My Brother the Devil

My Brother the Devil is a 2012 British crime drama film, written and directed by Sally El Hosaini. It has won several awards, which include the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival. It features James Floyd as Rashid, Fady Elsayed as Mo and Saïd Taghmaoui as Sayyid. The film is about two brothers of Egyptian background living in east London. It was released in the UK on 9 November 2012 and was in US cinemas from 22 March 2013. The companies that produced the film are Rooks Nest Entertainment, Wild Horses Film Company, Film-Clinic and Blood Brothers Films.

The genres that My Brother the Devil conforms with are romance, crime and Drama. This is because of the drug dealing, killing and mugging throughout the film, drama with gangs and romance between the characters. There are many themes in the film which are family, religion, love, conflict, relationships, prejudice and identity.

Mise-En-Scene was used in order to create an environment which is seen as fairly rough. The characters live on an estate and this was shown by the establishing shots of towering, crowded flats throughout the film. The graffiti on the walls enhanced the idea that the characters lived in a rough, depleted area and the characters could be seen wearing clothes such as hoodies in order to blend in and stay out of the way, keeping a low profile at times when they did not want to be easily noticed. Another thing that was effective throughout the movie was Mo’s clothing. At the beginning of the film Mo is seen wearing bright colours but as the film progresses, he goes from being a school boy to being a drug dealer which meant that his choice of clothes changed as well. During his time with the dealers Mo started to wear dull colours like grey and black or navy blue. This represents how his innocence of being a young school boy has changed and he is now trapped in the life which his brother wanted him to avoid.

Camera angles and shots were extremely important in making this movie realistic and effective. Simple things such as the camera following the movement of someone taking a drink makes the movie more realistic and the audience feel like they are there with the characters. The cinematography in this movie was absolutely amazing. The shots of the estate and the surroundings made where they live look like a better place than what it actually was, this could represent how Rashid (the older brother) wanted a better life for him and Mo. Another effective technique was how the camera angle started off looking down on Mo, and throughout the movie the camera angle started to look up at him. This represents how Mo made his way to the top (making money from dealing drugs), whereas before he was a little boy being protected by his older brother.

Shooter Analysis

Shooter Dir. Antoine Fuqua (2007)

Antoine Fuqua (born January 19, 1966) is an American film director, known for his work in the film Training Day as well as The Replacement Killers, Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter, Brooklyn's Finest, Olympus Has Fallen and The Equalizer. He has directed music videos for such artists as Arrested Development, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Toni Braxton, Pras Michel and Usher Raymond. He was nominated for MTV's Best Rap Video for Heavy D & the Boyz. He also won two Music Video Production Awards: The Young Generators Award, for his work on Coolio's rap video "Gansta Paradise" and the Sinclair Tenebaum Olesiuk and Emanual Award for the trailer to the hit feature filmDangerous Minds (1995). 

Shooter is a 2007 American film directed by Antoine Fuqua based on the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. The film follows Force Recon veteran Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), who is framed for murder by a rogue secret private military company unit. The film also stars Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Levon Helm, and Ned Beatty and was released in the United States on March 23, 2007. The films genre is Action Thriller and its the themes for the film are; Loyalty, Vengeance, Death, Conflict and War. The companies that produced the film are Paramount Pictures, Di Bonaventura Pictures and Grosvenor Park Impact Productions. 

In the opening scene of Shooter, we see the end of a gun poking out from under grass. In this first picture alone we can see that the film is going to include violence in some way. We then see a medium shot of two men hidden under camouflage, grass and twigs. The next thing we see is one of the guys looking through the scope of a gun and we see what he see's through the scope. It then switches back to the two men and we get to see their face. We see that they have face paint which connotes that they are in the army or military. 

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Fish Tank Analysis

Fish Tank Dir. Andrea Arnold (2008)

Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actress. She won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp in 2005 and has since made the leap to feature films and television, including Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey, all of which have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Most recently, she directed three episodes of the Emmy-winning series Transparent.

Arnold was born in Erith Kent, the eldest of four children. She was born when her mother was only 16 years old and her father was 17, and they separated when she was very young. Her mother had to bring up all four children alone, which is reminiscent of Arnold's own directorial debuted short, Wasp. When people are asked if the story is in any way biographical, Arnold replies "I grew up in a working class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. 

As a young girl, she was writing dark stories about human experience. In an interview, Arnold speaks about how when she was a mere 10 years old, she wrote her first play that expressed her "horror" of the slave trade, and a few years later while studying for a dance GCSE, she made a performance piece; "I took quotes from the Diary of Anne Frank and read them aloud as I moved around the room. All the other kids would just bung on some pop music and dance. I remember the examiners sitting there looking at me, perplexed.Arnold left high school when she was 16, when she was drawn to becoming an actress. When Arnold was 18 years old she began working as a host and actress for a children's TV show called No. 73. She worked in TV for the next 10 years, while continually writing on the side. Arnold realised she could turn her stories into films, so she studied at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles where she gained experience in the film industry. After finishing school and returning to Britain she had her daughter, Coral and began making short films for TV.

