My Thoughts on the Class

Overall, I enjoyed the class. I originally took the class as an elective because I took a lit and film class in high school and thought that it would be similar. This class focused more on the film and cultural impact that the film had while the class in high school focused on comparing books and films. The material regarding film and filmmaking were very similar so this class was too difficult for me. Going into the class I had prior knowledge about shots, angles, sound, and other filmmaking techniques. The movies in this class were very different from the other class, which I enjoyed. They were movies that I would have probably never gone and seen on my own, so this class exposed me to different types of movies. I would say that my favorite movie we watched besides Cars would either be Get Out or Jaws. I liked Get Out because it was probably the most modern film that we watched in class. The plot was interesting and intense in a good way. It did have a somewhat fear factor to it, which I don't typically watch, but I think it well in this film. The ending of the movie was really good, and I enjoyed Rod as a character. He added comedic relief to break up some of the tension in the movie, which also worked really well. I liked Jaws because I like shark attack movies. My dad and I would always watch those really bad shark attack movies when nothing else was on TV. Some of them were better than others like Double Headed Shark and Zombie Shark. These movies definitely did not have a high budget because some of those movies were hard to watch but was funny how bad it was. 

I did end up enjoying some of the other movies we watched in class as well. I thought that Rear Window was good. I just thought that the beginning was a little slow and hard to follow. Swiss Army Man was decent, but just a little weird in my opinion. I think that the message behind the film was good; however, the whole dead body with power was just strange. I feel like I was spending the whole movie trying to figure out if the body actually had powers or it was like a dream or it was Hank's imagination. Marie Antonette was okay. I just felt like there wasn't a true plot to the film, which made it hard to follow for me. Moonlight I thought was a really good story. Its unique three-act/chapter style made it stand out for me although I felt like we were missing somewhat important information. I think it would have been better if we saw more interactions between Juan and Chiron because it seemed that Juan played a huge role in Chiron's life. I think the course covered a good range of movie types and was an enjoyable class.