Pschuman’s Weblog

                I have seen a lot of movies. I have even watched movies when I should have been doing other things, like studying. Of all of the movies I have seen, the top five that I have seen would have to be: Boondock Saints, Band of Brothers, SiCKO, Hero and Planet Earth. While two of these, Band of Brothers and Planet Earth, are actually miniseries, I still feel as though they are very impressive pieces of film making.  Why don’t we start from the beginning, with one of my all time favorite movies, Boondock Saints. I know now it is a huge cult flick and everyone knows about it but there was a time, 5 years ago to be precise, that no one even knew of its existence. This was the first time I saw it. It was the end of 7^th grade, and my cousin came up to my cabin with this movie that he said was the best action movie he ever saw. We proceeded to watch it, and I was instantly turned into a fan. What makes the movie so good is the plot itself. It deals with the whole issue of what is morally right and if killing is justified if it is the killing of truly bad men. It is a movie that sparks a whole new idea on vigilantism. It is a very entertaining movie that definitely has your mind set on the oxymoron, “killing for good.” Band of Brothers was a 10 part miniseries that HBO put out about 4 years ago. It is a series of narratives by different soldiers of a company as they fight through World War 2. This is one of my all time favorite war for several reasons. For starters, total it runs more than 10 hours. You as the audience aren’t given one 2 and a half hour battle, your given the whole war, through the eyes of the men who fought it. The other reason that I enjoy it so much was because this is a true story. This miniseries is based off of the book by Stephen A. Ambrose in which for years he spent countless hours interviewing these men of this company about the horrors they went through and how they felt about the war, about Europe, and about each other. Finally, the last reason why I love this story so much is because it focuses on the people a lot more than on the action. There may be 4 hours of battle scenes, but there are 6 hours of scenes in which the men are playing cards, they are eating, they are dancing, and the viewer is really able to see these men for who they really were, just 19 year old boys, not big tough army men. SiCKO is not one of my most favorite movies but it is definitely one that has affected me the most. I went into the movie not knowing at all what it was about, and came out with this really strong feeling of what should be revised in health care and how America should deal with its citizens. It made my top list because Michael Moore can single handedly gets the entire general public to take a stand and rise up for what they believe in. Just months after SiCKO came out Hillary Clinton restarted her effort towards universal health care in the United States. My last two top films are on here because of their use of images and other visual aids in order to send a message to the viewer. Hero is the story of a warrior in pre-unified China who is telling his story to the current king. The entire plot of the movie is basically the king interrogating him about what happened and he changing his story every time he is accused. What is truly spectacular about this movie is that with every different version of the story, the color tone is altered. In one version of the story there seems to be a lot of the color red present and in another version is seems to be blue. This gives the movie a very beautiful touch, one that shows how color can convey emotion and mood in a story. Planet Earth is a miniseries aired by the discovery channel and it is unlike any nature film you have ever seen. This is on my top list because the makers of it travelled for years around the globe, filming some of the rarest and most spectacular animals on our planet, showing us all how beautiful our planet is and how we have to make sure that we take the steps needed to make sure that this beauty is maintained.