip Mosz buys an 8mm film camera to shoot footage of his newborn daughter.  He ends up becoming a documentary filmmaker.  As the film progresses he realizes he can't make documentaries without harming people and so in the end gives up his filmmaking career.  The film is reflexive because it shows the workings of making an amateur film.  It covers the whole process of filming and editing.  Filip learns the whole process throughout the film.  It's an entertaining movie.

The Pink Panther

This is Steve Martin's remake of the classic Pink Panther films starring Peter Sellers.  While it is a funny movie it falls short of living up to the Pink Panther name.  Martin struggles in playing the character of Jacques Clouseau that Sellers perfected.  The story is well scripted.  There are many funny twists and turns.  I think the movie could have done better without Beyonce.  She didn't ruin the film.  It could have been better with a more experienced actress.  There didn't seem to be enough contention between Dreyfus and Clouseau either.  In the original films Dreyfus is driven so nutty by Clouseau that he attempts to murder him several times throughout each film.  In this film Dreyfus seems content with merely ruining Clouseau's career and embarrassing him.  The movie is good for a laugh and worth watching at least once, but for fans of Seller's Clouseau a bit of a disappointment.

Weekend

A film by Jean-Luc Godard, Weekend is a political film commenting on the rich upper class of France.  The film is about a couple, Roland and Corinne, that take a weekend to travel to her parent's to receive an inheritance.  They've been slowly poisoning her father so he would die sooner, but due to a few setbacks (car wrecks, traffic jams, a car jacking, etc) along the way they don't make it there before he dies.  The film is an expression of how horrible this upper class is.  Roland and Corinne end up murdering both of her parents in order to get more money.  In the end they get their comeuppance with Roland being killed (not to mention disemboweled) and Corinne resorting to cannibalism in order to not starve.  I found the film confusing with many hidden messages.  The characters constantly state that they are in a film giving it a kind of reflexive feel.  At one point they burn a girl because she is an "imaginary" character.  It is an interesting film in an artistic way.  I wouldn't recommend it to the normal class of film viewers.

Live Free or Die Hard

What this movie lacks in story it makes up for in action.  The story is pretty simple.  Man tries to destroy the world, another man tries to save it.  Throw in some guns, explosions and fight scenes and you've got a movie.  It falls in with the previous Die Hard films fairly well.  The movie has a very rough, straight action film feel to it.  Some scenes were surprising, for instance Bruce Willis fighting a girl.  Some of the dialogue is very rough too for instance when he explains a plan in the film Willis says, "Save my daughter, kill everyone else.''  

Living in Oblivion

This movie was extremely funny.  It's about the frustrations of low budget filmmaking.  There are three different sequences in the movie.  Each sequence deals with different problems that could arise on the set.  The first sequence deals with mostly technical issues including problems with the boom, the lights, and the camera.  At one point in the sequence the tech takes a break and the actors run through their lines.  They give the best performance of the day and the camera guy isn't there to film it.  Steve Buscemi gives an excellent performance as the director of the film.  The frustration in his face as he watches a perfect scene slip through his fingers is hysterical.  The second sequence deals with personality conflict.  In it a "star" actor who thinks he's God's gift to the film industry destroys a scene by insisting on alterations that he thinks are improvements.  The last sequence is a mesh between the two with a dwarf who calls the director out for being stereotypical by casting a dwarf as a dwarf.  The dwarf's outburst comes after the smoke machine for the sequence explodes.  This movie is definitely an eye opener for future filmmakers on the process of movie making.

A Beautiful Mind

This movie is a touching story about a man with schizophrenia.  John Nash is the main character of the film.  It documents his struggles with the disorder and how he overcomes it.  The movie itself is stunning.  The cinematography is amazing.  Camera movements and positioning keep the film interesting as the story progresses.  The film also has many aspects of the action thriller.  There is even a great chase scene.  Russell Crowe gives a stunning performance as John Nash.  He is very convincing in his role and gives the viewer a good sense of what it would be like to suffer from schizophrenia.  One of my favorite scenes is a scene where John finally realizes how to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.  It brings all of his delusions together with his wife and is actually the first time in the movie where we see the perspective of someone else rather than simply from John.  It's basically the first scene where we notice that other people really aren't seeing the people John sees.  I would recommend this movie to anyone.

The Stunt Man

The Stunt Man is a movie about a vietnam vet who, through an interesting turn of events becomes a stunt double in a movie about World War I. The movie is fun to watch because it draws you in to its cinematic qualities while showing you the inner workings of Hollywood. For example a scene in the movie involves a stunt man running across the rooftops of a building, dodging bullets and fighting off soldiers. The scene is presented as if it were shot in one continuous shot though in actuality it would not be. This draws you in to the story of the film. Then you see men being thrown off buildings to land on giant inflated pads below, showing you that this is a movie and none of the men are actually getting hurt. It gives the viewer a nice sense of how the movie was shot yet still flows well enough to create a fantasy world you can get lost in.

The Player

Robert Altman's stab at Hollywood is a delight for movie watchers. This film is full of reflexivity as it portrays the inner workings of a Hollywood movie production company. Tim Robbins stars as Griffin Mill, a movie executive that's been receiving death threats from a writer that he promised to get back to, but never did. The film is Altman's attempt to expose the corrupt dealings of Hollywood production companies. It's his way of showing that the industry's only goal is to "make a buck" and that they don't care about the art of film. This is clearly shown when the film pitched within the movie, "Habeus Corpus", which was meant to have no stars and a tragic ending, is changed to sell more tickets and make more money. Even the writer, who was very adamant about the artisitic style of his movie, sold out to make his fortune. In fact, the one woman who protested the changes was fired. The film definitely points out the flaws of the Hollywood system and is a great film for viewers and filmmakers alike