For the final movie of the semester, I had to watch Us by Jordan Peele, a new director focused in the horror genre. This movie was about a family that moved to a new house not knowing that there were doppelgangers of themselves that were there. It starts out with a young girl named Adelaide where she went to a fair on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and wandered off into a house of mirrors, where she found a doppelganger of herself. Now, as an adult, she is hesitant to go back with her family because of her haunted past, but goes with Gabe and the rest of her family. When they get back, they find that there are doppelgangers that look just like them and have to fight them off.

This movie definitely shares elements with a lot of the movies studied throughout the semester. While it does not have similar plotlines, the main cast is similar to the main cast of Do the Right Thing, where the main characters are African American. It also shares similarities to The 400 Blows, where both Antoine and Jason share similar character traits with each other. Both characters are children that like to be mischievous in some way, where Antoine ditches the day with his best friend, while Jason likes to play tricks using his lighter.

Similar to many of the postmodern films that were studied, this film also deals with one of the main characters going through trauma and having a messed up past. Like Teddie, Georges, Diane, and Shosanna, Adelaide deals with a traumatic past during her childhood, where she finds a doppelganger of herself in the fun house on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk while wandering off by herself. Another similarity to this movie and the other postmodern films is that there are dual identities. In Us, each of the family members and all the people had doppelgangers that wanted to untether themselves, similar to the dual identities in both Shutter Island and Mulholland Drive. Using many of the main themes that were used during the postmodern movies, it may be a new turn for film where the main character or one of the main characters has a form of trauma and they have to figure out a way to deal with it.

Mulholland Drive is a psychological thriller film by David Lynch that is about a new actress, Betty, figuring out who another actress is (Rita) because of her amnesia. This movie fits in really well with many of the main themes used in the postmodern movies that have been studied such as trauma, figuring out reality versus fantasy, and meta-commentary. Similar to the likenesses of Cache and Shutter Island, Mulholland Drive strives to have an ambiguous ending with many raising questions that goes unanswered. These questions would turn out to be who are Camilla and Diane, do Betty and Rita really exist, and could there be alternate universes that can be traveled to via the blue cubes, and so much more.

While Mulholland Drive’s ending seems to fall under the same category of ambiguity with Cache and Shutter Island, some of the story elements are similar to Sunset Boulevard, which was studied a while back. Both movies take place in Hollywood and are both named after streets that can be found in Hollywood. They also have to do with someone running away from something and staying over the night at someone else’s place. However, the roles seem to be reversed in both movies. In Sunset Boulevard, an aspiring journalist (Joe Gillis) runs away from the cops and stays at a movie star’s house (Norma Desmond). In Mulholland Drive, a movie star (Rita/Camilla) gets in a car crash and runs away and is found by an aspiring actress (Betty/Diane) and stays at her place.

In both movies, there is one character that is named Betty, where in Sunset Boulevard, Betty is Joe’s partner also working in journalism, while in Mulholland Drive, Betty is the name of the aspiring actress that finds Rita/Camilla. Another event that happens during both movies is that when one character goes to Hollywood to fulfill their dreams, the other character gets extremely jealous of the aspiring character’s significant other. In Sunset Boulevard, Joe starts developing feelings for Betty and Norma starts to get jealous. In Mulholland Drive, Camilla starts developing feelings and is having an affair with Adam, the director, and Diane starts to get jealous and starts having a mental breakdown towards the end of the movie. Overall, both Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive have many similarities that talk about Hollywood and how it can affect people as a whole.

Shutter Island was one of the most interesting movies that I have seen for this class. This movie definitely gets the viewer thinking, especially at the end when it is revealed that everyone at the ward has taken pills that have hallucinogenics in them, and even the main character, Teddie, starts to break down.

Towards the end of the movie, Teddie is convinced that his partner, Chuck, was taken away to the lighthouse and wants to find him there. However, when he gets to the lighthouse, he sees the main psychiatrist, John Cawley, tells him that Edward Daniels isn’t his real name and that his real name is Andrew Laeddis and that he was the 67th patient at the ward and was the most dangerous patient that was there. Cawley has also figured out that Edward Daniels and Rachel Solando are anagrams for Andrew Laeddis and Dolores Chanal.

Throughout the whole movie, Teddie has been having migraines along with having weird visions of his wife and one of his kids. Towards the end of the movie, Teddie starts to have a dream about what the past really was, where he was under the name of Andrew Laeddis. In that dream, he started out inside his house in Oklahoma wondering where his kids are. He asks his wife, Dolores, about where she thinks where they might be only to find out that his wife drowned his children in the water. After grabbing the bodies, Laeddis grieves over them and then murders his wife because of what she did.

