Drama Movie Reviews Samples For Students

The movie entitled “Snitch” is a crime drama film directed by Rick Roman Waugh, who is a former stuntman. The movie starts off with the lead character, Johnson, who played John Matthews, who receives an unexpected call about his son. He has not seen his son, Jason, in a while and was surprised that he was being charged for possession and distribution of illegal narcotics. It is now common to see Johnson playing a family man, but not one for drama. The start of the movie introduces him as a caring father who was really concerned.
Even in the first scene, there was ...

Introduction

A great script full with twists and unpredictability influences the success of a film to a great extent. The 2003 award-winning film adaptation, a comedy drama written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze exemplifies creativity in filmmaking. It is wickedly playful in construction and records the torments of a screenwriter who is not adept at writing a movie about orchids. Ironically, the film manages to have the story effectively told in a captivating and exceptionally creative manner by incorporating two lines of stories into one. The film narrates the true story of Charlie Kaufman and his struggles to adapt the book The Orchid ...

Takashi Miike's 1999 film Audition is an artful yet horrifying tale of a mild-mannered widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who, in his attempts to find a new wife, falls for a young woman Asami Yamasaki) who is far more than meets the eye. Miike's signature dreamlike mise-en-scene, complete with moody and atmospheric cinematography and strong, vulnerable performances from both leads, creates a twisted romance/revenge film that strongly addresses issues of gender roles and divisions within relationships, particularly as they are applied to Japanese culture. The film explores and critiques notions of romanticism normally found in modern romantic dramas, as the representation of relationships and sexuality in ...

The following analysis of Persona and Solaris reveals how movies from unlike countries and of different genres portray the development of opposite human personalities while losing or gaining humanity under the external influences and internal self-recognition. The attempts to create a fine movie about internal and external of human life do not often impress much, especially nowadays when we experience an endless flow of visual images. Probably, it inspires people to look back at the classic works that not only represent the unusual transformations in the forms of self but also produce extraordinary rhythms in the scenes (Tarkovsky 113). ...

Our university’s recent production of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene showcases a relatively straightforward performance of the opera by Kurt Weill, Langston Hughes and Elmer Rice. The drama of a group of neighbors along an ordinary New York tenement in the 1940s, Street Scene (as produced by the theatre department) seeks to illustrate the inherent drama and tension of ordinary American city life, and the universality of those conflicts to human history. Through the elements of performance and lighting, Street Scene elevates the domestic dramas of these New York characters into universal themes that resonate greatly with the ...

“12 Angry Men” is an excellent drama that describes the prudent judicial process and legal acumen of jurists. The drama is considered significant in educating law students about the judicial process. The filmmaker educates about different methods of reaching a wise decision by consensus building. This paper intends to discuss the film, “12 Angry Men” along with analyzing the judicial process that is involved in the drama.
The drama opens with a scene where a Judge assigns a responsibility to find the truth to a jury of twelve members. Judge addresses jury and says “it now becomes your duty to try to separate ...

Secrets and Lies (1996)
This movie focuses on the life and struggle of one woman in finding truths in her life. After her adoptive mama passes away; Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a triumphant black eye physician, searches for her birth mother. She is surprised when her investigation leads her to a plebeian white woman, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). Initially, Cynthia denies the claim, but she finally admits to birthing Hortense as an adolescent, and the pair begins to bond. Nevertheless, when Cynthia invites Hortense to a relative’s barbecue, Cynthia's already nervous relationship with her kin becomes even more complex. The film is ...

The Pursuit Of Happiness Summary

Movie is a form of art just like literature, music and paintings but movie is much beyond that. Movie is a pictorial representation of a story one reads in a book. Movie is an expression of life in motion as one sees in paintings. Movie is a medley of colors and sound which provide a gateway to its audience from all the worries of life for a short while. Movie is a means of escape from the reality of life to find solace in something more cheerful. During Great Depression when people were bogged down with the distressing economic condition of the country, many Americans find something ...

