Set in a vibrant community in Johannesburg, South Africa, Ayanda tells the story of a young woman who begins a journey of self-discovery. After tragedy strikes, Ayanda, the 21-year-old protagonist described as an Afro hipster, struggles to save her father’s car repair shop, and to keep his memory alive. She’s thrown into a world of greasy overalls, and has to deal with gender stereotypes as a girl in the world of mechanics.
Director Jeremy Saulnier’s debut film Blue Ruin marked him out as a director to watch, a spiritual heir to the throne of the Coen Brothers at their most violent. Like the Coens in their bloodthirsty prime, Saulnier filled Blue Ruin with borderline absurdist humour and fully fleshed out characters who would appear as nothing more than walking quirks were they not so perfectly realised. Most importantly, he achieved something that few other Coen imitators manage – he perfectly understood that the violence in their movies takes place in a moral universe, where no evil deed goes unpunished.
Okay, I am so lost here. In Hollywood’s mad scheme to leach money from teenagers and people with the mental capacity of teenagers, they’ve split the convoluted final Divergent series book Allegiant into two parts, titled The Divergent Series: Allegiant.
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 great war films from all over the world.
Have you ever thought to yourself – who is my favourite actor? Whose films do I enjoy the most? What is it about him and his performances that make me enjoy his films the most?
Every week Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: The Hunger Games:
Many filmmakers have made movies about the Holocaust, yet so few are able to portray the atrocities without either becoming exploitative by staging fictionalised versions of some of the worst scenes in recorded history, or by sanitising the events in order to ensure that audiences aren’t left shocked and devastated. Austrian director Michael Haneke has frequently gone on record to claim that the idea of making a film about the holocaust is “unspeakable”, criticising the way a movie like Schindler’s List emotionally manipulates the audience when the subject matter alone should leave every sane person feeling depressed that something like this happened in recent history. Haneke argues that Steven Spielberg staging a sequence where concentration camp prisoners are marched to the shower and then building suspense from whether or not water will come out of the shower heads is the most offensive kind of exploitation; it trivialises a shocking moment of history in order to create nothing more than an action set piece.
There aren’t many people who can claim that the woman they watched larking about on children’s morning television when they were a toddler also became of one of their favourite film directors as an adult. But that’s exactly what Andrea Arnold turned out to be, for me. For those of you who have never heard of her I can guarantee that you’ll be impressed.
There are two thoughts that go through your head when you hear about a Romanian film which won the Silver Bear for its director Radu June (at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival), and which has been earmarked as the country’s entry into the Foreign Film category at this year’s Oscars. The first is that this must be a very good film indeed. The other is that this is the sort of film that groups of people gather around and agree is an artistic and important film, but ultimately it’s not very entertaining.
One of the internet’s favorite pastimes is letting people know why the things they love are actually terrible. It can be frustrating sometimes, being the only one in the world to know the true value of a film when it seems like the whole world has had the wool pulled over their eyes. In this edition of Staff Inquiry, the FI team joins in on the fun as we get our full troll on.
Didn’t think a sequel to Finding Nemo was necessary, because it was perfect? Tough – Pixar’s doing one anyway, even if it’s been 13 years (!).
The old Hollywood Studio System produced many great works of art from the eternal fable of The Wizard of Oz to the harsh poetry of director John Ford’s westerns. Out of this creative environment came film noir, a style of movie-making that became very popular in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Noir filmmakers used shadowy black and white cinematography and inventive camera angles to make movies filled with crime, lust, betrayal, and the darkness in the human heart.
You know the story: movies based on games are rarely, if ever, good. Yet, my stupid monkey brain refuses to listen to sense.
As bubbles fill the air surrounding world famous Red Square, and a young girl is seen relishing in their creation, one is likely to be filled with memories of their own bubble-oriented experiences of a normal, fondly recalled childhood, and imprint said associations onto the scene before them. They would then immediately be rebuked for their premature assumptions, as we travel back with the child to her home, and it is revealed not to be a house, apartment, or even a tent on the street, but a shack built in the heart of a garbage dump. “I’m alive, I cant simply die and go away.