The Matrix

Sebastian Peill-M
12/8/15

     That is right, I am reviewing one of the most famous sci-fi movies of all time, The Matrix. This 1999 film starred Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving. The film had a budget of 63 million, however it only made 28 million opening weekend. This does not change the fact that it is immensely popular. It has so many different aspects and scenes and effects that one could write an essay on, I am not going to do this but I will cover a variety of things in this film.

     Neo(Reeves) is a computer hacker who has been obsessed with finding him- Morpheus(Fishburne) the legendary man, who knows about the Matrix, something that little is known about. When Neo is contacted by Morpheus he is immediately targeted by the Agents led by Agent Smith(Weaving). Neo is captured and literally bugged (you have to see to understand). He then is taken by Trinity (Moss) one of Morpheus's people, to Morpheus. Morpheus gives him a choice, either find out about the Matrix or go back living his old life. Neo chooses to learn about the matrix and is hooked up to a machine to find his body in the 'real' world. He wakes up in a weird pod in which he hooked up to tubes and wires and is submerged in a goo. He is drained out of the pod and is picked up by a hovership, Morpheus's ship. He collapses on board and spends the next few months sleeping and having acupuncture preformed, as he has never used his muscles before. He then wakes aboard the ship and is shown what the Matrix really is, a computer program created by robots to keep humans asleep while the robots use their body heat to power themselves. Neo is then told that he is the One, the person who will destroy the Matrix and free all of the humans. He is then trained for hours learning all known types of  fighting and other skills. He is brought to the Oracle who tells him that he isn't the One and they are betrayed by one of their own to the Agents. The Agents capture Morpheus and begin to interrogate him, Neo and Trinity escape and get back to the real world. Neo tells them all that he isn't the One but he will rescue Morpheus, and he and Trinity venture back in. Neo and Trinity destroy the lobby of Morpheus's holding place in a very cool scene. Then they rescue Morpheus and get him and Trinity out of the Matrix, Neo is trapped and must fight/run from the Agents and in a very large twist find out that he is indeed the one, he can move as fast as he wants and can even stop bullets with his mind. He destroys Agent Smith and gets out of the Matrix, Trinity confesses her love to him and the movie ends.

First off the music, this film is not known for its music bu that doesn't change that it is still pretty epic music. Most of the music is a reprise of the opening music just played at different speeds and pitches. However sound is very important in this film, whenever there is slow motion all of the sounds are very pronounced, each bullet casing hitting the ground, an Agent punching through brick, and bullet impacts. Each character has a volume at which they speak, Morpheus and Smith both talk in low whispers. Smith however has the tint of anger and danger, whereas Morpheus is wise and thought provoking. Whenever anything weird happens the sounds correspond, a window moves like a puddle ripple and it makes a strange bendy noise. All of the sounds are very well done and chosen perfectly.

The camera angles and the effects, this is the most famous parts of this film, it would take pages to talk about them all so I will talk about some of them. There are so many different angles in this film it is amazing, you have basic portrait and landscape but then you have slow motion 360 (the frame freezes and the camera moves around the object completely, when people run on the walls the camera tilts and canters. There is an infinity shot, the camera shows an object extending forever, the pods with the humans inside. There are amazing shots in which you have an object in the foreground doing something to an object in the background. The effects are spectacular with slow bullets in which you can see the bullets spinning and slowing down. Explosions and windows bending like ripples. Peoples mouths disappearing while they try to talk and people dodging bullets in slow and fast motion. I simply can not say it enough, this film is amazing because of its effects. When Neo eventually realizes he is the One he see the Matrix as it is, a computer program, he see symbols instead of objects. He even jumps into someones body and makes them explode from the inside (they dissolve into code). The film even ends with a change from medium close to extreme extreme long shot(there are supposed to be 2 extremes there) and Neo flies up to the camera and out of shot. This film is amazing because of these effects and deserves all of its fame.

Slow Motion

What Neo sees after he is the One

Neo's mouth sealing

Infinite shot

Fast Motion

The acting skill in this film is rather good with Keanue Reeves who had already done some acting. Fishburne portrays the all knowing yet dangerous Morpheus very well and has perfected the voice that goes along with that as well. Weaving does an amazing job playing a computer program Agent, who lives to hunt and stop the One and his associates, he too has his deadly scary low voice down. Moss, or Trinity does a good job playing a girl who is afraid of her feelings at first but comes to terms with them by the end of the film, slowly letting them show more and more as time progresses, the other actors do good job as well, especially the traitor, who does an amazing job not seeming guilty until necessary for the film to progress. All in all a very good job done over all.

