Monday, September 28, 2009

Citizen Kane Movie Review


"Rosebud", was the last word out of Kane's (Orson Welles) mouth, before he past away. What did Kane mean by "Rosebud"? Was it a wife or maybe a childhood pet? During the movie that's what they were trying to figure out. I rated this movie 4 out of 5 stars. The camera angles in Citizen Kane are very random and I found them quite interesting. I felt that there was a lot of symbolism in a lot of the props, especially at the end of the movie. The sounds and music were really intense and really captured the mood of each scene. This movie made me go into to deep thought about why Kane was acting certain ways he did.


Citizen Kane starts out in flashback, with a man in a bed who whispers "Rosebud" right before he dies and drops a snow globe. It then goes to present day where Kane's closest friends and colleagues are questioned about what "Rosebud" really means.


The movie then goes to Kane's childhood at a not very nice house in the middle of winter. There is a little boy sledding, Charles Kane, and his mother is signing papers to sell Charles to some rich man. Kane grows up with the rich man being pampered with money and a very good education, while Kane's original parents receive money every year. When Kane grows up he runs a newspaper company that is not very successful, but Kane lives off his fake dads money. He then decides to make his newspaper successful and hires a new staff. Kane's wife Emily divorces him because she knows that he had an affair. His former wife and kid then die in a crash. Kane then married the woman he had the affair with, a former singer, named Susan Alexander(Dorothy Comingore) . Kane builds an Opera house for Susan and becomes very controlling and makes her sing. Susan then leaves him.


He becomes very aggressive and in one scene he tears apart a room and stops when he discovers a snow globe. It was the same one that dropped from his hand when he died. During his life he built this huge house that was bigger than anything ever imagined. He had a very large amount of statues and art. When people were cleaning out the house to sell the the items of worth, they came across something that would have explained what they were looking for, but never realized it and it ended up in a fire.


I think the reason Kane was so messed up was because of his mother and father selling him to that rich man. All his life he was given money and never really had a normal childhood. He thought that love was money and that's why none of his marriages lasted. I also think he was looking for his childhood the whole time and could never find it. I think he knew it to that's why he said, "If I wouldn't have been so rich, I might have been a very good man."


Friday, September 18, 2009

Gone with the Wind Movie Review


"Do u ever think of marrying just for fun?" This quote said by Rhett Butler to Scarlett. It's pretty ironic that Rhett said this because it seems that that's all that Scarlett does. I rated this movie 3 stars out of 5. It was pretty entertaining and kept me on the edge of my seat. What I didn't like was how the movie didn't really have a point and the ending was really disapointing. This movie could fall in the genres of romance and drama. Throughout the movie there were many unsuspecting deaths, civil war drama and a very complicated love triangle.

During the civil war in the movie one soldier only died that was of any importance to the movie. When the war ended, important characters started dying left and right. They were dropping like trees at a lumber jack convention. The love triangle of Ashley, Scarlett and Rhett was very exciting. I think that Clark Gable (Rhett Butler in the movie) did a great acting job, because he was very convincing and really captivated the audience with the bad boy style of Mr. Butler. The Civil War aspect of the movie really showed how the south really hated the yankees and how all the rich people became poor really fast. The war shaped many of the characters personality. Scarlett had to learn how to work in the fields and how to do things for herself.

During Gone with the Wind there many shocking deaths, a love triangle that was never fixed and a very traumatic war. I believe that th movie title means that when the war swept through, the southerner's lifestyles were Gone with the Wind. In the beginning Scarlett's father says this about his land, "It will come to you, this love of the land. There's no gettin' away from it if you're Irish." At the end of the movie when things are as bad as can be, Scarlett returns to her home and the land.