“It Hurts Reggie”

In Scott Kalvert’s The Basketball Diaries, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Caroll, renown poet and former heavy drug abuser. In the film, Kalvert depicts the real-life occurences of Jim Carroll heroin use. Towards the end of the movie, a man Jim used to play basketball with, Reggie, try’s to help Jim get off heroin cold turkey. In this scene, we see how Jim’s body and mind react to the withdrawals of one of the most dangerous drugs. I decided to take a look at this scene purely because of DiCaprio’s portrayal of drug withdrawal. He has huge difficulty formulating his sentences, his mouth is foaming and is in immense pain. It was an incredible performance for a young actor in one of his first leading roles. Also in the scene, DiCaprio crawls to Reggie, still foaming at the mouth. This shows exactly how low Jim is in this point of his life. The crawling shows a boy who is being reverted back to a child because he cannot care for himself. This was also an important scene because of how it is shot. While Jim is not high on heroin, the use of distorted camera lenses shows that this is not the normal state Jim is in. For him being sober is being high because it is no longer the norm, and that is why his body is having such difficulty adjusting. The most powerful part of the scene is Reggie’s response to Jim for why he is helping him, “I always pay what I owe.” This clearly means someone helped him when he was in need so he believes he must do the same for Jim. Because of the great camera technique and Leonardo DiCaprio’s ability to drugged up or mentally ill (qualude scene in The Wolf of Wall Street) make this scene one of the best for the film

 

Everyone knows a Mix Fischer

In 1998, director Wes Anderson made his second full-length film, Rushmore, with the help of frequent collaborator and former classmate, actor/writer Owen Wilson. Rushmore is about an ashamed poor 15 year old boy who goes to the prestigious prep school Rushmore Academy. Max Fischer goes to Rushmore on scholarship, but is doing poorly in school despite being part of many clubs at the school. Some of the thing Max enjoys are; writing, acting and directing theater productions, hanging out with self made millionaires and hitting on the first grade teacher Rosemary Cross. Along the way, Max’s rich friend Herman Blume (played by Bill Murray) starts falling for Rosemary, starting a feud between Max and Herman. By the end of the film, Max begins to feel bad for the damage he caused to Herman during their fight and was guilty for pushing Rosemary and Herman apart. He writes a play as a mission to win back Rosemary for Herman which ultimately works. After the show, Max is no longer ashamed of his father being a barber and finally matures into someone he himself is proud of.

Being one of Wes Anderson’s first films, it is the one that sets the bar for what we will be seeing in the future. While Rushmore is still shot very much like a Wes Anderson film, the set designs of the film were not as apparent and important as The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel. This film is much more central to its plot and didn’t rely as much on the heavy artistic qualities it could have presented if it were made later in Wes Anderson’s life. As for the film itself, it was quite enjoyable. Bill Murray, who worked for a fraction of his normal price in order for this film to get launched, gave a brilliant performance to help make this movie better. He played a typical Murray character that was awkward and out of his luck and played it just as well as he always has. Blume is a much more dark character at this point in his life has nothing else to look forward to because his best days are behind him, and he is slowly losing everything all at the same time. It would have been a bit more interesting of a story if more of the focus was put on Blume, rather then Fischer.

 

Wes Anderson set design– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eg6yIwP2vs

 

 

Family Affair

The Virgin Suicides is the first full length film from director Sofia Coppola. Post Virgin Suicides, Coppola wrote and directed Oscar-winning Lost in Translation, biopic Marie Antoinette, Somewhere and her most recent film, The Bling Ring. While Coppola is a successful writer/director in her own right, she comes from one of the famous families of film; the Coppola’s. It all started with her father, an all-time great director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish). Her late brother Gian-Carlo, was a producer before his untimely death by speedboat accident. Her other brother Roman is a writer who frequently collaborates with director Wes Anderson. Other famous family members of Sophia Copolla include; aunt Talia Shire (Godfather trilogy, Rocky series), cousin Jason Schwartzmann (Rushmore, Grand Budapest Hotel) and the greatest actor who lived, Nicolas Cage (Adaptation, National Treasure). In her early career in film, Coppola was acting in many of her fathers films as background characters. This was up until the third and final Godfather. Here, Coppola took on a larger role and was ultimately criticized for her performance. This was the final movie she acted in and was the last step into thrusting her into directing. Without the help of her father, (who produces her films) and the rest of her family, we wouldn’t have such a distinct talent like Sofia Coppola.

 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001068/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2

“Don’t you know this a dead body.”

In the film Boyz N The Hood, John Singleton depicts the life of four boys growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In the beginning of the movie the four boys; Tre, Ricky Doughboy and Chris go out on a walk to see a dead body. Ricky brings the football his father had given to him despite Doughboy warning him not to. I believe this scene is very important because it is where we first get to see how to the boys act. Tre is shown at a young age being responsible and caring by telling the gang of older boys “Man, don’t you know this is a dead body.” Ricky is shown to be timid and shows weakness towards the gang members. This foreshadows his ultimate murder. Doughboy is portrayed as the tough one despite his limitations. Him confronting the much older and stronger gang members shows that he is unafraid and could become the most troubled. While the fourth boy Chris does as he is told clearly showing he well be a follower in his older life. This scene is used purely as a catalyst to showcase what type of kids they will turn out to become

 

Is Kids as controversial as its reputation?

The movie Kids (1995) written by Harmony Korine and directed by Larry Clark, has garnered much criticism from critics and audience alike for the provocative nature of the film. Many have called the film “borderline child pornography” for the scenes depicted what it is like for teens having sex and losing their virginity. Another way this film is marked controversial is the dialogue between these young characters. The dialogue of Kids, tends to be navigated towards adult topics such as sex, drugs and crime. Because of these instances of “borderline child pornography” and harsh dialogue, audiences were starting to believe this film was simply glorifying this way of life. Another way audiences and critics feel this film to be controversial is because of the style in which this was filmed. Audiences believed this film was depicting real life and many were fooled into believing this was a documentary showing the lives of these inner city children.

Over the years, Kids still has its controversial reputation, but is beginning to become more widely accepted. Before, audiences were not accepting of the art that Korine and Clark were bringing to the public. Slowly, people are beginning to realize there was no perverse subtext to the movie but it was simply to show how out of control some kids lives can get, as well as how serious protection against AIDS was in the early 1990’s.

 

example of controversial scene- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLwhN1Yxkpo

Personal Reflection

The film Edge of Seventeen by David Moreton and Todd Stevens was a good film in which it left an impact on the viewer. I watched this movie having no idea what it was about. I figured it had to do with a female because of the films title. You can obviously tell I was proven wrong once I realized this had to do with a boy stuck in a crisis in which he doesn’t know whether to identify as straight or as gay. Once the character Rod was introduced, it was clear from that first conversation that Eric was going to start becoming confused about himself. The best part of this film was the acting between Eric and Maggie. They were interesting in the sense that you could see the chemistry between them in the beginning but once Rod comes into the picture, their chemistry subtlety begins to fade and makes it that much worse for Eric. As a whole the film seemed to a good a job portraying some of the difficulties gay, lesbian and bisexual people face when trying to find out who exactly they are.