Mind On Film Reflection

Before taking this English class, I would say that I had very little experience with film from a critical standpoint. Over the past three years I have seen a lot of different types of films at Movies 10 in Nelsonville, but not once did I think about going home and writing a movie review or analyzing the film. Coming into this class spring quarter I really didn’t know what to expect or know how it was going to turn out for me.
The creative nonfiction essay from the beginning of the quarter that I wrote was about my life and how football was my number one priority because I loved watching and playing football everyday was important for me. The only thing that was ever on the TV in our house on Sunday was NFL football. It didn’t matter what team was playing, I was always watching a game. The only time I would miss a game on Sunday, was for my own football practice. The game of football has been a part of my life since I was seven and it has helped me in so many different ways. If it was not for the game of football I would not be attending Ohio University today. This game as give me the opportunity of a life time and I am grateful for that in so many ways, the opportunities it has opened up for me are for things I would never in my life experience otherwise, like this class.
The writing assignment that I found to be the most interesting to me was the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind film review because it made me view the movie in a different way. I also felt that it was summarization of my personal opinion. What I took from the movie without spilling the key sequences of the film itself. The main reason I liked this assignment is that I got to tell you my opinion when trying to review the movie without telling the story or giving the movie away. It was easy for me to write, which is also probably a reason that it worked well for me.
The movie that interested me the most during this spring quarter was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World because I had never seen previews for this movie and had I never heard of this movie until this class. Out of all the movies that we watched in class, I liked this one the most because it had a lot of action, and there were many different character personalities. This meant that none of the characters were alike. This kept me guessing throughout the whole movie about what was going to happen next. Another thing that made me really like this movie was the theme and how it had added an arcade effect. The arcade effect made the movie appealing to the audience with a different style. But it also added to how the movie was unrealistic. I felt like I could relate to this movie a little more than some of the others as well.
I think discussing these movies in class made the papers easier to write because we were able to get different types of idea to write about. Another thing that made this work easier was that we got to hear our other classmate’s opinions and what they took from the film. It is really hard trying to catch all the details from a movie without writing them down. I benefited a lot from the days in this quarter when we would watch a certain scene from a movie and take 10 or 15 minutes to write down ideas. This really helped me to understand, I think it is the way that my mind works, this just worked better for me.
After doing the research on Amelie my opinion changed. Since I had only seen the movie once I was very confused. On my own, I looked up some information about the movie. This, along with the class discussion, was helpful in understanding. We found a journal article that talked about some of the lines were not exact translations, because it is hard to do an exact translation. The researched helped me piece parts of the movie together. For example, I thought that Amelie was stalking the guy that she liked, but in the French culture, this might be more acceptable.
This class has helped me by learning to view films in a different way. I really like this class because we were able to watch movies that made me question my own opinion and sometimes played a big role and changing my opinion – for instance a movie I might not have liked, I did enjoy because of the class experience. Writing is really not my strong point but I can say I think my skills have improved. There are a lot of new films coming out this summer that I will take the knowledge that I learned in this class to help me see the film from another aspect.