This is one of my favorite movies and I highly, highly suggest it to anyone and everyone
Interesting Fact 1: All scenes that take place within the Matrix have a green tint, as if watching them through a computer monitor, while scenes in the real world have a blue tint, blue was also used at a minimum in the matrix scenes since the directors thought blue was more of a real world color. The fight scene between Morpheus and Neo, which is neither in the real world nor in the Matrix, is tinted yellow.
Interesting Fact 2: Will Smith was approached to play Neo, but turned down the offer in order to star in Wild Wild West (1999). He later admitted that, at the time, he was "not mature enough as an actor" and that, if given the role, he "would have messed it up".

Goldfinger (sorry about the pictures, technical diffculties)

Sebastian Peill-M
11/30/15

This is it, the big one, Goldfinger, considered the most famous of the original Bond films (excluding films with Daniel Craig). The film was released 1964, and starred Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Fröbe, and Harold Sakata. The film had a budget of 3 million and made a gross of 51.1 million dollars.

 Bond(Connery) has been tasked with investigating the rich businessman Auric Goldfinger (Gert) who has been able to move his gold supply from country to country without getting caught. Bond meets with Goldfinger and his silent but deadly henchman Oddjob (Sakata) for the first time by making him lose $15,000. Goldfinger gets revenge by painting Bond's female companion in gold paint, causing her to suffocate and die. Eventually Bond is able to learn about a plan that Goldfinger has to "knock off" Fort Knox gold depository. It involves a deadly nerve gas being dispersed by Goldfinger's personal pilot, Pussy Galore (Blackman, yes a very strange choice of a name) and an industrial laser that can cut through steel. Bond is able to befriend Galore after a judo fight and his "charm". She agrees to help him change the plan, and notifies the CIA of her and Bond's plan. Galore does her part and disperses the "deadly" gas and Goldfinger marches staright up to the vault of Knox. He then puts a nuclear bomb in the vault, stating that if the gold in Knox is radioactive his gold's value with increase 20 times. He leaves Bond handcuffed there and leaves to escape from the chaos outside. What happens next is very famous and cliche in Bond films, the henchman vs. agent fight. Bond and Oddjob fight, Bond with his training and Oddjob with his strength and razor edged hat. Bond eventually beats Oddjob and defuses the bomb, but is captured by Goldfinger again, when being transported to the White House for gratitude. Goldfinger gives a monlogue about how he could have gotten away with it and tries to shoot Bond. He didn't consider the fact that they in a plane and Goldfinger is sucked out a window. The movie ends with Bond and Galore doing what Bond does best.

Oddjob and  GoldFinger

Galore

 The music in this film really upgraded from the previous, there is a singer preforming the opening credits, Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger. This is the first Bond film to do this, previous may have had a theme song but they weren't preformed by a famous singer. The film contains of course the same original theme song, but instead of just using parts of that song throughout the film during important or action sequences, they including new sounds. During a very tense scene you can hear the music get louder and louder or during a sneaking scene very quiet and soft music. All of these combined create a great amount of "realism" to the film.

The Laser and Bond

 The camera angles in this film were a little disappointing in my opinion. Almost all of them are from a wide angle and most are medium close to far shots. Not many scenes have portrait shots so the talking is not as personal. As with the previous films they include landscape shots to indicate and set up the scenes.

 The acting skill, this was an awesome film when it comes to lines and how they are delivered. Some of Bond's first lines include a pun after he kills someone. Goldfinger is often considered one of the most complex villains of all Bond films and Gert portrays him very well. Oddjob is considered the most popular henchman and although he is a mute, he leaves a mark with his dangerous hat and martial art skills. Pussy Galore, besides having a weird name is a very interesting character, she seems drawn to Bond from the beginning, although she says that she isn't, she is only helping Goldfinger for the money and switches side to help Bond almost too easily, Blackman, although I haven't seen her in any other films, does an amazing job in this film. Part of the reason that this film is so popular is because of the characters and their portrayal.

The famous hat scene

All in all, this a great film and deserves all of its acclaim, despite lacking dynamic camera angles, it contains extremely well portrayed characters, all of who are remembered.
 Interesting Fact: The movie was the fastest grossing picture in film history when it was released and was entered into the Guiness Book of World Records.

