VIDEO EVALUATION ASSIGNMENT -- Fall 2004
DUE
BY October 19, 2004 – no late evaluations accepted!!
You may (for
extra credit) choose, watch and
evaluate one of the films from this list. Do not choose a movie you have
already seen before. Or if you do, be sure to watch it again – successful
evaluation comes after a fresh viewing. There are other films that would be
appropriate, but you must get permission to use another film.
WRITEN
RESPONSE GUIDELINES:
All responses should be typed, double-spaced in standard academic format, at
LEAST one full page (250 words). Title of films should be italicized. You may
express your opinion using first person pronouns. Do not write just a
summary (telling what happened). Write an analysis, discussing what you think
about the movie. Was it good or bad? What made it good or bad? Try to evaluate
at least two of the following aspects of the movie and discuss whether they are
good or bad: directing, acting, story, cinematography, special effects, music,
writing, editing, etc.? Make an argument like a film critic, showing your
analytical evaluation of this as a film.
NOTE:
You may receive a maximum of 10 points towards your final grade. But
merely doing the assignment does not guaranty that you will receive the points.
Points given will reflect
substantial effort (you will not automatically receive all the points just for
doing the minimum amount of work).
Films
with Native American Themes (in order of
how I recommend them)
The Business of Fancydancing (2002
– directed and written by Sherman Alexie about a successful, gay Indian poet
from Spokane who confronts his past when he returns to his childhood home on the
reservation to attend the funeral of a dear friend – all Native cast and
crew).
Smoke Signals (1998 – First all-Indian feature
film about two young men trying to find their way on and off the reservation;
starring Adam Beach & Evan Adams)
The Fast Runner (2001 – directed by
Zacharias Kunuk; telling of an Inuit legend of an evil spirit causing strife in
the community and one warrior's endurance and battle of its menace).
Powwow Highway (1989 – Social realism regarding
struggles of reservation Indians in the North)
Incident
at Oglala (1992 – Documentary on events of Leonard Peltier’s
controversial conviction for murder; made by Robert Redford and Leonard Peltier)
Blackrobe (1991 – Canadian film about
Algonquians in 17th century, starring Lothaire Bluteau and Aden
Young)
Thunderheart
(1992 – FBI man with Sioux background is sent to a reservation to help with a
murder investigation; starring Val Kilmer, Sam Sheppard, Graham Greene)
Last
of the Mohicans (1992 – Three trappers protect a British Colonel's
daughters in the midst of the French and Indian War; starring Daniel Day Lewis,
Madeleine Stowe & Russell Means)
Little
Big Man (1970 – Jack Crabb, looking back from extreme old age,
tells of his life being raised by Indians and fighting with General Custer;
starring Dustin Hoffman & Chief Dan George)
A
Man Called Horse (1970 – In 1825 an English aristocrat is captured by
Indians and lives with them; starring Richard Harris)
Boyz
N the Hood (1991 – Saga of a group of childhood friends growing up in
a Los Angeles ghetto; starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Lawrence Fishburne, directed by
John Singleton)
Monster’s
Ball (2001 – Billy Bob Thornton,
Halle
Berry, directed by Marc Forster; after a family tragedy, a racist prison guard
reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African American wife of
the last prisoner he executed)
Malcolm
X
(1992 – Spike Lee’s version of the famous civil rights activist’s life;
starring Denzel Washington, Angela Basset, + more)
The
Hurricane (1999 – Story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a
boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to
prove his innocence; starring Denzel Washington)
Finding
Forester (2000 – An African American teen writing prodigy finds a
mentor in a reclusive author; starring Sean Connery & Rob Brown)
Beloved
(1998 -- Based on the book by Toni Morrison, in which a slave is visited by the
spirit of her deceased daughter; starring Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey and
Thandie Newton)
The
Color Purple (1990 – The life and trials of a young African American
Woman; starring Whoppi Goldberg and Danny Glover; based on Alice Walker’s
Novel directed by Steven Spielberg)
Menace
II Society (1993 – A young street hustler attempts to escape the
rigors and temptations of the ghetto in a quest for a better life; starring
Tyrin Turner & Larenz Tate)
He
Got Game (1998 – A basketball player's father must try to convince
him to go to a college so he can get a shorter sentence; starring Denzel
Washington)
To
Sleep with Anger (1990 – Danny Glover plays a sinister stranger who brings
confusion to the “family” he visits)
Once
Upon a Time . . . When We Were Colored (1990 – A narrator tells the
story of his childhood years in a tightly knit Afro-American community in the
deep south under racial segregation; starring Phylicia Rashad & Al Freeman
Jr.)
