Category: Movies Comparison

My Dear Friend,

How are you? It has been a while since we talked. Since our last conversation I have been to the cinema a few times and I would like to tell you about two romantic comedies I have watched that, to my mind, you might find interesting. They are Aloha and Man Up.

Aloha starring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams depicts a reconnection of a celebrated military contractor, Brian (Cooper), with his old love, Tracy (McAdams), and his sudden going for the Air Force watchmen, Allison (Stone), assigned to him during a military operation (Aloha par. 1). In Man Up starring Lake Bell and Simon Pegg, we see Nancy, a single 34-year-old woman (Bell), who is mistaken for a blind date. Finding a stranger (Pegg) handsome she decides to hold back the truth and as the result realizes that she has found a perfect boyfriend in the person of a 40-year-old divorcee, Jack (Man Up par. 1).

Both Aloha and Man Up are romantic comedies and have something in common. First of all, in both movies, we can see the depiction of people who fall in love unexpectedly  Nancy, who had been mistaken for a blind date, and Brian, who was assigned with a watch-dog. Second, in both Aloha and Man Up, there is a set of intrigues  Nancy does not tell Jack that she is not the girl he was going to date, and Brian meets his ex-girlfriend who is married and has children and wants to break up her family, so they get back together. Third, there is a line of recollecting old love in both films  Nancy and all her earlier relations and Brian and Tracy, who used to date. And, finally, there are happy endings in both movies and a beautiful depiction of true love.

Despite being similar in some ways, these films as well have differences. First of all, the most evident difference is the geography  Nancy and Jack find each other in London while Brian goes to a military base located in Honolulu, Hawaii. Second, while there is a love triangle in both movies, in Man Up, it is invisible because Jack does not know that Nancy is not the girl he was going to meet, but in Aloha, Brian tries to break up Tracys family, so a romance triangle is quite real. Third, in Aloha, there are other characters living their lives and the course of events takes a long time to develop, while Man Up focuses on Nancy and Jack and the short time they spent together getting to know each other. Fourth, the background of both stories is also different  while Nancy and Jack are having fun and partying, Brian is involved in a military operation. And, finally, Nancy realizes from the very first sight that Jack can become her perfect boyfriend while Brian is a little bit lost in his feelings and only after Tracy decides to stay with her husband and children, he understands that he is in love with Allison.

So, my dearest friend, these are two absolutely different but in so many ways similar movies that, I think, are worth watching. Depicting people with the diverse background, they show that true love is what we all need and that it always comes unexpectedly even when you think that everything is over for you. I hope you will find them interesting and will enjoy watching them.

P.S. Tell me what is new with you.

Your Friend, &

Works Cited

Aloha. 2015. Web.

Man Up. 2015. Web.

I hope my message will find you well, and you will enjoy my reply to your last message. You asked me to share my recent motive theater experience and compare two romantic comedies I was lucky to watch. In fact, such a task was a bit complicated for me because I am not a huge fan of romantic comedies being watched at theaters. However, I was able to remember two comedies I saw: Why Him? and Bridget Joness Baby. Both of them are American comedies that make people smile and believe that human life can be easy in case people try to develop appropriate and trustful relations. Some people may think that these are the only similarities in addition to the release year that may be given to these two movies. However, it is not true. Why Him? and Bridget Joness Baby have many things to be compared and contrasted.

The comparison begins with my decision to watch these two movies. I expected Bridget Joness Baby for several years. It is the third movie in the franchise about an amazing Bridget Jones, starring Renee Zellweger, a woman, who tries to find her love and enjoy her personal and career choices regardless of her weight, clumsiness, and ability to fall into ridiculous situations. In comparison to Bridget Jones, Why Him? is not a sequel or prequel to something. It is a new comedy about the relations that are developed between parents, children, and their lovers. I was invited to watch the movie in the theater. Therefore, it is possible to say that it was not my personal initiative to choose the movie. However, in both cases, I have not regretted spending time and watching these two romantic and funny stories.

