Short term 12: lighting

Destin Daniel Cretin's film Short term 12 deals with life in a home for troubled youth ,ith troubled meaning abandoned, abused or just lost. Given such dark subject matter it figures that the majority of the film should have rather dark, muted lighting to match the tone and situations presented within the film. The use of lighting in a film is essential to establish mood and atmosphere. The film reaches its darkest when we delve into the personal struggles of both Marcus and Jayden. This is especially true of the scene where Jayden shares the story of her abusive father as told by the "octopus" story. and later at Jayden's dad's house. This darkness of course represents the mood and the feeling of being lost and neglected commonly found in group home kids but is also a great demonstration of trends in contemprary dramas, as new tech has allowed for more atmospheric shots and lighting. needless to say there was points in the film where the lighting was weak as it was often overused and made more positive moments feel somber. The use of lighting in this film is strangely similar to Christopher Nolan's memento, a thriller. I say this because Memento is largely dark as well and is very atmospheric, with several Noire elements, which also represents the trends in contemparay film.

MYST #3: Spectre

James Freaking Bond, doesn't get much better than this right? The adventures of 007 have been pulling audiences into theatres since 1962 with fast action, beautiful cars and gorgeous women. The newest entry in the series "Spectre" doesn't seek to change that, as we still see the usage of great visual effects and not one, but two beautiful women. As the fourth film starring Craig as Bond the film retains its markedly darker tone, having a grey hue throughout and making villains far more personal and diabolical, which we saw mastered in Skyfall by the likes of Silva. This time Bond is taking on the criminal organisation behind everything: Spectre.
The strongest point of this film as with all Bond films is the big-budget action, my personal favorite is a chase scene with Bond in a single engine plane pursuing a convoy of baddies who kidnapped Dr. Madealine Swann, his love interest, which culminates in Bond adjusting the trajectory, flying through a barn and straight-up ramming one of the vehicles, resulting in a huge fiery explosion. This in addition to a mid-air struggle to control a helicopter and the always excellent gunplay makes Spectre a solid action film in its own right. The editing in the film is also superb, being essential for action scenes. one such place it was well utilized is a car chase through the alleys of Rome which cycles through many shots to keep the pace of the action up.
Even so, the film is held back severely by its lack of an interesting plot. We see the introduction of a malevolent shadow organisation, which in spy movies is probably one of the most tired cliches available, barring the Soviets. The first half of the movie consists of Bond finding information about Spectre who, it turns out, seek to take over the world through a unified security program called "nine eyes" introduced by "C" the Joint Chief of Staff who you know is evil within two seconds. The second half consists of Bond stopping their "nine eyes" plan, which involves satellites and other stuff we've seen before in the series. The climax of Spectre was rather lackluster as well as it consisted of Bond saving Swann from the old MI6 building which was rigged to explode while "M" and "Q" stop "C" from activating "nine eyes". It's cool, but not as cool as the climax of Skyfall which was a last stand scenario at James' house complete with the old Aston Martin and an attack helicopter, which ultimately resulted in the death of a villain we thoroughly hated and despised. The saddest thing about Spectre is how Director Mendes failed to utilize Christoph Waltz, a man who owes his fame to a hammy, hilarious performance as a Nazi officer, as a villain. We see hide nor hair of him until the third act where his "personal" vendetta against James is revealed out of nowhere and throws the entire story off-track. Luckily, he survives in the end so he may come back later with a vengeance.
In any case Spectre's weak plot is real downgrade from Skyfall which makes it all the more tragic and with the next film likely being Craig's last we can only hope that the next film can leave us with the closure and payoff we saw in SkyFall