Final reflections of the course

My general feeling about the course couldn’t be more positive. I have done exactly what I wanted to: improve my writing skills in English, using a lyrical language and watch movies (one of my passions). I think that the objective was to feel more secure and confident writing in English, in the last review I totally felt that way. I probably make mistakes analyzing the film from my own point of view, but I have realised reading other reviews that if the writer supports his own vision with a logical argumentation deserve a respect even somebody couldn’t agree.

During the course I should have published more regularly. I also have been stopped during Christmas time because I had a lot of works and I had to study for the exams. These are the weaker points of my CAL learning process. I admit that I should have been more constant.

Despite of that, I think that I have accomplished the goals of the course. I have done the amount of hours predetermined (obviously reviewing in a foreign language need a few hours) but what I want to underline is the great utility that the reviews represent to me, not only in writing skills, but also in the use of vocabulary and expressions. I have improved my knowledge of the language reading other reviews, it has been really useful.

I would like to say that I feel satisfied of my work and now, when I have re-read all the reviews I even feel proud of what I have done.

Writing Process of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

This is the last review of the CAL course program and I have decided to try to do it in my own. I haven’t consulted any external review. The movie has stroked me very deeply so I have had many different ideas of focusing the review. I have decided to focuse in my owm feelings and reflections. I couldn’t have focused in the facts that happen in the movie that are also really interesting, but I thought that the review would be too long (the film lasts 166 min.). The movie is very rich in symbolic elements; it’s like a book of philosophy. The review follows a structure I which first I talk about the most interesting elements of the film: the past of time, life and death and destiny. Then I have thought that performances needed to be pointed out. The final conclusions are personal reflections about the film and it has the intention to increase the interest of the reader about the movie.
I have felt strangely comfortable reviewing the film in my own words, without any support. I have doubted about if I could do it, but I feel really happy with the result. It has been an interesting and extremely useful experience reviewing the film.

I have learned new words and expressions: everything in its own good time (cada cosa al seu temps), shun (esquivar), knocked down (atropellada), run down (atropellar), displays (exhibeix, desplega), compendium (repertori).

The total amount of hours I have spent doing this review is 5 hours:
- 30 min for reflections and doing the brain storming.
- 4 hours for structuring, writing the review and look up in the dictionary.
- 30 min. for re-read and doing the “Writing process”

Review of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008

Directed by: David Fincher
Screenwriter: Eric Roth (based on story by F. Scotr Fitzgerald)
Music by: Alexandre Desplat
Photography by: Claudio Miranda
Genre: Fantastic/Romance
Main actors:
Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button)
Cate Blanchet (Daisy)
Taraji P. Henson (Queniee)
Julia Ormond (Caroline)
Jason Fleming (Thomas Button)
Tilda Swinton (Elizabeth Abbot)


The curious case of Benjamin Button is a beautiful movie, an injection of poetry directly to heart. Fincher’s staging couldn’t be more precise and effective, all the elements seems to suit together harmonically perfect.

The movie is an extraordinary reflection of the inevitable course of time. The fact that Benjamin was born being an elderly man and with the pass of the time he gets younger and younger makes the viewer realizes that even with a different way to face life the lesson is the same: everything in its own good time. We learn as Benjamin does that we can shun death, it’s the end of our path but until then we have many things to do and to enjoy. I have had a strange feeling watching the film because for the first time in my life I wasn’t afraid of death, it’s something I see far away and from now on I have the conscious that it’s necessary to think about the end sometimes; the death it’s what make our life so special and unique.

I am fascinated when I think about fate, destiny and predetermination; eternal reflections of human nature. In The curious case of… there’s a sequence in which Daisy is knocked down by a car and she breaks her leg. The way that David Fincher shows the accident deserves to be underlined. We contemplate a succession of facts with different unexpected events that change the normal course of the daily routine of some anonymous people (a girl that has a phone call, a man who forgets his coat, etc.) and when they finally are in the street a taxi driver almost run down them. The taxi driver is delayed a few minutes and when he passes in front of the ballet academy, Daisy is going out and… The movie it’s not saying that destiny exists; it reminds us that even if we apparently know that some incredible things happen without an explanation we have to be constantly conscious of that and be prepared for unexpected events because humans aren’t omnipotent. The almighty nature it’s totally unpredictable, the thrill of the hurricane Katrina when Daisy is in the hospital consuming his last second of life couldn’t be more eloquent.

