Top 100 Movie - "Lady Bird"
The basic plot of “Lady Bird” is that a young girl, 17, does not get along with her mother at all. They don't see eye to eye on any subject and are constantly getting in arguments while her dad is more supportive of her but gets let go from his job and all of the financial pressure is put on her mother causing their relationship to frey even more. As the movie goes on and you get to know the characters the main character whose name also happens to be Lady Bird meets a boy and starts to become more popular in general around the school, I will stop here as to not spoil anything else in the movie.
I really enjoyed the acting in this movie because it came across as genuine and I think that in general the characters played off of each other extremely well. The plot of this movie really drags you into it and takes you for a lot of twists and turns that you would never see coming, the music matches the characters and flows well between scenes, the shots are well thought out and there are some extremely interesting ones that I personally never would of thought of. My favorite scene cinematically in this movie is one where Lady Bird is laying in the grass on the top of a hill at night with a boy and it is dark out and you can tell that it's dark out but they use lights from the side of the hill to illuminate the grass and just the faces of the two people, they use a drone shot where the two actors are the center of the shot then they have shots from the ground where the place a camera in the grass, on on each side of the actors, and it acts as an over the shoulder shot but they are laying down facing up at the night sky. It also has just shots of the stars in the sky to cover the cuts in movement.
I would recommend this film to anyone that is looking for a good story that they can really get into, it is not that long of a movie but it is enough to get a lot of detail in and to be able to appreciate some of the cinematic effects. Overall this movie has a good story and good cinematography and is enjoyable to watch.
"Life of Brian"
Monty Python the Life of Brian is extremely similar to Monty Python and the Holy Grail in both its comedy and its filming. The main character repeatedly gets himself into mischief and there are dozens of amazing interactions between him and random characters throughout the movie. They are filmed in very simple methods, not a lot of moving or panning shots. This does not make them bad movies, the biggest strength in the Life of Brian is the scenes and the costumes. (Excluding the comedy of the characters themselves). This movie is an amazing example of not relying on cinematic shots to hold an audience's attention. The camera itself is very stagnant but the actions in front of the camera are not. Watching this movie and really looking at it made me realize the importance of the other aspects of a movie compared to the camera work, from the script to the costumes to the background the more work you put into those aspects the less the camera work itself matters. The one difference that was present in the camera work was the height of the cameras themselves, there was always a change between looking up and looking down. Not always in a way that made sense, (following cinematic rules). One of the most automatically noticeable things about this movie is that a lot of the women are played by men. This is reminiscent of classical shakespearean plays and was a unique detail. The use of lighting throughout the movie is extremely well done with no obvious shadows and the scenes filmed inside or under ground are made to look dim but are still well lit so you can see every detail. I’m not sure if this was done through color correction in post or was done through the lighting while filming, both equally impressive. As to be expected from a Monty Python movie the humor is on point throughout, from stonings to being crucified every moment no matter how dark has some humor in it. I believe that this is the biggest strength of the movie and why it can even be considered as a good movie. The quality of everything besides the script and the casting is sub par. The humor shown throughout the movie is the saving point and the only reason that I could recommend watching it. It’s not filled with great cinematic shots or overally put together scenes but rather filled with small laugh provoking interactions between characters. This film demonstrates perfectly the importance of good casting and script writing. The only other part of the movie that was surprisingly good was the animations on the intro, this is a small piece though and doesn’t have to do with the cinematics of the move. Great hook though. All and all the Life of Brian is an extremely funny movie that any fan of Monty Python should watch at least once in their life.
Ready Player One
Ready Player One is not your typical sci-fi movie. RPO is a refreshing take on the genre as a whole, it is much more modern that other sci-fi kind of movies that generally all follow the same plot and have to do with aliens. It was refreshing to watch something that was as creative as this. The switching back and forth between animations and real life is seamless and the animations themselves are extremely well done. As a quick synopsis if you have not watched the movie before the premiss is fairly simple. It is set in the future only a few decades where a lot of people are poor and not living good lives. A few years prior to the start of the movie a virtual reality game was released and took off in popularity. The game grew to a point where almost everyone plays it and the people who are living in poverty use the game as a way to escape their circumstances. Now the plot of this movie is a pretty classic one in essence but the twist on the use of virtual reality since it's something thats so new makes it much more interesting. The main character, a teenage boy, meets a girl in the virtual world while trying to complete one of the challenges designed by the games creator before he died. For anyone who can complete the three challenges he created he left his life earnings. The movie starts five years after his death and the creation of the challenges and no one has completed the first one yet. The main character is the first person to win the first challenge and as a result becomes internationally famous in the virtual world while no one knows his real identity. Unfortunately for him there are companies who sole purpose is completing all the challenges so they can acquire the creators money and ultimate control of the game. Without revealing too much of the plot I want to say that this was a surprisingly good movie that was extremely well made. It was definitely an interesting take on a futuristic society and I absolutely recommend it to anyone who is looking for something new and a little different.