45 MINUTES OUT OF THE MOVIE “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN”

45 MINUTES OUT OF THE MOVIE “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN”

1:44-3.33

Because I feel like the part where the knights are cutting off Balian’s wife’s head, and burring her, doesn’t add much at all to the story. Through out the movie Kingdom of heaven, I found the story about his wife to be un- important except for when he kills the man in the black smith store that is wearing his wife’s necklace and visits him at work.  1.89

           

12:13-12:45

I think that the director doesn’t need to state how much of a fighter Balain is, because through out the movie, he definitely proves him self worthy of being a brave knight. This fight seen at the camp just adds on more to his character but I think it’s unnecessary. 32

23:11-24:08

 This scene doesn’t really add up to the movie. I don’t think it’s very important for Balain to have this conversation in the town with one of the potential kings. 1 37

27:31-29:41

 I think they could have cut out the shipwreck to Jerusalem, because it doesn’t add up to the movie. I found this part to be very confusing. In the next scene, Balain is traveling in the desert, so I think that people would just suspect that he already took some kind of transportation and now is walking to find it. 2 10

34:56-35:25

 Him walking along isn’t very important to the movie. 109

38:01-38:38

 when Balain was caring for the horse, I found it to be a bit boring because it didn’t add anything to the movie in my opinion. 37

41:39-42:27

This isn’t important to the film, because this character ends up being killed in the end, and I don’t think the director

should waste the movies valuable time elaborating on him, or this conversation. 128

44.55-46.02

I think that this isn’t that important to the story because the queen and Balain talk right after so it would seem as if dinner would finish then they have their conversation. 147

48.00-49.15

During this part, I feel like it is a bit of the king just rambling on, and it doesn’t really make that much sense near the end of his talk. I think the director should have just stopped the conversation there.

115

49:20-51.08

This part doesn’t need to be in the film, because it makes more sense when it just cuts to the next scene and goes from there. You don’t miss anything by taking it out. 188

53.10-54.35

 In this scene it is elaborating on how the queen and Balain like each other, but I think it’s un-important, because they already established this in the beginning. 125

55.28-56.24

To me, this is just almost footage that Riddley Scott put in to make the movie longer and more developed, but I think the movie would still be fine with out the conversation between the queen and Balain. 96

58.12-101.39

The fight scene is short and not very important so I think that they should have taken it out, and just started a new scene when the king said, “assemble the army”. 5min

102.24-103.40

I don’t really understand why this fight scene is in the movie because I feel like it doesn’t do anything to enhance the plot. I still feel like the director is just adding in more, and more fighting scenes to elongate the film. I do not think that this is a good idea.116

105.36-106.07

When the knights are running towards each other to fight, the running seems to last for forever, so I think by cutting it down it will capture people’s attention much longer. 71

109.37-110.30

This traveling scene takes too long and makes the viewers loose attention on the film. 93

112.03-113.55

This part of the movie really confuses me, because the man gets beaten by the king, for yelling remarks in the town. I just don’t see how this helps and characters or the plot. That is why I took it out.152

115.00-116.50

The talk between the two men is confusing, and again its just a way that the director is trying to make the movie more developed and longer.1.5

125.20-128.27

 This part of the movie involves another pointless fighting scene and I think that the director could have used these 3 or so minutes to elaborate more on the main character Balian’s life. I don’t like how he did this scene either because I feel like some of the camera angles are off.  307

130.19-132.40

I feel like they don’t have to have a talk before they go to war. I think they should have just gone straight to battle and not wasted any viewing time. 2.21

133.36-140.19

This part of the movie really confuses me, and I don’t think that it’s necessary to have it in. I like the idea of having to wait until the very end to have a giant fight scene rather than having so many in the middle that aren’t important for the story.  6.83

146.36-147.23

The scene is lasting to long when they are at battle so I think it should be cut down just by a couple of minutes. 87

150.47-152.48

There is too much of a battle scene, and I think that they could have taken out a couple of minutes of it just to make it a bit shorter. 201

155.13-156.22

I think that the battle scene again is way too long because after this point, its just getting repetitive and un interesting. 109

202.00-203.00

the scene is again lasting way too long and the camera angles were the only parts that were changing in this part of the movie. 100

209.35-211.05

This particular part isn’t very important to the scene, and they should have taken it out so that they could’ve gotten on with showing the town of Jerusalem being converted. 1.7

Cinematic points of view on the film Stand By Me

          Cinematic points of view on the film Stand By Me.