This film definitely was an interesting watch for me mainly because of the twist reveal that occurred toward the end. If there was a film from this semester that I would compare this film with, it would be Cache because of the ambiguous messages that it brings across. Both films rely heavily on the viewer’s interpretation on how these unanswered questions get answered. They also have unanswered questions on specific people, more specifically, in Shutter Island, it was about figuring out who the real Rachel Solando is, while Cache focused more on who was the stalker that was stalking Georges and Anne. While both of these films had different tones to them, both managed to pull off the ambiguous endings remarkably well.

Inglorious Basterds is a war film that takes place during World War II in Nazi-Occupied France. The film is broken up into five main parts: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, Inglorious Basterds, German Night in Paris, Operation Kino, and Revenge of the Giant Face. The thing that I would like to point out, especially in Revenge of the Giant Face, is that it is excessively gory and violent unlike any other movie that was studied.

Building up to the fifth and final part of the movie, Shosanna Dreyfus (currently under the name of Emmanuelle Mimieux) has been forced under the influence of Frederick Zoller to premiere Nation’s Pride at the movie theater that she works at. After the interrogation, Shosanna talks with Marcel and plots to set the theater on fire on the night of the premiere when the Nazis arrive.

Revenge of the Giant Face takes place on the night of the premiere of Nation’s Pride. During the final act of this movie, there is a lot of events that go on that ultimately builds up the burning of the movie theater. On the night of the premiere, the Basterds disguise themselves as Italian guests of famous actress, Bridget Von Hammersmark. It doesn’t take long for Hans Landa to figure out that something is off with the Italian guests and Von Hammersmark. He then proceeds to take Von Hammersmark into a private room to find out that the shoe she left at the tavern fits her and then strangles her to death. Shortly afterwards, he takes in two of the basterds as prisoners and forces them to make a deal with him.

Back at the movie theater, Zoller comes into the projection room to see Shosanna. After rejecting him once again, he starts to get aggressive with her, leading up to her shooting Zoller and Zoller shooting her just before he dies. As the movie reaches the climax, it stops as Shosanna tells them that they are going to be killed by a Jew and that the whole thing was a setup. Marcel then lights the nitrate film on fire as the movie theater quickly rises up in flames as the Nazis are closed in trying to escape.

The climax of this movie was on of the most over-the-top and violent climaxes that I have ever seen for this class. It definitely stands out from the rest of the movies that have been studied. I would say that this movie definitely over-dramatizes the events that occurred in this movie during World War II because of how over-the-top the fight scenes were. After watching this movie, I felt like I had to watch something else in order to get my mind off of it because there was so much that went on throughout. Overall, I wasn’t that big of a fan of the movie because of all the goriness and over-the-top violence throughout it.

Cache (also known as Hidden) is a French movie that is a psychological thriller. The movie is about a family that receives disturbing pictures in the mail and they would often feel like they are being watched by someone. One aspect of the movie that I would like to point out is the lack of a score, which is much different than the other movies studied during the semester.

The lack of a score from this movie definitely fits the tone of the movie and creates some sort of uncertainty throughout. The viewers can feel somewhat uncomfortable and definitely are more immersed and relate to the characters in the movie. Most of the sound in the movie come from the diegetic sound used during the scenes.

Silence is used a lot throughout the movie, especially during the segments that are surveillance videos of Georges and Anne’s house. The audience is supposed to feel disoriented, confused, and uncomfortable similar to how the characters felt when watching them.

If there was a score to the movie, I think that it would sort of ruin the whole suspense segment of the movie because the music would add some sense of familiarity. While music can portray tones of uncertainty and confusion, silence grabs people’s attention and can have more of a meaning than the score. Since the movie is completely silent throughout, it can definitely grab more attention.

Silence is an important factor when it comes to sound in a movie because it gives a sense of uncertainty and is attention grabbing. Cache also feels like a more realistic movie without having any background music and is supposed to feel somewhat like a surveillance video and that someone is watching what’s going on with Georges and Anne. The lack of music used in this film helps with the portrayal of the tone of the movie.

Fast forwarding to 1989, Do the Right Thing is a movie that occurs at the tail end of the American New Wave. The movie takes place in a neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which is mostly black. In the neighborhood, there is a pizzeria that is run by Italian-Americans that hate black people. Throughout the movie, tensions rise between Sal and the people in the neighborhood, more specifically, Buggin’ Out and Radio Raheem.

