The movie is about Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster, who is assigned a case where she has to interrogate a prisoner to help catch a serial killer.
This prisoner is Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins). He is a highly manipulative psychologist and a serial killer. He skins his female victims. And he is a cannibal.
Why is The Silence of the Lambs a great movie?
1.Won the Top 5
First of all, The Silence of the Lambs is the first and only horror movie to win 5 Oscars.
The movie won the best picture, best directing, best writing, best actress, and best actor!!!
2. No cheap horror
It is different from other horror films because it has an artistic value in addition to being very entertaining to watch.
In this movie, there is no “cheap horror”.
No graphic violence or cheap scares. The horror comes from the dialogue and the character of Hannibal Lecter.
3. Great performances
It is probably the best performance in Jodie Foster’s career.
Her acting was naturalistic. And in her scenes with Hopkins, you can feel the fear in her eyes without even moving or talking.
Anthony Hopkins masterfully played the character in a more elaborated way. He was not naturalistic like Foster.
But the character required a more pronounced performance.
He managed to capture the audience whenever he was on screen. And actually he was not on screen for a long time.
Hopkins appeared only for less than 16 minutes in the movie. Yet, he managed to win an Oscar for best acting.
4. Defied steriotypes
Clarice works in a man dominant workspace. Other men hit on her in many scenes of the movie. In the beginning, other male characters looked down at her and ridiculed her.
But this is a very small part of the movie and almost insignificant in the character’s arc.
Jodie Foster’s character is strong, smart, and independent. She is not the typical female of the horror genre.
The character was not sexualized. She is not seen as always scared and crying for help.
Directing Style
Director Jonathan Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto used a subjective camera to “show” the audience what the characters are feeling.
Subjective camera angles are used to enter the minds of the character.
For example, POV (point of view) shots show us what the character is seeing. But also intimate close up shots on the faces of the characters can be considered subjective.
Because these shots help us see what the character is thinking… of course, this happens with the help of great angles.
To better understand the style and camera language in the movie, let’s dissect this scene:
Dissecting a Scene: First Encounter
This is the first scene where Clarice meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
The Silence of the Lambs: first encounter scene
First, Clarice’s POV… We see the character only when she sees him. The director is trying here to put the audience in Clarice’s shoes. To identify with her.
Notice how Jodie Foster is looking at the person in front of her. While Anthony Hopkins is looking closer to the camera lens than her.
This is a small acting trick… It should go unnoticed for the untrained eye. But it is very effective. We feel as if Dr. Hannibal Lecter is talking to us, the viewers. And as if the camera is still the point of view of Clarice even though it is a close up.
After a sequence of over the shoulder shots, the directors moves to close ups. Here the characters start to connect.
But notice who is dominant in the scene: Dr. Hannibal Lecter is the one who motivated the close up.
He ordered Clarice to come closer. He then comes closer to the camera. As if the character demanded the close-up.
Then, an old and over-seen directing technique: Clarice sits down so that the camera is shooting her from a higher angle. This makes her weaker than Hannibal. Meanwhile, Hannibal is shot from a lower angle to give him more power.
Add to that, Hannibal’s face occupies the whole screen while Clarice is filmed with a medium shot to appear smaller.
Through these directing techniques the director told the viewers visually who is the protagonist (Clarice who we see the scene from her perspective), and who is the dominant character.
Even if you watched the scene on mute, you will understand the essence of the scene.
1917 is a war movie about two British soldiers in WWI who were tasked to do an impossible mission.
The movie starts with the soldiers sleeping, they receive their task, walk through the very long trenches, then to the enemy’s trenches, get chased and bombed… (we will not spoil the entire movie). All that was done in one continuous take!
Actually, it seems like just one long continuous take. When you take a look at the behind the scenes shots of 1917, you will see that the camera crew had to chase after the characters by Jeep, motorcycle, crane, drone, and even by foot.
This has been done before. One of the earliest examples of a one-shot film was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. A more recent example is Birdman.
However, 1917 pushes it a step further. In this movie, the task was harder because of the war setting which means persistent action. Add to that, the action took place over large landscapes. 1917 never uses the same location twice.
Obviously, the movie was not shot in 1 continuous take. We will reveal all the techniques and filming tricks used in 1917 to establish the feel of a continuous shot.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins was up for this hard task. Deakins is undoubtedly one of the greatest cinematographers alive. He worked on movies like Skyfall and Sicario, The Shawshank Redemption, No Country for Old Men. He also earned the best cinematography Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 and now for 1917. The list goes on…
Director Sam Mendes decided to shoot the film in a continuous long take to create an immersive experience and to put the audience in the shoes of a British soldier fighting in World War I.
