A single man

George (Colin Firth) is both main character and narrator in A single man (Tom Ford, 2009). We know it because of his voice explaining his life, but also because the entire movie is sprinkled with memories about his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode), who has recently deceased. These memories are thoughts that he has through the day, and they may seem to be about a previous, completely different life. Losing the loved one is for George the most horrible tragedy, and his life makes no sense now. Some of the flashbacks even appear in a very melancholic black and white.

Colin Firth is a great actor and he makes credible the literature professor who is thinking about commiting suicide.

I  liked narration but I loved mise-en-scène and the use of colour saturation, which are just incredible. Maybe the fact that the director is a also a fashion designer helps in that aspect.

I  strongly recommend it to you.

Penelope

Penelope (Christina Ricci) is the narrator of her own story. Her story seems an old epic one, since a servant of the family cursed the descent, being Penelope the victim.

Mise-en-scène reflects how Penelope sees the city, with innocent eyes, like a magic new world that she has never seen before.

Goodfellas

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese,1990) is narrated by his protagonist, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) who grews up in a very similar environment that the boy of A Bronx Tale (Robert De Niro, 1993) did and finds being part of the mafia as the best thing he could have.

This narration show a very personal point of view. With the freeze-frames, we realize the narration is taking place time later, and the narrator and protagonist is thinking and reflecting about his story. Later in the film it is Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco) who narrates her new life. She also does it through photo-montages, we are almost sitting in her living room, having a look at her albums.

In this video you can see some Scorsese's editing techniques with some examples of Goodfellas. 


I really liked the film, I found it interesting and very similar in some ways to A Bronx's tale: the narrator, the protagonist story told since he was a child,or Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) : drugs, the fall. And, in both of them, the figure of the divine woman who once got, is not so interesting as it was.

Everybody's fine

The thing I liked the most about Everybody's fine (Kirk Jones, 2009) is the personal point-of-view. The story is about a a recently widowed Frank Goode (Robert De Niro) who decides to visit his 4 children in Christmas, since they can not (Or that is what they say) go to visit him. He begins his trip, and each first time he sees one of them, they appear in the screen as a 7 year-old child. I loved this device. It means that he still sees them as if they were children, and in my opinion, that is a very sweet way to let us know that Frank really loves and cares  about his children, even if he may seem cold.

This point-of-view really surprised me, since I am only 19 and I have never really thought about how parents feelabout their children. 

Nevertheless, I do not think the film is a very good one and I found it takes pleasure in the melancholic scenes. The scenes in the train, when Frank is totally alone and disappointed, for example.