Reviews

Red Dead Redemption is far more that a great video game, it is a work of art. The enormous open world has many beautiful and fascinating areas, many of which you didn't know existed until you find yourself in the middle of them. No details were spared: you can even read the epitaphs on the gravestones, many of which mark the resting places of relatives of the colorful characters that you meet during the rich story. However, the details are not the most important factor in the beauty of the world, this title goes to the lighting of the landscapes, the pink-tinted clouds on the horizon during a sunset, and the endless stretches of plains, shadows streaming from the feet of the cacti. You find yourself in the midst of a truly beautiful world, and that world is the only permanent thing in the game.

The story is an incredibly intricate epic, in which you find yourself running into the most unusual and eccentric characters, including a grave robber and a "miracle cure" salesman. You will find yourself compromising your moral code so that you can protect your family, helping both sides, even when neither are right, and doing the bidding of those who you would much rather kill. Although this game allows more freedom than many others, you will always feel imprisoned by the forces of the government. The story is told in very cinematic cutscenes, with incredible voice acting, camera angles, facial animation, and screenplay. Although it is a gritty story, the cutscenes are peppered with amusing and subtle social satire. All of this creates a cinematic atmosphere as well as a sense of struggling against the tide; a world where there are a few good men who have there hands full fighting the evil people of the world, and are then slowly dragged down by the incoming forces of evil and government regulation. Thus, it does not come as a surprise when you find in the miscellaneous section of the newspapers (absolutly dripping with hilarious satire) that almost everyone you knew has met their ends, until you finally die yourself. The harsh reality that this game's realistic world is conveying is very simply that terrible things happen, and no matter what you do, they will continue to happen.

I was hesitant to approach this film, as it seemed like a pointless, overblown action film. Maybe it is all that, but it is also a great film, and perhaps the most important film since The Battleship Potemkin. It has a deceptively simple plot. Just another apocalyptic robot rebellion. Still, it not only draws on biblical and mythological stories, but it creates the fascinating concept of the Matrix. It blurs reality lines between the various worlds in play, and uses all the implications of artificial reality to its advantage in great visual innovation. The Matrix used CGI and bullet-time in never-before-seen ways that have already become clichéd. It came at the end of a 20-year innovation starved era of film, and shocked the world with something new. Who could forget Neo and Smith diving at each other, their guns blazing? Who could forget Neo leaning backwards, dodging bullets, sharing the screen with objects moving at impossible speeds, but somehow making us forget that they were bullets? Perhaps most stunning of all: who could forget Neo, to Uzis blazing, straight in front of him, as he runs, cloak trailing, through a hell of flying tiles and marble as untold numbers of bullets fly around him? These unforgettable moments are the excuse for such overblown action. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this film has one of the most perfect villains ever to grace the screen. A demented but calm, crazed but intelligent, ruthless but calculated agent known as Smith laughs, yells, and taunts his way through his great lines filled with pregnant pauses. A perfect villain for a messiah of a hero.

This film has a plot that is so detailed, so developed, and so complex, that no one would believe it was a silent film. As the plot develops, the character of Dr. Mabuse changes drastically. In Part I, he is an impossibly clever and cunning criminal. He is introduced as a master of disguise who carries out an almost victimless crime with the stock markets. He is not evil, he is just a criminal. But then, you see him hypnotize a rich man in to gambling away large sums of money, abusing his skill as a psychoanalyst, and aiming to ruin and drive insane an innocent man. When state prosecutor von Wenk is introduced, you get the impression that you do not know what Mabuse is capable of.

Later, in the film's most memorable scene, the state prosecutor, in disguise, enters a club and goes straight to the card table. There is Dr. Mabuse, in the disguise of a feeble old man. As the state prosecutor takes up his cards, the words TSI-NAN-FU begin to chase him. He is falling under the spell of Dr. Mabuse, and you see the grim determination in the eyes of Mabuse, and you see that he will stop at nothing to rob and kill the state prosecutor. This is the first time that you see true evil in Mabuse.

After that, Mabuse seems troubled. He lives by the bottle, and is stern with his accomplices. He shows no mercy to Edgar Hull, the rich man he robbed, and lures him in to a deathtrap with the seductress Carrozza, who is caught. Although Mabuse could easily have gotten her out of prison, he does not bother, he instead, unveiling all his evil, kidnaps Countess Told, and locks her in the room where Carroza lived, showing that he is not going to rescue her, despite her love and claims that he is the greatest man in the world for him.