So how did director Sam Mendes, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and editor Lee Smith achieve this extremely difficult cinematic trick?
Planning the long take
To get the 1917 long shot right, the filmmakers needed to plan everything before starting to shoot. And I mean plan to the tiniest detail.
The crew needed to build models for every shot. This would help them visualize the shooting process better.
For example, this is the farmhouse that the two soldiers visit.
Here is the model they built and here’s how it appeared in the movie
The art department built realistic sets from scratch. Each set needed to be able to accommodate for the path of the camera.
This was a main aspect the filmmakers needed to account for before shooting. These narrow trenches needed to be wide enough to fit the camera and crew who will be following the actors as they walk along. For example, the barbed wire the two soldiers walked through in no man’s land had an angled pathway so the camera could get through. Ramps allowed the camera to pass from no man’s land into the lower German trenches.
For example, the barbed wire the two soldiers walked through in no-man’s land had angled pathway so the camera could get through. Ramps allowed the camera to pass from no-man’s land into the lower German trenches.
Perhaps most impressive of all was the 5200 feet of trenches the crew had to build. As some of the most action-packed and challenging shots happen in these narrow pathways, it was crucial to measure everything.
Timing
Every scene had to be the exact length of the land. So if a scene shot lasted 5 minutes, the action has to take exactly that long to get through that specific area.
So, the production designed should build sets that allow the camera to move and still look narrow. These sets should extend to a large landscape that will fit the exact timing of the actor’s action!
Rehearsals and Blocking
In an interview with Vox Mendes said they wouldn’t fill the set until they knew exactly how long it should be.
This required a lot of rehearsing.
While all films require rehearsals the process for achieving the 1917 long take was much longer and more rigorous.
Usually, the rehearsals on most film sets can take place on the day of shooting. But for 1917 walkthroughs were happening well in advance. They first started rehearsing is a studio and then moved to the real sets.
Every single line of dialogue had to be rehearsed on location. The whole process of blocking and rehearsing scenes went on for 4 months!
Once they figured out the landscapes and timing, measured everything out, and made sure every actor knew their lines and hit their marks… it was time to start shooting.
Filming
There was another crucial step in pulling off the illusion of one continuous long take in 1917:
The camera could never move backward only forward.
The characters had a starting point and a fixed destination and could never go back.
One solution for that was letting the camera move 360 degrees.
This allowed the crew to constantly move forward and follow the characters without making a visible hard cut. Productions of this size call for heavy equipment, but how were the crew supposed to deal with cameras that needed to be mobile?
The solution was a new model of high-definition camera that was much lighter and smaller than usual.
This gave the cinematographer the same great image quality but also allowed for more portability and for the camera to more quickly be attached to something like a crane or a drone.
Scofield’s (the main character) journey downriver was captured mostly by a crane.
Lighting
The constant movement created another big challenge: lighting
This was a challenge because it will be extremely hard and restricting to hide the large lights and their grips in 360-degree shots. It would be very hard to light such large areas.
The most logical solution for that would be natural lighting.
Therefore, cloudy days were the best days to be filming. Sunny days meant more shadows and more equipment.
Imagine that they would be looking at weather apps to see when it’s going to be cloudy and if the cloud would last long enough to do a 5-minute take.
However, they did use some artificial lighting.
For example, this 50-foot tall light tower that was dimmed to create the color of fire that meant to light up the entire wound village.
And, because the movie took place in real time the lighting had to look consistent and to match the natural light of the time of day that the action is taking place.
Editing
In post-production Deakins and Mendes found subtle ways to make those cuts without the audience knowing.
Sometimes an object would block the frame.
Hidden cuts were also seamlessly achieved when characters travel through doorways or entered a dark bunker.
Other shots required even cleverer transitions.
In one sequence, Scofield runs through a burning City and jumps off a ledge into a river. If you look at the same shot behind the scenes you’ll see George running through that same city and jumping off the ledge. But instead of a river, he jumps onto a mat!
With the help of some visual effects, the editors were able to seamlessly stitch together the character jumping off the ledge and into the water.
Crazy Creative filming
Nothing quite matched the challenge of pulling off the climactic sequence in which Scofield runs alongside a trench in the middle of battle.
Getting the shot was a huge endeavor.
They started on a 50-foot crane. It climbs up the trench with the actor… then the camera is taken off that crane and hooked onto another crane. That crane was on the back of a tracking vehicle that was already slowly moving back. So as they hook it on, it’s all one move that moves back.