The performances deserve a place in the actor’s hall of fame. Brad Pitt, a splendorous actor, displays an infinite compendium of resources introducing his innate charming and gestures in a computer technology and he experiments an incredible transformation until become Benjamin Button. He makes homage to his career, rediscovering and remembering himself in his earlier plays when he was young and innocent. In that movie I felt in love with Kate Blanchet, his journey across different moments of Daisy’s life is pure emotion; it comes from the real life of a character with a deep psychological charge. The deathbed scene in the hospital with his daughter (a marvellous Julia Ormond in a secondary role) creates an emotional and nostalgic atmosphere; the viewer feels and identifies the emotions of a mother that is saying goodbye to his daughter symbolically using the personal diary of a unique person that has distinguished her life, Benjamin Button.

Obviously, I have felt extraordinary and amazing emotions watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I have thought a lot about the movie and I have the presentiment that if I watch the film again being 40, 60 or 80 years old, I will experiment completely different feelings but I’ll be even more fascinated because I will be travelling parallel to Benjamin through my own life. I highly recommend the film for all the audience because it’s a journey from life to death, in which you can rediscover unknown sides of your own nature; there’s only one need: open the gates of poetry.

Ideas for “The curious case of Benjamin Button”

Ideas for “The curious case of Benjamin Button”


- The pass of the time
- Cine poetry
- Technology used in the film
- Extraordinary staged
- Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett
- Life and death
- Metaphor of the Hurricane Katrina
- References of David Fincher filmography
- A love story
- Fate, destiny, coincidences

Writing Process of "The Cotton Club"

It always a pleasure reviewing a Coppola film. As always I have consulted imbd: Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, Apollo Movie Guide [Ryan Cracknell]. It has been complicated because the film is complex, there’s a lot of characters, different story with parallelism, a mixture of genres but it has been a really interesting review. I am satisfied with the final result, because it offers a quite good perspective of the different elements of the movie. I had several ideas but I had to spend a lot of time thinking how they could better fix together. I have tried to combinate an analysis of the story, with opinions about the characters performances and the interpretation of what is the director’s intention. I have tried to explain to last images of the movie because they are very original and interesting but it has been impossible because I couldn’t express in a foreign language something that it’s difficult to express in catalan. However, I think that the review it’s better that way because there’s an unwritten rule of not telling what happen in the end.

I have learned some new words: slick cornet player (trompetista hàbil), hood (banda), tap dance (claqué), époque (època), mob boss (cap de la màfia), maching gun (ametrelladora), burst of violence (esclat de violència), touchy (sentimental)

The total amount of hours I have spent doing this review is 6 hours:
- 30 min for reflections and doing the brain storming.
- 1 hour for reading the reviews and look up unknown words in the dictionary.
- 4 hours for structuring and writing the review.
- 30 min. for re-read and doing the “Writing process”

Review of "The Cotton Club"

The Cotton Club, 1984

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenwriter: William Kennedy & Francis Ford Coppola
Music by: John Barry
Photography by: Stephen Goldblatt
Genre: Crime/Musical
Main actors:
Richard Gere (Dixie Dwyer)
Diane Lane (Vera Cicero)
Gregory Hines (Sandman Williams)
Nicolas Cage (Vincent Dwyer)
Bob Hoskins (Owney Madden)
James Remar (Dutch Schultz)



The Cotton Club placed in Harlem (New York) is the most famous jazz club of the 20’s. The movie follows two different main line. The life of Dixie Dwyer, a slick cornet player, that saves a dangerous gangster from death and without any choice he joins his hood. At the same time two colored brothers, Sandman and Clay Williams, do their best for make real their dreams of being hired in the Cotton Club as tap dancers.


