Reviews

Romantic Comedy reviews

I'm a Cyborg but that’s okay (2006)

The movie is about a girl who thinks she is a cyborg. After attempting to force wires into her  system, she's sent to a mental institute where she meets a guy who always wears a mask. He likes to steal things from people. He's in there because he fears that he'll shrink into a dot if no one pays attention to him. He finds out that the girl is refusing to eat because she's scared it'll ruin her circuitry he decides to help her and grows attached.

Despite this set up its actually the most pleasant of the director's (Park Chan-Wook) movies. I'm a fan of the director which is really the only reason I bothered to watch it. Its a decent movie with some great visuals(As usual from Park Chan-Wook) and quite a few amusing scenes. Sadly the first half of the movie kind of drags. It takes awhile before it really gets into it as the movie seemed preoccupied with introducing the other inmates than with moving it forward. While they are interesting it would rather have just gotten on with the movie.

Overall its a good movie. Definitely not Park Chan-Wook's best work (Oldboy) but also not his worst (Thirst). This could be more down to me expecting a lot out of Thirst while I wasn't expecting  Cyborg to be very good.

  

 Chasing Amy (1997)

I love Kevin Smith movies. He's a nerd who managed to make it big and it always shows through in his movies. Chasing Amy is about two comic book artists; Holden and Banksy. Everything is going good for them until they meet another artist called Alyssa. Holden ends up falling for her but she turns out to be gay. They eventually get into a relationship anyway that seems to be great but things start to get bad when Banksy begins thinking that Holden and Alyssa relationship is affecting their friendship. Holden also starts finding out about Alyssa's sexual past which puts more pressure on the relationship.

This movie is just hilarious. My personal favourite part is Holden's idea to solving all the problems. It's both hilarious and...Almost logical. The whole script for the movie is just perfect to the point where I can't really think of any complaints besides the fact it the ending is kind of a downer. My only other complaint is that Jay and Silent Bob aren't in it very much, which sucks because they're always great. Despite this the scene they're in is still good.

Overall its a great movie. Very funny and actually has some legitimate points to make.

Pretty Woman (1990)

A rich businessman hires a prostitute to go to some social events. He ends up falling for her. Not really much else to say.

Just like pretty much every other Gary Marshall movie we have our shopping/rabid consumerism montage and an illogical story. “Become a prostitute and there is a possibility a wealthy businessman would end up falling for you”. I think I laughed a single time during this. The rest of my laughter came from making jokes with a friend about it. The acting wasn't anything to scream about with Julia Roberts been particularly bad. And the ending. The ending could have redeemed it but no they had to go with the average Romantic Comedy ending. C'mon you had a good chance to do something with it! Give a "Some things aren't meant to be type ending." But no, lame afraid of heights joke and big kiss.

I really didn't enjoy this one.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Scott Pilgrim must defeats the seven evil exes of his current girlfriend, Ramona in order to date her.

It’s difficult to think of much wrong with this movie. It’s a lot of fun. The action is well done and the comedy is hilarious for the most part. The only thing that’s wrong with the movie is Scott himself. Michael Cera was poorly cast. In the comics he’s not as awkward and is more a jerk while Michael Cera is just…Michael Cera. He plays same character in pretty much everything he’s in. The rest of the actors and actresses did a good job with their characters. Chris Evans absolutely nails his role as evil ex number 2 as does Brandon Routh as ex number 3.

Overall it’s a very good movie and it’s a lot of fun. People who haven’t read the comic probably wouldn’t be bothered by Michael Cera so they’d likely enjoy it more.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun decides to turn his life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend and make things good with his step dad. And then the dead rise.

This is a spoof of one of my favourite sub genres; the zombie genre.  The title itself is a joke on “Dawn of the Dead” and the whole movie makes lots of references to other horror movies. For the first part it’s mostly romcom humour before taking on a darker humour in the latter half. The two main characters, Ed and Shaun, are great together with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg both nailing their roles.

Task 4

Task 4

The poster is very simple. It’s an alien egg from the movie on a pitch black background with what seems to be a grid of human bodies on the bottom. It’s a very empty poster but it’s also very suiting with how empty space is. The tag line is “In space no one can hear you scream”, probably the coolest tagline a movie has ever had. It’s very minimalistic and it works very well for the movie. The only other colour outside black and white on the poster is Green. It gives a creepy hue to the moon like egg at the centre of the picture.

This is the alternate poster to the movie. The poster used in most cinemas just had the Batman logo and nothing else. It was proving that everybody knew who it was and they’d have to go see it. This poster only shows a very shiny batman logo with the title below.

This poster is fully in black and white except for the main text. It shows only the class in the picture, giving no indication as to who the main characters are. They blend in with the minor characters.  There is an equal chance of each of these characters being killed and no one is really safe. The tagline is “Could you kill your best friend?” which would cause people to wonder just what the hell is the movie about?