  When watching the film stand by me, I realized many aspects of cinema through out the film. The points I would like to talk about are the following; the use of camera angles, costumes, lighting, and special effects.

  I noticed a lot of good use in the camera angle opportunities in this film. I found that when there was a switch to a different scene, they would choose an angle that could really make you feel like you were in the movie. At times, they would put the camera in front of the characters as they were walking along the train tracks and I thought that was a good choice for the director. I think that when they added that touch, you could really see the whole scene and everything that was going on. At other times, Robert Reiner (the director) would take the chance to do a scene from the characters point of view. This was very interesting to me, because I did feel like I was on the train tracks looking for Ray Brower along with them. This movie was defiantly about an adventure, and if you were not deeply engaged with it, you would get bored very easily because it would seem as just a movie where boys are walking along rail -road tracks looking for a body they may or may not discover.  In reality, them walking along is the whole movie. This is why camera angles were so important to make you feel like you were there.

   The costumes in this movie I thought were high budget and prominent. I think that Robert Reiner did a phenomenal job on suiting the characters to their clothes. As soon as a new character walked in the frame, I could tell what kind of person they would turn out to be, just by looking at what they were wearing. For example, Robert Reiner could spend a lot on the original costumes of the group of boys. He could do this because they really only had to wear one outfit for majority of the film. If I had read the book before I saw the movie, I would have pictured the boys in the same outfits as they were wearing in the movie.

 I noticed that the director used a lot of lighting techniques that caught my eye. I am going to talk about one scene in particular for this theory. In the scene where they were having an overnight camp -fire, each boy had to stay awake and guard the site. When each one was hiding behind the tree on the look out, they had one side of their face lit up, and the other was in shadows.  I thought that this symbolized one side of the boys being scared (the shadowed side). The shadowed side also showed that a lot of them do have a dark side to their personalities. The other side of their faces was lit up. The first thing that came to mind when I noticed this was, they were very vulnerable at the moment they were guarding. I really thought that this scene added a great amount of description about each boy’s personality to the film Stand By Me.

  The use of special effects was striking during the action scenes, such as running away from the train. When I was watching it, I was thinking about how hard it would be to get a train and chase the boys at perfect timing. I’m not sure if green screens were around at this time, but even if they were this part of the movie was impressing. I thought that getting the camera around at the right times to capture every second of exhilarating action was incredible. Other parts in the movie that used great special effects were every time a gun fired. The crew would have to make an explosion every time that a gun was fired, and it would have to be at the right time, every time. I think the film could have used a bit more action, or suspense, but each time that they did, I thought it was ample.

   

 

The Count Of Monte Cristo

                The Count Of Monte Cristo

    Personally, I did not enjoy either of the versions of this movie. I thought that it was very boring, confusing, and unstructured. Most people enjoyed this movie, but I just found it very hard to follow along and understand what was going on

    I must say though, that I thought the 1934 movie was very impressive. The movie graphics were what impressed me the most, because it was very original. They used very interesting ideas for the time that it was filmed. The plot though, was very hard to follow and they could have developed the ideas a lot more.

   The only part in the 1934 movie I found interesting was, the part where the two main characters were in the jail trying to escape. This was the only part of the movie I could pay attention to.

    Over all I liked the 2002 version much better. I found it to be more defined and detailed compared to the older version. This of course, is bound to happen, because the movies are made in two completely different time periods, but I think the second was better.

I would not watch this movie again, because in my opinion, was one of the worst movies I have seen yet. 