Coppola’s “Cotton Club” is a perfect symbiosis between musical and crime. The main characters of the story are two couples of brothers (the Dwyers are white and the Williams are black) and at the same time, there’s two couples of lovers who harassed their life for loving each other inside a complicated and violent world. The whole movie is a huge dichotomy between different worlds and personalities, perfectly represented in the extreme racism of the late 20’s in America. In the Cotton Club the musicians could only be black, but the audience was exclusively white.

The movie has a strong pace as a consequence of the excellent jazz soundtrack that mixes swing, ragtime and even blues with spectacular choreographies of tap dance and musical performances. The music gives cohesion to the different stories of the movie. The exceptional performance of Cab Calloway the king of the “hari hari hoop” not only shows how much enjoyed the audience in the Cotton Club but also a change in the direction of the club orchestra that was produced in 1932. The film combines historical characters with fiction; in Calloway’s performance we can see Charles Chaplin, James Cagney and Gloria Swanson among the audience. Coppola uses an invented plot combined with real elements that truly happen in the époque with the objective to capture the essence and the atmosphere of the time; he understands the cinema as a representation that emerge from the reality.

The performance of Diane Lane as the adolescent girlfriend of Dutch, the violent mob boss that has been saved for the handsome musician performed by Richard Gere, is simply marvelous. Lane is astonishingly beautiful, he seems to have truly lived with those men and the love story with Dixie is mainly sustained by her magic portrayed of a girl who dreams to own a club. Madden, the owner of the club performed by Bob Hoskins, couldn’t be better played. He irradiates violence and aggressiveness, but he also has a lovely touchy side and his relation with Frenchy his criminal associate, played with deep voice by Fred Gwynne, is absolutely charming.

The most remarkable sequence of the film has clearly the Coppola brand. The rhythmic parallelism between the tap dance of Sandman Williams in the club and the sound of the machine guns destroying Dutch and his hood is just extraordinary. The parallel montage is an element that we had already seen in the mythical “The Godfahter” saga, in which we observe a conception of the cinema similar to the opera, a huge catharsis with amazing bursts of violence, that incredibly look like poetry.

Ideas for reviewng "The Cotton Club"

Once again, I return to my admired Francis Coppola and now with a problematic and difficult production in 1983 with the mafia involved, that at the end became an amazing film. I have some ideas:


- mixture between musical and drama
- an extraordinary Diane Lane
- different parallelism
- a portrait of a mythical era
- the sequence of tap dance while Dutch is eliminated
- The Godfather constantly present
- Combination of real facts, fiction and historical movie stars
- Bob Hoskins!
- The importance of racism
- Cab Calloway performance
- Richard Gere it’s correct, but doesn’t offer an amazing performance
- An strange and personal end, mixing the real facts with the performances in the Cotton Club. Who but Coppola could do this?
- Nicholas Cage performance, Coppola is his uncle.
- The violence of the époque

Writing Process of "The Birds"

After watching the film I have written down my ideas and then I have consulted the reviews on the imdb: Variety.com [Variety Staff], Reel.com DVD review [Pam Grady] Urban Cinefile (Australia) - DVD review. It’s a shame that Roger Ebert hasn’t reviewed the film because it’s an extremely useful influence. I haven’t published different drafts because after doing the brain storming I decide the tone and the structure and while I am writing I introduce new ideas. I don’t change many structural things when I have decided to write down only words or expressions but not the structure, because I am sure of what I am doing. So I can’t publish drafts because I do the final product as a pack, progressively in a lineal order.
For the review of “The Birds” I have decided to focus in the meaning of the movie, my own personal interpretation. I wasn’t necessary to explain the narrative structure of the film because it is not relevant. I haven’t had many problems doing the review, I have to admit that it’s the first time that I have felt pretty confident. The movie follows the classic structure of the Studio System (the Hollywood Classic) and this time it hasn’t as much complicated that it was before in other reviews.
I have learned new words: raven (corb), sparrow (gorrion), seagull (gabina), fainthearted glance (mirada buida). And new expressions: become nuts (tornar-se boig).
The total amount of hours I have spent doing this review is 5 hours:
- 30 min for reflections and doing the brain storming.
- 1 hour for reading the reviews and look up unknown words in the dictionary.
- 3 hours for structuring and writing the review.
- 30 min. for re-read and doing the “Writing process”
P.D. I have seen “Magnolia”, an extraordinary movie and I thought about reviewing it but I finally decided that it was too complicated. I read Ebert’s review Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times and it was really interesting and fascinating. I have learned different new words: leap (salt), ragged (confus, desordenat , trencat), turmoil (confusion, desordre), shield (escut), heedless (descuidat), stud (semental), melting down (desmoronandose), blast (explosio), allegedly (aparentment)