And so Part II begins, with several evil goings on, all the fault of Dr. Mabuse. The Countess will not love Mabuse, Mabuse is slowly driving the Count insane, and Carrozza is still in prison, refusing to reveal to the state prosecutor that Dr. Mabuse is the "Mystery Man" they're looking for. Mabuse does not wish to free Carrozza, he wishes to kill the state prosecutor. He hypnotizes the Count, and commands him to kill himself, and the Count's butler tells the state prosecutor that the Count's treatment only became poor when Dr. Mabuse was visiting. This throws suspicion on Dr. Mabuse for the first time. He handles it gracefully, he blames a hypnotist (him in disguise) who is holding a show that night. This lures the State prosecutor to come to the show, where Mabuse picks people out of the crowd, and convinces them to do random things. Then he takes the State Prosecutor on stage, and puts him in a trance, just before he slips into the trance, he identifies Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse hypnotizes van Wenk to drive off a cliff, but he is saved at the last minute and brings police over to arrest Mabuse. Mabuse and his men stay and fight, but are overpowered, and Dr. Mabuse is forced to flee through an underground passage to his other base, where he counterfeits money. And finds himself unable to get out. He goes insane, and is apprehended. Poetic justice, we have now lost all sympathy for this demented man.

Such is a detailed plot that is too sophisticated to be told properly through title cards, and it may require several viewings to understand certain parts. On other elements of film craft than story, first is photography. This is a film with excellent angles and distances, and even a few tracking shots. As well, the use of double exposures and the iris shot show things that can best be expressed through visuals, such as the double exposure showing the face of Mabuse over the stock market.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge gives one of the best performances in all of silent film as the demented arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse. His eyes seem to stare straight into your soul, and he never ceases to be convincing in the final scene. But best of all is when he says TSI-NAN-FU, with the utmost and purest of evil contorting his mouth, flaring his nostrils, and freezing his eyes.

And finally, this film has excellent expressionistic sets: most notably Schramm's Grill, Mabuse's house, the corner it is at, the Count's mansion, and the club where Edgar Hull meets his demise: 11 Hayden street. All in all, this film is a masterpiece in plot, acting, and every other element of film craft. This is the greatest of all silent films.

Near the beginning of City lights, Charlie Chaplin is slipping on a marble floor wildly, but still greeting people with a stately dip of the hat, thus epitomizing the charming buffoonery of the little tramp. In City Lights, the best of Chaplin's works, the little tramp is mistaken for a rich man by a blind girl, and taken under the wing of a millionaire, and he does quite well in his new rich life, although he is a tramp. Perhaps this explains the famous W.C. Fields quote: "a rich man is nothing but a poor man with money."

So, City Lights is satire of the rich, but it seems to have more dimension than that. It is moving, it is inspiring, it is beautiful. But what makes it beautiful is elusive. It could be the romance, it could be the humor, but more likely, it is the tramp himself, with his little grins and shining eyes. Charlie Chaplin is both a genius director and a genius comic actor, and he was the only one who fully understood his work. And no matter how many speculations there are, nothing will be settled other than the rightful place this film has in cinema history.

The ending of this film sticks out most of all as masterful. What does it mean? Will she love him? Will she believe him? Is it melancholy or euphoric? Has the flower stopped wilting? Is that a grin or a tear? All these loose ends make you think and wonder, until you finally come to the truth of the matter: that you have just witnessed the most powerful ending in the history of cinema.

Many movies have great cinematography. These movies will have a handful of excellent shots. If that is great cinematography, great would be an insult to this movie's cinematography. Instead of a few excellent shots, every single shot is excellent, every moment wows you. It is relentless; it doesn't give you time to marvel, it makes you marvel more. Considering it is at the core of cinema history, almost everything is, if not a first, the first well developed example of a certain bit of film. The opening scenes are subject to an unfortunate disadvantage of early film: while it has one of the first uses of swinging objects to make an ominous feel, the camera rolled too slowly, and the objects swung too fast. The scene where the execution is imminent takes full advantage of the battleship's guns. Almost all shots are taken from right next to the cannons, thus showing this grim scene from a tool of destruction, establishing the mood perfectly.

The Odessa steps sequence is perhaps the most influential scene involving the portrayal of military brutality in film. It has the higher ground of the oppressors, allowing them to fire at a downwards angle, showing the helplessness of the victims. It has the emphasis on young children, which has been used quite effectively in Schindler's List. Most importantly, it shows them firing in a unified, systematic fashion, which portrays them as unfeeling killing machines, with no pity or hesitance.

