
Cinematographers, or directors of photography (DP’s), handle what many think the directors accomplish in their films when it comes to visual techniques and style. However, the distinctive look many movies have has more to do with the “real” eye behind the camera, and that is usually the cinematographer. Over the years, cinematography has evolved from a craft to an art, although to be successful in the business there is a delicate balance of both.

Have you ever found yourself loving the bad guy in a movie? Villains come in many different forms, whether it’s the combined protagonist/antagonist situation like Mickey and Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers, or the complete polar opposite of the hero, a dark and vicious villain like Heath Ledger’s astounding role as The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. And with the recent trailer release of the movie Suicide Squad (a team of DC comic villains coming together to take on the missions deemed too horrific for the heroes), it provokes the question:

Design studio Art & Graft have injected a welcome sense of humour into 1150 Canyon Road, a dark and stylish crime animation. The London-based animation team, led by creative director Mike Moloney, have done a stunning job of throwing together a narrative and several brilliant characters in just two and a half minutes and a single shot. Combining the paranoid, ’80s crime caper themes of L.

The arcade was video games’ greatest legacy. In a simpler time, before gaming consoles became mobile and placed within the home, the arcade was at the heart of the world’s most ultimate video gaming experience. As an impact, the popularity of the arcade video games snowballed into the animated characters that we now see onscreen – among them the likes of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.

The film Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski is admired by critics and viewers around the world. The movie won awards at important international festivals and it was nominated for an Academy Award in the category for Best Foreign Language Film. A glimmer of hope woke in the Poles after winning a golden statue:

“A Cajun devil hunter goes to the crossroads and meets the devil’s attorney”. The compelling summary of Chasseur had me hooked before I even started watching, let alone the mesmerising central performance from the film’s writer and director, Christopher Soren Kelly. An unconventional structure, perhaps, but a successful one.

Woody Allen’s perennial dialogue of death and futility is upon us, and, as someone who takes comfort in the recurring anguish of Mr. Allen’s films, I couldn’t be happier with his 2015 iteration, Irrational Man. He executes a story equivalent in scope to what has become one of the auteur’s main ambitions these fifty years:

Another Marvel anti-hero is brought to the silver screen and this time, it’s Deadpool. When Wade Wilson (former Special Forces Operative and now mercenary) discovers he has a severe type of cancer and does not have a long time left to live, he joins an experiment that will grant him superhero powers. The experiment is successful and he becomes Deadpool.

I was having a conversation recently with a friend who complained about how he gets annoyed when he sees child celebrities, as “they’ve already achieved more in life than I ever will and they are younger than me!” As a recent university graduate, without a firm footing into the grown-up world of work, I’m increasingly empathising with this statement, whilst also increasingly acknowledging how ridiculous it is. Why should I be bothered that people who are more talented than me are going places, just because they are younger?