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movie analysis of pretty woman
movie analysis of pretty woman
film analysis american beauty
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Review of American Beauty
The 1999 Academy Award winning movie American Beauty has many major plots and shows the reality of American life. This movie uses symbolism to get ideas across in many different situations and it shows the actuality of life, it is not always what it looks like on the outside.
Lester and Carolyn Burnham seem like they have a perfect marriage and a perfect family life while in turn they are having a lot of marriage problems. Lester is going through a midlife crisis; he quits his high-paying job for a fast food service job at Mr. Smiley’s and he buys the car of his dreams. His wife, Carolyn, is so upset by his new “freedom” that she has an affair with one of her colleagues and is caught by Lester when she goes to Mr. Smiley’s drive thru with her colleague...
Not long ago, a woman’s success was measured by the success of her husband and her domestic prowess. Today, a woman is presumed successful if she can emulate the standards of beauty portrayed in the media. Unfortunately, this subliminally enforced standard is unattainable to some women, regardless of the quality of their character. Let’s examine how western women went from being pioneering superheroes, to people who measure their worth against airbrushed photographs of impossibly beautiful women.
The film, Dear White People, displays a ton of racism with the white students. The film’s plot is based off some actions of the students of University of California, San Diego. The party titled “Compton Cookout” occurred on February 15, 2010 at 1pm from the members of PIKE fraternity. It received enough attention that a movie was created to bring light to the situation. The reason I believed it received the amount of attention it did because it was during black history month, the only month out the year Americans recognizes iconic black people who help build this country, led the civil rights movements, and who gave their lives to make a change in our country’s culture. The party was a spit in the face toward the 1% of UCSD black student body
American Beauty (1999) is an American drama film which stars Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, a man who is seen to be having a midlife crisis and becomes sexually attracted/interested in his teenage daughter’s best friend. As the film progresses this attraction leads him to make major changes in his life in order to cope up with his urges, and thus these changes somehow helps him to manage and tackle his midlife crisis. This film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes tries to show how the American middle class may view beauty and personal attraction. This film uses humor, irony and ridicule to show and criticize people's stereo types of American families. The film takes an approach to portray everything an American middle class family
“American Beauty” through images and character depiction attempts to portray and question the triteness of middle class sexual mores. One of the main ways director Sam Mendes portrays this is through symbols, especially in the seductive color red, used to represent both sexuality and youth. The characters of the film, through their dialogue and various deceptions to the outside world also pose questions about society’s expectations for sex. Mendes’ also utilizes lighting, props, sets and music as commentary on the sexuality of all of his characters, both sexual reawakening and oppression. The visual style of the film coupled with the character’s unique struggles and views make “American Beauty” a haunting look at the way our culture views gender and sex.
After filing for divorce and agreeing to joint custody of their nine-year-old daughter, David eventually finds love again with another man named Tom. However, when him and Tom bump into his daughter and former wife at a local diner, David introduces Tom as an old work friend. Though David could have easily expected a serious argument with Tom after that encounter, he fears a life without his daughter. Despite the fact that David knew his daughter had no negative feelings towards her best friend who was adopted from China by a same-sex lesb...
Each couple goes through a different scenario that affects marriage during their retreat and individual life journey. Through the scenarios, the audience can tell that money, lack of trust, closed feelings, and cheating breaks marriages apart; Tyler Perry’s writing about these problems creates a message for his audience. Tyler Perry’s combination of comedy and melodrama displays an unexpected climax leading to a soothing or a sad ending for the characters (Hale). This leaves the audience gasping to know what happens next; it introduces new drama for the characters. In addition, The plot structure focuses on “emotional affairs, domestic abuse, near-nervous breakdowns, cancer, and death” (Robeldo). In summary, Tyler Perry’s writing displays the connection between him and the audience, sharing a common lesson learned from watching the
It begins with Joey, his wife Peggy, and her son from her previous marriage, Richard. They are driving for a long time, as they are coming to Pennsylvania from New York City. As the family goes about their normal conversations, Joey has a chance to reminisce on his failed previous marriage. Joey is described as a somewhat precarious man whom is completely controlled by his mother. The purpose of the visit is to introduce Mrs. Robinson to Joey’s new wife, Peggy, as she has hated Joey’s two previous wives. Mrs. Robinson has even caused both of these relationships to end in divorce. Also, Mrs. Robinson forced her husband and Joey to move to the Pennsylvania farm in the first place, because she held it near and dear to her heart. Unfortunately, Mrs. Robinson and Peggy fight constantly and are quite mean to each other. Mrs. Robinson does not approve, and it appears as if history is about to repeat itself. (Detweiler
The Seven Five is a documentary that frivolously reexamines the crimes of Officer Michael Dowd and his team of dirty cops. Dowd is a former New York police officer who was stationed in the 75th Precinct in Eastern New York. The film presents the nefarious deeds of these officers via original interviews with Dowd and his former comrades as they recount their crimes and explain the reasoning behind their unethical behaviors. While working as a cop, he embellished his income through criminal exploits which include stealing guns, drugs, money, and eventually he began working in drug rings selling cocaine. Dowd’s felonious activities were extremely lucrative and earned him approximately $4,000 a week. Dowd was eventually arrested in 1992,
Pleasantville and American Beauty Everyone wants to be happy. But ask Americans what they would need, realistically, to make them content and I'll bet a majority would say a house with a white picket fence, and dog and a couple of clean-cut kids. This Father-Knows-Best, Brady-Bunch, Ozzie-and-Harriet utopia is exactly what writer Gary Ross unfolds in "Pleasantville": just an agreeable little town that nobody leaves, one which is blissfully ignorant of what may lie outside or cares to find out. Who could blame the people? There are no graffiti, no drugs, and no crime. Everyone looks about the same and has similar cultural and political values. Life is safe, secure, and predictable with dinner on the table for all the husbands, wives perfectly content to avoid the hassles of work and to stay at home, kids cheering on a basketball team that never loses a game and never even fails to sink a shot. You might not expect such a movie to be much more than a reflection of the predictability and concomitant drabness of small-town America, but "Pleasantville" is in fact a wonderfully entertaining work full of easy-to-swallow social commentary. It is a testament to the power of the movies to maneuver the audience that this one proves today's complex world--filled with AIDS, crime, drug- addiction, global warming, terrorism, broken homes, and most of all uncertainty--is to be preferred. The movie American Beauty was modeled after so many other former movies that it just seems plain. I can't see how this movie was like any other movie at all. I mean I'm sure there is a slight resemblance if you look at the comparison of this movie and Pleasantville, but no normal person would have ever looked at it that way. I personally have never seen a situ...