From Russia with Love

Sebastian Peill-M
11/15/15

As promised, the second James Bond film: From Russia with Love. This film was released 1963 and made 24 million dollars in the USA alone. It stars Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, and Lotte Lenya.

Bianchi

Bond has returned and this time he is after a coding machine, a Lector, which would help out the British government immensely. He has been partnered up with a defected female Russian agent Tanya (Bianchi) who helps him get the device, all the while dodging Russian agents and an agent from the Criminal group SPECTRE (Shaw). Eventually they get the device onto a train and start heading to safety, although the SPECTRE agent is on the train with them. Eventually Bond dispatches of the agent, although barely and they head towards the England. In their final a stop, a hotel room, they are ambushed by the SPECTRE agent who was leading the whole operation Klebb (Lenya). Of course she doesn't stand a chance and she is dispatched by both Bond and Tanya. The film ends with them sailing away on a Venice canal.

Shaw

The camera angles in this movie are very interesting. To a person who is not paying attention they seem very simple and there. However this is not true, almost every scene that takes place in a building or outside shows Bond in the middle ground, the bigger the area the more he is present. When they are inside confined areas Bond is fore ground, on the train when Bond and Grant (the agent) fight you see Bond and Grant up close, but in the background you can see Tanya sleeping. Conversations are always portrait, up close and not many things in the background are present. Many scene that show Bond walking in buildings are shot so that there is part of an object in the way, i.e. someone peering around and object. They use a few landscape shots to help the setting. The boat scene was filmed so that you can always see Bond's face, except when the villains are talking.

The music is this film is very similar to the first with much of the music being repeated throughout the film. Although they did have a singer preform the opening song they used an instrumental and used the sung version when they first show Bond. They use a lot of music when there is a very tense situation which helps keep the adrenaline pumping and makes sure you can't fall asleep. The music is almost all done by orchestra again. The music doesn't start to change until the next film.

Opening credits

Finally the acting skill, many of the actors in this film don't appear in too many movies I have seen except Sean Connery, who is a great actor and just gets better as the franchise progresses, the actor for Klebb did a good job although a scene in which she is talking to Tanya is quite creepy. Grant doesn't talk much and is a killing machine so he fits that perfectly. Tanya does a decent job, she may have a been a Russian agent but she is very wimpy.

All in all this is a great film and one I could watch again and again. My dad calls this the romantic James Bond film and I agree with him as Tanya wasn't supposed to fall for Bond, but he is Bond so it is to be expected.

Interesting Fact: When then President John F. Kennedy listed Ian Fleming's book among his top ten favorite novels of all time, a list published in Life Magazine, March 17, 1961, the producers decided to make this the second James Bond movie. According to the book "Death of a President" (1964) by William Raymond Manchester, this was the last motion picture JFK ever saw, on a private screening in the White House, November 20, 1963.

Dr. No

Sebastian Peill-M
11/8/15

     There are many movie franchises for people to love, Marvel, Fast and Furious, and even the Twilight series. I however love James Bond films, they are my favorite movie franchise and I could watch any of them again and again (except maybe Quantum of Solace, that one was kind of bad). So I will start reviewing James Bond films and I am starting with Dr.No, the first Bond film. It was released in 1962 and had a budget of 1.1 million dollars, despite the lower budget the film made 60 million dollars world wide.

     Sean Connery stars as James Bond, one of the top spies for Mi6, he is called down to Jamaica to investigate the murder of a fellow agent. When he arrives he teams up the the CIA's agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and they begin to work to together to solve the mystery and what it has to do with a man called Dr.No. Bond eventually is noticed by Dr. No, he is almost killed by a tarantula and decides to take action. He and a local man sneak onto Dr. No's island laboratory (very classic villain), where they meet Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) a local girl who is collect conch shells. She tells them that if they don't tell authorities about her illegal conch gathering she will sneak them around the island. As they slowly make their away around the island, the dreaded "dragon" which has kept locals in constant fear. It turns out to be a tank with a flamethrower, but that doesn't stop it from killing Bond's guide (not Honey). They are captured and taken to Dr. No who gives his whole, "I am a villain dialogue". Then he takes Honey to slowly be drowned by the tide and takes Bond to his area of evil activities where Bond against all odds escapes and kills Dr. No and rescues Honey all before the island explodes.

