Films change us, we change films.

During this quarter, I have had the benefit of studying ten movies each of which left their own impact on society. As we wrap this semester up, we are asked, “How have movies changed since 1965?”. In my attempt to answer this question and upon reviewing my own work it is very clear to me…

Unconventional Love Stories

For the last two weeks, I have been studying the films Brokeback Mountain and Forrest Gump. The only fitting theme to study between them seemed to be their stories of unconventional love. This is where the two films are so similar. And for no particular reason, I watched Forrest Gump first. The story was wonderful…

Violence and Intimacy

                                  This week I watched two movies. The first was Hard Boiled, a Chinese action film directed by John Woo. Many people consider this Woo’s try out for American action films and he did not hold anything back. The…

Rocky – The Underdog America Deserves

Rocky is the story of an underdog who is given an enormous opportunity to fight the Heavy Weight Champion of the world. The story of the underdog was one that resonated with America, which was suffering from massive public dissonance over the Vietnam War. In an interview, Sylvester Stallone describes “being Rocky”. He states, “Every…

Blazing Saddles

The Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles is an unconventional take on a western and uses the satirical genre artistically. This film, out of context, is horribly offensive and frankly quite shocking. There are moments in the film which made me wonder how it was received by its 1970s audience. Upon viewing the film in its…

Bonnie and Clyde – 1967

Bonnie and Clyde is a conventional American crime movie about the famous criminal duo, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. My introduction to this movie started as most do, with the trailer to the film. It was a fun trailer but made me wonder if I take these sorts of exciting trailers for granted. For instance,…

A Hard Day’s Night – 1964

A Hard Day’s Night is a movie starring the rising pop sensations of England called The Beatles. Though the movie itself was groundbreaking, the most interesting part of this movie is it began. The project seems to have been the result of calculated risk and ended up spreading Beatlemania throughout the world. Early into research,…

The Lion King — 1994

“I truly believe that my generation grew up in the golden age of Disney movies but I have always considered The Lion King a cut above the rest.”