Breakfast at Alexa's

  Jaws (1975) Believe it or not , the first time I ever watched Jaws was last week, in my film class.  I know, I know, I'm really late. But at least I have a one up on people when it comes to Hitchcock's Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window.  That being said, I'll admit, I think the film really lives up to its fame. It was a lot more suspenseful and scary than I thought it'd be. Although I wasn't sure what I was expecting, it definitely was not graphic, bloody kills, a child victim, and an actual realistic looking shark. For 1975, Bruce (The Shark) looked pretty legit and I'll admit made me scream a few times. After watching and analyzing aspects of the film, something that stuck out to both me and my professor was how menacing and sharp Quint's eyes were during his Indianapolis speech. After looking into it a bit more, I made a connection between him and the shark that I thought worked in the storytelling and revealed deeper meaning behind Quint's characte...

Swiss Army Man (2016) Just last week, my film class watched probably what I'd consider to be the most bizarre film I've ever seen: Swiss Army Man (2016). Now I probably should not have been caught off guard that much, because the film was directed by The Daniels, the same duo who'd later go on to dominate the 2023 Academy Awards with their equally bizarre and mind-boggling film, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). To this day, I still can't comprehend that film, and ever since last week after watching Swiss Army Man , I still can't comprehend what to take from that film. But, similar to Everything Everywhere , I think I was able to take away some parts of the film and put meaning into them. So really, this blog post is just me trying to make sense of the film by talking through my thought process. Enjoy.  Did Everything Actually Happen? The film starts off with Hank Thompson, played by Paul Dano, on the verge of ending his life after struggling to survive on ...

Recently, our film class had a group project where we got with other students to make a 2-5 minute short film. At first, many of us were concerned about how the heck we were gonna make a movie, with what camera, storyline, equipment, music, editing, and quite literally everything.  But as my group started to plan out our film, we found that like many of the other groups, the creative juices just kept flowing. Not only were we able to figure out what our plot was going to be, but we were also able to visualize what scenes we wanted to film. The next thing we know, we were all looking forward to making a film.  Now, would our film, "See-Bastian" have make it to the Oscar's? No, but it made it to my blog, which is basically the equivalent, if not better. In this post, I'm going to share some of my favorite parts of our short film, as well as some behind-the-scenes choices we made that I think really impacted the finished product.  Synopsis During a normal day of school, ...

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)  Earlier this semester, my film class watched Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense film, Rear Window  (1954). Now as much as I'd love to analyze this film (again), my film teacher mentioned another thing that I thought would be more interesting to talk about for today's blog, and it was Hitchcock's obsession with blondes. The term "Hitchcock Blonde" refers to the leading ladies in Hitchcock's films, who were, as the name suggests, blonde, usually blue-eyed, seductively attractive, and untouchable. Not only was Hitchcock obsessed with his blonde female characters on screen, but he seemed to develop a fixation on the stars who played them, including Grace Kelly ( Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief ), Ingrid Bergman ( Spellbound, Notorious, Under Capricorn ) and Tippi Hedren ( The Birds, Marnie ). Unfortunately, Hitchcock's obsession with his leading ladies made him compulsive and invade their private...

Although films first started out as a visual medium, it has developed over time to be both audial and visual. Even the first silent films were not completely silent; it was a commonly shared opinion that both films and the audience greatly benefit when movies are accompanied with sound effects or music. Today, sound and visuals are considered to be co-expressive in film, meaning what we hear affects what we see, just as what we see affects what we hear. Filmmakers will often use this relationship to their advantage as it is essential for the cinematic experience, especially for watching horror films.  In honor of spooky season and the soon coming of Halloween, I thought it would be fun to do a post dedicated to the horror genre. My tolerance for the genre has grown immensely over the past few years, even to the point where I actually enjoy watching it a lot. It's probably because I'm addicted to the adrenaline rush of fear it gives me, but I always wondered, what was it exactly...

Casablanca (1942) - Turner Classic Movies A big development in film that shaped the way cinema is today is the ability to produce colored film. Ever since movies were able to be filmed in color, it seems that there are hardly any made nowadays that are in black and white, because why would we go back if we already have the technology for color? Similarly, why the heck would younger folks of my generation (Gen Z, unfortunately) want to watch films from over fifty years ago that aren't in color? This is something that annoys me as someone who appreciates older films; if the film was made any year before Jaws  (1975), then it's not worth their time. Now I get it, older films are simply what they are, old ; the resolution tends to be pretty grainy, there's a lot of background noise a/o buzzing from the old audio equipment, some of the narrative points are moving too slow, and of course, there's no color. There were many older films I've watched that I genuinely could no...