     The music of Bond films are one of my favorite things about every film, except Dr. No, features a famous singer preforming a song named after the movie title. You also have every Bond films' beginning with the famous theme which was written by Monty Norman. Up until recently all of the the other music in the films, was done almost entirely by an orchestra, this adds a really nice effect to the films and gives the film the classic feel.

     The camera angles in Dr. No aren't anything majorly special, mainly they are portraits when characters are speaking or landscape for transition. However the opening sequence (as shown above) is a first person point of view, and shows someone being shot in the eye which did cause some problems at the time of release. Of course as the film franchise continued there were many different angles utilized.

As for acting skill, I thought hat the acting was great. Sean Connery is often said to be the perfect James Bond (him and Pierce Brosnan). Honey Ryder is one of the most famous Bond girls and the picture of her coming out of the ocean is an extremely famous movie scene. Dr. No did a good job, I cant judge his acting skill as well as I have only seen one movie with him in it and Dr.No is it. All in all Dr. No was the start of one of the best movie franchises of all time and is certainly not a film that will be forgotten any time soon.

Interesting Fact: Sean Connery is morbidly afraid of spiders. The shot of the spider in his bed was originally done with a sheet of glass between him and the spider, but when this didn't look realistic enough, the scene was re-shot with stuntman Bob Simmons. Simmons reported that the tarantula crawling over Bond was the scariest stunt he had ever performed. According to Steven Jay Rubin's 1981 book "The James Bond Films", this tarantula was named Rosie

The Bourne Ultimatum

Sebastian Peill-M
11/2/15

     The Bourne Ultimatum is the third film in the Bourne series and is the last one starring Matt Damon. It was released in 2007 and made seventy million opening weekend.

     Jason Bourne has returned, this time he chasing after the man who made him the man is. He has no allies and has the CIA still after him despite him proving his innocence. He finally finds someone who has an informant who knows about Bourne and how he came to be. When he finally catches up with the man, the man is shot by the CIA. Then it becomes a race between the Bourne and CIA to get to the informant a man who works for the CIA. When the the informant realizes that he is danger he flees. Both CIA and Bourne meet at the informants house and fighting happens. Bourne escapes with the help of one of his old handlers. Both CIA and Bourne rush to the informant, CIA gets there first and the informant is killed. Then Bourne and his handler then part ways and Bourne proceeds to make his way back to the place he was trained and ends up incriminating the people who created him and escaping.

    The film director and writer did a great job keeping the story fresh, between each film so each is equally as entertaining as the the previous. The acting is good, I mean it is Matt Damon and he is not a bad actor. The head of the operation, David Strathairn, is supposed to be a good actor, according to me grandmother that is. Other appearing characters all have  decent skill skill as well.

The music isn't anything special, it is mainly just the type of music in action movies. High paced, with electric guitar and drumming. The music, despite not being very special, does do a good job at keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat and makes sure that no scene is too dull.

The cinematography in this film are what really make up the the film's greatness. They consist of a variety. One of the most recurring is where the camera is peering around a corner, you have a wall or some other object blocking a portion of the screen and all of the characters and action happening in the middle ground. Then they used what I like to call really shaky filming, it is used often during action or chase scenes and the filming is really shaky, sometime so much you cant even tell what is going on. They really use a lot of the shaky camera when they film what I think is one of the longest chase scenes I have ever seen. Seriously there is like 15 minutes if nothing but people chasing each other. During the chase scene there is so much shakiness I actually started to get motion sick and had to close my eyes for a bit. Besides those 2 major different styles of filming the rest were straight forward, portrait shots for talking, landscape for transitions and birds eye, for people walking.

Overall this film is a great action movie, the story isn't very original as it is almost the same as the first 2 movies but that doesn't take away from its entertainment. Unlike many action films, the main character can actually sustain damage and is often hurt in some way. I enjoy the film and would watch them again.
Interesting Fact: This is the only Bourne movie to win an Oscar. It won 3 Oscars when the other two weren't even nominated
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT2ZxjUjSo0

Sherlock Holmes a Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes a Game of Shadows
Sebastian Peill-M
10/24/15


   Why stop at the first Sherlock? Onward I say, this week I am reviewing "a Game of Shadows" the second in the Robert Downey Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes. The film was released in 2011 and made just under 40 million its opening week.