This poster is for the adaptation of the Hellblazer comics and despite the differences it replicates the feel of the comics pretty well (Despite not being as scary).  The poster is quite simple with a beam of light illuminating Constantine’s face. The poster is mostly dark colours with only a slither of light showing through. Inside the beam is various images of demons as if they are haunting him.

Again this movie is minimal in what it shows. It shows the main character’s face combined together to form the mask of the movies most memorable character, Frank. It has a very liquid look to the poster which ties in with Frank appearing once behind some kind of watery alternate dimension. It’s a creepy image that doesn’t explain much about the movie as that would be very difficult.

The poster for this movie is yet again very minimalistic. It’s a shot from the movie with one of the exorcists arriving at the house. He is only seen in silhouette with a light amount of fog covering the background. The lights have a green hue to them and cover up a lot of the house. It’s a very creepy image and you know that something horrible is going to happen.

The poster for Scarface is a very famous one. It has Al Pacino as the lead stood in centre of the poster with him standing partly in the dark and partly in the light. This could be trying to represent how he’s torn on whether to do the right thing or that he’s not 100% evil, but that’s up to you. It’s (again) a black and white poster with only the main title being in colour.

The A Nightmare on Elm Street poster is a fully drawn poster in full colour. It shows the main character, Nancy, lying in her bed as something evil lurks above her head. She has a terrified look on her face, insinuating how scary this movie is. Her face and the bed are illuminated by the moonlight.

This is my favourite movie poster, The Crow. It’s a very simple poster and features the titular character walking forward through the rain. The only thing with a hint of colour is the centre of the poster where The Crow stands. The tagline is “Believe in Angels”. The Crow would technically be an avenging angel. The whole movie has very dark colour with it rarely extending beyond its grey colour palette.

Task 3

Task 3

A. The trailer is 1:32 long. This is a good time for the trailer and what I was aiming for. The time between scene cues was quite inconsistent with the first one being 10 seconds, 20 seconds for the second one; the third one is 35 seconds, 14 seconds for number 4 and the final scene being 11 seconds.  

B. There are a total of 5 scene jumps in the trailer. A lot of the movie would take place with Ash tied to a chair so the time skipping would not be very noticeable. The scenes are in order for the most part.

C. The music that is used in the trailer is “Lust for Life” by Iggy pop. This was chosen because I liked the effect it gave the trailer. The voice for the 999 operator also had to be dubbed over. This was done by a classmate.  There was originally going to be a sound when Ash was hit with the bat but I couldn’t find one I liked. I could have done this with a microphone myself but I wanted a cartoonish noise for the hit.

D. All the footage fits together quite well with no changes to cast. The lighting for the indoor scenes matches very well but the lighting outside was noticeably worse in one shot. There is a slightly notable difference when it comes to continuity is that Ash’s facial hair (Small though it is) increases.

E. “Using the following title as a basis for your project you are asked to create a trailer and promotional poster for a Blockbuster movie. The trailer can include animation however it must be based around and show live action filming. There must be at least 2 different locations of your choice shown, with 5 scenes to make up the trailer which should be no longer than 150 seconds in length.
The movie you will be basing your work around is named ‘The First Date’. You may wish to research the genre ‘romantic comedy’ as a starting point for the brief.” – From the Brief  

The whole trailer is live action and there are a total of 3 separate locations shown. There are a total of 5 scenes shown. It will be difficult to differentiate from one another due to the fact they take part (as would a large part of the movie) in the same room. The length of the trailer is 92 seconds, which is almost 60 seconds shorter than the 150 seconds maximum.

Evaluation of filming

Filming took place in 3 sessions. The first session was by far the longest session and was about 2 hours. I spent the whole of this time duct taped to a chair. Shooting took place in an unused kitchen in the college. This was used as we couldn’t get access to due to the room being pained.  It was a long shoot and it was difficult to operate but thankfully Taliah was very helpful with the camera. For the most part it was set up on a tripod. The second session was a single shot. It was me talking on the phone to a 999 operator. This took longer than I hoped as I couldn’t get a take I liked because I couldn’t throw the phone down, I could only pretend. This was until I was lent a phone case that I could throw. Then I got a good take. The third and final session was outside. This took a few takes with me trying a few variations of shots. It was very cold outside and it was quite busy so there’s quite a bit of background noise which doesn’t really present much of a problem due to the fact its meant to be taking place in the early hours of the morning.  

Poster feedback

Poster feedback

Describe posters

The first poster concept was a white background with the main characters at the front. The male was duct taped to a chair looking terrified while the main female leans on him looking fairly happy with herself. The second poster concept was a penny (used in the movie to kidnap the main male) on the ground.

The first poster suggestion was a very typical romcom poster with the main character duct taped to a chair. There were suggestions that I add something in the background but I think that would go against the fact that it’s supposed to be a typical romcom poster with a twist. The second poster was given more attention as people had a lot of ideas on how to improve it. One of the ideas was to include some blood droppings along with the penny or having the shadow of the main villain.  I didn’t like this poster as I didn’t feel it really suit the romcom.

Overall I’ll likely just stick to the original idea of the first poster, which I find to work better with the trailer.