Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is Spaghetti Westerns that weren’t directed by the legendary Sergio Leone.
The revolution is here— We are in the midst of a global revolution for female empowerment and equality. This movement has been building for some years, and the new efforts for women directors have added great momentum to the cause. The campaign and ongoing support for women directors starting 2013 by the ACLU has now led to an industry-wide investigation.
Watch Our Lad here. Our Lad, brought lovingly to life by director Rachna Suri, is a compelling insight into a British Muslim community and the conflict between two brothers. The short film stars Shazad Latif (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) as a young Muslim soldier returning from Afghanistan to an antagonistic brother and community.
In Onur Tukel’s Applesauce, Ron (also played by Tukel) calls into a sketchy radio show, where they are talking about “the worst thing they’ve ever done”. Before Ron admits to the worst thing he’s ever done on-air, he’s interrupted. Later at dinner, the story still comes out, and he soon starts receiving packages containing…
I’m a big fan of a well-made sports biopic. Not being very athletic myself but fascinated with the world of sports science and laws of probability, I find I have a great interest in ‘the field’. That is why I was very excited to see that a biopic was being made of Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal and much heralded fall from grace.
Amicus Studios had the reputation for being the rival studio to England’s famed horror factory Hammer studios throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. While that may be true in some respects, Amicus also had the goods to make some truly enjoyable horror anthologies that managed to be both entertaining and scary. As a devout fan of Hammer studios, it feels nearly traitorous to be praising their rival Amicus, but to ignore their body of work would just be flat out ignorant, as Amicus proved to be a formidable rivalry to the house of horrors that Hammer was known for.
I have a philosophy on assassination. Put your index finger (washed beforehand) on your lips and say “Shhh!”.
The tale of survival is a common one in the world of film. These stories present harrowing experiences that an individual or group must overcome before finally seeking rescue by the end. What these films rarely discuss, though, is the aftermath of the experience:
I can’t think of any other couple that exemplified the pure nature of an old Hollywood romance other than Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. If you take a quick glimpse at their history together, the love they shared was palpable. Bacall was only nineteen when they met (twenty when they married), and Bogart was old enough to be her father.
November has reared its head, and that means it’s starting to get seriously cold (or seriously hot, depending on where you are) outside. We hope everyone enjoyed Halloween – did you watch anything good to celebrate it, and who did you dress up as, if you did? October was a great month for Film Inquiry, we published nearly 70 great articles, and we announced that Maria Giese is joining us to keep the world up to date on the unfolding EEOC investigation, and report on Hollywood’s response to the action.
Every week Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Spectre, The Peanuts Movie, Spotlight, Trumbo, Brooklyn, Miss You Already, Theeb and What Our Fathers Did:
You would be right in thinking with a title like this The Boom Boom Girls Of Wrestling would be a lot of fun even if it wasn’t very good. Made by independent filmmaker Carolin Von Petzholdt, The Boom Boom Girls Of Wrestling claims to be inspired by true events (but I’m pretty sure this is just a gimmick), and tells the story of a group of out of work actresses who train to be wrestlers as part of some kind of reality show. However, on their way to their first event in Las Vegas their bus breaks down and they are stranded in a ghost town where a mysterious slasher (dressed as chicken, because, why not?
Dalton Trumbo is not a household name today, but he was one of the most influential screenwriters in the old Hollywood studio system. Many of his films like Roman Holiday and Spartacus are beloved classics, but Trumbo is also a significant figure for his part in the Hollywood blacklist, a period of anti-Communist hysteria that swept through the United States in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Trumbo, like many Hollywood intellectuals, was targeted for his progressive politics in an unprecedented purge that saw many actors, directors and writers, lose their livelihoods, their freedom and even their lives.
