Film Review- "North By North West"

Alfred Hitchcock's North By North West, released in 1959 is a suspense-thriller film that I watched in my Film Studies class. Starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, it tells the story of a middle-aged man (Cary Grant) who is wrongfully accused of being a CIA agent by the name of George Caplin. The movie follows him as he flees from his kidnappers and falls in love with the young and beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on the way. Although I did not absolutely love the film, it had solid acting and is one of MGM Picture's films that are worth seeing.

I was very impressed by the acting of all the leading roles in this film. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint did spectacular jobs of holding the tension that makes the movie a thriller, as well as channelling their emotions clearly to the audience in order to move along the romantic elements of the plot. I found Alfred Hitchcock's classic brief cameo in the beginning of the film, in which he is seen boarding a bus, very amusing. A director who places special things in his films for the audience to notice provokes the viewer to be more attentive.

Although I sometimes found the plot confusing, the ending tied everything up nicely and left me satisfied. I was very intrigued by how the director so sneakily dropped a clue to how the main mystery of the story developed in the beginning of the film. I would recommend this film to anyone above the age of 12 who enjoys thrillers, romance, suspense or action.

"Plan 9 From Outer Space"/ "Ed Wood" Film Review

Released in 1959 by Reynolds Pictures , the notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space is both a waste of time and a must-see. All acting in the film, including that by Gregory Walcott and Mona Mckinnon who play the lead roles, is absolutely terrible. Half of the characters in the film do not even speak and just walk around poorly pretending to be dead. The alien characters are cheesy and unbelievable. They never let the viewer believe that they are anything more than regular people in smocks who do bizarre 'alien" handshakes. The set in this movie, which consists mostly of cardboard pieces and phony UFOs, is equally to blame for the film's lack of realism and credibility. Although it is a complete failure on director Ed Wood's part, I would highly recommend seeing it for two reasons: to get a good laugh at its pathetic attempts at movie making and to learn everything that you should NOT do when making a film.

In director and producer Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood, Johnny Depp stars as the talentless director previously mentioned in the above paragraph. Unlike Ed Wood's actual films, this one had great acting. Johnny Depp played the failing director perfectly, mastering both his attractive naïveté and disturbing qualities. The film provided an easy to follow plot and realistic sets (also unlike Plan 9). As a viewer, I stayed entertained by the film because I wanted the character of Ed Wood to succeed in his film making, although I knew he would not. His determination and obliviousness to his own lack of talents makes him a likeable character. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wonders how and why Ed Wood's films were always so terrible or to anyone who enjoys Johnny Depp or Tim Burton films.