Still in the same take, the action continues… Jorge speeds up and starts running. Meanwhile, the two crew members that hooked the camera come across the back of the shot, but we don’t recognize them because they were in costume. Once the camera was on the truck it had to follow George as he ran for about a quarter of a mile meanwhile.
Fun Fact
While everything they did while shooting had to be so precise, there was still room for accidents…
As George is running out of the trench you’ll see him bump into some extras. That wasn’t planned!
The actor bumped into them by accident and they just kept the camera rolling. Had Mendes called cut right away, this great genuine moment capturing the chaos of the war would never have made it into the movie
Citizen Kane is a film produced in 1941 and written, directed, and produced by Orson Welles who also starred in it as the role of the main character. Not only that, but the movie was Welles’s first feature film! Citizen Kane is considered by many critics and fans as the greatest film ever made. The movie is ranked 93rd top rated movie on IMDB and 4th on Rotten Tomatoes with a 100% positive reviews from critics. The main question is: why is citizen Kane that important? And why film critics consider it a revolutionary film? The answer will concern the narrative of the film and how the story was told. Before I dive into the answers, let’s quickly remember the movie.
Citizen Kane Summary
The movie starts with an old man on his dying bed. In the first scene the man says the word: “Rosebud” before he dies. And the journey begins in a search for the mystery of the meaning of Rosebub. After that it is revealed that this old man is actually the wealthy newspaper publisher Charles Kane. The audience are introduced to a documentary about the life of Charles Kane. The producer of this showreel is unsatisfied by the result because he thinks that it does not reflect the real character of Kane, so he send a reporter to search for the meaning of Kane’s last word. The reporter starts his investigation and interviews different people who were close to Kane in an attempt to find the meaning of Rosebub. The movie tells us the story of Kane from his childhood until he died through the interviews of his associates and through flashbacks.
Why is Citizen Kane and Important Movie?
Citizen Kane was considered as a turning point towards a new form of narrative cinema where the movie defied the conventions of the classical movie narrative. The story of the film is told from the perspective of six narrators by a series of flashbacks. This way of storytelling added complexity and ambiguity to the film narrative. Another modification in the typical narrative is that the film presented the ending of Kane since the beginning, the viewer knows that Kane will be successful and rich and that he will die at an old age. The enjoyment that the audience get from the narrative is no longer through suspense about what will happen to the character, but rather from understanding why his life turned out the way it did. In Citizen Kane, the spectator needs to put together bits and pieces presented by the six different narrators in order to get a hold on the whole narrative.
The ending: What is Rosebud?
In the end of the movie, the characters did not succeed in knowing the significance of the word “Rosebud”, but we are given an additional shot that Rosebud was engraved on a sled that belonged to the young Kane before he was taken from his parents. So, before the last shot the film ends with an open ending. But the final shot introduced the meaning of Rosebud to the audience and not to the characters. By that the movie has 2 endings. This is a new technique which adds to importance of Citizen Kane in film history.
Most of us consider the Oscars to be our ultimate guide for good and respected movies. Actually there are other film awards given at various film festivals that are more important and more prestigious than the Academy Awards. So, while the attention of most fans go to the oscars to see if their favourite film or actor will win, movie critics and film buffs are more concerned with other film festivals that are considered to appreciate the artistic achievements in cinema even when films are not produced by big studios or featuring celebrity actors or gaining wide public recognition.
In this list we present the top 5 film festivals (other than the Oscars). The festivals have a great importance in the film industry, are greatly recognised and appreciated by film critics and by the audience at the same time, and somehow these awards guide the results of the Oscars. This film festivals and awards in this list are not presented in any specific order since we are not judging their importance or popularity.
Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival Official Logo
Cannes Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and most important film festival in terms of worldwide impact. Films that participate in this festival usually belong to the arthouse cinema while having a wide audience attention at the same time. Cannes Film Festival was founded in 1946, and is now considered the world’s most widely publicised events. The most important award given in Cannes is the Palme d’Or award or the Golden Palm, and it is granted for the best competing film. Films that won this prestigious award include Amour (Directed by Michael Haneke, 2012), The Tree of Life (Directed Terrence Malick, 2011), The Pianist (Directed by Roman Polanski, 2002), Pulp Fiction (Directed by Quentin Tarantino, 1994).
Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival Official Logo
The Venice film festival is not only important because it celebrates the artistic achievements of filmmakers, but it is gets its prestige from being the oldest film festival. This film festival was founded in 1932 and it takes place annually in Venice, Italy. Several awards are distributed among competing films each year including a Grand Jury Award and The Silver Lion which is an award for the best director in the competing section. However, the highest prize in Venice Film Festival is the Golden Lion or Leone d’Oro. This award is the equivalent of the Oscar’s best picture and is awarded to the best film of the year. Some movies that won the Golden Lion are Roma (Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, 2018), The Shape of Water (Directed by Guillermo del Toro, 2017), and Brokeback Mountain (Directed by Ang Lee, 2005).
Berlin International Film Festival
Berlinale Official Logo
The Berlin International Film Festival is also called Berlinale. This festival is on of the “Big Three” festivals. (the Big Three are: Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and Berlinale). Among the awards of Berlinale, the biggest prize that filmmakers wish to get is the Golden Bare. Movies awarded with the Golden Bare award include Sense and Sensibility (Directed by Ang Lee, 1996), A Separation (Directed by Asghar Farhadi and won Best Forign Language Film at the Acedemy Awards, 2012), and Magnolia (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 2000).
Toronto International Film Festival
tiff Official Logo
Also known as TIFF or tiff. TIFF was founded in 1976 and since then the festival had a steady growth in prestige and popularity. Now it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world with around 500K attendees every year. TIFF is considered to be second to Cannes film festival in terms of exposure and market activity. The festival also is known to lead the Oscar results where films the win in TIFF are more likely to receive Oscars. Unlike all the festivals in this list, the most prestigious award that TIFF offers is an award based on the voting of the people who attended the festival and not based on the decisions of a jury. This award is the People’s Choice Award, and it has been awarded to movies like American Beauty (Directed by Sam Mendez, 1999), The King’s Speech (Directed by Tom Hooper, 2010), 12 Years a Slave (Directed by Steve McQueen, 2013) and Room (Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, 2015). You can see the direct effect of the People’s Choice Award of the TIFF and the winning movies at the Academy Awards through these examples.
Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival Official Logo
Sundance Film Festival is the most prestigious festival in the United States for arthouse films, documentaries, short films, and episodic content. The festival is held yearly since 1978. What differentiates Sundance Film Festival from the rest is that the movies participating in the competition must be independently produced. Independently produced films are movies founded, produced and distributed by individuals or groups that are not major studios. So movies produced by Warner Bros, Paramount, and Disney… are out of the competition at Sundance Film Festival. Two major categories of prizes are awarded at this festival: the U.S. Grand Jury Prizes (for dramatic and documentary films produced in the U.S) and the World Cinema Jury Prizes (for international dramatic and documentary films). Movies that won the U.S Grand Jury Prize include Whiplash (Directed by Damien Chazelle, 2014), and Precious (Directed by Lee Daniels, 2009). International movies that won the prestigious prize include The Sovenir (A British film directed by Joanna Hogg, 2019), and Butterflies (A Turkish film directed by Tolga Karacelik, 2018).
In the Irishman Martin Scorsese returns to his signature style in movies.. The director did not make a gangster film since his award winning The Departed! Scorsese also returns to his roots by collaborating with Robert De Niro. The two did not work together in a movie since Casino in 1995. So The Irishman brings memories for movies that we all loved by Scorsese and De Niro such as Taxi Driver, Good Fellas, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy. Scorsese also managed to convince Joe Pesci to get out of his retirement and work on this film. Some sources say that Pesci refused 50 times before he accepted to take the role in The Irishman. If that is not enough.. The film also stars Al Pacino to be the first film that stars the two acting legends (Pacino and De Niro).
Story
The Irishman is a gangster film. The movie starts with old Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) telling his story that we see through flashbacks. Before becoming a mafia hitman, Frank was a truck driver that delivers meat, events lead him to meet Russel (Joe Pesci) who is the head of a crime family and who has great power and connections in the city. The two men become friends after Frank starts doing some jobs for Russel including murder. Then, Russel introduces Frank to Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), a politician that has mafia ties. Hoffa and Frank become friends, their families become close and Frank becomes Hoffa’s body guard and helps him with his business and to take down his political rivals.
The 3 hours 30 mins movie is full with events and character development. Unlike many recent long films, I did not think that the movie could have been any shorter. I can guarantee that if you like gangster and political dramas you will never find a dull moment in the film.
Acting
As one would expect, the acting in the movie was just perfect. And I am referring to all the cast. But Joe Pesci steals the light in the first half of the movie. His presence on the screen was so captivating and his performance was very dominant and natural at the same time. If the actor decided to continue his retirement after this movie, it would be the perfect performance for us to remember his career. Al Pacino, as always was excellent, although Deniro and Pesci had a bigger margin to show off their acting and bigger screen time. But still Al Pacino delivered some great scenes in the movie.
