Monday, May 4, 2009

Coen Bro's

One of my favorite scenes of any movie is the opening scene of No Country, up to where Chigurh leaves the police station. It's extremely effective at establishing Bell as the world-weary, old-time style sheriff and Chigurh as a cold-blooded, lunatic murderer. Bell's voiceover along with the long-shots of classic Western scenery does the former, while Chigurh's strangling of the policeman and the look on his face does the latter very well. I think this has to be the best introduction of characters that I've seen in almost any movie.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Hero

This is my favorite of Zhang's films so far, but the ridiculous acrobatics still bother me... alot. It just doesn't add anything to the movie for me I guess. But I did like the plot at least, and that's a very important part of any movie.
The only problem that I had with the plot was that the protagonist is nameless, I feel like that's so overdone nowadays, like in the book The Invisible Man and other things too. Other than that though, the plot seemed well constructed and had an interesting form (memories/stories).
One thing that I did appreciate with the cinematography was how Zhang used color in the flashbacks. For example, he used red extensively in the main character's memories, blue in Sword's (i think?) and different colors in other ones to make it easy for the viewer to follow who was telling the story, and also provide some insight into the characters themselves.