Kellie's Red Dragon Review

Red Dragon, the prelude to Silence of The Lambs, was a very scary movie for me. I hate suspenseful/scary movies and movies where you see people get stabbed or shot. Even though I really dislike scary movies, this was probably the least painful to watch. I actually sort of liked the overall plot of the movie even though there were some nasty parts. The one actor that really stuck out to me was Emily Watson. She played a blind lady in the film who liked the Tooth fairy, Ralph Fiends, who was the same actor that played in Schindler's List. Emily is not really blind and she did an amazing job acting in this movie. My favorite part was when she was holding her arms straight out as Ralph Fiends held a shot gun to her chest. I loved this scene because her arms were completely open and she was vulnerable to the shot gun. This scene was very powerful because it also showed that Ralph did not let The Red Dragon take over his life. If The Red Dragon did take over his life, he would have shot Emily. Overall, I loved this plot but I hate the scary parts in the movie. I would recommend this movie to a friend but I will certainly never watch it again or the next movie in the series.

Calvin's "Red Dragon" Review

                The genre of horror movies is filled with some of the worst movies ever created. Most horror movies are generic, straight forward, and filled with mindless gore. Directors of horror movies must think that plotlines and acting are not important when compared to how much gore and suspense they can fit into two hours. Luckily, this is not the case with “Red Dragon.” “Red Dragon” is filled with all the things that everyone expects from a horror movie: suspense and gore, but it also has a strong plot to back it up.

                “Red Dragon” is the prelude to “The Silence of the Lambs,” therefore the director had the added pressure of staying true to the story and not destroying the series. “Red Dragon” was able to do both of these things successfully, however the director might have tried a little too hard to reference, “The Silence of the Lambs.” The movie starting with Hannibal getting caught put Hannibal in a completely different perspective for the rest of the film. Hannibal was caught mere minutes after he was introduced and made him look unintelligent for being caught so easily. Trying to convince the audience that Hannibal is in fact a genius after showing them him being caught seemingly by accident is impossible. If I hadn’t previously seen “Silence of the Lambs” I would never be able to respect Hannibal while watching “Red Dragon.”

                A strength of “Red Dragon” was their incredibly strong actors. Anthony Hopkins dominates as every role he takes and this movie was no exception even if the script painted him in the wrong light. Ralph Fiends, who plays the main villain, shows that he can not only play a likeable character like Schindler  in “Schindler’s List,” but that he can also play a character that can get the audiences blood pumping by simply being on screen. Emily Watson, an actor I had previously not even known about played a blind woman so well that I actually believed she was blind. One of the most stunning images in the entire film is when blood splatters on her face and she doesn’t bat an eye. Having such control over her body is something few actors have.

                “Red Dragon” is a very good movie that is worthy of being a piece of the “The Silence of the Lambs” series. Without giving anything away, the ending is superb and brings the audience on a rollercoaster ride. “Red Dragon” is one of the few good horror movies. 

Calvin's Snatch Review

                “Snatch” is yet another movie that follows the parallel lives of seemingly random people and their random encounters with each other. Each character in the film was unique and interesting. The chemistry each of them had with each other made each scene thoroughly enjoyable. The plotline was clear and concise, but complicated enough that at no point throughout the film did the audience know what was going to happen next. Overall, “Snatch” is a great movie.

                That’s not to say “Snatch” is perfect. One particular error is the sheer volume of characters the film introduced at the same time. During the opening credits there is a montage that gives three second introductions to what felt like twenty characters each with names like “Franky Four Fingers.” This is a lot of information to dump on the audience at one time. Throughout the rest of the movie I didn’t even think there was a surplus of characters simply because the movie did a good job of introducing them one at a time when the characters were actually needed. Even if the movie had the montage, but did not have the characters names of the characters displayed during the montage that would have fixed my problem with having too many characters introduced too fast. As it stands now however, this one scene overwhelmed me and almost scared me off from watching the rest of the movie.

                Another fixable error that could have made the movie more enjoyable to watch if fixed is the character’s accents. Some of the characters have great accents like Turkish. However, some of the actors over did their accents and this not only made the movie seem fake, but also made the movie hard to follow. When I say some characters, I do not mean Brad Pitt’s character. Brad Pitt’s character was supposed to have an accent that the audience would have to strain to understand and he did a great job of achieving this goal. One character whose accent was subpar was Brick Top. Brick Top having a very thick accent added absolutely nothing to the movie and nearly every one of his lines is crucial for plot development. Giving Brick Top a hard to understand accent only raised the chance of the audience falling behind in the plot and forcing them to put in the effort to catch up.

                These two complaints were minor things in a sea of great directing and acting. The director clearly went out of his way to be creative and original and that alone is a sign of a great film.

