Tag: cinema
The Greatest Sibling Filmmakers: Keeping Cinema in the Family
John Michael McDonagh’s new movie Calvary is quite good. And quite difficult. I intend to write about it in some detail in the near future, but I often find it better to think about difficult things for a while before committing fingertip to keyboard. So, in the meantime, I’m using McDonagh as a springboard to…
Movie Trailers: Bad Previews and the Misrepresentation of Films
Remember that great line from Shakespeare’s King Lear that opines: “The worst is not. So long as we can say ‘This is the worst’”? It’s not true. I recently attended a showing of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) in New York’s Times Square where a nearly uncountable number of loud, obnoxious previews appeared before the…
Revisiting Razorback: Pretty Images, Psychotic Yobbos and a Giant Pig
At some point long ago, film studios became acutely aware that taking an unremarkable animal or insect, then radically increasing its size, was a sure-fire recipe for commercial success. I suppose it makes sense to suggest that this trend began with the release of that most iconic of monster movies, King Kong, in 1933. Others…
Kasimir Burgess’ Fell: Great Distances and Close Scrutiny
“I don’t know shit about you.” Uttered almost 80 minutes into the 93 minute-long debut feature from Kasimir Burgess, this line perfectly captures the remoteness and intense insular focus of recent Australian film Fell (Felix Media, 2014). Fell follows the story of two men whose lives irreversibly intersect over the tragic hit-and-run death of a…
Where did Storm go?: Representing Race and Gender in Superhero films
Superhero films and the comics that spawned them are famous for their traditionally white male fan-base. It’s a fan-base to which the creators play, with the vast majority of superheroes, and particularly the high profile ones, being white men. This raises issues for the balanced representation of gender and race and for the diversity of…