A director is successful when they take the audience away from comfort and security. In the film American Beauty, director Sam Mendes effectively achieves this. Creating a sense of discomfort and insecurity throughout the film allows the viewer to have a more in depth knowledge of the underlying themes within the film. Mendes strips viewers away from a sense of comfort and security through the portrayal of a dysfunctional family and the use of aggressive verbal slurs.
During the course of the spring semester, as a class, we read and watched movies about fallen women and femme fatale in American Literature. Throughout each piece that we studied, I have chosen a book and a movie that I believe will compare and contrast effectively. We watched a movie in class written by J.F. Lawton called Pretty Woman, a movie that made a tragedy into a love story. This story exposed the life of a prostitute in Los Angeles, California. The prostitute, Vivian, happened to give directions to a rich man because he was lost, which led to her staying the night in his hotel room. The man needed Vivian to be his date on a social outing, which later led to more. On the other hand, during the semester we read a book by James M. Cain titled The Postman Always Rings Twice, a book that verbalized a forceful story. The story was about a girl named Cora, a prostitute who lives in a hash house. Then along the way she meets a man named Nick, whom she eventually marries. However Cora has a discomfort of being around her husband that provided her with a pretty virtuous lifestyle. Her solution to her discomfort creates problems that lead to more threatening problems. The movie and the book were both about women being saved from a place they felt undesirable. One fell in love after prostitution while the other never felt love. Now, with that in mind, The Postman Always Rings Twice is more realistic because Cora’s life explains the outcome of a prostitute that readers can relate to unlike Vivian from the movie Pretty Woman whose life is not a realistic outcome that readers can relate to.
...re the authentic version of Caroline, the authentic version of his daughter, and to be his true self. Through realizing this, he is able to see the beauty of creation in life. He ends by stating, “I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.” At this moment we realize Lester has determined how to use ordered love. Throughout the movie he tries to find himself through disordered love by indulging in things like an expensive car and lust for Angela. But in the end, he realizes he has to use these things to enjoy and appreciate the time that he was given in this beautiful creation.
video camera, of a young teenage girl. The narration reveals that she wants her father dead. The image portrayed around her is constructed as an evil, unaffectionate youth. The next scene is of a high angle shot, with a voice-over narration. The voice-over goes to explain that this is Lester Burnham’s speaking and he is already dead and the following is a construction of the relevant events. This scene holds relevance for two reasons. First it constructs an image that the young teenager in the previous scene is the killer. And as we will learn by the end of the film this image is not all that it appeared to be. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the film, that these are constructed images, and to notice that there is more to the story then what appears on the surface. The high angle spanning shot of Lester’s street also holds significance for the spectator. This opening shot is quite similar to that of Alfred Hitchcock’s opening scene in Psycho. The similar themes is the spectators being the voyeurs. In each we are looking into the private sphere of the character. However, in American Beauty our voyeuristic nature is not shameful.
The film American Psycho has strong references to the American consumer culture of elitists in the 1980s. However, the film main reflects popular culture among elitists in the time period but it also applies to a broader spectrum of the population. The main character is personally obsessed in a way with pop culture to be able to emulate others and apply that to how he should act.
My Mise-en-scene analysis is on American Beauty on page 217: number 1(The dinner scene). The frame itself is a very closed, tight shot; there is no way for the characters to escape and they're left with only confronting each other in this very little space. The shot of the camera isn't necessarily far away or close either. It's neutral, and we can see the full action of the family's dinner conversation happening right in front of us. My eyes were immediately attracted to the bright, white table and then my eyes focused on the faces of the family. The scene's texture is slightly fuzzy, and is not very detailed. But the character's faces are still recognizable. The foreground of this scene is the table with the man and woman sitting at each end; the middle is the girl-who is