In both movies, the cast is impressive. Zellweger was accompanied by handsome Colin Firth, whom she was in love with in the past, and Patrick Dempsey, whom she could be in love with one day (Maguire). This trio impressed by each members diversity and unexplainable appropriateness. In fact, Dempsey successfully replaced Hugh Grant, who did not accept the offer to continue playing the role of Daniel Cleaver. The cast of Why Him? is also memorable. James Franco introduced two powerful duos developing love relations with the character of Zoey Cranston and father-daughters boyfriend with the character of Bryan Cranston, who continued asking the same question during the whole movie, Why *him*? (Hamburg). It is hard and even impossible to imagine other actors performing these roles. I think that cast choices are successful in both movies despite the fact that different impressions and attitudes were developed.

Finally, I want to focus on the power of direction in Why Him? and Bridget Joness Baby. In both movies, the directors used different decorations and camera movements to cause different reactions of people. Family, work, and entertainment are three main directions chosen by Hamburg and Maguire for their movies. Each time, the characters were ready to deal with a new challenge and used appropriate phrases. However, in most cases, the situations turned out to be comic that made all people in the theater laugh.

Do I like the movies? Of course, I do! In both cases, I enjoyed the decision to watch them in the theater and share my personal emotions with a group of people who bought tickets that day. I like the actors and the ideas introduced in Why Him? and Bridget Joness Baby. Human relations may have many sides, and these movies helped me to comprehend this truth, enjoy two hours at the theater, and make the decisions that could change this life in a moment.

Works Cited

Hamburg, John, director. Why Him? 20^th Century Fox, 2016.

Maguire, Sharon, director. Bridget Joness Baby. Universal Pictures Miramax, 2016.

Air Force One

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Release Date: 1997

Lead Actors: Harrison Ford, Dean Stockwell, Gary Oldman, and Glenn Close

Plot: The president of the United States is en route to Miami, Florida after a state visit to the former Soviet Union to celebrate the capture of Khazak military dictator Gen. Ivan Radek. Air Force One is then hijacked by the other military supporters of Radek. They manage to board the presidential plane due to the connivance of the secret service agent Gibbs. With the president of the free world refusing to leave his plane, what ensues is an action-packed retaking of the White House in the sky led by Pres. James Marshall. As the battle to retake the plane ensues, the United States is embroiled in a constitutional crisis and finds itself in the difficult position of having to negotiate with a terrorist to minimize the loss of lives on board the plane.

Exploration: The movie utilized the use of single straight-through shots with only a camera for most of the movie. Due to the confined shooting space, it was more efficient to shoot in such a manner to ensure that all the shots could be tightly edited together. The lighting gave the actual feel of the indoor of an airplane even though it was only a soundstage. The computer-generated effects/animation that was used in the film were so flawless that it would be hard to tell if actual planes were used in some scenes or not. The sound aspect of the film acted to involve the viewer even more because of the realistic sound effects used in the high-action sequences. In all, the movie was a well-thought-out psychological action thriller that depicts what could happen if the most protected man and plane in the world fell into the hands of terrorists.

Down With Love

Director: Peyton Reed

Release Date: 2003

Lead Actors: Renne Zellweger, Ewan McGregor

Plot: Barbara Novak is the hottest womens rights author of her time. While her book Down With Love revolutionizes the way women treat men and sex, it also catches the ire of men who are not used to having the shoe on the other foot. When Catcher Block loses his woman to Ms. Novak, who was scheduled to interview for his magazine, he sets out on a vendetta to make her fall for him so that he can learn her secrets and ruin her. In a throwback to the Doris Day  Rock Hudson sex comedies of the 1950s, the well crafted romantic comedy shows us that there is no such thing as Down With Love and up with sex once two hearts finally make a love connection.

