I have a soft spot for WWII movies. I’ve always been interested in them and whenever one comes out, it usually is on my to-see list. So, when Monuments Men came out, I thought it would be an interesting side of WWII that I had never seen before. The movie, based on a true story, focuses on a group of men led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney) in order to save art from being stolen and/or destroyed by the Nazis and Russians (of course). The misfit group travels around France, Belgium, and Germany in 1944 to after the war in order to find the thousands of pieces that had gone missing during the war.
Right off the bat, the cast was amazing. The Monuments Men included George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and many more, and also with a French-speaking Cate Blanchett. The actors worked well together and you could see that they were having a great time being able to work with one another. Unfortunately, the writing seemed to greatly limit the actors from their true potential. Actually, I believe the writing is what prohibited this movie from being an exceptional film. The lines, humorous at parts thanks to the actors’ deliveries, was noticeably deliberate and forced. They lacked a natural feel and flow.
Also, the writers, George Clooney and Grant Heslov, seemed to like squeezing in a lot of patriotic morals throughout the movie. The writing did not kill the movie but it was disappointing. Stylistically, the film was well done. The settings looked like they were in Western Europe in WWII-era. The costuming and props were accurately portrayed. Having the film include shots of Paris also helps the validity of the movie. Not only that, but the art that they had looked like they had made their own raid of a museum. The art was so realistic that it makes one wonder if it is the real thing. Making the movie look like it was in WWII and not some movie back-drop helped save the movie from its writing.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when James Granger, played by Matt Damon, accidentally steps on a land mine. The scene starts with Granger, in an unsettling tone, calling to Stokes to come over to him off screen. Arriving to Granger, the shots alternate between long shots of Granger on the land mine and Stokes repeating why would he do such a thing. Keeping with the same shots, the other characters come in, again alternating between shots of Granger and the others. This back and forth separates Granger from the others since he is the one in trouble.
Monuments Men is probably one of the lightest war movie I have seen. Granted, there were some dramatic scenes that portrayed the horrors of war through the death of brothers. But, after doing a Formal Film Studies of The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan, and The Hurt Locker, this movie was like a walk in the park. It was entertaining and fun watching all the actors work together in an unusual setting.
So thinking of a children’s toy turned into a movie, I had low expectations when I heard about The Lego Movie. I feared that it would be another Barbie movie or the next Bionicle Movie. Yet, after I had at least three different people demanding that I should see it, I thought I would give it a chance. So, I saw The Lego Movie at the theatre. Funny enough, the audience was not just little kids, they ranged from all ages.
It is only about an hour and a half but it feels much longer, in a good way. The plot is cute, creative, dramatic, and emotional all at the same time. It focuses on this very average lego man (?) named Emmett (voiced by Chris Patt) who is supposedly chosen as the “Special” by an old prophecy in order to destroy Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell) and his plot to make the world too perfect.
The movie did not disappoint. First off, the cast was just incredible. There was Morgan Fitzgerald playing Virtruvius, Chris Pratt playing Emmett, Will Ferrell playing Lord Business and the father, Will Arnett playing Batman, Elizabeth Banks playing Lucy, Jonah Hill playing the Green Lantern, and the list still goes on. Having such experienced and great voices added to the movie’s validity and entertainment.
The movie was able to entertain the young, the teens, and the adults all at once. The bright colors, catchy tunes, and fast-paced movement throughout the movie allowed little kids to be entertained without losing interest. The plot was general enough to be understood by kids with leaving them with a moral at the end. For the teens who grew up with Legos, including myself, we were able to relive our childhood through the different characters of Batman to Gandolf while catching some of the more complicated and humorous plot. Adults would be relieved that this was one of the good kids’ movies out there. The writing includes a lot of innuendos that younger kids would definitely not pick up on. The story is creative and unique, making the combination of a good story and subtle adult content very entertaining.
The settings in the movie are very well done. They have many details and are able to represent the space of the area. For example, the group lands in the ocean that is filled with vast blue legos and waves as far as the eye can see. You feel like you are in a huge ocean…of Legos. Along with the setting is the quick shots in order to match the fast-pace of the movie. The Lego men themselves are meant to look and act like Legos, very stiff movements with limited facial expressions. This little movement from the characters makes the movie more realistic as true Legos.