In one scene of the movie, Buggin’ Out is at the pizzeria and looks at the wall full of pictures in Sal’s Pizzeria. He then asks Sal why there aren’t any black people on the wall, indicating that he should have some famous celebrities on the wall that are black because of the neighborhood that the pizzeria is in. Sal then tells him that the pizzeria is his business and that he could do whatever he wants with the place. After Sal kicked him out, Buggin’ Out decided to start a boycott on Sal’s Pizzeria, with the only supporters being Radio Raheem and Smiley.

In this scene, it shows the commentaries about racism specifically toward black people. When Buggin’ Out asked Sal about the Wall of Fame in the pizzeria, he felt that he should respect the people that live in the neighborhood by having people with a different race on the wall. On Sal’s Wall of Fame, they are all famous Italian-Americans that probably none of the people in the neighborhood would know except him. After Sal tells Buggin’ Out that he could do whatever he wanted with his business along with what to do with the Wall of Fame, he talks down to him and decides to kick him out when he tries to stand up for people of his race. Similar to many of the Civil Rights activists, Buggin’ Out decides to start a boycott on Sal’s Pizzeria and protest against it.

This movie shows a lot about what goes on with racism towards black people. There are messages that show that the pizzeria have oppressed the people in the neighborhood and that they want to do something about it. Out of the movies I’ve watched so far, this is not necessarily my favorite because it had a lot going on and it dealt with really heavy content with the messages that it brought out.

Bonnie and Clyde is a movie directed by Arthur Penn and tells the story of Clyde, a well-known criminal and Bonnie, a waitress who is intrigued by his actions. When they first met each other, Clyde was about to steal Bonnie’s car, which is owned by her mom. She gets intrigued about his actions and decides to become partners in crime with him. Their crime spree really kicks up when they formed their gang, consisting of C.W. Moss, a gas attendant, Clyde’s brother, Buck, and his wife, Blanche.

While on the crime sprees, they all rob banks from across Texas and the Midwest. During them, Bonnie starts to not like Blanche because of her cowardly nature and how much of a threat she can be to the gang’s survival. Blanche also doesn’t like Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. because she finds that their actions are much too violent.

At around the time that it came out, Bonnie and Clyde falls under the category of New Wave movies, where it broke many Hollywood stereotypes and taboos. One example would be that the movie is much more violent than some of the previous movies that have been studied. In the ending scene, Bonnie and Clyde are helping C.W’s father fix a flat tire. While fixing the flat tire, Frank Hamer and many other sheriffs have found where they both are shot open fire. The ending scene has tons of blood when both were shot and has later been known as one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history.

Another new thing that happened during the movie that was new was Bonnie’s character. Bonnie is much different than the other female characters that were studied in previous movies like Emily and Susan in Citizen Kane, Ilsa from Casablanca, Norma and Betty from Sunset Boulevard, and Lisa from Rear Window. Bonnie seems to be more headstrong and in charge and much less passive than the other characters. Usually, many of the female characters used in older Hollywood movies were used as love interests and were portrayed as pure and angelic.

However, while Bonnie is somewhat of a love interest for Clyde, she ends up falling for him instead. Bonnie is also bored of what she does and she takes charge along with being much more independent. In the end, Bonnie turns out to be the most independent of all the female characters from the movies that have been studied so far.

The 400 Blows is a French movie directed by Francois Truffaut that is about a child who runs away from home because of his neglectful parents. Antoine is a young Parisian boy who lives with his neglectful parents and has an abusive teacher at school. When he gets back from school, he uses some of his mom’s stuff and sets up the dinner table. After dinner, Antoine gets sent off to bed by either his mom or his stepfather when tensions start to rise between them.

After having a bad day at school and being ridiculed by his teacher, Antoine spent the next day ditching school with his best friend, Rene. When he came back to school the next day, Antoine made up an excuse that he wasn’t at school because his mother died, which got him caught by his parents. After Antoine was caught plagiarizing Balzac during class, he decided to quit and run away from school and home with Rene.

After spending multiple days at Rene’s place, Antoine steals his stepfather’s typewriter and then gets caught by him. Antoine is then sent to the police and spends the night in jail. He is then sent off to a place for troubled youths by the seashore, where a psychologist finds out about what has caused Antoine’s unhappiness. In the end, Antoine escapes from a football game to see the shore, which is what he has always wanted to see.

As one of the first “New Wave” films, The 400 Blows has some new features that are used. One of the “New Wave” features used in this film was location filming, which is filming at a real location rather than on a set or a backlot. For the past few movies studied like Sunset Boulevard or Casablanca, they were filmed on either a set or a backlot. Rear Window also was filmed on a backlot in order to portray a neighborhood in New York.

