http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/06/review.coraline/index.html

This sign is all over campus. Do you find it easy to “read” its message?

Here is a close up.

I don’t find it easy to read. Instead:

I feel like there are sick people, all over campus, collapsing near garbage bins. They are so weak, they can barely grasp the food they find on the floor. The fact that they have no hands and feet makes it much harder for them to function normally in society.

I am concerned for their wellbeing.

Only after experiencing these many initial “reads” of the sign do I realize that it is meants as a kind of PSA for cleanliness. The bold graphics only serve to confuse my eye.

Am I alone in this interpretation?

“””

Happy death Day, directed by Christopher B. Landan, is a movie about a college girl who celebreates and is killed on her birthday. However she doesn’t remain dead, she wakes up thinking it was a dream until the morning was just like the same in her “dream”. Knowing that she will be killed, she tried to protect herself but failed. And then she wakes up again, this time knowing that it’s not a dream and realizes that this will keep going on until she catches her killer.

Although I don’t like horror films because I’m too scare to watch.  Somehow this movie doesn’t seem scary at all, it looks more like an action film rather than a horror film. It’s just that there are a lot of jumpscares which I’m fine with. Other than that, there’s an intresting ability that the main character has, a chance to do a do-over of her birthday. Most movies would have a plot of having the killed person avanged by someone else or the main character learns to protect herself, but this was different

“Becoming a decent person requires an awful lot of dying in “Happy Death Day,” a snappy horror-comedy with a gentle romantic spine.” – Jeanette Catsoulis from New York Times

The 2016 film Arrival directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Hiesserer is a science-fiction mystery based on Ted Chiang’s 1998 science-fiction novella The Story of Your Life. The film follows linguist Dr. Louis Banks as she takes on the task of decoding an alien language in the midst of the arrival of twelve UFOs.

The film is interesting to me because it took inspiration from the Sapir-Whorf theory, a theory that I believe in to an extent. The Sapir-Whorf there states that the structure of language determines or greatly influences the modes of thought and behavior characteristics of the cultures in which it is spoken. Essentially, the structure of our languages determine how we think.

In the film, it is noted that all languages spoken by humans on Earth are linear, meaning that when speaking or reading there is always a beginning and end to our sentences. However, for Heptapods, the alien species that land on Earth in the film, their language is non-linear, the sentences are these circular splotches on ink. No matter where in the sentence you were to begin  reading, the sentence would always read the same, something that humans just can’t seem to understand due to our linear language and how it affects out way of thinking.

Most viewers, particularly from the late 20th Century era, can agree that this film is in itself a holy grail of film industry. This film is deserving of its reputation because of its incredible presentation of surreal humor. Example – banging together two halves of coconuts for traveling, an anarchosyndicalist commune, a killer rabbit, and the unorthodox ways of determining a witch. This movie is something that is required to be viewed in order have culture.

This film is a short film. It’s interesting because it shows how people really get lost being someone other than themselves.

The movie The outsiders is based off the novel written by S.E. Hinton. Directed by  Francis Ford Coppola. The movie came out on March 25, 1983. Its known today as a classic and was very successful when it first came out. The budget was 10 million dollars and they gained back 33 million. The movie itself and the cast was nominated for many awards but never won.

The outsiders takes place in the poor side of town in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With two gangs the Greasers and the Socs. Greasers live on the north side of town. They are less fortunate than the Socs and had it a lot harder. The Socs lived on the south side, came from wealth and had it made. And they never let the Greasers forget that. The movie is centered on one person. Ponyboy Curtis. A 14 year old greaser who lives with his two older brother, Darrel and Sodapop. The movie focuses on how him and his friend Johnny Cade ran away for killing a Soc that was attacking Ponyboy.

This my FAVORITE movie of all time. One I love old movies. And two this whole movie is dramatic and heart felt and its all about self growth.  I think the point of the film was to showcase these two topics:  being at the wrong place at the wrong time and appreciating those around you. You see Ponyboy coming of age and learning how to change his attitude towards his older brother.

