Amadeus

Amadeus follows loosely the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but despite the title the movie is really about Antonio Salieri. Salieri's viewpoint, motivations, and story are really the focus, and are interestingly entwined with the life of the famous composer.

The movie starts at the end, where we see Salieri attempt suicide and watch as he is carried to the insane asylum. There he meets with a young priest who has come to take his confession. Salieri's complicated life is shown in flashbacks, with the older Salieri providing insight in his feelings and motivations. This is a great technique for this particular story because his motivations about serving God and giving of his life and talents are much more historical accurate to the time period of the film than they are to 1984.

Salieri has been anxious to meet Mozart, whose music and talent he has admired from afar. When he meets the young Wolfgang, he is amazed and unhappy at the foolish, small-minded young man. Thus begins a mostly one-sided rivalry. Tom Hulce does an amazing job with the character of Mozart, but the acting by F. Murray Abraham (Antonio Salieri) was the highlight for me. Scenes which showed the younger Salieri showed a composed, serious, and dignified man. When the older Salieri was shown, the changes to his character were obvious. Here he was beyond caring for appearances, and had lost his great composure and restraint. It was almost difficult at first to relate the younger man with the transformed end-of-life man, which is an amazing feat for an actor.

His dramatic change from religious man to enemy of God (and of Mozart) is moving. When he discovers that Mozart has had an affair with a woman he has admired from afar, he speaks the following to a crucifix: "From now on we are enemies, You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature on earth as far as I am able." This marks his transformation in motivation and character that propels the rest of the movie.

Set design and mise en scene are incredibly well done. The time period was portrayed well through costume, and in the interactions between the characters. The deference to royalty was evident, and other elements of life in the 1790s were interesting to see. The actual burial of Mozart is historically unclear, but the representation of it in the movie was certainly historically accurate for many burials of the time.

Amadeus is long, (nearly three hours) but worth the time.

The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner is an adaptation of a young adult bestseller. I haven't read the book yet, but I hope it's better than the movie.

The movie seemed to be a compilation of Lord of the Flies and Hunger Games, with the combination of young boys living on their own and the survival of the fittest world. However, both of these movies are much better than this one. The premise is a group of adolescent boys that are put into a clearing. Walls around the area make up a giant maze that doesn't seem to have a way out. The boys have no memories, and are given no direction about where they are or why they're there. The maze was the most interesting part of the plot, but there seemed to be too much build up to the maze, and too little action inside of it. Mise en scene was good, with the greivers special effects and the walls of the maze the most visually compelling parts. The boys seemed to do a lot of talking around the subject of what was going on in their world, and very little exploring it or trying to make sense of it.

The effects of the greiver sting were intriguing, but again not developed well. There was a hint that the stings were bringing memories back, but really not enough memories to be compelling, and in the end this seemed to be another dead end.

The characters weren't well developed, but seemed more like caricatures -- the bully and his lackeys, the lovable chubby kid, and the smart, strong leader. All were predictable, and with the death of Chuck (Blake Cooper) at the end, all charm was gone. There were good performances by Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and Minho (Ki Hong Lee), but other than that the boys of the glade were forgettable.

The story had to include the aspects of brotherhood brought on by the group's confinement and isolation, which is where the Lord of the Flies comparisons are most valid. They didn't seem to have a solid group, but seemed to be somewhat loyal to their leader, Alby. The addition of Theresa brought an element of surprise into the relationships that could have been interesting, but didn't ever fully develop.

The beginning and the end were the most entertaining aspects of the film. In the beginning, there was a lot of curiosity about where they were, how they got there, and how this world operated. The answers to those questions seemed to come slower than they should, with most of them never answered at all. The lack of a real defined goal or path to that goal hampered the middle part of the movie. Sure, they wanted to get out, but they didn't really know why. Without any memory of what was outside of the glade, true motivation to leave it was hard to explain. 

The end finally felt like the characters were doing something, and working together against a clear antagonist. The surprise where the WICKED scientist Ava Paige faked her own suicide was interesting, and finally brought attention back to the questions from the beginning. The end was an obvious set up for the next movie, but this movie does not stand on its own well.