There is a scene in the movie where there is live action. Here, the dad is yelling at his son for playing with his Legos (the plot of the Legos).
Instead of making the movie all of the boy’s imagination, they incorporate the real-life action and the possibility that these Legos are “alive”. When the dad (Will Ferrell) is glueing some of the Legos at his desk in a medium shot, in the left corner, Emmett starts to movie. The combination of the dad’s lack of movie while busy at work with the anticipated movement from Emmett makes the scene even funnier and more powerful.
Out of my long list of movies to watch, I decided to focus on the three war movies that represent three different wars in three different decades. These movies are Saving Private Ryan (1998 on WWII), The Deer Hunter (1978 on the Vietnam War), and The Hurt Locker (2008 on the Afghanistan War).
All of these movies were wonderfully done and incredibly well-acted. They brutally show the reality of these wars while showing the beauty of brotherhood. I could not choose a favorite out of these since each are both ironically so different from the other.
Opening Scenes:
Saving Private Ryan had the most intense opening scene. It started with a close-up of Tom Hanks getting ready to enter into battle on Omaha beach. Once the battle began, which felt like an hour of the movie, the shots changed quickly to the quick deaths of the soldiers, to medics trying desperately to save dying men, to one man picking up his arm and carrying on, and finally to Tom Hanks’s hopeless face. This quick moving pace shows the tramatic battles fought in the Pacific and sets the intense nature for the rest of the movie.
The Hurt Locker opens, initially, with a semi-light-hearted scene of three friends joking and getting ready to disarm a roadside bomb. The scene, which consisted of medium shots of the bomb disarmer, shifts quickly when it is realized that the bomb is going to go off. The scene ends with the inside of Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson’s (Guy Pierce) helmet getting covered in blood. This sets the movie to have an untrusting feeling to the survival of the men.
The Deer Hunter differs from the other two because it starts off with a wedding. The light-hearted chaos of this small town getting ready for a big wedding seems to be the main issue of the first hour; even the future soldiers getting announced is only a minor detail during the wedding. Paradoxically, the remaining two-thirds of the movie are grotesquely similar to the opening scenes in The Hurt Locker and Saving Private Ryan. The slower pace of the film allows more time to divulge into the slow paced lives of these men and how war broke that tradition of regular life.
Women:
Women are portrayed very differently in each of the three movies. The Hurt Locker and Saving Private Ryan take a more positive view of women and their roles/actions. In Saving Private Ryan, women and home was viewed as the paradise these soldiers were reaching for, as said by Tom Hanks’s character, Captain Miller. Also, the whole rescue mission is to save this poor mother one of her sons. They risked their lives for her. The Hurt Locker had a similar idealized view of women and having a family as seen through Anothony Mackie’s character, Sergeant JT Sanborn, who went through a personal journey about wanting a son and to be a father. Even Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) wanted stability at home. The Deer Hunter, on the other hand, shows a much different view on the treatment of women. The scenes in their small Pennsylvanian town were filled with multiple abusive scenes against women. The one that stood out to me was at the wedding when Stan‘s (John Cazale) girlfriend was dancing which a guy who was touching were butt and she was the one knocked out cold. Even after the incident, she immediately went back to him. This inferior view of women seems to be heightened to portray a small town during the Vietnam War and how women were treated. It gave an air to the future soldiers and friends that took away from their “hero” image, as opposed to the other two movies that did not use women as a means of showing negative qualities of the protagonists. Yet, The Hurt Locker, portraying the war where women could go to war, showed barely any women overseas. The lack of female soldiers adds to the stereotypical masculinity theme of war.
Symbols:
Each movie had their own symbol which characterized the main actor and their corresponding war. The Deer Hunter had a the intense and disturbing symbol of Russian Roulette, a game played in the movie by force and by choice. The relating theme of “one shot” is used to show how one’s life is over in one shot, that’s all it takes.
