movie-reviews

The movie „Big Fish“ by Tim Burton is characterized as a fantasy adventure movie casting stars like Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney and Jessica Lange.

The movie is about the life of the storyteller Edward Bloom. When he begins to die, his son comes to visit him and he starts to tell the story of his life. His narrations are always fantastic and unbelievable, which disturbs his son. Even though he enjoyed listening to these stories very much when he was younger, he started to question for the truth in them as he became older.

Plot

When Edward Bloom had a heart attack his son William comes to visit him in the hospital.

He starts to tell one story from his childhood, when he and his friends went to visit the house of a witch and he as the bravest among them decides to go to her to see her eye, which is said to show the people the way they would die. After his story Edward tells his family that he is sure that he won’t die, because he would know how it would happen. Then he continues to tell his story by telling that he had to spend 3 years of his childhood in bed, because he grew immense and his muscles could not keep up and therefore had to be moved by a machine all day long. As an adult he was a much respected person in his city, so as one day a giant showed up in the village, the people chose him for taking care of the problem. As Edward went to the giant, he could convince him of leaving the village together with him, because Edward himself was looking for an adventure in the whole wide world. On their way they separated and Edward walked another way than the giant due to his curiosity. He discovered in a dark forest a small village, called Spectre, which seemed to be like paradise with all people living together happily and without problems. Later he left this town to meet with the giant again and continue their journey.

In the present time, as Edward leaves the hospital he starts telling his story to William’s wife while lying in his bed and suffering from his disease.

The story continues with the giant and him going to visit a circus, where the director offered a job to the giant and Edward met the love of his life for a few seconds before she disappeared. Edward desperately wanted to meet her again, so he agreed to join the circus and work every month for some information about this girl. After three years he still had not learned something important about his love. When he tried to talk to his boss about this, he discovered that the ringmaster is a werewolf. Although he tried to attack him, Edward did not harm him. Thankful for this, his boss finally told him that her name is Sandra Templeton and the name of the university she was studying at. Than Edward went to meet this girl to tell her that he is in love with her and wants to marry her, but when he met her, Sandra told him she had already been engaged. Edward tried to convince her nevertheless that he might be the right man for her. Later Sandra’s fiancé found out about this and he beat him up, but, for not fighting back and probably already having gained Sandra’s favor, she left her fiancé and married Edward in the end. Unfortunately Edward had to join the army then and was send to war. To be sent back home as soon as possible he took part in a special mission, which he could finish successfully with the help of a Siamese twin singer, escape from the country and come back home to his wife. Edward continued to live a normal life as a salesman until he met the poet from Spectre, whom he had to help robbing a bank. After that he told him about the financial system, the poet decided to go to Wall Street to get rich there. Later he sent Edward a lot of money for his services as a careers advisor. This money allowed him to buy a house for his family.

In the present time William finds Spectre and meets a woman who lived there at his father’s time. She tells him another part of his dad’s story, which also seems a bit incredible, but William begins to believe in his father’s stories, because he found one of the places he told him about and another person continues telling the incredible stories that his father usually tells.

In the past William’s father found his way back to Spectre on one of his business trips. The whole town had become bankrupt and broken down, when civilization had entered the city and banks and business had taken it over. Edward was upset about this and wanted the place to be as it had been before. He bought with the help of his rich friends the whole village, renovated it and gave it back to the population for free, so they could live there as happy and peaceful as they used to. The woman William is talking to was the only person, who did not want Edward to buy her house and give it renovated to her as a present, so he started to renovate it by himself with his own hands and the help of the giant.

Back in the present time Edward’s situation worsens and William spends the night next to his bed. The doctor tells William the true story of his birth, which was a normal and unspectacular birth like all the others, and that he personally would prefer the story William’s father used to tell. When Edward wakes up and is about to die, he wants his son to tell him how the fantastic story of his life would end. So William invents a new story about the two of them escaping from the hospital together with the old red car of his dad, but in perfect condition. They drive like crazy heading towards the river where his dad once caught the big, uncatchable fish. Arriving there all characters of Edward’s story have already been waiting there for him happily. William carries his father into the water and when he drops him, he becomes what he truly was, a big, uncatchable fish.

