Movie Review 6: Men in Black 1

In 1997, when MIB was shown in Japan, I was just 10 years-old. I remember this movie

well because it was the first time I had watched a movie, and I resisted going to a theater and was crying. In those times, I saw the advertisement of that movie many times, and I was afraid of seeing it since the characters appear in the movie looked really gross, and both Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in black suits wearing black
sunglass made me scared too.

Therefore, when my dad invited me to go to the movie, I strongly objected to the idea of watching this movie. However, in the end, in exchange for buying "Pokemon game", I accepted to go there.

 Since then, I haven't seen it for nearly 17 years. Before watching it, I tried to remember

the details of the story, but I totally forgot about them. However, when the movie starts, I began to recall the story. It wasn't a bad movie, I could see many kinds of aliens such as one who can regenerate its own head even if blew his head off, one who operates
someone's body (or it may be a robot) sitting in his head, and a speaking dog-like alien,
made me enjoy myself.

 Although the CG technology that used in it was not good in comparison to the current CG technology. I understand that it can't be helped, but it seemed cheap. In the meantime, I enjoyed lots of scenes. For example, in the first part of the movie, at the trial to decide who would be the best agent, J, performed by Will Smith, shot a target with a girl painted on it while other participants shot monsters. Also when J and K,

Tommy Lee Jones, went to autopsy room, K introduced J as a doctor "White". J turned
on K surprisingly, so K must have used the word as an irony.

 As I criticized about the CG, but in the movie, the scene of Will Smith being attacked by baby alien was so funny. The combination of seasoned cool agent and fresh hot newbie were making good atmosphere. What's more, the performance of the bad alien was really good. His ugly appearance, the creepy accent, and the constrained weird behavior gave me a feeling of ominousness.

 Lastly, according to web pages which written about MIB, the DVD version of MIB2 and

MIB3 have already released, so I'm going to borrow them while praying that they aren't bad movies.

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Movie Review 5: School of Rock!

While I was watching the movie, I had been thinking about two things. First, the first half of this movie, I wondered if these are really students and can the main characters really sing a song or playing instruments by themselves? It was questionable whether they are truly playing the guitar, the bass, or the drums. However, as the story went on, I became sure that they were playing instruments on their own, and were really singing the songs. After watched it, I confirmed about it on the Internet just in case.

Second, I felt the difference in ability of actors' performance between American and Japanese movies. I was just thinking the same thought when I was watching American TV dramas, such as C.S.I series and Dr. House. Not to mention, there must be well-financed companies in Hollywood, and also people who want to become a famous, rich, and great actors or actresses who get together at that place from around the world.

In the Japanese movie industry, as long as using bad actor, I mean, for someone who belongs to a major talent agency like Johnny's, it isn't possible to make excellent movies equivalent to the ones in Hollywood. In this movie, the main actor, Jack Black, gave an excellent performance. He played a struggling rock musician. The first part of the movie, he acted as a bad guy who troubled his friend, and also he screwed up his friend's good opportunity to become a teacher at a prestigious elementary school. 

At the same time, he played a passionate teacher, more than his friend. Although his motive was corrupted, as the story went on, it seemed that he started to find the fun in teaching. It was true that he deceived students, parents, and teachers, and messed up study hours for students for a couple of weeks. However, he built a really good relationship between him and students, he found good points of each student. In order to achieve his goal, he gave an important role to each of them, and boost them up. 

Even if you are a true teacher, it is difficult to motivate them, and have them to be united.

There was an interesting lecture, "History of Rock", he taught pupils during the work. It

seemed really interesting, I would take it.As for me, aiming to be a teacher, this movie made me think about how I should stir students up when they are depressed or in such a situation. Of course, I’m not favor of the fact that he ruined the class partially, but actually there were some good motivating methods. I'm not good at communicating with people immediately, so I want to learn from his ability of communication. 

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Movie Review 3: Rocky

Rocky Balboa was in a bad circumstance. He's been boxing since he was 15, but because of his left-handedness, most of boxers didn't want to fight him. As a result, for a living, he had to run an errand for a loan-shark. One day, a surprising rare chance came to him suddenly. The invincible heavy-weight champion, Apollo Creed requested to fight with him in order to liven up the bout, and Rocky was willing to accept it, so then he started to do hard training.

Not a few people recommend you listen to the famous theme song “Rocky theme song” when they want to raise their spirits. Every time I see something challenging or moving on a TV program, this music is often played in it. I do agree with their opinion, this music is stimulating and stirring. However, at the same time, I couldn't agree with what they said from the heart. It is because I believe that songs or music has to have a background as part of it. To raise my feelings up, it is necessary to have something moving or or some other attracting factors in the music itself while I'm try to overcome some difficulties. So, that's the reason why I hesitated to listen to the theme. I mean, I didn't understand what kinds of messages are included in it.

Although, I may understand why people recommended this music, and now it encourages me a lot. I love it, and also this movie. It is not just an action movie, that movie succeeded to depict not only a success story but also the story of of getting-his-life back. He had a dream to become a famous, strong boxer, but his dream didn't come true until he received a super chance. If people put them into bad circumstances, and everything doesn't work well, most of them would turn to crime.

