Journal 1: The Professional I came into The Professional not knowing very much about the film save for the general plot and that this was Natalie Portman’s first major movie. I knew the plot centered around the unconventional relationship between a young girl and a trained hitman, and that Gary Oldman starred as the antagonist. I did not know much about the actual substance of the film. Even though I knew very little about the movie, I still found it easy to predict the plot points beat for beat. The movie follows a rather simple narrative structure where we see a cold and calculating killer transform into a loving surrogate father, while a young and naive girl learns about the harsh realities of life. Having said this though, the movie really …show more content…
In one particular scene we see Mathilda (Natalie Portman) trying to convince Leon (Jean Reno) to play a game with her as she feels that they have been working too much. Leon reluctantly accepts and they play a game of quasi-charades where they dress up as celebrities and try to guess what each other are. It’s a silly scene that could feel out of place in a movie where the protagonist is a hired killer but it is executed in a way that makes it an important piece of the film. This scene accomplishes many things both explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly it acts as comic relief for the audience. This is the first time we see Leon having any sort of fun and seeing an assassin attempting John Wayne impressions is simply funny. However, this scene also offers insight into Leon and Mathilda’s respective characters and creates genuine emotion for the audience to latch on to. Leon is a pretty stoic guy who spends most of his time doing sit ups and sitting in the dark alone. In this instance though he is able to let go and have some childish fun with a young girl he sees almost as a daughter. A cold-blooded killer is being humanized and the audience can now grow attached to
The film Jindabyne, is a story about death, marriage, and race in an Australian town in New South Wales called Jindabyne. In the film, four men go fishing, and one of them discovers the dead body of a young indigenous girl. Instead of reporting what they found to the police immediately, they decide to stay and continue fishing. They decide that there is nothing they could do for her, so they tie her legs to a tree and continue with their fishing, reporting the death only when they return home. After they are done with their weekend of fishing and report the incident, conflict starts, as the men are criticized for not respecting the dead. Through the story of the town’s reaction to the four fishermen’s response to the dead girl, the movie shows Australia to be fragmented and divided over white-indigenous relations.
This brief essay examines racism in the 1974 motion picture Conrack. The movie is an adaptation of Pat Conroy's autobiography, The Water Is Wide. The main character, Conrack, a young white male teacher portrayed by Jon Voight, is assigned to teach students from poor black families on a small island off the coast of South Carolina. The small community has little contact with the outside world and develops its own language. He finds the students essentially illiterate and their education neglected by state authorities. Poverty and their race cause neglect of their educational needs. The black school principal has convinced the students they are stupid and lazy. Conroy begins teaching the students useful, essential life skills. The community has no interest in learning about anything away from the island. The community has lived in fear of a nearby river because none can swim. While trying to improve the students' level of knowledge and their enthusiasm for
The racial system is composed of three basic parts that divides people into different categories: the white on top, black on bottom, and brown in between. This system came to be as a result of three different population coming together with unequal terms resulting in one population having the most power. The film Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, does an excellent job at portraying how the racial system functions by showing the advantages of being at the top of the system and the disadvantages of being at the bottom of the system. Not only does Spike Lee show the way that the racial system works but it also shows the reality of it and how it puts the races at the bottom
Some films are made for mind-numbing entertainment, some are made to make you cry, and some are made to think, to question, Missrepresentation is one of the later films. The movie makes you question society and even yourself and what you view as the norm in media. I enjoyed the film overall. I believe the message the film was trying to portray was message that needs to be said and heard. Watching the film made me realize how so many things I just accept in the media that harm women and perpetuate rape culture and misogyny. Missrepresentation is a film that made me think and connect its message with what we are learning in class and my own life.
...situations in this movie are very serious like death and prison, the audience finds its way to relate.
Despite numerous criticisms about how the play was violence was “gratuitous”, McDonagh says, “The violence has a purpose . . . otherwise there’s nothing particularly interesting about shooting people on stage.”
The video MIDWAY a message from the Gyre: a short film by Chris Jordan gave me the chills and ultimately upset me. In the beginning of the short film the diretor shows us a glimpse of the seagulls that inhibit Midway Island, North Pacific Ocean, an Island that is more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. Jordan includes a clip of a mother gull feeding her baby gull before showing us snapshots of dead gulls with trash and plastic in their bodies. When i first saw these pictures I honestly thought that the photogragher arranged random pieces of plastic found on the isand into a dead seagull’s body. After the snapshots the director included a video of the photographer cutting open in a seagull’s body and taking random objects and pieces of plastic out. When I saw this my heart broke, I was in disgust and mad at us humans. The poor birds dying shown in the following clips were also very sad and graphic. These innocent birds are consumming
Through use of character development, even the worst serial killers are portrayed in a manner that elicits a sympathetic response in the audience, effectiv...
Within the German Democratic Republic, there was a secret police force known as the Stasi, which was responsible for state surveillance, attempting to permeate every facet of life. Agents within and informants tied to the Stasi were both feared and hated, as there was no true semblance of privacy for most citizens. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie The Lives of Others follows one particular Stasi agent as he carries out his mission to spy on a well-known writer and his lover. As the film progresses, the audience is able to see the moral transformation of Stasi Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler primarily through the director 's use of the script, colors and lighting, and music.
Movies are everywhere. They are a part of everyone’s life. Think about it, how many movies do you
was a spectacular film there were some things that I did not enjoy like, the
Before the civil rights movement could begin, a few courageous individuals had to guide the way. Dr. Vernon Johns was one of those individuals. Dr. Vernon Johns was a pastor and civil rights activist in the 1920s. Johns became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1940s. During his time as a pastor, Johns preached many sermons on how African American people were being treated not only in the community but in society. Johns on multiple occasions upset his community through his ideas on social change. Through a sociologist perspective, many sociological concepts were displayed in The Vernon Johns Story. Some of those concepts included: ascribed status, conflict theory, deviant behavior, alienation, and
The Associate is an entertaining movie that brings forth gender disparities in the workplace. Whoopi Goldberg, Laurel Ayers, portrays a financial analyst who has been stuck in a position that does not give her true credit for all of her hard work and talents. The Associate exemplifies the sexism that is occurring in the workplace through satiric wit and a strong story line.
Take a moment and think about how difficult it is going through an unexpected change having to do with leaving your old life, your hometown, and even your house by force. Well, that's what you call a sudden change that may leave a long-term effect on a person. Based on true story, In the book Night, movie called Life is Beautiful and article named “ The Journey to Europe: One Syrian refugee’s story” all show terrible experience through sudden changes of a person due to Religion and way life is going on in their own hometown that changes a person for life, but after going through the change they're able to continue a normal life.
With self-driving cars, facial-recognition software, mobile phones that listen to our very command and even robot-butlers, the future is now.