As for De Niro, I see that this movie is a tribute for the actor. He appeared as young as 24 year old and as old as 80! That was done with stunning and seamless de-aging effects. De Niro’s appearance as his younger self added a lot of nostalgia to the movie. I couldn’t but think of the actor’s older movies. And this is why i am saying that The Irishman is a tribute to De Niro’s career. I think that is only fair that he wins an Oscar for his role in this film. Not only for his performance, but also to complete this tribute for an actor that delivered many of the most memorable characters of cinema’s recent history.
Directing
The Irishman is a proof that Martin Scorsese still can bring us interesting gang story and tell them in new inventive ways. The 76 year old director did not remake “The Good Fellas” with a new script. He tried to add new directing techniques and aesthetics that in some moments you feel that the forces of Scorsese and Quentin tarantino were merged in directing the movie.
First, the confusing way of telling the story, or what film scholars call non-linear storytelling. This style of mixing up the time and place of events and presenting them in a different order and out of chronology is a Tarantino trademark. Think of Pulp Fiction!
Scorsese used this confusing technique but made it easier to watch and understand: The film opens with a tracking shot in a nursing home, where an older Frank is telling his life story, this takes us to a flashback where Frank and Russell and their wives are taking a road trip heading to a wedding. From that scene we go to another flashback (within the flashback) to the first time the two men met, and even to another flashback where Frank was 24 years old in World War I. Occasionally, the film returns to the nursing home and reminds us that old frank is still telling his story.
But it is not very hard for the audience to keep track of the story. In every time jump there are some guiding objects to make us understand where we are at. Most importantly, the faces of the actors and their de-aging helped us understand when the actions are taking place.
Tarantino style (or the post-modern style: for the cinephiles here) is also vivid through having text on the screen telling us the name of the character and how and when the character dies. And of course I will not forget the obvious blood splatter of the wall when Frank “paints the wall” with his victim’s blood.
The Irishman is a must see movie, and a 209 minutes worth spending! Its the longest film that scorsese ever directed, and took 106 days to film! With a budget of 159$ million!
Cast: Emmanuelle Riva (Elle), Eiji Okada (Lui), Stella Dassus (Mother), Pierre Barbaud (Father), Bernard Fresson (German Lover). Directed by Alain Resnais. Written by Marguerite Duras.
Story
Set in the summer of 1957 in Hiroshima. A French actress comes from Paris to Japan to make an international movie about peace. The actress meets a Japanese architect and has a short but passionate affair with him. The actress is set to return to France the day after she meets the Japanese man. Although the couple quickly became romantically involved, We learn that they both are both married with children. The movies is basically a conversation between these two lovers who come from very different backgrounds and have to learn as much as they can about each other and about their different cultures. All that happens with the Hiroshima catastrophe in the background of the film.
A French New Wave Film
Hiroshima Mon Amour obviously belongs to French New wave. It is directed by Alain Resnais who is a critic in the film magazine Cachier du Cinema, and produced at the time of the new wave. But also the film contains the essence of the new cinematic wave. I will not go over all the characteristics of the movement here, but it would be interesting to draw attention at some of these distinctive characteristics. (If you would like to know about the French New Wave read this post)
Structure: Multi-layered Time
Resnais’ revolutionary work of art in cinema is manifested in Hiroshima Mon Amour through the use of time. It can be described as multi-layered time. Since the beginning of the movie, we learn that the couple are running out of time as the woman is going back to paris. But more significantly, in the first few shots we can also notice that the film is jumping from current events into historical events (the bomb).
By that Resnais broke the classical narrative structure (three act structure: beginning, middle, and end). What is more interesting about this cross cutting between two different times is the director’s philosophy behind it. In an interview in 1999, Resnais said that he believes that “the past and present coexist, but the past shouldn’t be in flashback”. Hiroshima Mon Amour literally translates the saying. The characters were not present when the explosion happened, they were not even in Japan. So these images we see about the horrors of the bomb are, obviously, not seen by any of the characters. They are living in the shadow of past events, not remembering them.
This is a Movie
Another main characteristic of the French New Wave is reflexivity, or drawing the attention of the audience that they are watching a film. This is clear in Hiroshima Mon Amour through many instances. Such as the use of a mix between documentary footage and fiction scenes acted out by actors. And the fact that the main character is an actress filming a movie, this is present heavily in new wave films where characters in the movie are directors or actors to express the filmmaker’s love for cinema.
Hiroshima Mon Amour also references other movies. For example, the couple spent their last hours in a bar called Casablanca which can be seen as an homage to the 1942 movie Casablanca.