Baz Luhrman directed drama The Great Gatsby in 2013. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan took part in the film and played the main characters. The film was anticipated in 2013 and its screening became the great event. IN turn, High Fidelity is a comedy-drama movie starring John Cusack and it was screened 13 years before the Great Gatsby. Despite it received many positive reviews screening of that Nick Hornby’s novel was not as anticipated as the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s adaptation. These films are very different in style, in directing, in soundtracks. Yet they are ...

Ang Lee’s Films

The history of Taiwanese cinema has more than a hundred years and reflects a long history of culture, along with Japan and China, the colonization of the island. In general, the film in Taiwan until 1949, mostly had only a form of renting movies imported from the mainland, from Hong Kong and the western countries. But during the 60-80-ties, along with the economic development of Taiwan, he began to blossom "island" film, which the director sought out their way to other continents. Along with the emergence phenomenon of Chinese cinema on the international stage, outstanding representatives of which are ...

The movie “Birdman”, filmed by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2014, created a furor in the cinematography. This film uses a lot of unusual cinematic techniques, which we are going to analyze in our paper.
     Let us start with the camera work done by Emmanuel Lubezki, who used quite interesting techniques when shooting. First of all, you need to say about the angles of the shots. Emmanuel Lubezki filmed shots from low angles. These pictures give the impression that the subject is of great importance, and has certain strength. These shots make the viewers feel ...

Paradise now (suicide bomber drama).

I saw the movie on paradise now, the suicide bomber drama in March 2015 at a joint where I used to hang around with my college mates. We were randomly selecting movies to watch, and when we saw the title on the paradise now, we decided to pick it from the many so that we could look at the drama of the suicide bomber in the movie.
The movie is a story of two Palestinian friends, Khaled Ali Suliman and said Kais Nashef, who were recruited by a terrorist group as suicide bombers in Tel Aviv. They armed themselves ...

David Lindsay-Abaire is known for being the playwright behind the play ‘Good People.’ This is one that got a lot of publicity. The play was aired in a number of theaters including Noel Coward Theatre, Marine Theatre Company (which was where I saw the play) and Vermont Stage Company. The play can be characterized as a drama with a bit of comedy. This play mostly revolves around the life of Margaret, who was commonly referred to as Maggie (hard ‘g)’. Maggie has spent a significant part of her life in the South end of Boston or ‘Southie’ as most ...

Though not always elitist, movies are excellent at reflecting the reality and human history, just as poetry and prose are. The movie industry was being developed over the 20th century while the human civilization was being shaken by major military collisions, be they regional or conflicts of world proportions. There was no way the movie industry could sit sluggish in the circumstances, with film directors addressing the most vital social issues of the day. Genocide is one of grimmest crimes committed during the conflicts. Atrocious was the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Jews in Nazi Germany – ...

Films have developed out of dramatic and narrative tradition in which storytelling is used as a central concern. The filmmakers have challenged the manipulative and seductive power of narratives by using playful resistance to the convention of narratives, or by exploring other forms of medium. For example, filmmakers have used the interplays of gesture and rhythm, sound and image rather than relying on character psychology and plot mechanics. However, non-narrative film has a smaller audience than narrative films. A good example is aircraft passengers watching the direction of the nearest exit pointed out by flight attendants, which reminds the audience the ...

The Blind side

John Lee Hancock is behind the scenes in the film The Blind Side. Alcon Entertainment produced the sports drama film, and its central character is Michael Oher, a star player in football. The Blind Side is an interesting piece of art top watch with its hilarious and captivating story flow. The film is based on a true story to portray the events that shape and change the starring of the film.
The story is told by use of flash to allow the viewer to link the current action in the film and the reason for them to be acted in ...

A Soldier’s Story’s is a film that was produced in America in 1984 by an American drama film directed Norman Jewison. The film was developed from Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning, A Soldier’s Play. The story’s main themes are racism as well as segregation for a black United States Army battalion with white officers. A black army officer, Howard Rollins, is tasked with the role of investigating the killing of a sergeant Waters based in Louisiana towards the final bit of the Second World War. The case takes place in the interior of Jim Crow South at a time when a ...

Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant's 2000 follow-up to his critically acclaimed film Good Will Hunting, follows a young black youth named Jamal (Rob Brown) whose entrance into a well-respected private high school coincides with his befriending of an eccentric, reclusive Salinger-like fiction writer (Sean Connery), who teaches him to cultivate his writing skills. The film centers around this mentor-mentee relationship, as Forrester befriends someone for the first time in decades, while Jamal finds someone who believes in the things he is actually passionate about. Finding Forrester is a sentimental, treacly yet fairly effective movie that touches on ideas of anti-intellectualism, racism, inner-city ...

American Feature Film Critique

The Pursuit of Happiness
Introduction

An emotionally wrenching story of a father and son's struggle for survival from life's challenges has been the thematic foundation of the movie “The Pursuit of Happiness (otherwise spelled as Happyness)”. The film starring Will Smith as Chris Gardner together with real-life son Jaden Smith have delivered a remarkable performance portraying the characters based on real-life accounts. It was directed by Gabrielle Mucciono and was released in cinemas on December 15, 2006. The movie was inspired by the life story of the now CEO and founder of Gardner Rich & Co. Christopher Paul Gardner (Henning, n.d., ...

The 2006 film Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzales Innarito, was written by Guillermo Arriaga from his own story idea. The film stars an ensemble cast, including Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Adriana Barraza, Elle Fanning, and others. The music features an Academy Award-winning original score by Gustavo Santaolalla, featuring both incidental music and original songs.

This film is a straightforward, gritty drama, which takes place in many different countries, including the United States, Morocco, Japan and Mexico, demonstrating several characters' seemingly interrelated lives and conflicts in the present day. In Morocco, an American couple (Pitt and Blanchett) are ...

The statement that 80 Million (2011), a Polish film directed by Waldemar Krzystek, is less a Political Drama than lively hybrid of action movie, heist thriller and dark comedy can be quite valid. On surface, it dealt with the formation of pro-democracy Solidarity in Poland of early 80s that in fact resisted the communist rule as the main subject. But, in its depiction it features solely on small heist angle planned and executed by the Solidarity leaders under the threat of secret police. It featured an incorporation of a few simple truths of the era to play out a ...

The point of many movies lies in the fact of illustrating social problems. Global and domestic issues, issues of consciousness and symbolism – all of those aspects are shown in the three movies, which will be discussed in this paper. Avant-garde filmmakers have produced tons of works and it is essential to reveal at least some of them.
Powerful experiments with theatrical forms are introduced by Robert Lepage in his masterpiece, called “Le Confessionnal”. He is known as a director of game cinema and released four pictures during eight years in different countries of the world. His unique film "Confessional" ...

Film analysis is an expanding field of knowledge and increasing research interest in major institutions of learning. It is a very important area because it allows deep understanding of the knowledge and the brain behind the creation of the movie, the characters, plot, creation and the directorate of the film. The common fashion of film analysis is through shot-by-shot model where the clips, the scenes, chromatography among others. This paper is a film analysis for To Live directed by Zhang Yimou. It made a debut in 1994 produced by ERA international and Shanghai Film Studios. It is starring Gong ...

Essay 1: Auteur

X-Men series of film is an institution in its amazing way. Bryan Singer pioneered this popular comic characters and brought them to the silver screen. It is a very gigantic task to convert the fictional fantasy of an existence of a superhuman into a realistic visual treat. However, highly creative mind of Bryan Singer is capable of this task. The history is the evidence (The Usual Suspects) of the mastery of Bryan Singer in direction and storytelling. The thesis statement of this paper is the powerful auteur of the directorial team of the movie to bring his vision into reality.

Very few ...

