Critics+Corner+with+Mateo

//__The Shawshank Redemption__//

I have seen this film too many times and I think I have got all that I can out of it. The performances of Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are masterful and chief of the Guards Byron Hadley gives an excellent sadistic and sinister performance. I could accept the minor technicalities about the pipe scene and the crawling through a river of poo only to spill out in to river right outside of the prison walls. The qustion or the reason we watched this film was to ask ourselves the question, is Shawshank a classic. I believe that it is for the following reasons. A classic is considered timeless right? Well isn't a story filled with messages about hope, freedom and friendship something that is timeless? For this Shawshank is no doubt a classic!

//Casablanca.// This movie... it's not like a normal movie. It's all, like, black and white. NOW IS THE PART WHERE I STRING TOGETHER A BUNCH OF RANDOM ADJECTIVES SO THAT I SOUND LIKE THERE IS SOME DEEPER MEANING BEHIND EVERYTHING THAT I SAY. I liked this movie. It is a good movie.

<3 Mattk

__//On The Waterfront//__

"Yout don't undestand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender, instead of a bum, which is, lets face it, is what I am. We all played witness to one of the greatest performances by the most critically acclaimed actor in the history of film. Marlon Brando was the shining star throughout the movie but his performance would have been for nothing if it wasn't for his co-stars Eva Marie Saint(Edie Doyle), Karl Malden(father Barry), and Lee J. Cobb(Johnny Friendly). Terry Malloy, a punch-drunk has-been who missed his prime, works as extra muscle for Johnny Firndly on the docks in New York, though not by his choice. He lives his life in regret. He regrest that he listened to his brother, Charlie "The Gent", and threw a fight that he easily could have won, that would have given him a title shot. Now he is considered a washed up bum by everyone, but he is determermined to change this. He has tough decisions to make. 1. He can "rat" on johnny and get the girl, or 2. he plays D&D and goes on down a path to nothing. Bitter over the his career that could have been, he testifies against Johnny Friendly, putting him out of bisiness. But the Heroics don't stop there. He takes a beating by Johnny and his men but still leads all of the workers into the docks to finally work withut having to look over their shoulders. On The Waterfront is a story of going against the tide and fighting the corrupt system. A great movie!

//__The Graduate__

The graduate is the story of Ben Braddock, a recent college graduate, who is trapped in an affair with Mrs. Robinson, who just so happens to be the wife of his father's business partner and then finds himself falling in love with their teenage daughter, Elaine.// Ben Braddock is so annoying! He is awkward, anxious and unsure of himself. It is a wonder why he has women falling all over him, I don't get it. He's all worried about his future. Your a scholar for crying out loud, get it together. I do kind-of understand why he doesn't want to be like his parents and their "plastic" friends but you don't go sleeping with one of them and then go after the daughter. The plot to this film was sick and twisted. He didn't become relaxed until he stated with Mrs. Robinson. The fact that he could keep doing it for so long knowing that it was wrong disgusted me. The characters, as a whole, were just plain irritating. In a word, I thought the movie was boring. Sorry, maybe I just didn't get it. I would rather watch a boring western than see the Graduate again.

//__Chinatown

Do The Right Thing__//

Never before have I seen a movie that made me so angry until I saw this Spike Lee joint. It's a swealtering summer day in Brooklyn and the racial tensions are about to reach boiling point. Sal's Famous Pizzeria is the place where everyone from the hood can go to hang out as long as they can bear the stupidity of Sal's sons Pino and Vito. The problems begin when Buggin Out argues with Sal over his Wall of Fame and how there are no black peoople and only Italians. Another similar situation is when Radio Raheem enters Sal's, blaring his boombox demanding two slices and "extra cheese on that MoF@#%er." Due to their lack of education, their only rational way of dealing with this is to storm onto Sal's and threaten toclose down his pizzeria. A subsequent brawl ensues resulting in the wrongful death of Radio Raheem at the hands of the police. Mookie then stabs Sal in the back by starting a riot on Sal's pizzeria. This enraged me. Why would they do that to someone who was very good to everyone in the hood? Overall this was a powerful movie and the cinematogery and art direction were awsome, spike lee is a great director. A bold movie worth watching.

//__One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest__//

One of the most critically acclaimed movies we've watched and probably will watch to this point, Ken Kesey's film adaptation of his bestselling novel is funny, heartwarming, thrilling and dramatic. R.P McMurpy comes to a nut house and turns the place inside out. The only person capable of keeping him sort of in line is the bone-chilling Nurse Ratched. She is pure evil in every sense of the woord. She makes crzy people even more crazy with her mind games she plays on the other people in the ward. But he goes along teeter-tottering on the edge of being a crimnal and being insane. His major goal is to escape anyway he can but his attempts het him a labotomy rendering him in a totally vegitated state. Unable to ever function outside of the ward again, the chief does what he would have wanted and smothers him and then avenges his death by lifting the fountain out of the flood and throwing it through a wall and he runs to his freeedom. A fitting ending to a great story.