Yojimbo

The Kurosawa film that I am choosing to write about is the samurai action film Yojimbo. I never really got where the title came from and it wasn't explained in the movie to my knowledge but still it was a great movie.

Te story itself was one that I really enjoyed, some much so that I even think I would enjoy the remake Fist Full of Dollars. The idea itself comes off as a very lone cowboy fighting the town of outlaws to clean out the riffraff and there was even the damsel in distress.

I didn't notice anything special with camera angles or shots but the use of weather in all of Kurosawa's movie to help tell the story was very cool. The wind coming back when the samurai with the gun returns to town was a very clear example of this.

I feel like the movie would have lost some of its impact on me if it were in color because the black and white really helped add to the feeling of the town being lost to the evil businessmen. And the use of sound was really interesting. Like the guy they had who was pretty much the town clock. Every time he would hit the wood together it should that there would be a battle starting, even though it was his job to yell the time he became a warning that the bloodshed was about to begin.

Young Frankenstein

The final Mel Brooks movie that my group watched was the comic interpretation on the classic Frankenstein movie (a horror movie in its day) Young Frankenstein. This movie wasn't as funny as the previous movies we watched by Mr. Brooks, Spaceballs, and Robin hood Men in Tights, but it still was entertaining enough o keep my attention.

Sadly enough it took until this movie to even realize that Mel Brooks pretty much just write parade movies based on other successes. But the weird part is the braking the 4th wall scene in Young Frankenstein seemed out of place to me and lacked the comic effect that they were intended to cause.

Plus, I know the acting was suppose to be corny like the Abby Normal joke, and have things overdone but still i felt if that was toned down and the jokes were relevant then I feel the movie could have been much greater. The one character I did find funny was the Igor the henchman, the clearly sick minded and crude humor reminded me of a young me.

But that is just my opinion, the movie was a success so it must have something going for it it missed.