This vulnerability to death is seen throughout all the movies and is dealt with in their own ways, including Saving Private Ryan’s main goal to prevent a mother from losing all of her sons. The effects of war are seen in Captain Miller’s shaking hand in Saving Private Ryan. This hand, which eventually goes still, symbolizes the stress and catastrophic emotional results from war. The Hurt Locker takes a more light-hearted, yet slightly morbid, symbol through James’s collection of bomb parts. The movies all had a general theme of how such a little thing can cause the loss of life more than we’d like to imagine.
War Propaganda?:
Although these movies do differ, they all share a common theme. They all criticize war. Granted, they do on different levels. Saving Private Ryan showed the brutality of WWII and how many men died needlessly, yet the portrayal of the US army trying to help this poor mother lessens the criticism (also, there were few who disagree with the US’s pivotal involvement in WWII against Hitler). The Hurt Locker shows the cruel nature of the Taliban through the insane bombings and the torturing of the young boy and how there are citizens who support the US’s involvement.
Criticizing the war, the movie shows how these soldiers’ jobs are to basically stop things/people from blowing up. There is only chaos in the war without much progress. Although these two movies showed some silver linings about war, The Deer Hunter showed no compassion to the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War. This might have been supported due to the heavy opposition against the war, while WWII and Afghanistan have more justifiable intentions. The Deer Hunter does show the brutality of the North Vietnamese, especially in the first scene in Vietnam where a shot is taken looking down to a bunker full of civilians and only the grenade falling in. Also, the POW scenes involving Russian Roulette and horrifying torture of US soldiers adds to the harsh and incredulous nature of the Vietnam War. Yet, the POW scene and the aftermath of the soldiers coming home only criticize the war. Nick (Christopher Walken) was driven crazy due to the pressure and shock he was in, Stevie (John Savage) was left physically scarred, while finally Michael (Robert de Niro) has been emotionally scarred. The Deer Hunter also focused on the contrast of the soldiers’ hometown before and after their tours, showing how war affected the population in its entirety negatively. The ironic singing of “God Bless America” puts the icing on the cake of the anti-Vietnamese message of the film. There were no justifications seen in this movie.
Unique Characteristics:
Saving Private Ryan: There were no “glorious hero” deaths in this movie. Even the captain’s death was due to his shock leading him to carelessly walk into open fire. The death that stood out the most was of T-4 Medic Wade’s (Giovanni Ribisi). The shot is a close-up of his face surrounded by his platoon trying to stop his bleeding. His final words were nothing inspirational, but simply “Mama” repeated over and over again. This signifies that death in was was not as heroic as it usually is played up to be.
The Hurt Locker: During bomb disarmament scenes, many of the shots alternated between close-ups of Jeremy Renner’s character working on the bomb to long shots showing the scene from above. This seems to show how vulnerable these soldiers are in these situations.
The Deer Hunter: Robert de Niro was the most realistic soldier and friend during the Russian Roulette scenes. The shots were usually medium close-up shots of de Niro, but it is his facial expressions that define the scene. When he was a POW, the concentrated fear and leadership was scene in his consistent demanding of Nick to play the game and overcome his shock in order to survive. Contrasting to the final Russian Roulette scene, one of little words, is described by de Niro’s face. His eyes are filled with tears and the look on his face shows that he knows that he has forever lost Nick. This realization, although with no significant shot change, is overwhelmed by the “silence within the chaos” of the scene.
(POW Russian Roulette)
(Final Russian Roulette (SPOILER))
Money Money Money:
Surprisingly, these movies did very different in the box offices when compared to each other. Although The Hurt Locker and The Deer Hunter both had an estimated budget of $15,000,000, The Deer Hunter beat The Hurt Locker’s (US) gross $17,017,811 by having a gross of $50,000,000. This difference could be due to the fact that The Hurt Locker was portraying a current war while The Deer Hunter was filmed after the war. Saving Private Ryan skyrocketed over the other two by making a US gross of $216,540,909. This could partly be due to the fact that their budget was an estimated $70,000,000.
