Life Is Beautiful

The film Life is Beautiful is based on the Nazi Concentration camps during the Holocaust. The director, Roberto Benigni, is able to make the film funny and happy even though it is about such a sad subject. The movie is based on a charming guy called Guido, played by Benigni, who falls in love with a woman and has a boy. The movie fast forwards until the buy is about 3 or 4 and Guido opens a book shop. Throughout the story the buy follows him around and everything seems perfect for the family. Finally the Nazi's start to show up and the buy starts to wonder why the troops are patrolling. Guido calms his son by telling him jokes and acting like everything is a game.

Things change when the Nazi troops discover Guido and his son who are both Jewish. They are taken away and the mother comes with because she can't see her son go away from her. They are taken to the concentration camp where their future is going to be death. Guido stays strong and doesn't let his son know what is going on. When the Nazi general comes in to give the prisoners instructions, Guido makes up translations to the other prisoners to be funny. Nobody can laugh because of the situation that they are in except for Guido and his son who thinks it is hilarious. Guido convinces his son that the whole camp is competing in a game where whoever gets the most points gets a real-life tank.

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Bungalow/1204/libeaut.htm

This link is where I foung information on Benigni being both the director and the main actor. I think the happyness portrayed in the film was easy to show because Benigni is such an energetic funny actor. Throughout the film during every scene that would seem tragic, Benigni turns into a joke which is equally funny as the scene is sad, so the sadness you feel is countered with laughter. He uses very animated facial expressions in his acting and never shows sadness.

According to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000905/#director
, Benigni has won an Oscar award. He won the award Best Actor for his role of Guido in Life is Beautiful. The movie also won best foreign film and won an oscar for music (original score). He has acted and directed many films along with Life is Beautiful. The original title of the film in France is Vita e Bella. He has acted in thirty films and has directed nine. Many of these films which were mostly foreign were made into American films with subtitles.

Overall, the movie was good but kind of annoying to follow just because of the subtitles you had to read. Unless you know French it is annoying because there is a lot of dialogue throughout the movie. The movie does a good job of keeping the same soft-hearted sense during the whole story. When they first arrive at the camp you would expect Guido to lose his cool and maybe break down and cry. He keeps a smile on his face for his sons sake no matter what happens to him. The movie shows the importance of life to certain people. Guido values his sons life more than anything and puts himself through hell in order to keep his son happy. This is where the movie got its title from. Other than the subtitle problem, this movie was entertaining and I can see how it won an Oscar.

Stage Coach

I thought Stage Coach was a great movie for the time because the action scences were amazing. The scenes with the Indians attacking were really cool and they had me wondering what they were going to do. The scene where the Indians on horses attcked the stage coach was well-done and took very big risks to make it great. The part in the scene when the one of the indians fell under the moving stage coach seemed very real because the whole time you could tell it was an actual person getting hurt. This movie risked people's lives in order to make it better.

Stage Coach was fun to watch because of the way it portrayed different types of people. Movies these days stay away from this because of political correctness. The Indians were portrayed as ruthless savages. The prostitute was shunned by most of the people and Miss Mallory wouldn't even talk to her. The movie didn't put the viewer in the shoes of the Indians and they were killed like cattle with no remorse. This movie was great overall because of its simpleness and of well-executed action scences.

Alien (1979)

Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, was a typical alien encounter movie which was very unrealistic but enjoyable. The movie did a great job of using surprise tactics to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. The whole movie leaves you scared to think when the next alien is going to jump out and kill one of the crew members. The plot is formed when a space craft headed back to Earth takes a bad landing on another planet and the seven crew members decide to go off and venture the planet. They find an abandoned space craft with a dead alien with thousands of eggs, the fun gets started when one of the eggs hatches and the alien breaks into one of the crew members space suit and leaves him unconscious. The aliens are out to kill and they are now faced with life or death.



This movie did a good job of putting the viewer in the shoes of the crew. The crew faces survival decisions and debate among themselves and as a viewer you find yourself engaged thinking about what you would do to survive. The director did not shy away from going away from the typical Hollywood action genre. All the characters who die are fully developed which makes the movie seem realistic as it doesn't always have the people you're rooting for win. I love this in a movie because you never know what is going to happen as in some movies where you know which characters are going to somehow end up alive. The killing scenes although were not as brutal as I would have liked, were very scary. The aliens are not shown much which makes them seem mysterious because there is not much known about them.



The setting in space adds to the overall spookyness of the movie. There is no light and the planets is very detailed along with the alien spaceship. The special effects fot the aliens were lacking but this ended up making the mystery about them better because you only see them for short periods of time. If this movie were made today, it could have potentially been worse because the effects would probably have been overdone. Many movies these days use special effects in every shot resulting in the effect of almost a cartoon type look. Star Wars did this in their more recent movies with almost everything in them and they were ruined because of it. The aliens in Alien are actual puppets which had limited movement but were very real looking. The directer did such a good job with the materials he had that you forget that an aliens don't exist to man.

The acting in the movie was great. It had contrasting personalities with the leader being Ripley who was a tough man who never would quit on his team. As a plus, it included a very hot woman along played by Veronica Cartwright who played the weak helpless woman aboard. Ripley emmerges to command and controls all the other crew members. The music did a great job of enhansing the action. The movie did a good job of being quiet and dark then surprising you when an alien attacked and the music picked up. You get to see what each crew member is made of with all the one-on-one fights with the aliens. This movie makes you question your own toughness and puts you in the place of the crew.



If you are interested in a sci-fi movie with aliens an old movie is the way to go. Alien was made at a time when people were not overly reliant on special effects to engage an audience. Instead, the movie concentrates on the actual story and has great simple dialogue to get the viewer engaged. The mystery of the aliens leaves you spooked not knowing when you are going to freak out and yell. If you are wanting to watch an alien movie, don't go to the new release isle at the movie store. Go to the sci-fi section and pick up Alien.