In the end Edward dies in hospital, knowing that his son finally understood the magic of storytelling. At his real funeral all the characters of Edward’s fantastic stories show up, but they are just normal persons, no giants or Siamese twins. So the stories of William’s father seem to have a bit truth in them and he finally understands that.

The movie ends with William understanding the way of life his father lived and continuing to live his life telling stories as well. “A man tells stories so many times, he becomes his stories and that way he becomes immortal”, he says.

My personal opinion

I was at first very skeptic about the movie when I heard it is a fantasy movie mixed with reality. Usually I like fantasy movies very much, but could not imagine how one could connect fantasy-stories to a normal-life-story. Now I feel that the movie was pretty good and definitely entertaining. I like the way Edward was describing his life so fantastically and making it look so special, incredible and wonderful. The voice of the old Edward was sometimes very hard to understand, because he was speaking with the accent of an older person and furthermore was seriously sick, but I enjoyed listening to him, because I personally like dialects in every kind or form. So his way to speak with the accent of senior citizens entertained me a lot.

A character I did not like in the beginning was William. It seems correct to me to doubt the stories your father tells you, if they seem so incredible, but the way William talked to his father about his doubts was much harder than I would find it acceptable. Also his way to investigate the truth in his father’s narrations, while he is about to die, was something I cannot understand, but only criticize. The first thing he should do is to take good care of his dad and not finally explore his life. This is something one could also have done after the dead of this person. But when William in the end understands the magic and power his father had, when he was telling his stories, is what I like about him and makes me accept him as a friendly and educated person, although he behaves in the beginning like the complete opposite. The only friendly thing he did in the beginning was to come to visit his sick dad.

The way the story of the movie was told is very good. The time warps made it possible to show to different stories at the same time, without the audience forgetting the plot of them. Furthermore, the scenery in the movie was impressive and always created the right atmosphere at the right time, for example the perfect village Spectre, when Edward entered the place and I saw the houses, the grass and the way the people were dressed, it seemed to me as a perfect place, without hearing the actors explain anything about it.

All in all, the movie was very entertaining and funny, even though very emotional especially during the end when the protagonist Edward dies. Currently I am still looking for the overall message of the story, but cannot find something clever to sum the film and its point up. So I can just say that it was entertaining, good realized and, as I am still looking for a message, a little confusing to me, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone, who likes fantasy, comedy and/or tragic movies.

The movie “Hard Candy” by the director David Slade, starring Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, is characterized as a thriller film and was published in 2005.
It is about an underage girl, called Hayley, who meets a probable pedophile man, called Jeff, tries to uncover his pedophile character and tortures him.

