Pirates of the Caribbean

 

    This week, I decided to go back in time and rediscover Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl! Directed by Gore Verbinski in 2003, this movie exploded in popularity and produced 654.3 million dollars in the box office. I have not seen this movie in a few years, so it was a nostalgic experience for me and my family who watched it with me. This film is an absolute masterpiece, mostly because you develop an incredible relationship with all the characters. Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp plays a desperate pirate who loses his ship and crew and is on a mission to get his life back. To do this, he takes his tiny, flimsy boat to the town of Port Royal to start to put his life together again. Unfortunately for him, the town has a strong ban against pirates and will execute any that find their way into Port Royal. Will Turner, who is the local blacksmith apprentice in their town, becomes very conflicted when he discovers that he comes from a pirate background. Throughout the entirety of the film, he is learning to accept the fact that he comes from pirates and cannot change that. He is also in love with the governor's daughter, Elizabeth Swan, who is extremely high on the town's patriarchy. While they flirt and tease each other throughout the film, he has a challenging time expressing his feelings towards her because he is afraid of rejection. Thankfully, Jack and Will work together to overcome different obstacles and chase objectives to try to achieve what they want most.  

      

    Johnny Depp's portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow is what has made him such an Iconic character that is still admired to this day. While Jack is a gross, despicable, and unruly pirate, you feel a powerful desire to cheer for him. He is an incredibly witty, smart, and lucky pirate who always finds a way to get what he wants. What I really appreciate about him the most, however, is his ability to keep his hopes up and get out of all the bad situations he is in. While he gets discouraged after many attempts to have him killed, he never stops trying to chase the horizon and striving to be the best. Jack Sparrow has become one of the most influential characters in cinema history, so when I watched it this past weekend, I was reminded why he deserved all the praise he was given.  

     

    After watching the Curse of The Black Pearl, I was reminded that it was a five-part movie series that has grown into a huge franchise. Thankfully, the other four movies are also extremely entertaining! Usually, when films come out with sequels, they have a chance of missing and not living up to the expectations of the first one. These movies, however, are all unique and interesting which was a big relief. In fact, they are currently working with Johnny Depp to try and potentially make another movie that will make the box office explode with fans around the world. Personally, my favorite Pirates of The Caribbean film is the first one, mostly because they introduce Jack Sparrow in an extraordinary way that I believe is one of the most iconic scenes ever. I would recommend Pirates of The Caribbean to anyone that wants to have an interesting, exciting, and emotional night in front of the television.  

Male Gaze

 

 This week in film theory class, we spoke about that male gaze and how that has impacted the film industry. Gender roles in films have been a major discussion topic recently, mostly because it is very controversial. There are so many horrible ways that films portray women, although I have not noticed it until reading about it in the textbook. After watching the gaze, I noticed that even camera angles will show women from a male perspective. The cameras will show women looking incredibly attractive to gain the attention of a male audience. For example, a lot of the camera angles during the movie Wonder Woman Look up her skirt while it is blowing in the wind. They also used posters to draw in an audience of males by making her look attractive, although Wonder woman should be targeted at a young women audience.  

     Unfortunately, I know a lot of people that go to see movies because of a female's attractiveness. Bigger corporations can pay these extremely attractive women to model and act for them to get so much attention and sell more tickets. When trying to sell tickets, producers will change how they promote the movie based on the female characters that are in it. I have not noticed that until very recently, although most of the trailers involve beautiful women. I think more people should be aware of this because it is a real problem in our world today. It can be very awkward at times when a gaze scene comes on when you are with a partner, mostly because I never know if I should look or not.  

     While learning about this topic, I was trying to think of an example when they made a man look good for a female gaze. As hard as I tried to find an example, I simply could not find one anywhere in my movie list. I have a couple guesses as to why this would be the case, although I think the most obvious one would be having so many male directors. With that unfortunately being a male dominated career choice, it would make sense that you get their perspective on most movies. For example, in class we spoke about a movie called Blonde about Marilyn Monroe. While she had miscarriages in the movie, the male director had a challenging time describing that feeling because he can only use his imagination to express what that feels like. If there was a woman directing the move, she could have a better idea and be able to empathize with Marilyn Monroe more. She would be able to express the more appropriate emotions that come with that traumatic experience which make the movie more authentic and relatable.  

La Jetee 1962

 

     For this week of film class, we watched a movie called La Jetée for the year 1962. This movie was incredibly unique, mostly because it was all still images with a narrator over it. There were no speaking actors with lines or even movement, which is why it was so interesting. While it was only 28 minutes long, the director, Chris Maker, was able to fit a lot of detail into each clip. To break it down, the movie was about a time machine experiment after a nuclear war. You can tell that this was a low budget, although that makes the director use his strengths to the best of his abilities to make it work.                                    

    Unfortunately, I did not really like the narrator's voice. It sounded very raspy, slow, and honestly creepy. It was hard to listen to him, so eventually I just turned off the volume and kept reading the subtitles. I have to say however, turning black and white still images into a movie is exceedingly difficult, yet they made it into a movie we still watch today. For this movie, I was having a challenging time thinking about how we have advanced in such little time. It only took our world 60 years to progress from still image clips with narration to the technology influenced films that we see today. It is amazing to watch a movie with incredible sound effects, graphics, and creative art, although these older films have so much influence in our society.  

    The older films that I watch, the more respect I gain for creators in that time. It took so much effort, creativity, and time to create these movies with no reliance on the resources that we have today. They also did not have the budget for films that we have today, whether it was due to wars or smaller directors with no backing, those are the films that have stood the test of time. I will continue to watch different older films that have impacted generations, mostly because I think they have so much more to offer than corporate billionaires spending money on the most famous actors and most expensive equipment.  

Smile (2022)

 

    

For this week's film blog, I decided to go to the theater to watch a new movie called Smile. Parker Finn directed this psychological horror to scare his audience with loud noises, gory effects, and creepy messages. It all starts in a hospital where the main character was working with patients with mental disorders. One of her patients, however, had described her situation as seeing people smiling wherever she was. Unfortunately, it was a very scary smile that you would never see at a children's birthday party. As the movie progresses, that smile starts to become much more relevant and dangerous which is why people would hide behind a popcorn bucket when it would appear on the screen. 

I have not been to the theater for a scary movie in a long time, so it was exciting to get back and remember what it was like being afraid in front of a lot of people. I have always enjoyed going to the theater because it almost forces you to really pay attention to the plot with no distractions. The atmosphere in the theater was exactly how I had remembered, which was amazing news because I had missed that for a while. There were a lot of people hiding behind their hands, although that did not stop them from all erupting in desperate times. I tried to pay attention to the people in front of me because as the buildup for a scary moment would arise, you could see them shaking their head, looking at their friends, and even covering their eyes. When a jump scare happened, which it did many times, everyone in the theater jumped up and screamed together.  

  Most often, I find myself not really liking scary movies, mostly because the plot is usually dull. Unfortunately, Smile was not a remarkably interesting movie, although the jump scares were enough to make everyone pay attention. What drew me in to watch this movie was the incredible marketing strategies to get people to buy tickets. Not only did they have incredibly scary, interesting commercials, but they would also make an appearance at major level sporting events. While at a televised baseball game, the camera would have to point at the batter, although you could see someone with that creepy smile in the stands in the background after every single pitch. That is an incredibly unique way of getting people to see the movie, mostly because it is marketing to people who are watching a regular season baseball game. I would recommend Smile to people who would want to get really scared at the theater, although if you want a good plot, I will check out other films first.