The Hunger Games are well written and well directed movies, and considerably stronger than most of the teen friendly nonsense pumped out by studios these days. Critics have praised the movies for their plots, quick world-building, and empowering female protagonist. There’s a problem though, with how the series is being presented; in particular, how the …
Already it’s clear that the 2010s will be seen as an important time for LGBT rights, with LGBT issues playing out prominently across the recent world media. We’ve had legalisation of gay marriage here and in the USA, reports of the atrocities being committed in Russia and debates over treatment of gay athletes, primarily in …
First, a little context: Walt Disney Studios have worked in cycles since the 30s, and historically, the movies fall into a series of stages. The Golden Age covers the first few films – Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Dumbo, Fantastia, Bambi, Pinocchio and is considered the benchmark for quality. The Silver Age follows, with …
Some forty years ago, director Bernardo Bertolucci made Last Tango in Paris, a taunt and claustrophobic movie focusing on the obsessive and heavily sexualised relationship of its leads, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. It was a great controversy in the early 70s, but became something of a critical benchmark, leading to Bertolucci shot up as …
George Lucas’s Star Wars changed cinema forever. Released in 1977, and with a little help from the blockbuster monster that was Spielberg’s Jaws, the movie set a new precedent for blockbuster movie making and changed the industry forever. Star Wars (later released as A New Hope) marked the end of the 70s Renaissance, and though …
These days, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds tends to be unfairly overlooked. Though it made a considerable amount of money upon it’s 2005 release, it was met with mixed reviews, and these days, the general public seem to have forgotten about it. War of the Worlds has never taken on the iconic status of Jaws, …
Of all the canonically accepted Disney classics, Sleeping Beauty remains one of the most divisive. The movie is seen by some as the creative pinnacle of Disney’s Silver Age; a bold and beautiful fairy tale, with sumptuous animation and several iconic scenes. Others consider the movie to be rather flat and uninvolving – it was …
Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather series – at least, the first two movies – have long been held up as a kind of cinematic watermark. The Godfather is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made; in fact, The Godfather is widely considered the greatest movie ever made, period, whilst its follow-up, The Godfather Part …
Post-modernism, as a movement, is based on many different elements, but one of its key features relates to looking forward whilst looking back. As such, and across every medium of art, from literature to theatre, painting to cinema, post-modernism retains an awareness of the past, and examines how the past can be reshuffled into something …
Francis Ford Coppola has made some of the greatest movies of all time, and remains one of the world’s most influential filmmakers. The Conversation, The Godfather and it’s sequel, and Apocalypse Now were all seminal, cinema-altering movies which went some way to defining the American New Wave. Sadly, Coppola never really adapted once the Hollywood …
Carrie is the sort of movie you watch as a teenager and enjoy without getting much out of. It’s only when you revisit it as an adult, having gained a far greater understanding of cinema, that you understand what an accomplished and brilliant movie it is. Brian de Palma’s 1976 horror movie is a fantastic …
By the time of Scott Pilgrim‘s release in 2010, Edgar Wright had already made a name for himself as brilliant action/comedy director. His previous films with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost – Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz – had been quintessentially English-comedies and near perfect parodies of their respective genres – zombie movies …
Eyes Wide Shut received a lot of attention upon its release. Kubrick’s bizarre sex odyssey was separated from the rest of his filmography by a 12 year gap – the director hadn’t made a movie since Full Metal Jacket in 1987, and critics were keen to see what had brought the reclusive Kubrick out of hibernation. This focus was further …
Halloween was not the first slasher movie – before its release in 1978, there was Hitchcock’s Psycho, which generated some of the tropes, and in 1974, there was Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the latter two in particularly coming up with the teen focus, masked killers, and concepts such as the final …
There have been many classic movies about the Vietnam war – The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket – but it is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now, the first of the Vietnam movies, which remains the definitive film of the era. It was the first American movie to deal with the war, made when …
Openings in movies are important. A great opening sequence can generate atmosphere and mood, and gets the audience excited for what’s to come. Essentially, a film’s first scene or title sequence goes a long way towards confirming, and keeping, the audience’s attention, and there have been countless movies which have personally hooked me within the …
Releasing critically acclaimed hit after hit, Studio Ghibli has carved quite an internationally renowned name for itself over the last twenty years, with a consistent quality track record matched only by Pixar – hence why the studio is often referred to as the Disney of the East. A lot of Studio Ghibli’s success rests on …
Whilst Dr No and From Russia with Love were excellent spy movies, they only served to foreshadow elements of the Bond template – it was the third movie, 1964′s Goldfinger, which really cemented the character and series as cinematic icons. Goldfinger is where Bond began. It’s where the formula first came into play, where the …
Fight Club has an interesting backstory. Its author, Chuck Palahniuk, had previously written Invisible Monsters, which was deemed too disturbing by his publishers, who subsequently rejected it. Having something of a dark sense of humour, Palahniuk decided to write an even more disturbing novel, a novel which could never be published, and Fight Club was born. The idea came …
