The Number 23

The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, is considered a thriller/drama/mystery. Directed by Joel Schumacher, it is the story of Walter Sparrow (Carrey). Sparrow is an average man, happily married, unhappily employed as a dog catcher. On his birthday, he is running late to pick up his wife because of a stray dog at a Chinese Restaurant. While his wife waits, she goes into a bookstore and finds a paperback novel, The Number 23 by Topsy Kretts. She flips through it, finds it interesting, and buys it for Walter.
The book tells the story of a detective called Fingerling. The more Walter reads, the more it begins to resemble his own life. Fingerling is sent on a case to an apartment where a young woman is about to hang herself. He tries to calm her down and find out why she wants to kill herself. She tells him that she is being haunted by the number 23. It appears everywhere, even in her name and in her words. Walter leaves the apartment, thinking that he has convinced her not to harm herself, only to have her land in front of him on the street - she has thrown herself off of her balcony. As the story continues, Walter becomes more and more convinced that the writer is writing about him; he begins to look for the number 23 everywhere. He finds it in his license number, his social security number, and his birthday. The number starts to cause paranoia in Walter. In the story, Fingerling kills his girlfriend. He begins to worry that he will hurt his wife.
I don't want to give away the end of the movie, so I will stop with the plot here; but the cinematography of the film is also worth discussing. The color Red appears multiple times in the movie in striking ways. The book itself is red; Walter's wife paints the living room "blood red" -which stands out against the otherwise neutral colored house; Walter is bitten by a dog and begins to bleed, and the red is very striking against his khaki uniform. When they are showing the life of Fingerling, the scenes are all darker than when showing Walter. Both Fingerling and his girlfriend wear a lot of black, while Walter and his wife wear more neutral colors. Fingerling's story has a film noir feeling about it; Walter's life is more of a thriller.
I was pleasantly surprised by the film; I was not sure that Jim Carrey would be able to play such a serious, paranoid character, but he did really well. The color scheme and the use of different angles and jump-cuts between scenes really added an air of mystery and anticipation to the film.

Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot is the 1959 tale of two men on the run from the Chicago mafia, directed by Billy Wilder. It is a musical comedy, whose music is non-integrated into the plot. The story follows two men who have witnessed a multiple-murder committed by the mob and have to leave town disguised as members of an all-girl band. This film is a mix between a backstage and a backyard musical; that is to say that the films shows some of the rehearsals necessary to the band's performance, but it also follows the traditional boy-meets-girl scenario. The musical numbers are not fully-choreographed, in fact, the only music in the movie is being performed by bands in a concert-type setting.

Marilyn Monroe plays the blond ditz (for lack of a better word) Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a girl looking for a rich man to fall in love with. Tony Curtis's Joe/ Josephine falls for Sugar, and a humorous plot unfolds with Curtis trying to negotiate being a girl while having a relationship as a man. His friend, Jack Lemmon's character, Jerry/ Daphne helps to facilitate Curtis's tangled romance while staying disguised, hidden from Spats Colombo and his gang.

The costuming in the film is really important to the plot. It is the costuming that allows Curtis and Lemmon to join the girls' band, and it is joining the girls' band that allows Curtis to meet Monroe. Monroe's costumes, too, are important to the film. Her day-to-day costumes are nothing too extreme, but the dresses she wears for her performances and her dates are extremely revealing, emphasizing her femininity. Her character is a ditzy gold-digger, looking for a man rich enough to marry and take care of her. Her clothes further her characterization.

The film takes a comedic look at the dangerous side of life in Chicago during the Prohibition.