Informal Critique
Realism in Film: Kracauer believes the Lumiere films to be staged films while the purpose of film at the time was to record the natural and real world. This article also refers to how Tabu used non-professional actors to create a real effect. This also happened in the recent movie Slumdog Millionaire. The majority of the cast were not professionals and lived in India. In the 1930s it would come to be that poetic realist films would become important to directors like Jean Vigo who wanted to throw out Hollywood romance and focus on reality. With this in mind I feel like realism should be shown in theatres more. So many times we witness the love or happiness or life that someone has on the screen and want it for ourselves, when in reality we can’t. It’s so disappointing but these movies bring us into a world where anything can be possible and for those two hours we are able to be swept away from reality.
Introduction to the Problematics of “Realism” in Film, Video, and Moving-Image Culture: “The problem with “realistic,” therefore, as an evaluative criterion for judging how “good” or “bad” a film is results from the fact that all films provide a representation of reality.” If I was to go to a movie theatre and see a Star Trek movie and the technology features and special effects were so horrible that I found it too hard to believe and it didn’t look like it could resemble reality, it would be an awful movie. Unfortunately, you can have great actors and actresses but if a movie doesn’t resemble something real, there is no purpose.
It’s unreal: how phony realism in film and literature is corrupting and confusing the American mind: Author Gregg Easterbrook says, “Because we undeniably live in a world where violence is excessive, killings have become a token of Hollywood and pop-novel “realism.” However, Hollywood is always known to stretch the truth, even with movies like The Blindside, a true story that was Hollywood glamorized.
It is ok to get out of a realist realm sometimes because movies take you away from reality. When you have had a stressed day and put a movie in. it’s a way to get out of your own world. So, I don’t think movies that do not represent realism are bad. It just bothers me when movies are different from books or real life stories.
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