Plot
The movie starts by showing the audience a chat-conversation on the internet between a young girl and a man. They seem to have talked for a while to each other and are flirting until they decide to meet finally in person. The couple meets in a café, eats together and keeps on flirting and complimenting each other. Jeff, the man, mentions quite often how mature she would be and that she would act older than she actually is. Later Hayley goes to the bathroom to change her clothes and as the two keep on flirting she keeps provoking him, for example by opening the bathroom door showing herself to Jeff only wearing her bra and pants. Then they decide to go to Jeff’s house so Hayley can listen to some music he has and that she is very interested in.
At Jeff’s house the two keep talking a lot about Jeff’s work as a photographer and flirt. Hayley is very interested in his pictures of some young and underage models. When they start to have some drinks they start to talk about sexual affairs with some of his models, but Jeff keeps confirming that he did not have any sexual relation with the models and knows about the legal boundaries. Later Hayley can convince him of taking some shots of her, but when they start taking pictures Jeff passes out due to some drugs Hayley put in his drink earlier on.
Recovering his consciousness Jeff finds himself tied to a chair and Hayley tells him what she just did. The girl starts to call him a pedophile and accuses him of stalking her. Then she starts searching through his house to find some evidence of his pedophile tendency, while he tries to convince her that her accusations are not true. After a while Hayley discovers photos and pictures of Jeff’s ex-girlfriend and a CD. Unfortunately the audience does not get to know what is on the disc, but one can suspect that Hayley finally found the evidence she was looking for, because later on she tells him that she is going to castrate him so he cannot do harm to young girls anymore. To get finally some control of his situation Jeff tries to talk to Hayley about relationships and a good childhood to manipulate her, but she just laughs about his attempts. Therefore Jeff tries to deliberate himself violently, but Hayley manages to catch and overpower him again and again during the movie.
After she overpowered him and he recovers his consciousness again, Jeff is tied to a table and his genitals are being cooled with ice, because Hayley will castrate him soon. She puts a screen next to him so he can witness his castration on the screen, while she is taping it with a camera. At this point Jeff becomes completely crazy, cries and begs for pardon. After the operation Jeff is able to deliberate himself again and realizes that he has not been castrated by Hayley and that the video he has seen was a documentary film. Then he grabs the telephone to call the police, but before calling he decides to take his revenge by himself, so he takes a knife to attack the girl. But Hayley manages again to overpower the man and tries to hang him when he recovers again. Then his neighbor comes to Jeff’s house and disturbs Hayley by realizing her plans. While she is at the door, Jeff breaks free again. Therefore Hayley runs away. When Jeff is looking for her he admits to himself angrily that she uncovered finally his personality by saying: “This is how I am”.
When Jeff catches the girl on the rooftop she points a gun at him, shows him a rope and offers him to kill himself. She says she had called his ex-girlfriend, who he still loves very much, and she would take care of his things so nobody would find out about his tendencies. This would be the only way out for him.
The now completely desperate Jeff admits in the end that he witnessed the murder of a little girl, but did not kill her. But Hayley does not believe him, because she says that the other person involved told her the same before he died. In the end Jeff takes the rope and hangs himself at the roof of his house. Before doing so Hayley tells him again that she would take care of everything to convince him to kill himself, but after he jumps, she says to herself “Or not”.
In the last scene of the movie the audience can see the young girl walking down a street. Her facial expression is almost not understandable. She could be happy, sad, worried or confident.

My personal opinion
I really liked the movie, although I still do not know what to think about it. It was very entertaining in a sense of captivating the audience and was very thrilling, so it is a good example for its category and definitely deserves praise and appreciation from the movie industry.
But what I did not like so much about the movie is the fact that we, the audience, cannot see any real evidence for what Hayley is claiming. Therefore it is very difficult to say who of the two is the good and who is the bad character of the story. Both are bad in some way. Of course Hayley seems to take revenge for some other underage victims of pedophiles, but does that make her the good person/a hero? She is taking self-justice in a terrible way and the audience witnesses everything of it.
Something else that disturbs me is that we do not get to know much about Hayley. On one hand she tells a lot about herself, about being very intelligent, educated and even attends classes in university. But how come that she is so engaged in taking revenge on some pedophile man? Was she herself once a victim? Did she know the murdered girl she talks about? It would be easier to understand her behavior if we knew more about her background. Well, on the other hand this might even be a good thing. At this way the audience cannot identify that much with a person taking the right in her own hands and takes self-justice.
The question is as well, is it a good thing to kill pedophiles? In the movie it appears like it would be.
To conclude, it is a brilliant, but disturbing movie, which leaves its audience thinking about the movie for quite a while after they watched the film. Therefore it is to be considered brilliant, but it should still be discussed what the message of this movie should be. I personally cannot figure out a message I would like or admit that it is a good one.

Introduction
The movie „Gran Torino“ by the director Clint Eastwood and with him acting the leading role as Walt Kowalski, plays in the USA of today and is about the old American Walt Kowalski, his views on life, racism and the values of an older generation.
In general Walt is a very pessimistic and moody person, who shows no sentiments about telling his true opinion to everybody. For being raised in the old days, which were very patriotically marked and therefore more or less racist and fighting in the war in Korea, Walt’s thoughts and opinions are mostly hard to understand for the audience. During the story the protagonist is forced to experience new things that never occurred that way in his life. In such situations he behaves like people would expect a hero to behave. His ideals, which at first might seem very old-fashioned make him behave like a gentleman and a tough but helpful person.
The name of the movie “Gran Torino” is the name of an American car, built by Ford from 1972 till 1976. In this movie the car has an important role. Many people covet it and even try to steal it. It represents the old America and his ideals.