     Sherlock returns, and is in the middle of his biggest case ever, he is pursuing one Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), a brilliant but insane man who wants war between Germany and France and will stop at nothing to gain it, including murder. Holmes races to stop him but he is always one step behind. When Watson and his new bride are attacked because of his connection with Holmes, Watson joins Holmes in his pursuit of Moriarty. The duo meets up with a gypsy who has a connection to Moriarty and chase him throughout Europe. Eventually they are all in the same place at the same time and although there isn't explosions the ending involves amazing fighting and one intense game of chess.

  As its predecessor, the film utilizes' many different things to cause the audience to enjoy the film. The camera angles are amazing and are mainly of people although they use several landscape shots for transitions and fillers. One scene really catches the audience attention, as the protagonists are running from an arms factory they enemies decide to open fire with everything they have, including a giant cannon. The camera angle captures the them running while being fired upon. The speed slows down and shows the bullet impact among the trees and whenever someone is killed (although no gore). The entire scene is epic and shows how far we have come with visual effects.

  As for the music, well it was epic as the first movies. Including lots of harpsichord, which is the main instrument. The musical editor did a great job speeding up and slowing down the music whenever they needed to add affect to the scene. One negative note about the music is that it is a bit repetitive and gets almost annoying at points. The film added some gypsy music as one of the characters is a gypsy and it really enjoyable and dance-able, even making Watson dance.

   I love this movie, and although in my opinion it isn't as great as the first movie it isn't far behind. The acting is great and of course it has Robert Downey Jr. so what's not to love? With plenty of puns and short one-liners RDJ of course, rocks this role perfectly. Jude Law as the doctor does as well as he did in the first movie, although with the added emotion of having a wife. The added and the killed characters add a variety of options for story line and motivations for each character. One character who appears is Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother. Mycroft is played by Stephen Fry and is an extremely important government official.

    As for the future of this franchise? Well a third installment has been confirmed, so I am extremely excited and can't wait for it to come out.

Interesting Fact: The slow-motion work in the film was done by Gavin Free, an English filmmaker who works for Rooster Teeth Productions and is known for his web series, The Slow Mo Guys, on YouTube. (Awesome YouTube channel)
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=td2Zjdjqhhs

Sherlock Homes

Sherlock Holmes
10/19/15
Sebastian Peill-M

     Sherlock Holmes is a recreation of the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It stars Robert Downey Jr (my favorite actor), Jude Law, Mark Strong, and Rachel McAdams. It made 90 million dollars in the box office. It was directed by Guy Ritchie and was released December 25, 2009.
    

     RDJ plays the incredibly smart and funny detective, who has just solved his biggest and last case with his faithful and engaged companion Watson (Law). When the criminal hangs, but then escapes his tomb, Sherlock has to unwind what is trick and what is magic. The criminal is a man by the name of Lord Blackwood (Strong) and he utilizes many illusions to fabricate his black magic. While chasing down Blackwood, Sherlock runs into the only woman he has ever loved, Irene Adler (McAdams). While she was only a distraction Sherlock is still able to solve the mystery and save many peoples lives.

     Sherlock Holmes, uses a variety of different things to bring audience into the actions. To begin with the camera angles are marvelous, the director utilized a variety of angles but the three most common I saw were portrait; peoples faces, wide; the scenery and city, and birds eye; above the characters heads. These angles combine with surround sounds makes this an awesome movie. The acting is pretty great, with Robert Downey Jr, doing what he does best, getting into the perfect role. The soundtrack was made to keep a person on the edge of their seats, even my dad who often falls a sleep during movies was able to remain awake the entire duration. Another things that is recurring throughout the film is a crow. The crow represents death and whenever it appears you know someone is about to die.
    

Film's London

 

 

 Now, onto my favorite part of the movie, the boxing match. About 30 minutes into the movie you hear amazing Irish rock music and then see Holmes in a boxing ring, fighting a man 2x his size. Holmes is winning easily and decides to leave when he see Adler, however his opponent doesn't agree and spits of him. What follows is my favorite movie scene of all time, it shows Holmes and you hear his voice as he describes exactly what he is going to do and when in slow motion . Then it goes to real time and he does it all at normal. The way they filmed this scene has made it my favorite, the music is perfect, and it is an awesome concept which I wish I could do.

 This is one of my favorite movies and I would suggest this movie to anyone and everyone.
Fight Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLuhWLNqpiA
Interesting Fact: Rachel McAdams, Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. reportedly did most of their own stunts.