Introduction

The film, The Graduate, is Mike Nichol’s 1967 comedy-drama adaptation of Charles Webb’s novel of the same title. The story follows Benjamin Braddock, a 21 years old recent college graduate who has no well-defined aims in life. In his idleness, Benjamin gets seduced by an older woman, the family friend Mrs. Robinson. But things get even more heated when he falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine.
It explores, among others, the theme of family and becomes a good portrayal of just how delicate the family can be, how the dynamics of factors, often subtle in ...

For a long time, I have wanted to watch “Precious”, and I finally did that. I did not expect that it would be so heartbreaking and abstruse. I did not expect that “Precious” would affect me so strongly. What I saw shocked me, and no other film has accurately managed to realize my idea of the cruelty of life.
The film impressed me because it was filmed sincerely, and the purpose of it was to show people what life can be and to evoke a response from viewers` hearts, protecting them from similar errors that could be made. Therefore, "Precious" ...

Sequence Analysis in Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Pride and Prejudice (2005) was Joe Wright's debut as a director of a feature film. It was a tough choice for the studio, because he had no real experience and didn't even read a Jane Austen's novel. But in the end it was the best candidate, because Wright managed to explore his nature talent and was later inspired to direct his other movies like Atonement or Anna Karenina. Pride and Prejudice was the first romantic film he worked on, but later he was admired for his work and the film was welcomed very warmly by ...

Generation War is a 2013 German film directed by Philipp Kadelbach and starring Volker Bruch, Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler, Miriam Stein, Ludwig Trepte, who play the five central characters brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm Winter, Greta, Charlotte and Viktor. The movie is a historical drama attempting at providing a non-conventional view on the Germans, Poles and Russians and their behavior and beliefs during the World War II. The movie has caused controversial reaction throughout Europe, the United States and in Israel. The main reason for that is a perceived attempt of the German director to reconstruct the history and somewhat justify non-Nazi Germans, ...

In 2006 Martin Scorsese released “The Departed”, the remake of Hong Kong criminal drama “Internal Affairs”, which has brought the director a long-awaited Oscar. Andrew Loo was a co-director of “Internal Affairs” and as a gratitude for the successful picture, Scorsese decided to produce Loo’s first English-speaking film with Chinese actors as starring cast (Loo made his debut in Hollywood with his thriller “The Flock”, 2007) – and the “Revenge of the Green Dragons” has come on the screens.
End of the 1980s. As children, sworn brothers Sonny (Justin Chon) and Steven (Kevin Wu) came from China to New York and ...

“American History X” is a crime drama that was filmed in 1998 by Tony Kaye. This movie is one of the deepest and most powerful films, and it is almost impossible to find weaknesses in it. It is also a heavy social drama that affects one of the acutest problems of modern America – interracial conflicts.
“American History X” is the name of the school essay and also the name of American Tragedy of modern times. The main characters made a mutual hatred as a manner of their life and their thoughts. Hatred is the air they breathe; it is also the thing ...

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Thread of Lies is a drama movie that revolves around the story of a family whose daily life is a struggle to make ends meet. The family whom after the father died of accident, their mother was left trying to tide-over her two daughters of their daily needs. Until one day, Cheon-ji, the younger of the two daughters took her own life. Left without any suicide note, the mother and Man-ji, the elder sister were trapped in confusion and suspicion on the reasons why Cheon-ji committed suicide. In their quest to find out the reasons, they were able to ...

Breaking Bad is a crime drama that aired from 2008 to 2013 and received a lot of controversial feedback from the publicity. While the audience considered the show to be one of the greatest shows that ever aired on TV, the story is far beyond simple TV drama. The protagonist of the series is a middle-aged chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. Not only that, but Walter White suffers from other circumstances that he does not know how to deal with: unemployed pregnant wife, terminally ill child and huge debts for cancer treatment. As a result of these issues, Walter finds ...

Motion in the basic and simple functions in a movie or artistic work is to break the monotony that could accrue from still scenes. When the actors and actresses move about during the film, it helps the viewer or the audience in general to accept and appreciate newer scenes that would be equally interesting. This is one benefit that the motion has over still scenes and still films, where all the scenes are acted, or role played in a still or stagnant place. The overriding disadvantage of motion is that the viewer or the audience may lose grip and control of ...