Fish Tank is a British film set in Essex on a council estate. The films genre is Drama and Social-realism, it also has several themes including Conflict, friendship, love, violence and relationships. The budget for the film was £3 million and in the box office it almost doubled grossing £5.9 million. The companies who produced the film are BBC Films, UK Film Council and Limelight Communication. The film is about Mia Williams, a socially isolated 15-year-old who lives with her single mother, Joanne. The mother's new boyfriend, Conor, becomes attracted to Mia and has sex with her. Fish Tank was well-received and won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the 2010 BAFTA for Best British Film. 

Katie Jarvis, who plays Mia, had no prior acting experience. She was cast for the film after one of Arnold's casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in Tilbury Town,which is the railway station featured in the film.

Shooting began 28 July 2008 over the course of six weeks,and was filmed in chronological order. At the end of each week the actors were given the scripts for the scenes that they would perform the following week, so that when they performed each scene they were largely unaware of what would happen to their characters later in the film.

The opening scene of the movie is packed full of micro-features that can be deeply analysed. From the opening scene we can establish where the film is set, what the area is like and what Mia's character is like. In the opening scene, we see Mia catching her breath and then she goes over to her phone and calls her friend. From the conversation we see that Mia is more of a less educated person.  

Ralph Analysis

Ralph Dir. Alex Winckler (2008)

Alex Winckler was born in Washington D.C. but was raised in London. He was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study film at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts in New York. His graduation film, RALPH, was nominated for a BAFTA in 2009. Nominated as a Screen Star of Tomorrow in the same year, he went on to direct Richard Bean's HARVEST for Channel 4. After making another short, TITS, for the BFI/Lighthouse, which played in competition at the Berlin and Encounters film festivals, he went on to close the second series of Channel 4's BAFTA nominated drama series MY MAD FAT DIARY. The show was nominated for an international Emmy for Best Drama series 2015. He went on to open CRIMS, a BBC3 sitcom set in a young offenders institute and has recently directed the third and final series of MAD FAT. He is currently developing a feature with Creative England, written by Nick Payne. He is represented for commercials by Archersmark and has directed work for clients including Nike, Barclays and Microsoft.

Ralph is a British short film produced by Parkville Pictures and the UK Film Council. It is set in and around Marseille train station in France. The genre of the film is romance and there are many themes involved in it such as unrequited love, friendships, relationships and conflict. The opening shot is an extreme long shot where we see Ralph getting off of the train. The fact that when we see him in the train station he is very small compared to the other objects, suggests that he is out of his element and is essentially a little fish in a big pond. Alex Winckler uses lots of close up camera shots so we can see Ralph's facial expressions and reactions to events that occur. Winckler also uses a handheld camera when shooting the film. We know this because whenever Ralph moves, the camera isn't steady and firm, it is shaky and looks unprofessional. This is because he wants the audience to feel like they are with Ralph throughout the short film and to feel like we are experiencing everything he is going through.

In the movie, we hear and see people speaking french, but, Winckler doesn't use subtitles because he wants us to feel like we are in France with Ralph so we too can't fully understand what they are saying. This is also used for a dramatic effect, when we see Julie (who works in the Cafe), and her dad (who runs and also works in the Cafe), start arguing and we cannot understand what they are saying. When Ralph sees and hears them arguing, he is confused as he does not know what they are saying, this is how the audience is meant to feel when they hear it too.

Seven FIlm Plots

Overcoming the Monster – Man VS Monster - The hero must defeat real or imagined 'monsters' to re-establish the status quo - often by absorbing the 'evil' into his or her own worldview. Examples of this are Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Rags to Riches - Often the hero is plucked from seeming obscurity and given great wealth and power only to have it taken away. The story revolves around the protagonist's struggle to re-acquire his or her new status, through the defeat of a newfound set of obstacles.

The Quest  - The hero must overcome obstacles, recruit the help of friends, defeat enemies and save the world, possibly using a magical or symbolic artefact.

Voyage and Return - The defeat of a monster (often a metaphor for the hero's failings) is a mainstay of this plot. Back to the Future is an example of this.

Comedy - Comedy is often about using the absurd to make observations about people at their worst. The best comedy uses its own internal logic to highlight inappropriate behaviour that can lead to the same kind of resolution as the Rebirth plot. 

Tragedy - Usually centres around a high status character who is forced into a situation where he or she is downtrodden and the important things in life are taken. Often this is used as a starting point for a story, leading to revenge, justice, enlightenment, liberation etc. The Godfather series is an example of this.

Rebirth – Man VS Himself - where a protagonist must learn that adherence to his or her past life and values will not help growth or change. The largely symbolic 'death' of the hero usually occurs at around the mid to three-quarter point in the story, from which he/she rises again, stronger, wiser, and in control, usually with a mind-set that enhances the world around him or her. A Christmas Carol is a prime example of this as Scrooge gets visited by 3 ghosts of Christmas and starts to change his ways.

Pain and Gain

Pain and Gain Dir. Michael Bay (2013)

Michael Benjamin Bay was born on February 17^th 1965. He was adopted when he was two weeks old, by Harriet (Markowitz) and Sheldon James "Jim" Bay, who raised him. He has a sister, Lisa Bay.