The Silence of the Lambs remains one of the few movies to sweep the ‘big’ Oscars, winning Best Director, Actor, Actress, Writing and Best Picture. Whilst it’s not surprising that the Academy lavished such praise upon the movie – it’s an incredibly well drawn and brilliantly constructed film – what is surprising is that they chose …
The Exorcist is widely considered to be the scariest horror movie of all time. William Friedkin’s movie, adapted from William Peter Blatty’s novel, caused a huge stir upon its release in 1973 – audiences were absolutely terrified by it, and to this day, the movie sits firmly atop top ten horror movie lists. But it’s a …
Martin Scorsese remains one of cinema’s strongest filmmakers, best known for classics such as Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Mean Streets, with Taxi Driver standing out as the high point of his career. Taxi Driver, directed by Scorsese but written by Paul Schrader, is a phenomenal movie, often found at the top end of greatest ever lists, and with good reason …
A much beloved film, Jurassic Park remains to this day one of the great monumental moments in cinema. It was a movie which redefined the summer blockbuster, a rather fitting feat since its director, Steven Spielberg, had previously invented the notion with Jaws, back in 1975. The world hadn’t seen anything like Jurassic Park at the time – the sense …
Villains are hugely important in cinema. The strength of the hero is often measured by the strength of their antagonist, and a good villain can be a movie highlight. There are interestingly however a lot of different kinds of movie villains out there – some actual characters with motivations, some more thematic representations, and some …
Stanley Kubrick remains one of America’s strongest filmmakers – best known for classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick works across genres and his movies come with impeccable directing, atmosphere and a sense of intelligence. The Shining, one of Kubrick’s later movies, is now widely considered one (if not the) greatest horror movies …
David Lynch is one of the world’s most unique filmmakers, crafting unusual, dream-like movies, heavy on symbolism and atmosphere. Mulholland Drive is perhaps his greatest movie, second only to Blue Velvet; it’s a tormented, erotic, neo-noir fantasy, and it’s fascinating to watch. The movie actually started life as a television show – ABC wanted another Twin Peaks, and commissioned Lynch …
Horror is an intensely subjective genre and one difficult to define; it isn’t easy to pinpoint what constitutes something being scary. Does fear come from a sense of brooding dread and atmosphere? Is it the unknown, the barely seen on screen, or the graphic and unpleasant, body-focused horror of physical repulsion? Is it a sense …
Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, right from the start, a far more accomplished piece of television than the first season was. With the foundations already set into place, Whedon and his team of writers are able to craft the show they always wanted, and Buffy becomes a far more complex, darker and …
Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired on television roughly fifteen years ago and is now remembered as one of the most important and imaginative programs to ever grace the small screen; a highly creative, impressively well constructed genre-bender which defied all odds, Joss Whedon’s seminal late 90s show is often found at the top end …
The Alien franchise has become something of a monster – the first movie, released in 1979, was such a huge success that it spawned a further four more films – each worse than the last, up to the recent and frankly misjudged Prometheus – a comic book series on top of this, a handful of video games, and …
For decades, Ridley Scott and James Cameron circled around the idea of a 5th Alien movie. Rumours abound of what this would have been – there was talk of a script written by Cameron and directed by Scott which saw Ripley following the alien to its source, or finally reaching the xenomorph home planet. Weaver … Continue reading
If you grew up watching movies in the 80s and 90s, then you’ve already seen Stranger Things. Try this: It’s 1983. In a leafy, non-descript American suburb, a shady government agency accidentally open a portal to another dimension, unleashing a mysterious monster which picks locals off in the woods. One of these locals is Will … Continue reading
Whilst mainstream horror seems to be getting progressively worse, the indie scene is going from strength to strength, with creative and exciting new directors turning their hands to genre flicks and making some modern classics. Recently, The Babadook, It Follows, The Innkeepers, Goodnight Mommy, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, have all proved … Continue reading
It’s easy to list what’s wrong with the prequel trilogy – poor characters and non-existent character development, nonsensical and boring political plots, over use of CGI and green-screen – but harder to pinpoint why they went wrong. Looking back on the whole saga, it seems the original movies were probably more of a collective effort … Continue reading
Casino Royale pulled the Bond template apart to start fresh, giving us a raw and unpolished Bond in a world without gadgets and eccentric villains. The suggestion then was that this was the new Bond, the serious, semi-realistic and edgy Bond; the Bond for the 2000s. Then we got Skyfall, which ended on very familiar … Continue reading
Following on from LGTB Representation in Cinema, it seemed fitting to examine one of the highlights of the so-called gay genre – fashion designer Tom Ford’s 2009 drama, A Single Man. The film, based on Christopher Isherwood’s dreamy and beautiful novel of the same name, follows English professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) on what potentially, could be … Continue reading
There was a knowing quality to Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park. The title and logo are shared between the park and the film. The park’s merchandise can be bought in real-life. When Dr Grant and Dr Sattler see the brachiosaurus for the first time, their sense of awe relates to that of the audience, seeing the … Continue reading