Literary, Dramatic, and Cinematic points of view on the film “Gone With The Wind”

                    

 Literary, Dramatic, and Cinematic points of view on the film “Gone With The Wind”

    Through out the film “Gone With The Wind”, I noticed many reflections and many factors that proved the film involved all three of these topics. It was made in the year of 1939, and was produced by David O. Selznick. Victor Fleming, who is a well known, and very skilled director, directed the movie. He completed many moves such as “The Wizard Of Oz” and of course “Gone With The Wind”. Gone With The Wind won ten Academy Awards, and held this record for twenty years. It was also ranked in at number four on the top one hundred best American Films Of All Time in 1998. The movie has had the best turn out, and earned the most money in history.

     I will start discussing the literary category. This movie was much like a book, because the story plot was very fascinating and the plot seemed like it truly did belong in a classic storybook. Constantly through the movie, I kept thinking that the movie would be better left just as a story.

    I think the main topic that made me think this way was the dialogue. This movie was an old English type, because it was filmed in 1939, and had quite a lot of literary terms and language used by many classic novels. The sentence structure was very profound and interesting. Each character pronounced the words with such passion and emotion, that I thought it may certainly be straight out of a novel.

  What made me think that it was also a novel was the length of the film. Usually you cannot finish a book in an hour and a half, so that is why this movie was extended and prolonged. Ninety-five percent of movies today do not have intermissions. This movie however, does. I personally thought that this was a good idea because audiences would have time to let the moods and thoughts sink in. This is also very comparable to a movie, because every time you read a book, you generally would stop and take breaks. This would also do the same thing by letting all of the feelings and moods sink in. I thought that this point was a clear indicator of Gone With The Wind being similar to a book. 

    Another similarity that this movie has with novels is the time that it was made in. (1939) because around this period of time, majority of the population only had books for entertainment. People would be expecting a plot, dialogue and a resolution just like they would be used to if they were to read a story. The director (Victor Fleming) would have to work very hard at adding in details and structure to make sure that the film would be what the audience was already used to in novels already.

   I also really noticed the plot structure in this movie. It somewhat reminded me of an anti climatic, complicated, twisted story. There is the occasional book, which fits into this category to relate to literary points with the film. This movie was not like your typical film. It really had not genre and didn’t represent any stories that were previously made. Books are the same way also. Each book can be so different, and have very unique plot structures and endings just like the film Gone With The Wind.

   The way that Scarlett O’Hara was chasing after Ashley Wilkes, who was head over heals for Melanie Hamilton reminded me of a classic love story. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet in a way, because, it was the kind of love story that was twisted and different than what we are used to learning about. This was another key point that leads me to believe this movie had a lot of relations with novels.

   For the dramatic aspects on “Gone With The Wind”, I have a lot more to say. I noticed that this movie had more similarities and references to the drama department. From the costumes, to the lighting I noticed so much.

   The costumes in this play reminded me of something I would see on the stage of an old English play.  Each costume was perfected down to the tee. We even were previously discussing how the actors and actresses costumes were so perfected; that even the underwear was from the old days to get them thinking about what it was really like back then. They spent very high amounts of money trying to make the costumes perfect. Each lady had to wear a very large old-style 1861 styled dress. Each dress was thousands of dollars and took forever to custom make. This would have been very expensive and time consuming for the crew. This is the same idea with drama productions because, many times, the stage rentals, costumes, actors, and lights cost a lot. Each actor ad actress would have to go through hair and makeup, just as live drama productions would have to do.

   Another point I can think of, are the sets. Each set was very high quality for the time period that the movie was made in. If you took the time to realize the detail painted into each scene, it was immense.  Some scenes I have to admit were a little bit off with the lighting, or how the set colors were used. That was something I could relate to in live drama, because if something on stage goes wrong, the show still must go on. I found that the movie was very well cut in between scenes. In live theater, they do this by shutting of the lights, setting the mood with music, and changing to a different scene. In Gone With The Wind, they use the cut and paste method with the actual film. I still find this similar because in both situations they are changing the mood, and accustoming you to a different part of the story line.