Review of "The Birds"

The Birds, 1963

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Evan Hunter (based on story by Daphne du Maurier)
Music by: Bernard Herrmann
Photography by: Robert Burks
Genre: Horror
Main actors:
“Tippi” Hedren (Melanie Daniels)
Rod Taylor (Mitch Brenner)
Jessica Tandy (Lydia)
Veronica Cartwright (Cathy)


Melanie Daniels, young rich women of San Francisco, meets the lawyer Mitch Brenner in a bird shop and she feels attracted for him. Mitch wants to buy a couple of love-birds for his sister Kathy, but he recognizes Melanie from the press and decides to leave mysteriously. Melanie decides to go to Bodega Bay, where Mitch enjoys every week-end, to surprise him giving a present of two beautiful love-birds to Kathy. In the bay, the birds have an unusual aggressive behavior.


From the first frame of the movie there’s a strange, weird and indefinable atmosphere that saturates the locations in which the action takes place. “The Birds” have some perturbing elements, that don’t seem to come from a common reality and really terrifies the viewer. The master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, has the ability to transmit his personal fears to the story written by Daphne du Maurier about some birds that become nuts. It’s one of the most personal surrealistic films of the director.

The film is a representation of pure horror, but the horror doesn’t come from the killing birds or the blood; it comes from the unknown power of nature. There’s no answer about why the birds want to eat people, because sometimes the inexplicable happen and the chaos takes the control of some part of the universe. The inhabitants of the Bodega Bay seem small, useless, pathetic, a small toy for a huge plague of starving birds. They don’t believe that some birds could attack people, until they see it with their own eyes; the eternal human arrogance that think of the humankind as an omnipotent specie of the universe.

The attacking birds are sparrows, ravens and seagulls; the common birds of the area, nothing strange or unknown for the inhabitants. That’s why it is so horrifying because the birds are familiar for us. In 1963, the special effects weren’t technologically advanced enough, so the birds in the attacking sequences were drawn by specialist frame by frame (they spent 3 months for a 10 seconds scene) and the final result deserve big respect according to the time that was made. The final attacking sequence in Mitch’s house is a perfect metaphor of an exchange of roles between human and birds. Mitch’s family and Melanie are locked in the house, a claustrophobic big cage surrounded for hundreds of violent birds; the director maybe is suggesting the feeling of the birds in a pet shop.

All the characters hide something behind their fainthearted glance, some kind of an old pain, strange fears and worries about life that aren’t revealed in the film. Hitchcock reminds the audience that we doesn’t control our own life, we are exposed to the enigmatic rules of the universe. The birds symbolize the unknown fear of the humanity against fate, the inevitable mystery of death impossible to avoid for each person in the world.

Ideas for reviewng "The Birds"

I have tried to review "American Beauty", but I was blocked and I couldn't organize my ideas. After having a few problems of self confidence I've seen "The Birds" and I have known immediatelly that I have to review the film. I have some ideas in my mind:

- There’s something inexplicable.
- The symbol of people locked in a cage
- The importance of fate
- The fear against death
- The human arrogance
- Investigate the special effects for the birds
- An open ending
- The performances of the actors, they have something strange.
- A personal Hitchcokc movie, it’s a horror movie
- The influence of the taxidermy in “Psycho” represented in the birds.

