You’re forgiven if you didn’t know much about the Denver Film Festival. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to talk about in the aftermath of the ten day affair. Highlights included very interesting industry panels (a new addition this year), a few films slated for a wide release, and a local debut for a major Colorado-produced film, The Boat Builder. In a state where most of the money for films was recently devoured by Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, it was nice to see a Colorado-made film get a warm reception. I wasn’t able to finagle my way into every film I wanted to; such is the tragedy of any festival. But, I was able to see a variety of films big and small and elbow my way into a few industry panels. Below are brief reviews of every film I saw, …show more content…
This documentary follows the journey of passengers on an “Empire Builder” Amtrak train from Chicago to Seattle. Everyone on the train is dreaming of something. Such a long train ride inspires people to get to know each other, swap stories, and romanticize the journey. People talk of the “opportunity to change”, and the power of travel. Everyone on the train has a unique story, but all of them are in transition. Some have stories of heartache and abuse, some talk of striking it rich in the oil fields of North Dakota, and still others are there just to “buy the ticket and take the ride”. The film is populated by beautiful real-life characters that wax on life, chance, and how things are going to be different and better at their new destination. Equally beautiful is the natural scenery and artful cinematography throughout the …show more content…
Every story in the film is strong, and stands on its own. The “multithreaded urban fresco” film might be a bit hackneyed, but this film does justice to the genre. Even if the characters we see mostly only exist in the cinema, they do make rational sense within the world the film sets up. That kind of internal consistency makes a film seem real and relatable, even if at times it isn’t. An unreal but pleasurable device in the film is a taxi and its driver, tying the narrative threads together and providing a bit of Kafka-like humor. Narratives in the film are about unrequited love, sexuality and gender, relationships, excitement, and loss. Refreshingly, the female characters’ stories are not exoticized, reduced, or manipulated to fit many of the tropes of male-dominant film culture. Cinematography and art direction in the film is beautiful. It’s dark and crisp with a pleasing high contrast between the darkness of night and the fluorescent lights of the city. The acting performances matched the quality of the film and were in general very good. This film was a great example of how sometimes the smaller and lesser-known films at a festival can still be very enjoyable. boat 2. The Boat Builder written and directed by Arnold
It is no secret that there is an obvious difference of how women are portrayed in the media versus men. This movie discussed female characters never having lead roles and stated that when they did it ended in the women depending on, loving, or having to have a man. One young high school girl said, “Women never play the protagonist. The girls are
The movie’s length left me antsy, but I greatly enjoyed the proficient acting, detailed sets, and thorough presentation. I appreciated the subtle homoeroticism between Ben-Hur and Messala in light of ancient Rome’s somewhat flexible sexual culture.
The movie begins by following the lives of eight women whose lives intertwine and intersect in a present day Harlem walk-up. Patrick Ivers, film critic writes “Tyler Perry’s powerful opera of pain and poetry and precious intensity, lyrical lament to rhythms of resentment brings together eight women and their traumatic experiences. They have suffered physical and verbal abuse, abandonment, infidelity, infection, i...
The first scene that will be analyzed is that of opening credits and just how exactly this begins to set the stage for the main theme. In the very first frame, which also becomes the establishing shot, we come to a high angle shot that is zoomed in close on the words “Sunset Blvd” painted on a street curb as the image is also flooded with dramatic nondiegetic music. This becomes very important because the curb is also the gutter. Here, not even ten seconds into the movie, do we get our first glimpse of what the film is about; the mise-en-scene here involving a symbolic visual correlation to the central theme an this gutter frame is depicted through this entire establishing shot. Along with this we get more connection through the voice over actually describing, in an almost a sarcastic manner which should not be the case at all, about a murder on this high class, high status block. It’s almost as if this is a clear depiction of the true chaos tied in with how this Hollywood life can and will be to the people involved with it. As the film zooms out to a long shot of Sunset, we see the police brigade come and wiz by through a very quick pan shot. The next thing is a cross cut to the actual mansion where more commotion is viewed at an obvious murder scene. Bottom line is that the mise-en-scene involved here does an excellent job setting up the movie’s thematic intentions....
The most important events of this film all revolve around the female characters. While there are some male charac...
Before I made my trek to Vancouver back in November, I had the opportunity to interview a wonderful indie filmmaker team--Ross and Maria Munro. I was only able to publish my interview with Ross before I left, and I am incredibly pleased to now share my chat with his lovely wife, Maria. As one who is involved with the marketing/production side of films, Maria was able to share her own unique opinion concerning her views about and her experience with the indie film scene.
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
What comes after understanding how female characters are mistreated and mishandled when compared to men, is understanding how they are when men simply are not a factor. ‘The Girlfriend Flick’ as feminists have started referring the ‘chick flick’ as, is a subset of films that focus solely on women and what they do, with men not always having to be a factor (Winch, 2012, pg. 70). It is considered the next logical step in films focusing on women, and it allows us to see women as people (Winch, 2012, pg. 70). Women are as varied in the world as men are, and yet female characters don’t seem to be as varied on screen in other films, this type of film gives a better perspective of that variation (Winch, 2012, pg. 78). Women, when presented outside
This is a “love knows no bounds” drama that poignantly portrays a relationship between two powerful women. On one hand, the narrative doesn’t veer far from the course of a film like The Notebook (not that two such films deserve to be in the same discussion), and is certainly a film that contributes to breaking down barriers of Hollywood heterosexually – similar to Brokeback
“11x14” ”(1977), by James Benning is re-presents the American Midwestern landscape through the window of 11x14 format. It is a non-literary documentary film, a non-conventional narrative, and finds meaning in the space and construction of film. 11X14 opens with a lengthy shot from the back of the Evanston Express (a carriage ride into downtown Chicago). 11X14 includes two other extremely long shots, constructing three ambiguous plot strands dispersed
A complex social criticism comedy plays role with the wealthy social class Paris. It has many great and remarkable elements. Start with the Cinematography, and editing. And some other elements didn’t make sense for me and that’s doesn’t mean it’s a bad. It just the director choice and vision. I’ll enumerate what i liked first then what i didn’t.
My opinion about the film “City Lights” by Charlie Chaplin is that it is a great movie. It is the first time that I watch a silent romantic comedy film, my thought at the beginning of the movie was that it was going to be bored but once the story began my way of see this film was so different in the way how the story connect from the beginning to the end. This film was great how the images black and white, the fast motion scenes, and the orchestra music, give the story a taste of pantomime as an art of body language. Also playing a huge role in the story between the characters, in how Chaplin falls in love with this blind lady and his friend ship with this alcoholic
Dark City, a film by Alex proyas is a tremendous visionary accomplishment, and a motion picture so authentic and innovative, it provokes your wildest imagination. If these words speak the truth, as the German Director Werner Herzog presumes, that human beings live in an era emaciated of fresh concepts, then Dark City is a picture to enrich us. Not a tale so much as an incident, it is a exultation of art direction, cinematography, set design, special effects and of course, imagination.
...movie that I fell in love with. But most of all I love how the story line is a great overlap into the cinematically engaging movie. There is a great use of camera, timing, shots and story line that are portrayed in this movie without being too overwhelming. This allows the audience to relax during the movie and just take in the scenes as a story from reality. To this day, and even still doing this paper I still come to find different aspects of the movie that I missed the previous times I have watched it.
I like the film very much. I think its one of the best films I’ve seen ever. The comedy in the film is just my humour, and the action was okay.