He is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie, Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and The Divinyls. His work won him recognition and a number of MTV award nominations. He also filmed advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Miller Lite. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for his "Got Milk/Aaron Burr" commercial. At Cannes, he has won the Gold Lion for The Best Beer campaign for Miller Lite, as well as the Silver for "Got Milk". In 1995, Bay was honoured by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year. That same year, he also directed his first feature film, Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, which grossed more than $160 million, worldwide.

Michael Bay IMDb

Pain and Gain

Pain & Gain is a 2013 American biographical crime comedy-drama film directed by Michael Bay and starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie. The film is loosely based on a story Pete Collins published in a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles and compiled in the book Pain & Gain: This Is a True Story (2013), which details the kidnapping, extortion, torture, and murder of several victims by an organised group of criminals comprising bodybuilders affiliated with the Sun Gym. The film's title is a play on the common saying, frequently used in fitness: "No pain, no gain". It was released on April 11, 2013, Pain & Gain received mixed reviews; critics praised the acting, script, and comedic chemistry among the main actors, but criticised the violence, directing, and historical inaccuracies. Against a $26 million budget, the film grossed over $86 million worldwide. While the film tied with Grown Ups 2 for 3rd place on the Village Voice Film Poll's Worst Film list, Dwayne Johnson placed 10th for Best Supporting Actor.

In the opening scene of Pain and Gain, we see one of the protagonists, Daniel Lugo (played by Mark Wahlberg), hanging off of bars attached to the side of a building doing sit ups. In this first opening, we see it is a sunny day and that the film involves a gym because we see the logo of a gym on the wall and on the t-shirt of Mark Wahlberg. Bay uses a close up camera shot using a camera placed in front of Wahlberg on the wall, so we see his facial expressions as he is doing his sit-ups. In the opening scene we also see police vehicles coming around a corner and Wahlberg’s character looks down at the and says “Oh S**t” then jumps down and starts to run. From this we can tell that his character could be a possible bad guy because he is trying to run away from the police. In the opening scene, we see him get hit by a police car and it all goes into slow motion, we then hear him speaking, telling us his name and he says that he believes in fitness. We also see the date in which all of the events are unfolding which was June 17^th 1995.

We then see a blank screen with a voiceover from another character in the film, saying that the film is based on a true story. The fact that it was based on a true story can make the audience become even more captivated by the film, or it can make them not like it because they think that it isn’t really based on a true story. The voiceover says the events take place from October 1994 to June 1995. When then see an establishing shot of the gym and at the bottom it says 6 months earlier. The opening scene is the exposition, it tells us what is currently happening and where we are. The 6 months’ earlier shot is the preposition as it takes us back and tell us where we are and what happened before we got to what we saw in the opening scene. The use of the lighting in the film is important too. We see a very bright and sunny place, but the main character is wearing a black Adidas tracksuit. The contrast in dark and light shows that the character is a bad guy or he has bad intentions but hides it away or he is in a place full of good people.

The film has a meaning behind it and it is The American Dream, Daniel Lugo played by Mark Wahlberg is The American Dream and is willing to do whatever he can to achieve it. The American Dream is the ideal that everyone in the USA is created equal, and that if they work hard they will achieve upward mobility. This is an alluring idea for potential immigrants (USA has been described as having been founded on immigration). Ominously, Pain & Gain is a film about an American gang robbing, torturing and killing wealthy immigrants.  The American Dream has changed over time. Some would argue that it now bears more resemblance to the California Dream. Described as the idea, after the gold rush, of the pursuit of instant wealth, this certainly seems more in line with the aspirations we see presented around us in modern society.

Daniel Lugo’s American Dream is very modern. Frustrated with his life, he organises the kidnapping of a wealthy client. From there, he intends to beat signatures and information out of the man to allow himself to take ownership of everything he has. He concedes that they got greedy in attempting a second kidnapping, although this suggests that they started with the best of intentions. It’s always about having luxury items, like sports cars and big houses, which isn’t in line with having what everyone else has. It’s about feeling entitled, lying and taking what you want. Lugo isn’t just using the American Dream to take advantage of others and to guide his actions. He’s a victim of it, too. Daniel Lugo is a hard worker, look at the size of him - even with the aid of steroids, that’s the result of hard work. When Lugo is confronted with wealthy, successful people, it’s at his gym, where they inevitably can’t keep up with him. He’s working harder than them; where’s his fortune? He also makes a mockery of the phrase ‘never shit a shitter’, because he finds himself utterly taken in by motivational speaker Johnny Wong, another man selling the new American Dream; the secrets to instant wealth and success. In fact, Wong disparages hard work as a means to getting by, insisting that grinding your way up is for suckers.

My interpretation of Pain & Gain is that the film’s central character, Daniel Lugo, represents the modern American Dream. He is a man who pursues immediate gratification and wealth using the modern American values of violence and ruthlessness.

Edwards, M. (2013) Pain & gain, murky morals and the American dream. Available at: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/pain-gain/27082/pain-gain-murky-morals-and-the-american-dream (Accessed: 6 October 2016).