Coen Bros

The Coen Bros might as well be the Mario Bros because of how cartoonish some of their films are. Take as an example Raising Arizona. The action sequences were almost straight out of a cartoon (Yes, I know Mario was from a video game and all, but it's still a cartoon kinda thing). This isn't to say that all of the Coen Bros films were this way. No Country for Old Men is definitely not what I would call a cartoon. It is far to glum, and the violence is far too realistic for it to be a cartoon.
Another major aspect of Coen Bros films is that they always seem to revolve around money and the law. All of the films we watched in class have someone in the movie trying to get money, generally through an illegal action (robbing a bank, dealing drugs). There is always something to do with the law and its enforcement in their movies as well. Either the protagonist is an officer, or a criminal, or the antagonist is a criminal. Either way, there is an overarching feeling of the law in their films. Even if the protagonist is a criminal (Raising Arizona), he does not feel like a true criminal, and it's very easy to take his side.
I thoroughly enjoyed this Coen Brose unit. I think I'd go as far as to say that it was my favorite unit thus far. Now hopefully the Nair unit can follow it up pretty well.

Altman

As a whole, I was a pretty big fan of Robert Altman's movies. I'd have to say that my favorite part was probably how he made his movies seem so realistic (for the most part). Especially in Nashville, he used overlapping dialogue and a large cast. The overlapping dialogue really makes the movie seem real, especially when combined with the improvisation that took place much of the time by the actors. The authenticity with which they said their lines, or came up with their lines, really made the movie seem almost like a documentary. I mentioned the large cast also. The large cast in my opinion really added to the realism of the film. It contradicts the notion that many films project, that the story being portrayed is the only thing going on. With the large cast, there are so many different stories to follow; in fact, there are maybe too many in my opinion. Plus with the addition of the presidential candidate patrolling the streets in his van, the movie truly does seem to be a documentary of blue grass singers in Nashville. Everything that happens is entirely plausible in that movie.
Moving on to The Player, it becomes slightly less realistic, but the overlapping dialogue is still present. I suppose, seeing as I don't really know much at all about Hollywood, that the story could be true, but at this point, I choose to believe that it is not at all true, that something like this would/could never happen. I'm probably being short sighted and close minded, but that's just what I'm going off of for now until I find out otherwise.
Lastly, The Long Goodbye. This was probably my favorite movie of the three we watched in class. My reasoning for deeming it the best is that I enjoy film noir, and this movie is fairly similar to film noir. I loved how the movie was filmed though. The constantly shifting camera was fantastic. It really made me feel like I was actually watching what was going on. The story itself was slightly too farfetched for me, but the way the viewer saw the movie made it seem like they were standing in the movie. Once again, Altman used some of his trademark overlapping dialogue to make it seem slightly more realistic, but the story itself was definitely concocted. I suppose another reason why I might have liked it so much was that the story was unreal... Hmm... That's just how I like my movies I guess.
Well anyway, I definitely enjoyed Altman's movies (except partially Nashville because of the country singing aspect) and am looking into checking out a couple of his other movies like potentially M.A.S.H. simply because I've heard a fair amount about it.

Panic Room

So going into this movie, I thought it was going to be some horror movie or have something to do with some sort of psychopath killer (kinda like Zodiac), but I was pretty far off. It was a thriller, and a very good one at that. Fincher used a lot of cinematic techniques to add to the suspense of the thriller. He had a sort of recurring theme, a shot that he used several times throughout the movie that served to completely throw off the viewer. It was a shot that started off showing the character placed in the normal direction, then the camera does a 90 degree tilt, and the character is then shown in a completely different perspective that totally throws off the viewer, or at least I was totally messed up. After this move, something always happened. It was a giveaway, but nothing was really given away, just that something, anything was about to happen. The shot only shows the one character, so any of the other characters could do anything, which is exactly what happened. This is pretty much Fincher's way of doing the old Hitchcock showing the bomb under the table thing, except we don't know what the bomb is, just that there is a bomb-like thing somewhere that's about to go off. There was another really cool shot that was in a way the establishing shot. It was a really intense crane shot that evolved into a traveling shot that showed people outside the house trying to break in. It wasn't the first shot of the film, but it really showed the immensity of the house and what was really going to be occuring in the movie.

Fincher uses other aspects of film to add even more thrills and suspense. The characters that are found in the film each have some sort of quirk that you know will be very important at some point in the movie. Sarah has what seems to be diabetes, and being trapped in a room with no food of any kind will eventually lead to something bad happening - Meg, the mom played by Jodie Foster, has to eventually go and get Sarah's shots while there is a slight opening while the bad guys are having a fight about the money distribution. Burnham, one of the bad guys, refuses to kill anyone in the house. This ends up nearly killing him, and it is also what saves Meg in the end. He had intentions that were far better than any of the other bad guys in the movie; all he wanted to do was get the money to help his family and get out, no killing necessary. So the way the characters were set up was a key element that added to the suspense of the movie because you never knew when each character's quirk was going to cause a big change in the progression of the movie.

I think the best part of the movie was how well Fincher made the audience feel the emotions of each of the characters. You could truly see how desperate Meg was to save her daughter, and Burnham's humanity really came through his actions. It was something that I really enjoyed in the movie, feeling how the characters felt. Obviously it wasn't nearly as intense for me as the viewer, but even feeling just some of the intense emotions that the characters in the movie felt was enough to make me really really enjoy this movie. That is, if enjoying a thriller means being uptight and antsy and even a bit afraid the whole time.