   During most scenes, the characters had to react on the spot to different situations that were presented. Sometimes, in Gone With The Wind, they overreacted. In most cases I wouldn’t normally encourage if an actress or actor over reacted but I feel as though it helped build drama in the story. I also see this with actors on stage quite frequently. This movie, and live theater both benefited from this gesture, because I know I felt more on the edge of my seat while watching the problem, or scene un fold.

   The cinematic points on this film, were very tough for me to think about, because I didn’t noticed that many in every scene that were relevant to today’s movies. Any time I thought about how this could relate to today’s movies my thoughts changed because this movie was made around the time when movies were first starting come out, and it was one of a kind.

    I am going to talk about one particular scene in the movie where I noticed them using innovating and unique camera angles. There was a scene in the movie where Scarlet and Melanie were in a church praying. They were leaning down, and there was a light candle flickering in front of their faces. Typically, you could not get this type of shot with a camera and have the shadows projected on the wall like the director envisioned. To make his vision come true, they previously filmed the shadows and projected them onto the wall. Then the two actresses were being filmed at real time to match their shadows on the church wall that were previously recorded. You could tell that the shadows were not actually matching the actresses because their movements were slightly off.

  This movie was one of a kind, and I thought it was very interesting how they could make a 238 minute-long movie with really no true genre. They captured and paved a way for all movies afterwards to follow what they had done. They mixed adventure and romance, comedy, drama, action and much more to make this fascinating movie.

  Vivien Leigh  (Scarlett O’Hara) really did make the movie cinematically. She added just the right touch of emotion to everything that she did. I know that it took the directors a long time to cast the character of Scarlett, and I think they waited just for the right person, and it paid off. She was a very important character because without the right person to play Scarlett, this movie would have fallen to its knees.

   The camera angles in this movie, I believe set a standard. This was one of the first movies to be this long, and one of the first to use innovating camera angles, and shots. They used some from a bird’s eye view, and even tried some shots that were in the actor or actresses perspective. Movies afterwards used Gone With The Wind’s camera techniques to better their movie. I believe that they set an example o how all movies since 1939 had to be made.

   Gone With The Wind had you feeling almost every emotion that you could feel. One minute you could feel sad, and the happy the next. This was all to do with the director and how he played a very prominent role in this movie. Personally, I think that this is what led all the directors now days to do the same. We think of directors now as the people that manage and control everything that happen in their movie. Gone With The Wind certainly set the standards very high with how much Victor Fleming was involved. He had envisioned specific details and morals that the movie should follow. This is why I think the movie won so many Academy Awards.

   The movie Gone With The Wind could never be any better, and was definitely the best of its kind. I believe that every person should have a chance to discover what a truly wonderful movie should be like. The actors, actresses, crew, technicians and director deserve everything that they have won for this mesmerizing film. I am very glad I got to watch this classic movie, and share my thoughts and opinions on Gone With The Wind. 

Night Of The Living Dead

                                                        Night Of The Living dead.


               I thought that this movie was very boring and had no real plot line. It was directed by George A. Romero, and I donn't think he did a very good job, because during the movie I started to loose focus. I thought that the way they made the zombies was very well done condidering it was the first zombie movie ever made The costumes are also very realistic and that is one thing I think the director did well.

        I didn't like this movie though, because i found it to be un-entertaining and unstructured. The whole film took place in an old house that had nothing but a radio. When something important happened on the radio, i found they kept playing the same news over and over again, and it made the movie seem un-professional.


    The characters in the movie weren't very smart. Barbra, who i thought would be the main character, was very usless amd didn't do anything in this movie. When they added scenes
with her into the movie, I thought it was a waste of film.


