Post-traumatic stress disorder – abbreviated as PTSD – has been a subject in film as far back as the 1946 John Huston documentary Let There Be Light. Since the Invasion of Iraq, it’s become a prevalent concept. One of the most original to have been made is Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic Taxi Driver.
As soon as Justus D. Barnes fired point-blank at the audience in Edwin S. Porter’s influential The Great Train Robbery, the idea of violence to control an audience was introduced.
It’s hard not to wince when you see Matt Damon striding down the Great Wall of China. The attempts by American companies to break into China’s growing film market has been a mess so far, plagued by lawsuits, awkward plot detours to the country, and flat-out whitewashing. So while it’s not surprising to see a white actor fighting monsters from the Great Wall, the image still makes people cringe.
The intro to Miss Sharon Jones, likely tacked on by the film’s distributor, announces a standard music bio-doc kind of film, complete with voice-over, performances and talking heads. It was enough to make me roll my eyes at the prospect of sitting through another paint-by-numbers film on an under appreciated musician. Well, that intro was a deft bait-and-switch, as Miss Sharon Jones is anything but typical.
Though film is an inherently collaborative medium, requiring careful cooperation of dozens of individuals, there are two roles that get singled out as being most responsible for the final product. Representing the technical marvels behind the camera and the beauty in front of it, directors and actors are Hollywood’s lifeblood, providing a face for the art that took the efforts of countless unseen. Sometimes, a director/actor tandem proves so gripping or successful, that a personal and professional bond is forged, and the two continue to work together; sometimes it’s a brief burst, while other times it’s a career-long relationship, but often the familiarity working teams have with one another results in a film of elevated artistic achievement.
I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview The Hard Stop’s director, George Amponsah, producer, Dionne Walker and co-star Marcus Knox-Hooke, recently, before watching a screening of the film followed by an audience Q&A with Amponsah, Walker, Knox-Hooke and co-star Kurtis Henville. It was one of the most moving and insightful experiences I’ve had for a long time, and I’m still unravelling the many thoughts and feelings both the film and our conversation inspired. The IMDB description of the film The Hard Stop explains:
Is there a term for one-hit wonder film directors? Whilst the idea of the one-hit wonder is quite prevalent within music (I’m a sucker for late ’90s, early 2000s one hit wonders, who doesn’t love Breakfast at Tiffany’s?), it’s a concept that’s becoming quite frequent in cinema as well; filmmakers who coast off the success of one film.
Get ready for a division, because King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is directed by Guy Ritchie. I’m sure some of you have already left, siting the modernist spin and frantic energy that Ritchie injects into his films as turnoffs, while others are sitting there gleefully awaiting a good time at the theaters.
With the DVD/Blu-Ray release of The Invitation, I was able to snag a quick interview with the film’s director, Karyn Kusama. Taking place in a Beverly Hills mansion in L.A over the course of an evening.
In recent years, the gangster film seems to be a stale genre, with a majority of the films lacking any distinctive qualities. Last year’s Black Mass is a prime example, with the only really memorable aspect of the film being Johnny Depp’s performance. Viewed against this backdrop, then, The Infiltrator just manages to stand out amongst modern films.
We’ve seen Robert De Niro in a boxing film before, right? Yeah, it was just a little movie called Raging Bull, so there’s no way his return to the cinematic ring will overshadow what Hands of Stone is actually about. Okay, so everyone’s focusing on De Niro’s return as legendary trainer Ray Arcel, but the film is really about Edgar Ramírez’s Roberto Duran, a Panamanian boxer who was part of the dominant Fabulous Four during the 1980s.
You may be surprised to learn that David Fincher’s career almost never got off the starting grid. 1992’s Alien 3, a poisoned chalice if ever there was one, turned out to be a torrid experience for the former music video director (he had helmed videos for luminaries such as Jermaine Stewart & Madonna, most famously ‘Vogue’), to the point he genuinely considered giving up filmmaking. What a loss to cinema that would have been.
When I sat down to watch Observance, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It opened with a rather artsy tone, as waves crashed against rocky cliffs, all in black and white. After a minute or so of this, the film cuts to Tenneal (Stephanie King) walking through the streets on her way home.
In this era of cinematic universes, branding is key. The goal is for audiences to recognize and become invested in the world being built, not necessarily the individual movies. Think about it this way:
Usually, I’m not a fan of the ‘comedy’ genre of film. I find that ninety-five percent of the time, it’s filled with bland, repetitive plot lines that all crack the same sort of jokes: either helpless characters struggling with awkwardness, or more slapstick physical comedy.