Le voyage dans la lune review (1902)
An unexpected film that delivers a huge amount of fun.
Le voyage dans la lune (“A trip to the moon” translated into English) is an absolute bizarre but enjoyable film to
experience despite being made over one hundred years ago, has no dialog and it has cheesy but
lovable visuals. The story starts off with a group of scientist that wants to
explore the moon. They managed to accomplish this by shooting a rocket ship
from a cannon to the moon’s face (seriously) and ends up exploring and coming
across new planets and life forms, of which they battle and try to escape back
to their ship.
It's really am amusing that that the audience could be so entertained for
something that is outdated with no dialog but the movie seems to be smart enough
that it can explain everything though its visuals so dialog is considered as
pointless in this movie. The visuals are so cheesy that you could considered it
obvious that it was fake but unlike like most fake visuals that we see today
this film knows about it and aims to continue on being silly and fun like in “Kung
Pow” where the film itself is a joke on cliché tropes and story lines. It feels like an
early self-joke and it works. You can also feel that they put effort into the
background designs as they are made out of realistic objects and not cheap lifeless green
screen effects so when you are watching this you get this sense of
understanding of the character’s wonder instead of blandness of an obvious
green screen shot where everything feels boring.
Overall I give this movie an 8/10. Take this information
from a guy that lives in the modern world where the latest technology is
supposed to amaze me “This movie is fun to watch and worth seeing into. It’s
quick so even if you happen to disagree and become bored at least it is 15
minutes and not an hour and half long”.
Das Cabinet des
Dr.Caligari review (1920)
Das cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
that translated in English) is a strange but interesting film that most films
has evolved from by following the so called nowadays “cliche tropes” or “A hero’s
journey” that focus on creating its own ideal themes that we see in modern films
today and may have been perfected in other films. For example they created the “suspense
in the murder scene” however “Psycho” (1960) perfected it by having the audio
of a violin screeching in a high pitch tone that makes the audience feel uncomfortable
and they also gave us details and understanding of the character so we would
care for their safety.
The story is very complex and all about the human mind with the link it has towards insanity. The story starts off with the main
character called Cesare talking to a random man on a bench about his past, long flashback
was shown that Cesare once had a close friend and that they went to see the somnambulist
(sleepwalker) at the circus only to be told that his friend will die by the sun
rise tomorrow. Before the predicted death scene happened they met a lovely women called Jane, which they both
agreed that no matter which of them she marries they will still be best
friends. During the night the somnambulist’s predictions came true and the
friend was no more. Cesare was in shock and aims to find the murderer. He suspected that it was Dr. Caligari who murdered his friend however it turned
out to be the somnambulist himself, during the night he went over to Jane’s
house to attack her however she awoke and screamed, the somnambulist was
confused about what he had to do so he took Jane from her house and fled only
to be caught up by the civilians. During the mean time Cesare still on the look
for evidence that Dr. Caligari was the one behind all those attacks and he
ended up in the insane asylum where he found proof from Dr. Caligari’s dairy
that he planned everything so the other doctors sealed Dr. Caligari into one of
the cells only to be revert back to where this story began where Cesare was
talking to a man on the bench only to be told that he was insane.
The film is quite questionable. It's classed as a good movie because it
took a new direction in telling a story or it's a bad movie because of how the whole idea was put
together and deliver. It’s amazing that one film managed to cause the next generation of
films however it feels like some films that was inspired by this feature length film done some
of its original ideals better, for example: this film ends in a cliff hanger that the
main character is insane however in "Inception" (2010) they ended with the
question “is it a dream or not?” It was more effective as we know about the
main character in this movie but in "Des cabinet des Dr.Caligari" we was given so
little information about Cesare that the audience might as call him average Joe.
The only character was interesting enough to continue
to watch this was Dr. Caligari with his weird, hilarious acting abilities while
everyone else just looks like a cut-out cardboard. This film by no means is bad, in fact it was pretty good however the previous movie (Le voyage dans la lune) seems to understand the direction to go and understands
how to be itself and not for other movies to rip off and do better. The one
thing that "Le voyage dans la lune" does better than this movie is that Le voyage
dans la lune can be watched for fun and silliness however the same can be said
for this film however this film was designed to be a horror and unless if it’s
a spoof it won’t work for this generation as we have seen more scarier visuals and story so in simple terms “Le
voyage dans la lune” can work for both generations while “Das Cabinet des
Dr.Caligari” can only seem to work its best during its time.
Overall this movie is a 6/10. The ideas are really good and it has a unique art direction it took was superb and fitting towards its tone
however basic character introductions other than names and what they look like isn't
enough for me to care what happens to them. Even though that the other film had
this problem they showed the passion of their main character by having him
arguing to go to the moon so I at least want him to succeed. The duration of the movie is too long and any line of dialog was exchanged by subtitles in its own frame,
which can be annoying as if you can read too fast and you would have to wait for the next scene or too slow and
not care about the story at all, again: the other film managed to get around that and only allowing
their visuals to tell the story and that's why "Le voyage dans la lune" is objectively a better movie.
""The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" as a viewing experience must have been unsettling to the audiences of 1920." - Roger Ebert
(http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-1920)
"Early filmmaking at its best." - Wesley Lovell
(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/le_voyage_dans_la_lune/)
"The influence of Robert Wiene's Caligari is so great that it threatens to obscure the work itself." - Rob Humanick
(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003361-cabinet_of_dr_caligari/)""The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" as a viewing experience must have been unsettling to the audiences of 1920." - Roger Ebert
(http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-1920)
"Early filmmaking at its best." - Wesley Lovell
(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/le_voyage_dans_la_lune/)
1 comment:
Hi Jacky! Well done on getting your first 2 reviews out there nice and quickly :)
I would just like to give you a few pointers today, that you can apply to your next review to make them sound more professional and academic. Although these are called 'reviews', they are really more an exercise in analysing the attributes of the film, so you should try and keep the tone less chatty...so for example, not using colloquial speech such as 'flick'. Also, you should try and avoid writing in the first person, so instead of writing 'I think' you should say something like 'it appears that' or 'it could be said'... have a look at the guide that Phil has made available on the group blog for full details on how to do this. it will seem really strange to be writing like this to start with, but it is a habit that you need to get into, as your essays and eventually dissertation will need this style.
You are also asked to support your review with 3 quotes from published sources, so this means having a look at online resources or material from the library. Your quotes should be introduced (usually via the author)and then 'unpicked' to show how they support your discussion. You then reference them within the text with the author's surname and the date the quote was written by the author, so for example (Smith, 2010). A full reference is then created in your bibliography, which lists all the sources you have used. As well as quotes, you need to include images, which are also referenced in an illustrations list at the end. you can find all the information on how to compile a bibliography, and how to reference your various sources, here - http://community.ucreative.ac.uk/Harvard-Referencing
Make sure that whenever you mention a film name, you put it in italics, and include the date in brackets the first time you mention it.
And just one more thing...Cesare was actually the name of the somnambulist! The man with the murdered friend was called Francis... :)
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