"I'm her sister and her mother".... Just a little weird

Chinatown by Richard Polanski is a mystery/investigatory film about a man named J.J. Gittes(Jack Nicholson) who is hired to spy on Hollis Mulwray, a man in charge of the city water. His wife thinks he is cheating on her. Mr. Mulwray is found dead and would mean Gittes investigation is over but he continues to try and figure out the case. Throughout the movie, I kept wondering what the title had to do with the film. There were few and small hints to it but you never get a full grasp of it until the end. The ending leads the viewer and J.J. to Chinatown where Gittes is supposed to meet Evelyn, Hollis' wife. When Gittes gets to Chinatown he finds Noah Cross, Evelyn's father who he belives killed Hollis. Cross asks Evelyn for custody of their child (father-daughter relationship). Evelyn says no, shoots him and drives off in her car until a policeman snipes her in the head and she dies. A famous quote at the end is "Foget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." That is when I understood the ending a knew that Chinatown was a place where stuff like that happens. Nothing good happens in Chinatown. Gittes has been there and has lived through two deaths. It ties in the story and the title and brings the film to an end.

Kiss me Deadly

Kiss me Deadly by Robert Aldrich has probably one of the weirdest beginning and ending to a movie I probably have ever seen. The beginning of the film starts out with Christina (Cloris Leachman) running down a street at night barefoot with this odd semi-sexual scream. You can tell that she is running away from somone and is very scared. This is a great example of why it's film noir because it's at night, very dark and she's very scared for some reason. The end of the film is pretty crazy as well. Mike Hammer, the one who picked up Christina tries to figure out where all of it started and he comes to this case that is buckled and fasened. He opens it quickly and gets a burn on his wrist. At the end of the film Velda is has recovered the box and is going to open it. Hammer and Christina are there and know that they have to get out quick because they know something bad is going to happen when she opens it. So, Velda opens it and it's pretty much a box from hell. She's is immediately engulfed in flames and the house starts to burn up. The ending credits show Mike and Christina making it out safe on the beach. The beginning and ending were very odd but made for and all around good film noir.

Out of the Past

To be honest, Out of the Past is one of probably five or ten so called "film noir" that I have seen. I have never really been drawn toward them, so I wasn't sure what I was going to think about Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past.

One thing I really liked was watching the development of Kathie Moffat played by Jane Greer. At the beginning of the film, she is portrayed as this nice lady and kind of innocent like she doesn't do anything wrong. We later understand that she works undercover just like Jeff. Throughout the movie, she is very manipulative and at one point tries to kill Jeff. To her despair, she doesn't realize that Jeff is going to double cross her. At the end of the film Kathie is shot and killed.

In class we were asked to think if Kathie was redeemable in anyway and this question made me think hard about it. I mean, Kathie had to have known that if she was being manipulative and going behind people's back trying to set them up that it was going to come back to her. I think she had it coming. She was the one who sent the guy out into the woods to kill Jeff. I think it's one of those things where the viewer can see it happening and hopes that it does. Overall I liked the movie more than I thought I would. It was very interesting and very dark which added to the affect and something I liked.

Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind, by Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry, is one of those films that you have to watch several times before you really understand it, unless you're a genius and therefore know everything. Anyways, this film is about a man named Joel Barrish(Jim Carrey) who meets this unusual being that he finds to like very much. They start to hang out a lot until Joel gets a letter saying that Clementine Kruczynski(Kate Winslet) has erased her memory of Joel. He does the same and they find eachother again. They meet eachother again and go through the same process. The film can get confusing between real life, memories and flashbacks to their previous relationship.

At the end of the film we are kind of left hanging showing Joel and Clemetine playing in the snow but it doesn't tell us if it was from the past, in the present or from the future. I think the director left it up to the viewer to decide. To me, I think it is from another one of their relationships where they keep meeting eachother and then erasing their memory. I think their relationship is one that will never end in the long run so they keep erasing and keep erasing. I think it is a never ending cycle for Joel and Clem. The same thing will happen everytime. Overall I liked the movie. It's classified as a romantic comedy and I liked it better than others because it doesn't have all that gooey and mushy romantic things. Some of it is in there just not overused.

"And that's all I have to say about that" -Forest Gump

His Girl Friday by Howard Hawks is a screwball comedy about a man named Walter (Cary Grant) who writes for the local newspaper and wants to get back with his ex-wife. It is a little bit of a task because Hildy (Rosalind Russel) was about to head out of town to get away from the paper business and to be with her husband to be, Bruce, (Ralph Bellamy).

As the movie carries on you see Walter become less of a major character, and an ifluence of Hildy. Hildy wanted to move and go get married to him but as the movie progresses she can't find herself anywhere but with Walther around the newsroom. Bruce gets arrested a couple times and towards the end of the movie, he pretty much doesn't mean anything the Hildy. It's funny to think that Walter had such an influence on her to keep her around even though you know they have troubles in the past and have gotten divorced. I guess the newspaper business had something to do with it, but at the start of the movie you feel like she's going to leave right away and you're never going to see her again. I liked to see that Walter got more popular with Hildy as Bruce became nothing to her. Overall I thought it was a pretty good movie and I enjoyed that part about the film.