Final Thoughts:
All of these movies are a must see. They all portray war more realistic than the idealized image that many people have held over decades. The journeys that these men had to go through were tremendous and these movies realistically shows examples of those journeys and their outcomes. Granted, my desire to go to war has diminished greatly and I will probably be watching very happy movies for a while now. I highly recommend watching these movies not only for their content, but also the fantastic acting and the designs of the set and scenes. I give all the movies a 5/5.
The Story, Litany of the Saints, starts off with an old immigrant woman coming over to America. She is possessed by a demon but she is viewed as being insane and is instead put into a psych ward. When she dies, a nurse, Marion, is in the room with her and the demon passes from the old woman to the nurse. The nurse is the love interest of a man named James who was taken in by a priest when he was little. Realizing that she is possessed, the man has to use the help of his foster father into trying to save the girl and ridding the demon from further destruction. We chose to go with this plot due to the times. In the midst of the Depression, many people were trying to find a scapegoat. The easiest solution was the immigrants. Therefore, prejudice against immigrants rose. This prejudice is supported in the movie because it plays to people’s feelings. Portraying an immigrant as the good guy and an American as the possessed would not bode over well with audiences. Also, the emphasis on religion as a pure and righteous thing in the movie evolved from the resurgence of religion during the Great Depression. This message helps support the popular view of how religion is a good thing and should be supported. We chose a horror movie because many of the famous horror movies came out during the 1930s. For example, there were Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and many more. With these successes coming out around 1935, the possibility of our movie to succeed greatly increases.
We decided to go with Universal Studios because in the 1930s, it was known for its horror movies. Since we are going for a lower budget film, a smaller studio was a good fit. The sets that will be used will either be a harbor or done on an inside studio. This will allow for a more realistic feel to the movie because it will feel less like a production, like a musical, and more like real life. Also, the scale will be smaller since the topic of the film, demonic possession, is new to the film world and we do not know how it will be reciprocated by audiences and critics. Also, we will only have an American release due to the controversial subject and the anti-immigration undertones in the film.
James Whales will be the director of the film. He directed Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, two famous horror movies in the 1930s. He would be able to take a new approach to the horror of demonic possession yet in a way that he knows will appease audiences.
Helen Vinson will be playing Marion as the lead actress. She has worked for Universal and has a distinguished look to her. She fits the part as the strong female character that has an unfortunate situation. Una O’Connor will be the supporting actress as the old immigrant woman. An immigrant herself from Ireland, she fits the look and has also had experience in horror films such as Frankenstein.
David Joseph Manners will be the lead actor by playing James. He played Jonathon Harker in Dracula in 1931, a character that is very similar to our protagonist since both are trying to save the woman they love. The priest will be played by Boris Karloff as the supporting actor. He is one of the pinnacle actors in horror films by playing the infamous Frankenstein. Having him in the film will naturally draw fans. Our cinematographer is Arthur Edeson who was the cinematographer for Frankenstein. Having worked on a horror film, he will be able to bring a dark look on the movie. This will be portrayed through extensive lighting, mainly dark on the possessed and light on the religious figures, and odd shots on the possessed. This cinematography will make up for the smaller scale set by adding a sinister look to the film.
The Hays Code heavily influences our movie. Religion cannot be ridiculed, nor a religious figure, making our movie be very serious about the contents of exorcism and Catholicism. The priest cannot be a comical character and evil, the demon, has to be portrayed as evil, not good. There will be no taking the Lord’s name in vain and no images too scary or disturbing. We will be shooting in black and white to give a classic, yet ominous, feel to the movie.
If I were to have sole control over the movie, I would have made the movie further away from horror and more a mainstream, blockbuster film.
I have a soft spot for WWII movies. I’ve always been interested in them and whenever one comes out, it usually is on my to-see list. So, when Monuments Men came out, I thought it would be an interesting side of WWII that I had never seen before. The movie, based on a true story, focuses on a group of men led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney) in order to save art from being stolen and/or destroyed by the Nazis and Russians (of course). The misfit group travels around France, Belgium, and Germany in 1944 to after the war in order to find the thousands of pieces that had gone missing during the war.