Plot
The story begins at the funeral of Walt’s wife. His sons talk about him, his character and his past and present life. This way the director gives a short introduction of the main character of the following narration.
After this Walt’s living conditions are shown. He is in at the beginning of the story in a very bad mood, which is understandable, because his wife recently died. He observes critically the behavior of the children at the funeral and of his Asian neighbors at home. They seem to not like him for still living in the now Asian occupied neighborhood, while he does not like them for his own reasons, like prejudices from his time in the war in Korea and because in the past his neighborhood seemed to be in better condition, while there lived only Americans.
Now a new and important character is being introduced - Thao, one of the neighbors’ kids. He is a not very respected person in his family, due to their opinion that he does, so called, “woman work”. When he is molested by some Latinos his cousin Spider comes around with his gang to protect him. Spider says Thao would “fly solo”, so he and his gang decide that he has to hang around with them to get protection and become a man. The gang forces him to break into Walt’s garage and to steal his car, the Gran Torino. At night when Thao tries to steal the car Walt wakes up, catches him in the garage and points his gun at him, but Thao manages to escape.
Later the priest comes to visit Walt at home to take care of him, because this was the last wish of Walt’s dead wife. The priest wants Walt to confess to give him peace, but Walt is very distant towards the priest and does not want to talk to him. Therefore the priest comes to see him at another day in a bar, where Walt met with some of his friends. This time Walt decides to not be as distant and unfriendly as before, because his friends seem to like the priest. So the priest manages to talk to Walt in private about his thoughts about life and death and what he had seen in Korea.
In the next scene Thao’s cousin and his gang come back and want to give him a second chance to enter their gang, but he does not want to and his family tries to protect him from the gang. As a result all of them end up in something like a fight over Thao. By this they enter Walt’s property, which he really dislikes and point his gun at them and tells them to leave right now. So he drives the gang out, saves Thao from them and is therefore a kind of hero to the neighborhood and his neighbors start to bring him gifts to thank him. At first he dislikes this kind of attention, but in the end seems to appreciate it. There can be seen that Walt’s old-fashioned views of right and order are not as out of place as they appear at first, because the people still appreciate them.
In another scene Walt shows the good side of his character again. The neighbor’s girl, Sue, is in trouble for being pestered by some African-Americans. Then he comes around in his car, recognizes that she has problems and gets out of his car to help her. The argument they have contains many racist swear words, like Walt uses all of the time during the whole movie, but when he pulls his gun again the discussion ends, he saves the girl and takes her back home. During their drive back home the two get to know each other. Sue seems to be a nice, intelligent, open-minded and daring (she keeps calling him Wally even though he obviously hates this name) young girl. They talk about living in their neighborhood and Walt finally finds out more about the, so called, Hmong-culture of the people living right next to him.
On his birthday Walt sits again on the porch and reads a newspaper. It contains a message for the persons, whose birthday is on that day. He reads it out loud to his dog and makes fun of this message. It says: “This year you have to make a choice between two life paths. Second chances come your way.” Even though the old man makes fun about it, at this point in the story he starts to decide to choose another life path. You can see this when Sue comes to invite Walt to join a party at her house and he accepts the invitation. He even takes foreign food that is being offered to him and likes it or speaks to some of the Korean people at the party. At one point the man says to himself that he feels like having more in common with these foreigners than with his own family. During the party he talks as well to Thao, who tried to steal the Gran Torino in the beginning of the story. Walt calls him Toad, on one hand probably because of his racist thinking and on the other hand to not show him any respect. But he finally talks to him about the tried robbery and a girl at the party that obviously likes “Toad”. So it becomes obvious that Walt starts to change and chooses a different path of life, when he opens up to a new culture and even talks to a person he used to hate.