   During the movie, I found that the characters were not very smart, and didn't really do much in the given situation. This was the first movie of the zombie genre, so the zombie creatures were not well developed. If i were to make a new genre like the one George A. Romero did, i would have tried to keep the zombies personalities consistant. I say this because at the begining of the movie, the zombies were not very smart, and they walked slowly. As the movie went on, they got increasingly fast and i didnt think this was very realistic.



     Over all, I will say that i would never watch this movie again because it just wasnt my style, and didn't fit my liking.

Literary Aspects On "The Goonies"

                The Literary Aspects On "The Goonies”

   I chose to write about the literary points, and examples for the 1985 film “The Goonies”. I chose this category, because I found that there aren’t a substantial amount of films about pirates today, they are usually in books and novels.

  I know that there are movies that are about pirates, but this movie specifically is different than all the others. I think that the plot is quite different and very unique. They didn’t use the pirates as the main characters, in this movie all the pirates are dead, but they are still very involved in the story line. The adventure that they went on was very intriguing and it kept me glued to the screen.

   The story line was very similar to those of novels. I think that having the story of a group of outcasts going to find hidden treasure, because of a map they found was very novel like. This was and adventure movie and it had a lot of suspense and aspects about being brave in tough situations. I found that in books they usually show a lot of bravery. I thought that this movie was very prominent in doing so.

  This movie seems like it would also work very well, if not better as a book. I think that it would because, pirates remind me of a storybook theme. When the Goonies find the monster, and the underground world, it seems like its all a fictional story for a novel. The “monster” that was living in the house just doesn’t seem like a movie character to me. He seems more like he would be placed in a novel. I really liked this character though because I thought he added a different side to the film.

  This movie also used a lot of interesting langue (Spanish) which I though fit into the literary category. Spanish is a language that the pirates spoke.I thought that this was another good example of how words were written down and passes on by different cultures.

   This was a very good movie to write about literary comparisons from my point of view.

  

Dramatic Aspects Of The Film Super 8

            Dramatic Aspects Of The Film Super 8

   Through out the movie Super 8, I noticed a lot of examples from the dramatic point of view. In the movie, you see the characters trying to make a movie to enter the local film contest. They use makeup skills, wardrobe, pyrotechnics and props very well.

  When this happens, you hear them talk a lot about the production values, make up and camera angles. In one scene, they are trying to shoot Alice, and Joe at an old train station. As they are shooting, a train goes by and the camera crew of kids is yelling for them to get the scene for production value. By adding a train or something that would take a lot of money to order, or set up for your movie would be too much work for an amateur film like theirs. When they added the train crashes in the background, it really made the movie seem more professional. I thought that it would be very difficult for them to add that in  digitally because this movie was supposed to take place around the 1970’s era.

  The movie was very strong because they used makeup to make the zombies look truly dead. I thought that this compared to drama because when you are performing a play, you really need to accentuate their features to make them stand out. This movie was very sophisticated in this category of drama. I found that they used fake blood very well, and when they killed the zombie, it looked very real, just the zombie really died.

     I found the wardrobe to be very appropriate for each characters personality. When some one walked into the room, I could tell what their personality would be like just by looking at their outfit. For instance, the young boy Joe looked like he had an easy-going attitude. I could infer this, because he often ore baggy and neutral colored shirts. Usually easy going people fall under the radar and don’t generally stand out. This is why putting him in bright, or unique clothes would not make sense.

  When J.J. Abrams would use light pointed at the screen, it would create a very cool effect called a lens flare. They used this because it created an awesome picture in the end. I think this is like drama, because when they have plays on stage, they also use a lot of lights to make the actors and actresses stand out more. I thought that the usage of lights had resemblance between plays and movies.

This movie was a great to compare with other plays and aspects of live theatre. That’s why I chose the movie “Super 8” to review for the dramatic aspect of films.

True Grit movie review

                                      True Grit

I personally did not enjoy the film True Grit. I have never watched many westerns, but I know for a fact that they all have a similar plot line.

   The reason that I am so against westerns is, because I feel as though the whole movie is about rebellious, and drunk cowboys who travel by horse, and kill a mass number of people. 