Finally, the approach of the battleship to the enemies is the best early example of suspense in film. With the constant use of few shots, it makes the wait seem longer and longer. The guns pointing strait at us make us truly realize the unspeakable power they are about to discharge. And the use of the "all for one" narration is an incredibly effective way of showing us the kind of suicide mission they are on. Nothing but stunning.

All critics agree, this movie is the best, not many people agree, including me. But the fact remains that the most trained eyes of judging film see this movie as the best, probably seeing more than we see. Aside from all this, there are visuals that will stay with anyone longer than the story. What comes to mind first? An opera house, six shadows falling across the room, leading to one man, a thousand Kanes walking, a snow globe, a sea of statues, jigsaw puzzles, and snow going over a sled. This cinematography is what would come to someone in a dream, or an empty thought, years after they have seen the movie. Maybe they have forgotten what it was from, it hovers on the edge of the mind, but no one will forget all of Citizen Kane, no matter what. Although many movies rely heavily on cinematography, very few have that cinematography more memorable than the movie. I am not saying that the movie is, on the whole, forgettable, I am saying that if someone forgets it, they will always feel part of it on the edge of their mind.

However, cinematography is far from all of the film. First off, this film is blessed with an immortal story, not a very exciting one, but an emotional one. It is so human that we are all moved by it. We feel sorry for him, not in spite of how awful he is, but because of it. His plight is understandable to anyone, no matter how different he is. Anyone can empathize with him because deep down, we know most of us would suffer like him in his position. This beautiful story, backed by excellent screenplay, and told through cinematography so great that Orson Welles, famous for ego, allowed the cinematographer's name to appear on the same card as his, also has the bonus of great acting. It is so demonstrated especially in the scene where Kane trashes his wife's room. It is a masterpiece in almost every sense of film, and from a first time director to. To use one of the characters analogies: each aspect of film-making is just a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, fitting in with all others and, after careful hunting and searching, it all fits together to form one beautiful picture.

While watching this movie, I couldn't help from laughing as if it were a black comedy. The courtroom scene at the end comes readily to mind, with head numbing repetitions of "when did you love her? Confess to loving her!" The melodrama is so superfluous as to be humorous, which probably is a good thing, as it would just be a plain stupid movie without this enjoyable factor. But while reading this, you might expect me to give a 2-star rating, but the lead performance is spectacular. Her eyes darting around in a paranoid manner, and then stop, glaze over and seem to stare right into your soul. But surely, that can't be enough. It is not, the drowning scene is what lifts it to this seven star rating. It is one of the most chilling scenes ever made, especially as it is more well-known than the movie, so you will be waiting for it anxiously the whole time.

Hollywood(land) never made a better film, and I strongly believe that they never will. This film started as a flawed small film that the star (Bogart) hated, saying "the situations are ridiculous." Adapted from a play that is now little known, the screenplay, courtesy of the Epstien twins and is often regarded as the greatest ever.

As well it is peppered with famous scenes, such as the flashback and airport, backed by excellent sets, powerful screenplay with great lines tossed around casually, and stupendous acting from Bogart, Bergman, Greenstreet, and Rains. To say that this is Bogart's strongest performance would be difficult, considering the versatility proved by him in Treasure of the Seiarra Madre, but Bogart was born to play this part, which contains the romantic hero, the sad drunk, the lonesome drifter, and the devil-may-care noir hero. His acting is genius, a stream of forlorn faces, emotionless reactions, excellent deliverance of lines, and confident movements, all of which is outlined in the waving, shimmering distortion of the smoke from his cigarette.

To sum it up, the best romance ever, the best American movie ever, the best actor ever delivering his best performance, reading the best screenplay ever, all work together to be one of the most beloved of all movies.

The fine acting, stunning cinematography, incredible lighting, and remarkable art direction is all accompanied by the numbing, bouncy, unsurpassable zither music. This complex, eerie story is told with cynical narration and shadowy imagery. From the amateur floating in the water, to (spoilers) the balloon seller, whose enormous shadow is thought to be that of Harry lime. The story is almost brutal to the protagonist, the poor sap by the name of Holly Martins who falls into an unhealthy love story.

The final scenes and opening scenes reach perfection. In fact, so do the middle ones. This is is one of the few films that I would never change anything in. From the wry humor to the masterful suspense and dark villains, this will always be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, movies ever made.