Glory
(1989
– Robert Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company,
fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates; starring
Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick)
The
Green Mile (1999 – execution of a wrongly accused man who has the
power of faith healing; starring Tom Hanks, David Morse, Michael Clark Duncan)
Films
Concerning General Race Relations
The
Believer (2001, directed by Henry Bean with Ryan Gosling; a young
Jewish man develops a fiercely anti-Semitic worldview. Based on the true story
of an American Nazi Party leader in the 1960s who was revealed to be Jewish.)
Mississippi
Burning (1988 – Two FBI agents with wildly different styles arrive
in Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of some civil rights activists;
starring Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe and Frances McDormand)
American
History X (1998 – A former neo-nazi skinhead (Norton) tries to
prevent his younger brother (Furlong) from going down the same wrong path that
he did)
Urban
Playground (2002 – gritty urban drama focused on the victimization of
a child by the desperate inhabitants of his community)
Mississippi
Masala (1991 – An Indian family is expelled from Uganda when Idi
Amin takes power; their daughter falls in love with an African American in
Mississippi; starring Denzel Washington & Sarita Choudhury)
Do
the Right Thing (1989 – Spike Lee’s film of a hot day on a New York City
street, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into
violence); OR ANY SPIKE LEE FILM
In
the Heat of the Night (1967 – An African American detective is asked to
investigate a murder in a racist southern town; starring Sidney Poitier and Rod
Steiger)
Dangerous
Minds (1995 – An ex-marine teacher struggles to connect with her
students in an inner city schools; starring Michelle Pfeiffer, George Dzundza,
Courtney B. Vance)
Fresh
(1994
– Michael (or Fresh as he's well known) is a 12-year-old drug pusher who lives
in a half-way house for children without their parents; starring Sean Nelson,
Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson)
Tortilla
Soup (2001, Hector Elizondo, Elizabeth Peña; a Mexican-American
master chef and father to three daughters has lost his taste for food but not
for life)
The
Milagro Beanfield War (1988 – Robert Redford’s film about a struggle
between a White developer and a Chicano farmer and his community; starring Chick
Vennera and Sonia Braga)
Bread
and Roses (2000 – Two Latina sisters work as cleaners in a downtown
office building, and fight for the right to unionize)
Real
Women Have Curves (2002, story of Ana, a first generation Mexican-American
teenager who must choose between family loyalty and university)
El
Mariachi (1992 – El Mariachi just wants to play his guitar and carry
on the family tradition. Unfortunately, the town he tries to find work in has
another visitor...a killer who carries his guns in a guitar case)
One
Man’s Hero (1999 – Little-known story of the "St. Patrick's
Brigade" or "San Patricios," a group of Irish immigrants who
deserted to Mexico after encountering religious and ethnic prejudice in the
U.S.; starring Tom Berenger and Joaquim de Almeida)
El
Jardin del Edin (1994 – Looking for a better destiny for their lives, a
group of people arrives to Tijuana, in the Mexico-USA borderline)
El
Cometa
(1998 – After witnessing the arrest of her father for publishing, a
"subversive" winds up working in the circus in El Paso)
American
Me (1992 – Epic depiction of thirty years of Chicano gang life
in Los Angeles)
Old
Gringo (1989 – When school teacher Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda) goes to Mexico
to teach, she is kidnapped by Gen. Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits) & his
revolutionaries)
The
Mask of Zorro (1998 – The elder Zorro comes out of retirement to train a
new Zorro to fight the enemy Montero in early California; starring Antonio
Banderes & Catherine Zeta-Jones)