Nevertheless, he wouldn't do that. He loves little things. He takes care of a street girl. He is concerned about even a man's fingers in debt. He must be in the doom-and-gloom of his life, but he had kept his pride and integrity. Before the bout, he was in a bed with his girlfriend, Adrian, and he says “If I go fifteen rounds, an' that bell rings an' I'm still standin', I'm gonna know then I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood...”. In the game, the champion punched Rocky's nose, and knocked him to the mat over and over, but the Italian Stallion rose each time. Rocky couldn't beat the champion finally, but winning or losing isn't important any longer. He retrieved what he wanted.

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Movie Review 4: Romeo and Juliet

 
Nearly two decades ago, when I was a kindergarten student, me and my classmates played "Romeo and Juliet" in front of our parents. Of course, I played Romeo and a girl, who I liked the best at that time, played Juliet. After the play, everybody gave us a long standing ovation with crying. It was sweet and just like dreamy memory....yes, it is a dream.

Actually, I played some grass. I had been hiding behind a cardboard grass during the play. A role of a grass? I still it doesn't much make sense about my role. Anyway, every time I see "Romeo and Juliet", which reminds me of that memory, and also I didn't exactly know the detail of the plot of the drama and the end of the story. I only knew Juliet's lines, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo, why do you have to be Romeo?" Most of students around me only knew those lines as well, so we often talked about it as a conversational topic. Which means, the words in Japanese, sound a little bit funny (or weird) for us who don't know the surrounding words of the lines, I mean the context. I

think it is a translation problem.

Anyhow, thanks to the movie review, it was given the opportunity to see the drama, I understood the meaning of "Oh, Romeo, Romeo, why do you have to be Romeo?" It is really tragic story. Because of the long-standing bloody battle between two prestigious families, young beautiful woman and handsome man must be destined to die. If Romeo wasn't a members of the opponent’s house, they would have spent a happy life. lines may be include that kind of meaning in it, I guess.

In addition, I have a question about making Juliet in a state of apparent death. A padre attempted to allow the couple to escape secretly, which was in vain eventually, but was it really necessary to camouflage her death? I thought the priest just let her go to the place where Romeo had stayed. I find it doubtful about that point, so if I have a free time I want to check why did he do that. What's more, I thought, this is William Shakespeare. While I was watching the movie, lots of interesting and fantastic expressions came from the characters’ mouths. I wonder

if it is difficult to understand the lines in English? Either way, I want to read or watch that masterpiece again.

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Movie Review 2: Mission Impossible Ⅰ

Ethan Hunt is a special agent of the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). 6 agents including Ethan were ordered to carry out an operation in Prague. The purpose of the operation is to prevent a classified list of spies from falling into the hands of an underground society. However, during the mission, all members of the team were killed by someone unknown except for Ethan. That operation's true aim was to find someone who leaked the IMF's crucial information, and as a result of Ethan's survival, another team decided that he was the culprit.

I already knew only the very famous action scene, which is, to withdraw important information from the CIA's computer room which was strictly guarded by several kinds of security technologies. Tom Cruise tried to hack the computer while suspended from the ceiling dangling horizontally. To tell the truth, I surely understand the mastermind of this movie the moment I saw Jim Phelps (who is the leader of the Prague's operation) was killed by someone on a bridge. Despite the fact that he had a diminutive video camera somewhere on his body, and he must be a cool agent, he didn’t take a video of the assassin and didn’t resist.

I wondered if I would be able to enjoy the rest of the movie because of the barely understandable scene. However, fortunately, some action scenes were really interesting, not to mention, the suspension scene. Those scenes thrilled me with their tense atmosphere. As I watching the movie, I was disgusted by myself. Since I entered again this university, I had to write a lot of reports or home works about movies and books. Through the training, I learned how to read the meaning or messages behind those works. I have became to enjoy them more than in the past, but as for some movies, like typical action movies, I could not have enjoy them any longer as well. I want to see more movies which go against my expectations.

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Movie Review 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones is a handsome and intelligent man who is popular with female students. He teaches archeology at a university, but in this movie, the man goes to many placesincluding the jungle, Nepal, and Cairo, Egypt to look for precious treasures, and he gets involved in big problems wherever he goes.

I have never watched this “Raiders of the Lost Ark” before because the film seems very old (it was released in 1981, 6 years before I was born!) and boring. In addition, the actor, Harrison Ford also discouraged me from watching the movie. When I saw a movie which the man acted as a main role in it was “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. I watched the movie on TV by chance, but it was dull from start to finish, so I didn’t expect I would watch a movie like that and have to write a review.

However, it was more interesting than I thought. I think there are several reasons for this. The first reason is Harrison Ford’s youthfulness. In the newest Indiana Jones’ movie, I felt that he was too old to act as Indiana Jones, but on the contrary, I could see his energetic and very physical shoot in the old one. In the story, he was about to be flattened by huge rock ball, and also he fought a nazi soldier on a plane’s wing. Then the second reason is CG. Of course, that high technology was used in the film which I saw this time, but its frequency in this movie was minimized. On the other hand, the newest one also used CG in its movie, but it was too sophisticated to watch.

What’s more, the characters that appeared in this movie also attracted me. A woman who likes Indy was really cute and hot, and some actors who were acting as the enemy also gave a good performance, especially the man wearing glasses. In conclusion, that old movie made me to reconsider the way of thinking to vintage, superior movies which released before I was born.

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