Writing Process of "Waltz with Bashir"

That’s the first review that I’ve done after watching the film in the movie theatre, not in a DVD. From the first sequence I knew immediately that I would review the film because it’s spectacular. I doubted about doing the review without consulting any external review but at the end I decided that I wasn’t ready yet. So, I have consulted from www.imdb.com, Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times [Kenneth Turan], Reel.com [Chris Cabin], Rolling Stone [Peter Travers]. I had a dilemma deciding how I focused the review. Watching the movie I felt amazingly attracted for the visual potency of the film and I loved the style of the drawings, but at the same time the story that the movie is about is too strong and shocking. I have decided to include a paragraph in which I narrate the attraction that the images can produce to the viewer. I feel really happy with the final result and I think it has been so useful.

I have learned some new words: former soldier (ex-combatent), bark (bordar), enraged (enrabiats), shaterring (contundent), sensitive (sensible), sensible (prudent).

The total amount of hours I have spent doing this review is 5 1/2 hours:
- 1 hour for reading the reviews and look up unknown words in the dictionary.
- 4 hours for thinking, structuring and writing the review.
- 30 min. for re-read and doing the “Writing process”

Review of "Waltz with Bashir"

Waltz with Bashir, 2008

Directed by: Ari Folman
Screenwriter: Ari Folman
Music by: Max Richter
Photography by: Animation
Genre: Documentary, Animation
Main actors:
Animation:

Ari Folman
Ron Ben-Yishai
Ronny Davag


The director Ari Folman talks with an old friend, who is having a horrible nightmare in which is chased by 26 barking dogs. They reach the conclusion that the dogs come from war memories. Ari is surprised because he doesn’t remember anything about the time he fought in the Lebanese war in 1982. Ari decides to visit his old colleagues and to interview Israeli soldiers with the intention to reconstruct a forgotten past.

“Waltz with Bashir” is an animated documentary where the Israeli director, Ari Folman, reconstructs a mental puzzle trying to remember his participation in the war. He has completely forgotten everything about those horrible times and during the conversations with his psychologist he finds out that the brain can be extremely selective. He only has a particular memory in his head, in which he is naked in the sea with two colleagues in front of Beirut and suddenly the sky becomes powerfully yellow, then the three young men get dressed in their soldier uniform and stare into the city. Ari decides to investigate his past, he interviews old friends and former soldiers in order to know what role he had in the war; his journey along a surrealistic, crude and violent universe is one of the most amazing and shocking experiences I ever had in a movie theatre.

The animated images gives an extraordinary potency to the film, they aggressively catch the viewer like the 26 enraged dogs do with Folman’s friend in his dream. The movie couldn’t be done in other way, the animated images allow the director to explore the oneiric world and memories of his friends about the war, and they relatively reduce the shock that the facts explained in the film would produced if the movie was done in a traditional way. I have to say that I am hypnotized by the amazing visual style of the animated images (created with flash techniques and 3D) that mixed together with the shattering soundtrack gives an exceptional atmosphere to the film.

The sequence where an Israeli commander gives orders to destruct a red Mercedes that probably hides a high quantity of explosives it is deeply significant of the current reality in Gaza today. We contemplate the soldiers trying to destroy savagely the car: they shoot missiles from a tank, they use violently the shotguns, and also they throw bombs from an airplane; the crude result of the operation is that the red Mercedes has escaped undamaged and all the houses and the surrounding area have been brutally destroyed.

The catharsis of the story is the massive murder that happens in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Shatila. The Christian Falangist militia in revenge of the assassination of his leader, Bashir Gemael, kills without any regret the inhabitants of the area. Among the Israeli soldiers there’s a lot of confusion; some of them apparently don’t know what’s going on, others just contemplate the action with incredulity. Lots of families have been destroyed in front of the passive eyes of the Israeli army. Are they guilty? The movie doesn’t answer the question, that’s not the point of the film. The objective is to show how devastating can be the consequences of war. The final sequence reminds the viewer that the story that he has contemplated is real, the animated images leave the screen allowing the entrance of newsreel footages of the massacre. The closing has an extraordinary impact to the audience, for sensitive personalities would be a strong psychological shock, maybe the human nature is not prepared to feel the horror so closely.