Howard Rosenberg of Los Angeles Times:

“Although the characters are too inconsistent to be entirely believable and often act too inanely to be respected, there are enough nice moments here to lift “The Outsiders” above the ordinary and give it promise. Yet “The Outsiders” depicts a pretty dismal world, giving us corrupt, sadistic cops and rotten rich who spend their waking hours plotting how to oppress the poor and dirty-fingernailed. What’s more, even the show’s young target audience may ultimately tire of week after week of greasers and socs sneering and snarling at each other.”

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone:

“Coppola has given the film a fullness that makes it feel freshly minted. Ponyboy, quoting Robert Frost’s poem about how nothing gold (meaning youth) ever lasts, is set against an impossibly golden sunset that always threw me, as did much of the florid dialogue.”

Directed by Peter Jackson and Written by Peter Jackosn, Fran Wash, Philippa Walsh, King Kong is a action, drama and adventure movie that takes place in New York, 1993.  When a determined movie producer Carl Denham (Jack Black ) with his cast voyages to a unexplored island called , “Skull Island,” they encounter King Kong a giant ape,  dinosaurs and other enormous creatures. Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) an actress in Denham’s film is taken away by the giant ape.  The crew rush to find Ann; throughout the movie Ann and the ape form a bond.

King Kong was released in 2005, had a budget of 207 million USD,  and the movie has also won three Oscars and some other awards too. Some other films by Jackson are Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

A few reason why I enjoy this movie is because there’s a lot of action and unexpected things that pop up, and you don’t expect to happen. For example when I first saw the movie I did not expect to see dinosaurs at all. And even though this movie is 3 hours long, there’s never a dull moment except for the beginning. The music and sound effects in the background are also really effective. I will admit I did tear towards the end. If I had to rate the movie I’d give it 4.8 stars.

David Denby, ” The New Yorker,” says,

“This Kong is high-powered entertainment, but Jackson pushes too hard and loses momentum over the more than three hours of the movie.”

Kirk Honeycutt, ” Hollywood Reporter,” says,

“This is spectacle film making at its best, where a director is in tune with the story’s underlying emotions and his own boyish love for adventure fantasy.”

Andrew H, person from the audience said,

“About 45 minutes too long, but great nonetheless.”

Vile yet interesting. This movie serves its purpose as the worst film ever made, but somehow it was enjoyed by millions of people. Written by and starred Tommy Wiseau and Directed by Greg Sestero, It tanked in the box office making only 1,800 dollars on a 6 million dollar budget. But over the course of the last 10 years, The room has successfully made profit due to DVD, streaming sales, and merchandise.

One of the reasons “I” find this film enjoyable is because you don’t usually have the chance to watch inexperienced actors on set portraying their roles, so instead of watching a movie about a successful banker watching his life being torn apart as his wife has an affair with his best friend. I’m watching a bunch of people “acting” on a studio behind a bunch of cameras and lights. That’s enjoyable to me because you don’t usually see that in a movie too often, you’re used to watching actors actually do their jobs. But in this case it’s entertaining to watch actors portray their roles poorly in a sense to amuse the audience without intending to.

JLuis_001 says ” The Room is perhaps the worst movie in history,  it lacks everything a good movie requires. It is disconnected as it is stupid and boring.”

CSJ says ” I do not enjoy reviewing the movie so low because of the sheer amount of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of it, however in the name of objectivity, I must say this movie is not good.”

Hi. I just watched The Imitation Game (2014) on Netflix and really enjoyed it.

Do you ever watch a couple of movies in a row and see parallels? Two nights before, I watched a documentary about Edward Snowden on Amazon by Laura Poitras.  Her film (Called Citizen Four) was a true story that revealed how thoroughly computers have infiltrated our lives — and of how privacy is a thing of the past. So, when I saw The Imitation Game (directed by Morton Tyldum) I was already thinking about technology. Turns out,  Tyldum’s film is about how the first computer was invented — to serve the British military. (Well, among other things; the film has a lot of plot lines to it, but its main character is a math genius named Alan Turing, who invented the first computer.) It was chilling and fascinating to think about code and innovation and how fast our lives have changed — and are changing.

I didn’t intend that my personal “screenings” would make an interesting back-to-back “read” of society and technology — but they did. I’d recommend both films.