Another “New Wave” feature that was used in the film was that it was an autobiographical film. This film talked about the childhood and adolescence of the director, Francois Truffaut. The only film studied that was based on a person was Citizen Kane, which the character Charles Foster Kane was based on a real person. However, while Citizen Kane was a movie about the biography of a fictional character, The 400 Blows was based on the life of the director of the movie.

The 400 Blows is an interesting foreign film that kicked off the New Wave of films with its narrative of being autobiographical. It is a great coming of age movie as it focuses on Antoine and what he goes through when trying to run away from school and his home and what consequences it has. It is an interesting watch and if you are into foreign films, I would recommend giving this a watch.

Rear Window is a film by Alfred Hitchcock about the different events that go on outside Jeff’s window. The movie is also focused on Jeff’s relationship with his maid, Stella, and his girlfriend, Lisa. During the movie, they all suspect and witness a murder that might have gone on just by looking out the window. At the beginning of the movie, Lisa thinks that it is dumb that Jeff finds pleasure in looking out of the window, but then, she starts to gain an interest in solving this murder mystery.

Throughout this movie, there are many statements that are made about voyeurism. Voyeurism is finding pleasure from looking at something, whether it be elicit or sexual. During the movie, Jeff is seen always looking out his window seeing what is going on with his neighbors in the other apartments because he is confined to his wheelchair. Some of the people that he sees while looking out his window are “Miss Torso”, a dancer, “Miss Lonelyhearts”, a single woman, several married couples, newlyweds, a female sculptor, and Lars Thorwald.

There are different messages that people can get when they are looking at something or someone. Some would classify this as “people watching”, where people observe others in a public place. Others would classify this as somewhat creepy if it is always done with the same person. Throughout this movie, Jeff observes the daily lives of various people in the neighborhood to help solve the mystery of Lars Thorwald.

This movie would fall under the category of people watching in order to help solve the mystery of Lars Thorwald. Jeff would use the different clues of the people that live around him to help pinpoint what has happened. One scene in particular that brought out a big reveal was when Jeff finds out that one of the neighbor’s dog has died from sniffing the plants. It turns out that with the help of Stella and Lisa that Thorwald buried his wife under the plants so that no one will know. Overall, this movie was a great watch and is great for those that love mysteries and suspense.

Sunset Boulevard is a movie that takes place in Hollywood and is about making movies. The movie follows the main character, Joe Gillis as he tries to get his writing green-lit by the executives at Paramount Studios. As he tries to write out his screenplay, he comes across a mansion located on Sunset Boulevard that was owned by famous silent film actress, Norma Desmond.

Norma Desmond has an interesting character, to say the least. She was a washed up silent film actress that no longer performs anymore because she is afraid of the outside world. She is constantly addicted to having someone around her, along with being in front of a camera. She also comes across as extremely self-centered and egotistical, where she makes everything about herself. It is revealed that in her house, she has tons of pictures of herself.

When Joe comes across Norma’s mansion, he was driving away from men who wanted his car. After staying at the mansion for a day, Norma immediately wants him to move in. There, she wants him to read a script that she made where she plays the starring role, which Gillis finds terrible. He is then willing to help her fix the script into something better. As time goes by, Gillis starts to gain a similar mentality to Norma with getting a lot of money out of the script and not really caring about the quality of it.

Later in the film, Joe secretly works at night at Paramount to write an original screenplay with Betty Schaefer, who is another screenwriter at Paramount. The two then fall in love with each other and Norma finds out about the two of them. Norma finds out about the script that Joe and Betty wrote, and then starts threatening Betty by talking bad about him. When Joe overhears this going on, he tells Betty to come over to the mansion and see for herself on what is going on. After Betty briefly finds out about this place, she had to leave for Arizona to get married to Artie. Joe then leaves the place, but then Norma threatens him that if he leaves, then she will shoot him. Joe then proceeds and then Norma shot him three times as his body is found in her swimming pool.

This movie portrays the film industry as a large moneymaking machine where people have to look a certain way in order to become famous. When Betty started working at Paramount Studios, she had to get a nose job because the studio didn’t like it. It also shows how the film industry can have an impact on people. After working with silent films, Norma Desmond felt that the fame would never leave her and that she was some legacy. She also felt the need to be in front of a camera at all times, along with being afraid of the outside world. The studio would tend to blow stories completely out of proportion just to make more money. After working with the studio, Norma was afraid to go outside of her mansion because the media put it out there that she was dead. Overall, this movie tends to portray the film industry under a negative light and shows the effect that it has on people.