Later the family of Thao comes over to Walt’s house and tells him that Thao has to help him for a while now to make up for trying to steal his car. After a short discussion the old American finally accepts the offer and tells the Korean boy to fix some things of the neighbor’s house in front of Walt’s. There Walt reveals again his good character. On one hand he is egoistic, because the house is being repaired, because he has to look at it all day, but on the other hand he behaves unselfish, because he obviously helps another person. This even continues, when some neighbors ask him to let Thao repair something at their houses.
In a short scene in between, the audience can see that Walt suffers from a bad disease. He coughs blood and goes to the doctor, who tells him that his situation is bad. Back home Walt calls one of his sons to talk to him, but he does not seem to be interested in talking with his father. Therefore the conversation ends early.
The story continues with Walt and Thao developing then something like a real friendship. They work together if one of the two needs help, for example when Walt has to move his old washing machine out of his house or when Thao has to fix the sink, but does not know how. Thao tells the old man after a while that he would like to have a job and earn money, but does not know where and how. So Walt wants to introduce him to one of his friends that owns a construction company to get him a job there. Before doing this he feels that he has to “man him up”. Therefore he takes him to the barbershop where he always goes and teaches him how a real man has to speak in his opinion. Furthermore he even gives him some of his tools to work with them. So they seem to have more than a friendship. They help each other out very often, but Walt also is a kind of role-model to Thao for teaching him so much.
Things at this time seem to be all right, but then the troubles really begin with Thao’s cousin Spider and his gang beating the boy up, when he comes back home from work. When Walt meets the boy again and sees the wound, he decides to take revenge. Therefore he drives to the house of one of the gang members, beats him up and tells him to leave Thao alone. Another day at night the Korean gang rolls up to the house of Walt’s neighbors and shoots at it with machine guns. None of the family gets seriously hurt, but Sue comes back home beaten up and raped by the gang.
The old and seriously sick Walt realizes that violence is no solution to the problem of having this gang molesting the neighborhood. Even though Thao wants to take revenge right away, the old man tells him to stay calm and think about it first. He himself thinks a lot, then starts to make personal preparations like getting a haircut, buying a new suit and even making a confession to the priest. At night Walt goes all by himself to the house of the gang. He stands in front of it talking to the members and provokes them. When he reaches in his pocket to take his lighter, the gang believes he would reach for his gun and fires at him. Walt dies and the whole gang gets arrested when the police arrive. This way, by sacrificing himself, Walt prevents the neighborhood from more troubles. It seems that he has been happy with his life in the end and gives his life willingly to save his new friends, the Korean family, although he did not like them in the beginning of the movie.
In the last scene a man reads out Walt’s testament and tells the family and his Korean friends that he wanted to give his most expensive good, the Gran Torino, to his friend Thao, on the condition that he does not change anything on this car and keeps it the way it is. This last wish of Walt contains a very important message. The Gran Torino, as a relic from the old days, like Walt it was, represents the values Walt himself stood for. The values of an older generation - seriousness, honesty and courage, which are still up-to-date when it comes to doing good. The people should still stick to these values, because they did never lose their importance. Therefore Thao should not change anything on the car to make it look modern, because it is good the way it is and worth to be kept that way.

My personal opinion about the movie
I liked the movie very much. The topic racism really interests me and here the story shows how racism can be all around you, but if you finally get up and try to understand the cultures, you may find something you like and realize that this foreign, strange culture is not as bad as you thought before. Also I like the character of Walt in this movie. He is a person, who just wants to be on his own, but when somebody needs help, even someone he does not know very well or he does not like, he comes around to help them. This way he makes a lot of good friends. Although he is always very skeptical, not very open-minded and even racist in the beginning, he opens up and learns many things, becomes happy and gets in touch with another culture. I truly admire the type of character Clint Eastwood represents in his movie. He seems to me somehow like the old heroes in the western movies: a serious, independent and though person.