August Films-My First Blog!(Denarius)

HEY EVERYONE!!! I'm Denarius, I just started writing on this journal because I really enjoy how it acts as a timecapsule. A digital photograph, trapping memories and emotions in tangible words. I felt like I wasn't reading, but actually conversing to a living person. So huge shout out to Pippmaroni for inspiring me!

School just started and college application work has been piling in. So, I want to talk about some films and a singular book I read over this month in August just to reflect and chill.

Films

I finally got to watch some classical gangster films!!! I haven't gotten time to watch anything fun after being so deeply in love with The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III which are all amazing and would highly recommend to you guys.

Goodfellas(1990)

Directed by Martin Scorsese, I thought the imprisionment of the characters during the film was really funny and expected. But, it didn't stick to me. Sure there were scenes like when Henry says "mama I want to be a gangster", but the overall storyline lacks surprise for the viewers. The first murder scene does bring us into the grim reality of the gangster life which the film is obviously trying to criticize through the lowly lives of the gangsters who end up getting caught, ratting each other out, or killing each other such as after the bank heist where they shoot the black guy (I genuinely can't remember the name). There is also some scenes about drugs and the addicitive effects it had on Henry when he was making a profit by selling to buyers behind the back of Jimmy, and it definitely showed how gangsters and these "families" weren't so cohesive or trustworthy after all, especially after Jimmy tries to kill Henry's wife in the alleyway.

But it all seems to me quite repetitive in Hollywood, and they don't touch on themes beyond gangster, violence, and the ultimate demise of these overlords.

A Bronx tale(1993)

Directed by Robert De Niro who is also in THE GODFATHER PART II!!! AND HE IS ALSO IN GOODFELLAS! This man is absolutely amazing and one of the GOATS in film acting. His acting is phenomenal, and the young boy who plays his son age 9 in the film Francis Capra also fills the shoes of the film. One of my favorite scenes is Francis Capra anger with his dad when he says the "working man is a sucker" with eyes filled to the brim with tears. C or Calogero grapples with the neighborhood of violence begining from a young age. He can't distance himself away from the influence of the gangsters, and his father can't keep him away from Sonny. He earns money at the bar working for Sonny (who also shares the name with the older brother of The Godfather, I can't help but wonder if there is a coincidence), and he eventually grows up to hate Mickey Mantle because he won't pay his rent and is entirely changed by seeing Sonney.

I really enjoyed the relationship C has at school with a black girl called Jane. It dives into deeply racialized conversations and rids of the societal constructs of a black girl being seen with a white boy (even though he is Italian and treated similar to the black people in the U.S.). It truly makes the audience want to root for their relationship, so when the scene of the Italian friends C played with begins to beat up black people in their neighborhood it broke my heart to see them separated because of a misunderstanding. This film is great because of its emphasis on how one can still choose to be an emphatic person despite being in a environment that alienates outsiders and values violence. C defied the norms of the place he grew up in (though I'm not sure if the same sort of protection he felt for the girl would have still happened if he was not in love). This is what makes the film a runner up to The Godfather trilogy in the gangster film genre!

Rashomon(1950)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa, this film dives into how different narratives such as by the fighter, the spectator from the mountains, the woman, the samurai husband all contribute to a wider narrative of the story. The opening scenes are strongly provocative and brilliant. As viewers, we are thrown into the rain, without a clue at what we are seeing, we see parts and bits of Rashomon gate. These scraps of the scene are delivered from hazy and vague to specific and vivd, we only see the full picture at the end of the shot sequence. This is similar to how when the film progresses, we only see snapshots of narratives which are all flawed in biased in their own way and only finally presented the final narrative which we take for granted as the most truthful one.

I was suprised that Akira Kurosawa casted the main character Takashi Shimura, the same lead for the film Ikiru(1952) which is equally as novel in its ideas as Rashomon. In fact, Rashomon has been adapted in legal diction as when multiple witness testimonies contradict each other. The film is funny in some parts(when my boy is crawling to get his sword and then suddenly finding the courage to attack the samurai only when he loses his), also when the woman starts to laugh maniacally (which is probably calling back to the power and control that she felt when she instigated the fight for honor that ensues).

This film is real quirky, but its fun in that way. It's overarching message delivered through multiple perspectives and unreliable narrators also brings a sense of anticipation for the truth to finally be revealed at the end. This is definitely a recommended watch!

Oddessey(2026)

Okay so, the Oddessey. First of all, I have never read the actual Oddessey written by Homer in god knows when. It's really sad, but the only thing I've read is when I was 13 and plucked a random book out of the Penguin short stories. But from that short story I remember the plot details, of Circe, Oddessey's boat and the rest. I also recreated the Oddessey in 7th grade in Minecraft for a history project, I'll find it sometime and show it to yall. This film is directed by one of my most favorite directors, the Great Christopher Nolan. The infamous, non-social media, non-CGI, IMAX, making his films for the rich, Christopher Nolan. He is also one of the guys who has the most inspiring ideas, from extracting information in dreams, to travelling through space through worm holes, to cinematic masterpieces like The Dark Knight, to short-term memory loss murder mystery, to inverting entropy and time. Everything is amazing until it comes to his historical films such as Dunkirk, Oppenheimer(I did the bingewatching Barbenheimer and I though Barbie was a better film than Oppenheimer), and of course the Oddessey.

It's not like fully bad. Sure I was almost blinded during the boat in the thunder rain after they pissed of Apollo's cows. Sure I was almost made deaf after the screams of the giant cyclops. But the storyline and acting are on point. The story just felt too predicatble. I knew Oddessus was going to live through all of the stuff they would undergo. I knew that once they went onboard land they would have to deal with giants, witches, and more giants. I know its meant to recreate the history that Homer wrote about, but it lacks creative license. It seems to me more like a portrayal on film instead of a director's twist/flair. My professor at the summer camp disagreed, believing that: "oh the men from the sea are actually Oddesseus and his men when they decide to hide into the horse disguised as the surrendering gift to Athena". But to me that seems obvious, and the metaphor even more straightforward. Something I always liked about Nolan is his ingenuinity such as when the elevator floors in Inception represent different years of the lives of the protagonist, or when Leonard realizes that he killed the wrong person just for the entire scene to happen again(with his tatoos guiding him). Visually, its a masterpiece, but its more of a masterpiece because of the creative ideas. Yet this time, it just seemed to me more of a retelling than a creatively directed film. Not one of Nolan's best work, but standing alone in the stage of cinema it still is worth watching.

Btw Agemmenon still is the greatest aura-farmer, and I love that Nolan recasts his actors. But I feel like the IMAX thing is like when Robert Pattinson says "Get these beggars out of here" in the dinner scene. Like bro why would you even make it IMAX when most people can't see it in IMAX because its either already packed or hella expensive. That's also why I had to watch it TWICE and the one I watched in IMAX theaters didn't even feel like the IMAX tape(which had the extended top and bottom footage) so there's that.

That's pretty much it. Well not totally(I watched like 14 films in this month because I had a summer film class), but I already spent like 30 mins writing during application season which honestly was fun writing my thoughts and feelings out. I don't think I have the mental capacity to write really; however, I do have this amazing and definitely super fun Shakespere monologue to prepare for for Stanford. So see yall next time! Peace-- Denarius