Exploration: Peyton Reed mimics the directing style of the 1950s in this film and heavily uses special visual effects to recreate and set the mood of the era for the movie. The character costumes, lighting, set design, sound, and animation, all remained true to the era it portrayed and helped the viewer go back in time for a few hours. The dialogue and some scenes had obvious sexual innuendo but were dealt with so lightly that one could not help but laugh at the punch lines thrown our way. The acting was a bit exaggerated but understandable since this film is somewhat of a parody of a bygone era in Hollywood. In totality, the film is a refreshing blast from the past after one has gotten used to the new crude dialogue and in-your-face action of modern Hollywood films. The film does not spell everything out for the viewer through actions and energizes our brain by forcing it to recognize the comedy through the thinly veiled innuendos. A great film to watch with your best guy or girl on movie date night.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past (Orwell, 309).

In his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell describes by far the most terrible and powerful political regime that has ever been created by the human mind. Oceania is the classic example of dystopia, the world in which a person desperately tries to survive often at the cost of others. Those, who try to break free of this bondage, are doomed to failure. Winston Smith is one of them; his most intimate is to escape from the all-seeing eye of Big Brother. To some extent, he is an embodiment of the individual who has been subdued by the state and virtually turned into an animal. This character became an archetype, and now many writers and film directors use him in their own works, though under different names (Lucas, 95). For instance, one may remember Florian Henckels film The Lives of Others. Gerd Wiesler shares many common features: with Winston: both of them are disillusioned with an existing political system that forces people into submission and justifies these actions by noble pretexts. They are also forced to cooperate with the state but Gerd occupies a higher position in the hierarchy than Winston, he is one of those who spy on others but later he realizes he has been horribly deceived by his government.

One may as well draw parallels between Winston and Georg Dreymann, the playwright. They commit their deepest thoughts to paper in an effort to leave a trace in history and convey a message to future generations. This part of their lives is entirely unknown to others. The main difference is that Georg still cherishes hope, believing that his plays will eventually find their readers while Winston is firmly convinced that his diary will be destroyed as soon as it is discovered by the Thought Police.

Julia and Christa-Maria also immensely resemble one another; the most striking detail is their sexual promiscuity. They are heavily dependent on people, who possess the authority and this dependence makes them act in this way. Christa-Maria loves Dreymann but she cannot leave Hempf, a party official because her refusal may prove very perilous for her. Moreover, these women do not consider betrayal as something immoral and unacceptable. They are corrupted by society, but in 1984 the degree of corruption is extremely intensified.

The theme explored in both works is the manipulation of public opinion. In Nineteen Eighty-Four the domination of the Party is absolute because people do not know anything about other counties; they are totally isolated from the rest of the world. As a result, the state can impose its opinion on the population by changing the history or even vocabulary of the language. The censure, arrests, and constant supervision are the strategies used by the government to eliminate any possibility of dissent. Certainly, similar methods of control are depicted in The Lives of Others, for example, bugging, shadowing, or arrests. Nevertheless, the situation is drastically different as in this film citizens of Eastern Germany understand that there is a different way of life, so Stasis does not manage to subjugate them (Nickerson, 1). In this case, a comparison is not quite appropriate because these films are distinguishable in terms of genre: 1984 is dystopia (James, p 44), whereas The Lives of Others is a historical movie.

George Orwells novel will always attract the attention of many authors and cinematographers because this book warns human society against the dangers of despotism and dictatorship. It eloquently proves that people can be gradually enslaved even without noticing. Other authors will refer to this novel because 1984 abounds in very strong and vivid characters.

Bibliography

James. G. Pauli. L. Utopia/Dystopia. Douglas & McIntyre, 2008.

Lucas. S. Orwell. Haus Publishing, 2003.

Nickerson. C. German film prompts open debate on Stasi. A forbidden topic captivates nation. The Boston Globe, 2006. Web.

Orwell. G. Nineteen Eighty Four 1st World Publishing, 2004.