Movies often appeal to our fantasies, employ our fears as well as our desires, and speak to or use our values to get a reaction from us. Thus they are an excellent sources for semiotic analysis, in order to understand what they can tell us about us (or because they're so often targeted to a subgroup, especially young people, particularly males, who make up a significant percentage of the audience, what's up with those folk). The following information will help you analyze the various films .

*Hints on how to write a film paper

*A history of film

* McHenry library resources on film

* Here's a film page made by a student with good links (now dead, but the film titles are intereesting)

* Advice on how to use basic terms of film criticism

*Here's an excellent student paper on Scream

*A student says you must see this site on the Star Wars Trilogy, which includes a thesis and an extensive list of helpful links! And here's a fine student paper on mythic attributes of Bobba Fett

Media criticism site with film resources

Ideas for movies to look at:

Cult movies are especially interesting in pop culture; these are films that a relatively small group of people have adopted, seeing them again and again, usually at a second-rum movie theater at midnight on weekends, sometimes in costume. Most are available on video. Some of the movies below aren't exactly cult movies, but should be seen for one reason or another.

Rocky Horror Picture Show (perhaps the purest example; if you go to see it at a theater, don't admit it's your first time: take rice and a a spray bottle and newspaper)

Blade Runner (a futuristic film noir; visually striking)

Star Wars

Star Trek

Apocalypse Now Coppola's update of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Film Noir (Bogart): Big Sleep/ Maltese Falcon/Casablanca

Horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (2 versions)

B-Movies: mostly from the 50's: monster movies,

80's teen flicks: Ferris Beuler (did not write Twist and Shout) Fast Times, Heathers (a dark comedy).

Citizen Kane said to be one of the best films ever made. Basically destroyed the life of its maker (Orson Welles) at 26 and its subject matter, Hearst.

Pulp Fiction?

Other good films few people have seen: Local Hero, the Abyss

Recent students suggest studying:

Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, Kids, Natural Born Killers, Forest Gump, the Matrix and Clueless.

Books:

All That Hollywood Allows is a book at McHenry about women in 50's films. PN 1995.9 P6 N 37 1994.

Journals

Film Quarterly, Journal of Popular Culture etc

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