                                  

Kellie's Snatch Review

Snatch was the one movie where I could not figure out the point of it. The plot really did not make any sense. I knew they were looking for a diamond but they were also trying to find someone to fight for a mobster who fed the people who betrayed him to pigs. The only good part of the movie was Brad Pitt’s acting. Brad Pitt (Mickey O’Neil) was a gypsy who was really good at bare knuckle fighting. Brad Pitt overpowered every other actor in this movie with his gypsy accent. The accents were very hard to understand in this movie. I often felt like I had no idea what was going on because you could not understand what the actor was saying. However, I did like the fact that the multiple plots came together at the end and you were able to see how they were related to one another. It reminded me a lot of like the structure of American Gangster. During the movie, the dog was the only thing that really related the two stories together. Overall, this movie was not really the best movie I have ever seen but it was also not the worst. Nothing really stuck out to me in this movie to put it over the top, but a couple laughs came from it. I would have never watched this movie myself and I do not think I will ever watch it again.

Red Dragon

Red dragon

Red dragon is a thrilling movie staring the greatest actor of all time Edward Norton. Red dragon plays off of the popular and successful Hannibal Lector story. Hannibal, played by Anthony Hopkins, is an ingenuous doctor who murders people and devours parts of his victims. This movie answered the popular question as to how this brilliant murderer was caught and put in jail. Unfortunately I feel the director did a poor job showing this partly because it went by so quickly in order to get the actual plot. It seemed almost impractical the way  Hannibal was caught because he is supposed to be this magnificent genius.

Red dragon tells the story of a retired detective Will Graham, who had originally solved the murders of Hannibal Lector, who is attempting to solve a mystery of the Toothfairy. Graham, being a great detective, helps the police in their investigation. The murderer, “the Toothfairy”, magnificently played by Ralph Fiennes, was a man who had gone insane from years of abuse from his mother. He believed he was the “red dragon”, with unforgettable tattoo of a dragon that covered his entire back. Ralph Fiennes is well known for his compassionate and good characters from movies such as the great Schindler's List. Fiennes take a drastic change in this movie cast as an insane murderer. Fiennes nails this role giving a great performance that convinces his audience that he truly is insane.

- Maxwell Brown

Maxwell Brown

Snatch

Snatch takes place in London, where a man named “Franky Four Fingers”, played by Benicio Del Toro, is given the task of returning an enormous diamond that was stolen, back to New York Where another man named Avi Denovitz played by Dennis Farina. Franky Four Fingers is given the nickname because he has a major gambling problem and couldn’t pay someone back so they cut his finger off. At the same time a man named Turkish, played by Jason Statham, who is a boxing promoter sets up a deal with Brick Top for his fighter to fall in the fourth round. Unfortunately things go wrong when a gypsy knocks out their boxer. Turkish then proceeds to get the gypsy to fight in the set boxing match but runs into even more trouble.

The director Guy Richie does a fantastic job filming this movie. He uses a fast action camera shots. Using this fast action type of directing he will shoot a quick scene then move to the next scene in just a short amount of time. Guy Richie chose to direct the movie in this fashion in order to portray the fast pace and confusion of the plot. The director also chose to have the gypsies speak with an unrecognizable accent n an almost unrecognizable accent that takes concentration to understand what they are saying. Guy Richie is trying to give the idea that these gypsies are different, that they are separate ideas and values because of how they were raised. The most interesting thing I found about the movie was the way they depicted the gypsies. They showed them as dirty people who live in tiny trailers. Guy Richie also portrayed them as being people who you cannot trust.

Calvin's Review on "Memento"

                “Memento” is a masterpiece. Simply attempted to create a movie as complicated as “Memento” shows the courage Christopher Nolan has as a director. Creating “Memento” successfully shows that Christopher Nolan does not only have the drive to make good movies, but the tools to do it as well.

                “Memento” is so confusing that simply trying to explain what “Memento” is can be a challenge. Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, suffers from short term memory loss and uses notes and tattoos to hunt down the man who killed his wife. If Nolan filmed the movie normally, Leonard would not be a good main character for a movie. The movie would mostly entail the audience yelling at Leonard for being such an idiot and making constant mistakes due to his short term memory loss. Nolan solved this problem by having the movie play in reverse. The first scene in the movie is Leonard killing someone, and every scene after that shows the steps Leonard went through to find and kill this person. Leonard still makes quite a few mistakes through the movie; however the audience is making these same mistakes with Leonard and don’t realize their own mistakes until a few scenes after.

                 “Memento” keeps the audience trying to figure out what is really going on and when the movie finally reveals the answer at the end, or rather the beginning, there is a twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan jealous. This twist, which I will not say, made the movie especially challenging for the actors. Often times scenes in the movie had multiple meanings and the actors had the impossible job of portraying their characters so they could fit both meanings.

                “Memento” is a movie that I would strongly recommend on the condition that the person I am recommending it to is not looking for a relaxing movie to watch on a Saturday night. As long as the audience is willing to think while watching it, they will get more enjoyment out of the film than they will ever expect from a film that tells the story backwards.