   The movie true grit was followed these lines. Although one thing is, I do think by adding Mattie (one of the main characters) was a nice touch because she definitely adds a different outlook on your average cowboy. In my opinion she was the highlight, and or best feature that the director could have added.

   Personally, I truly admired Mattie. The way that she could negotiate a deal, and not back down at any cost is something that I could never do. She is very sure of herself, and is extremely driven, and motivated to complete any task given. If Mattie wasn’t in this film, I don’t think I would be able to hold my focus throughout the whole thing. She made situations just that much more interesting. 

  Going back to what I said about not liking westerns, I noticed that throughout this movie, there was a substantial amount of violence. One particular scene stood out to me that had a great deal of violence. It was when Rooster Cogburn, and Mattie went to the small cabin, there were the two men who had already occupied it. One of the men got disappointed with the other for telling Cogburn too much information, so he cut his fingers off and he slowly began to die, because he also was severely bleeding from the chest. Cogburn had shot the attacker in the head, and I found that part also very disturbing.

  There was another big problem with this movie. Usually in movies these days, the dialogue is very clear, understandable and a key point to a story line. However, this movie was quite the opposite. Cogburn mumbled and grumbled the entire movie. I understand that cowboys at this time lived in a different lifestyle, but I think the director should have made the accent half as intense of what it was, so that people can understand every word, and understand the movie better.

   Something really stood out to me in this movie and that was the music that they used. I found that with each scene they were able to capture it to the full extent. They could create suspense, sadness, bravery or pretty much and emotion with their soundtrack. The music took credit for making you sit on the edge of your seat during the intense scenes. 

    In the end, I think what I took most from this movie was how brave a 14 year old girl could really be. In the end, she lost her arm but still lives and eventful life, and still has the dream to never give up. I wouldn’t re-watch this movie but I would recommend it to people just for the sake of the character Mattie who I greatly admired. 

   

North By Northwest

                     North By Northwest (1959)

  The film North By Northwest was a very well done film. I say this, because Alfred Hitchcock has a way to pull you in and be very intrigued. You will have intermixed emotions through out his films. North By Northwest was a classic example of how he is capable of achieving these feelings.

   He used lines, and placing of objects to symbolize tension, or the beginning of certain events that are about to occur. I had this feeling of uncertainty and I wasn’t sure why. For an example, he was using a cluster of trees to create distance between the two characters in the film (Roger O. Thornhill and Eve Kendall). This was a scene in a movie where they hadn’t seen each other in quite some time and had a few topics that needed to be resolved. At one point, there was a diamond-shaped cluster of trees, and this one tree was the main focus of the frame. Roger and Eve were at the two corners of the frame, so you could tell that there was tension in the air. They later moved closer together, so that there was now only one tree left in between them, but you could still tell that there was distance between characters.

  The last movie that I watched was The Birds, which was also directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This movie I found very similar to North By Northwest, because of the similar lead roles. He always uses a very pretty, smart, independent blonde woman for the lead role. This was the character of Eve Kendall. I quite admired her, because I liked the fact that she was able to fend for herself, and do anything she would have wanted to.

  Another thing that I picked up on in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were the abrupt and unfinished endings. At the end of this movie, I wasn’t sure if he woke up from a dream, if they died, or if it actually ended. I can see why he would have thought that the ending would have worked, but in my opinion I think he could have added more. He probably thought that he had explained that they were back on the train and every thing was fine, but I just didn’t think that was enough.

     Personally, I think that he should have clearly established that they got up and talked to the detectives. It feels like he got lazy with the ending so he just decided to cut out 5 minutes by ending it the way he did.

Over all I really enjoyed this movie and it is a must see for anybody that enjoys thrillers.

   

                                               Movie review on "Singing In The Rain" 




               The movie singing in the rain is a classic that i think everybody should watch.  For a movie that would seem to attract only a certain kind of person I thought it was very well done. What I mean by attracting a certain kind of person, is the fact that its a musical. Most people generally do not enjoy musicals, there for i thought it would not be a good film.

