Movie Review 1
Reservoir Dogs
I recently watched the movie Reservoir Dogs. It was released in 1992 and directed by Quentin Taratino. It was an action/drama movie. Reservoir Dogs is about six guys who are going to attempt a jewelry heist. The movie takes place after the robbery goes wrong and the guys get away and hide in a warehouse where they try to figure out who set them up.
The story never actually shows the robbery. It begins with the characters meeting in a café and then cuts to two of the characters getting away after one of them was shot in the chest. During the movie flashbacks to before the robbery are shown from different characters perspectives. Most of the movie is set in the warehouse that they hide out in.
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It was a very interesting movie. Even though it was an action movie it was somewhat slower paced and a lot of the movie was building up to the action. Up until the actual end of the movie, it is very hard to tell where the movie is going. In the first part of the movie, the audience is guessing who was working with the police and ratted them out, and then later in the movie, once you know which character it is, the tension gets really high as all of the characters are close to shooting each other. A very memorable scene is a scene where one of the characters tortures a cop. The acting is really believable which makes the torture part very disturbing. There is an interesting choice of music for the torture scene where the music is upbeat and almost seems unfitting for what is going on in the scene. There are also a couple unexpected surprises throughout the movie.
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The movie style is very tense and surprising. You really don’t know what is going to happen but it is a well told story which makes the audience get very invested in it. Tarantino doesn’t tell the story in order but has events revealed later in the movie when it is more narratively interesting. It is interesting how it is focused on one location and how they don’t really move around except for the flashbacks.
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I really enjoyed Reservoir Dogs. I would strongly recommend this movie to most people although the story is little bit slow. I had already watched Pulp Fiction so I chose to watch another Tarantino film. The story was interesting and the way he told he story out of order from different people’s perspectives was similar to Pulp Fiction. The graphic violence in the movie was there for a good reason and added a lot to the story. One of the shots that I thought was well done was when they opened the trunk to reveal a cop tied up in one of their cars. It was shot from inside the trunk and showed the different characters starring down from the cop’s point of view. Another cool scene is during Mr. Orange’s flashback scene which starts with him going over a script for a fake story to tell and then cuts to him telling the story to the people he is going to do the heist with, and then cuts again to showing the story really happening even though it isn’t real because he is picturing it in his mind.
Movie Review 2
The Thing
John Carpenter’s The Thing is a horror/thriller movie. It is about a group of researchers at a base in Antarctica who encounter an alien/monster that can disguise itself as different people. The tension of the movie comes from the mystery of who the monster is. The tension rises as more and more people start to go missing and the characters get closer to figuring out what the alien is and who it might be.
There is really good special effects in the film and there is no use of CGI in the film. They had to construct life-size models of the different monsters in the film. They used a very large amount of pyrotechnics and explosions in the film. The creepiness of the film comes from the special effects of the monster. The film only shows the monster sparingly so when the film does use special effects to present the monster it has a lot more of an impact.
The movie opens up with lots of wide shots of the Tundra with things going on in the snow. As the film progresses, we start seeing more shots close up to the actors’ faces, mainly when the tension is building in the film. These close up shots help to build the tension. The film uses lots of wide shots in the outdoor scenes which adds a sense of emptiness.
The film also uses lighting to build up tension. The use of dimmer lighting makes the setting feel more unsettling and these dark sets puts more emphasis on the actors’ faces.
I would recommend this film. I thought is was really good. The special effects, the lighting and the camera work really made the film feel tense and exciting and worked well to tell the compelling story. A lot of the film is spent slowly rising the tension waiting for action to happen. Although the story is told a bit slowly, it is an exciting film the whole way through.
Movie Review 3
Kill Bill
Kill Bill, by Quentin Tarantino, is an action thriller film. The movie is about a woman who wakes up from a coma four years after being shot at her wedding and finding out that she’s lost her baby. She goes on a quest for revenge, hunting down the four assassins who tried to kill her and their boss, Bill. The film has an incredibly large amount of violence.
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Like some of Quentin Tarantino’s other films, the story is told out of order. It is structured in different chapters that reveal different parts of the story. There is a lot of impressive fighting scenes with great choreography. It was inspired by old martial arts films and has similar action sequences and story. The movie had a good soundtrack and the music fit well with what was going on in the movie. The music adds a lot of suspense to the scenes. The movie included an animated section which was a bit out of place but well done. The movie had a decent amount of humor even in the more violent action scenes.
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Tarantino uses a lot of wide shots and close-ups. He uses wide shots to show large action sequences and combines them with lots of close up shots to build up tension. A more funny example of this is when the bride is trying to move her toe and extreme close up shots are used of her toe to make the scene tense. There are also several shots in the film with intense zoom-ins during action sequences. There are a couple scenes in the film that use wide shots from above with a top-down view of the scene. These shots are unusual and have an interesting style.
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I would recommend this film to people who like violent action movies. The film has very impressive fighting scenes and choreography but the story is a bit cheesy. Due to it’s violence and sexual themes, the film is especially deserving of it’s R rating. I personally thought the fight scenes were very exciting to watch. It reminded me of films that I have watched before such as John Wick, which is another action movie which also parodies the same style of old martial arts movies. The movie is similar to Quentin Tarantino’s other films but there is more focus on action and the story is not as complex.