ABSTRACT

During the last decade, Asian horror cinema has seen a surge in popularity throughout the world, especially in western countries. Traditionally, Japan has dominated the Asian horror cinema, but recently Hong Kong and South Korea have emerged as major powerhouses in the genre. Majority of these movies have enjoyed international success. Moreover, many of these movies have been adapted and remade by Hollywood. As the genre continues to grow, there is a need to understand the social conditions, cultural values, and cinematic traditions which influence the horror movies from Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. In particular, ...

The Butler based upon the true story Eugene Allen of a man who served eight American Presidents over the course of his employment as a butler in the White House. Over the course of 34 years working in the White House, the fictional Gaines and the real Allen served as eyewitness of the sweeping changes to civil rights law and attitudes. Some of Allen’s life events are fictionalized for the movie. The real Eugene Allen’s parents did not suffer the same abuses that Gaines’s did in the movie, however the fictional version uses these iconic events to portray ...

Ancient Rome has often been depicted in film through sprawling epics, mining historical accounts and Biblical scripture for sweeping stories of love, governments, religion and war. As the environment they depict is one of slaves, imperialism and hedonism, many of these stories fall into the traditional historical epic of a slave freeing themselves (and others) from tyranny. The 1960 film Spartacus is most certainly one of those films, a powerful and expansive work by Stanley Kubrick, depicting the slave Spartacus' rebellion against the Roman aristocracy who enslaved them. However, this same self-serious scope can often be mined for comedy, as in ...

Movie Reviews

This 2011 sports drama follows real-life coach Billy Beane (an entertaining Brad Pitt) who decides to take a different approach to assembling sports teams; unlike the old-school approach that divines players through straight play history, personality and likability, Beane consults Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to come up with a new way to find good players - sabermetrics. The sabermetrics approach applied in the film is a way to objectively assess sports players and their records in baseball; with this, the only factors that matter are baseball statistics that analyze activity within baseball games. Instead of factoring in the subjective elements that many ...

Introduction

Almost every year, there are thousands of individuals that decide write movie scripts actually hoping to get them produced and then also to make some serious cash flow. What people do not realize is that a lot of these scripts are never even looked at or even bought. The reason for Th is that movies are costly to make and basically only the best scripts are ever actually get produced. When they are made into movies it is important that a film analysis is done in order to see what was done correctly and what was not. Often, students that do ...

1995's Dangerous Minds, the urban school drama directed by John N. Smith and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, tells the tale of real-life teacher LouAnne Johnson, who dramatically transformed the lives of kids at an inner-city school through dedication and innovative teaching practices - all the while dealing with sensitive issues of race and violence in schools and the inner city. While its intentions are noble, Dangerous Minds tends to warp Johnson's story into a treacly, overly sentimental mess that cannot be saved by a strong cast and assured direction. In the end, the overt melodrama and incredibly simplified morality of the film undercuts ...

- The 1996 film “Romeo + Juliet” directed by Baz Luhrmann modernizes the classic drama by using more urban scenery instead of the more traditional Elizabethan/Renaissance scenery of earlier “Romeo and Juliet” adaptations. For example at the moment when Romeo and Juliet meet, their eyes meet through an aquarium in amidst of a costume party. Although the room is modernistic it reflects the original scene when the couple meets at a costume ball. The aquarium scene captures the magic of love and expresses the theme that even though they are so close they are still kept apart. The glass is a metaphor for ...

Introduction

The Godfather is a crime film of American origin. Its director was Francis Coppola. Coppola directed the film using Puzo’s novel, which was published, in 1969. The direction took place in 1972.the screen play was done by Puzo, Coppola, Robert Towne, Marlon Brando, Duvall Roberto, Al Pacino,Caan James, Sterling Hayden, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton, and John Marley. It spanned between 1945 and 1955. It is a popular and common film among all literature and movie lovers. Its popularity arose when it received the Academy Awards for Best Actors, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Pictures. The film has also been ...