               When i saw this movie, i was blown away by actually how good it was. The director knew what he was doing when he was putting together this plot and story. I found that as the result of this, i was able to follow exactly what was going on during this movie.

              Each scene almost told a different story, and when they were put together, they created the movie "Singing In The Rain". I thought that some of the scenes were kind of pointless, for example, the scene where the main character is dancing with a girl in the green dress. I thought this scene was strange, because it lasted for very long and it added nothing to the story.

             The acting wasn't the highlight in this movie in my mind. Sometimes i found that they over-reacted, and didn't react when they should have. I don't know if this is something i just noticed, but i felt that the acting could have improved.


          The singing in this movie is what i think made it. This musical was well done because they added very catchy songs that made it worthwhile. I think that having music and dance in a movie would be very hard to put into something like this. They had bright colours, dance, and tons of movement going on during the songs, and that added to the over-all experience in this movie.

       All in all, i though this was a good movie and it is  a classic that every person needs to see.

       

Movie review on "The General"

                                                   Movie review on "The General"



              I normally don't enjoy silent movies, but the movie The General was quite different from what i have seen before.   From watching the movie, I have been able to view, and understand the concept of telling a story with out any dialogue.

       Jonnie Gray was a very smart and intelligent man, he worked as a train engineer and had the love of his life right by his side. Or so he thought.

  Jonnie Gray, who wanted to serve in the army but was denied because his career position was already to valuable to the town. At first, he thought he was declined because he was much smaller than your average man.  After he was denied access to the army, Annabelle Lee told him that since he was not a part of the towns army, she would not love him anymore. I felt that this was not very fair as Annabelle Lee did not understand the full story, about what had happened that day. She though that he didn't even try to get into the army, which was obviously not the case.

   Jonnie later went on a train ride with Annabelle Lee, and got off at a train stop.Little did they know, the opposing town was planning on stealing the train that they were on at a near by stop. I thought this was a good use of foreshadowing, because film was just starting to build, and not many people in 1926 would know how to use this properly.

   When the opposing town came to steal the train, Annabelle Lee was still on the train, and about to get off when they came and kidnapped her, along with the train. Jonnie was soon aware of this and hopped on another train and started to follow the kidnappers. Jonnie was a very brave mam for trying to save someone in that situation, and i thought he was especially a good man for not holding grudges about what Annabelle had said to him earlier. The chase scenes in this movie took up about 90% of the film, and sometimes it got boring because the two opposing trains involved in the chase were trying to create obstacles to further their time in getting away quicker.

     As the story progressed, the use of special effects, props, and explosions got even more intriguing. I though that for a movie made in the 20's it was extremely well done. As Jonnie was chasing the stolen train, the camera kept up with their every move, and never failed to miss a shot. the use of explosions was almost unreal, because that was a very hard task to achieve back then. I wont tell anymore of the story because it is a great film that i think everybody should watch
  
      Every time there was an explosion, they had to do it in real life because they had no access to editing, or computer generated explosions etc. In certain times of the movie, they had to blow up objects, burn down object, fire cannons or shoot bullets. I am still wondering how they were able to achieve this with so Little experience with movies back then.

   I thought the characters were very believable because they were around the same skill levels of actors from our generation in my opinion. At times they did over-react to certain situations, but i only think that this was on purpose, because of the fact that they had no sound in the 20's.

The film also used amazing sound effects, like for an example when something would fall on the ground, they would use a drum to create a loud "BOOM" and i personally thought this added to the movie, and made it more realistic, and believable.


   The character of Jonnie Gray was very heroic, i thought he was very brave for what he did because he risked his life for Annabelle Lee. He was probably my favourite character because i admire his concept for never giving up. Annabelle Lee on the other hand wasn't my favourite because i found that she didn't help much with trying to get away from the train robbers.


Over- all i really enjoyed this movie and would like to see more by this director because i think it was one of the first movies in the 1920's to impress people. It certainly impressed me.