As a director, Atom Egoyan has increasingly shifted away from the emotionally raw content of his beloved 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter in favour of seedier, pulpier material that film suggested he had emotionally matured away from. Egoyan’s love of trash cinema informed his earlier work, but after showcasing his potential to make a drama film divorced of genre pretensions, the fact he is still preoccupied with putting an unwarranted arthouse inflection on such material feels like wasted potential. How to make trash cinema out of human tragedy without being offensive He manages to attract the attention of A-list casts and find his way back into the official selection of the Cannes official selection with most releases, purely on the strength of his earlier work, not out of a desire to honour his current sub-De Palma mindset.
Let’s snuggle into the familiar embrace of the British biopic. A genre all on its own, their tempered looks at history often play as apologies for past sins, with recent entries like The Imitation Game and Suffragette discussing or taking on outright the treatment of gay men and women by past British society. The problem is that they often feel like hollow pats on the back, because while the atrocious behavior that the films portray have become antiquated, more mild wrongs are still committed against these groups every day.
This is the second and final part of our What Is Film Analysis article. Find the first part, on Narrative and Character, here. Production The giveaway of any bad production is the settings and costumes.
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 prison films.
The central concept that for 12 hours the American government makes all crime legal has always been the main selling point for The Purge series. There’s inevitable sociopolitical commentary there, not to mention the smaller question of what kind of people would participate in such brutality. Striking ad campaigns for the first two films turned them into massive financial successes, and the forthcoming third film, The Purge:
Catherine Hardwicke’s name may now be synonymous with a certain teen vampire movie, but her career has spanned a diverse and accomplished selection of films encompassing skateboarding SoCal teens, adolescent angst, fantasy action and moving comedy drama. Hardwicke is now also well-known for her work in raising the profile of both female filmmakers and highlighting the industry bias against them, an issue she has experienced first hand throughout her career and one on which she is not afraid to speak out. Whatever project she undertakes, her work is full of energy, vibrancy, and authenticity.
A fatal flaw runs through many conversations about gender issues: they narrowly focus on women. The problem largely stems from comfort, as that is how the battle has been framed for decades.
Every Tuesday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Young Messiah, The Perfect Match, The Brothers Grimsby, Creative Control, Eye in the Sky, Hello My Name Is Doris, Lolo, Marguerite and River of Grass.
Film analysis, as far as I can tell, isn’t conducted any more in mainstream film criticism. That’s because these days anyone can write about film, and do. The film theorists and heavy-weight reviewers of the past have been overtaken by the age of the internet and by all the people ‘having a go’.
If you’ve ever wondered what inclusive cinema looks like, you should watch Becoming Bulletproof. Michael Barnett’s documentary captures the filming of a Western, called “Bulletproof,” starring performers with different abilities. Among the cast are people who struggle with impediments to speech and mobility, and working with their different needs creates an unique atmosphere behind the scenes.
If there is a universal desire in this world, it’s for our children to live a good life. No matter how you define good, the possibility of this seemed remote for Jewish families during World War II, forcing many parents to make desperate choices to keep this hope alive. And so there was a generation of lost children, boys and girls who had been flung to the wind after all other options were taken away.
Some of you may have come across Helene “Leni” Riefenstahl, so I hope you’ll forgive the introduction for those who haven’t. Born in 1902 in Berlin, Germany, Riefenstahl defied gender norms and became one of the most successful documentary filmmakers of the 1930s. At a time when most industries, especially film, were dominated by men, Riefenstahl found herself not only directing films but developing new techniques which influenced cinema up to this very day.
The old is boring and the new is exciting; right or wrong, that’s just how our brains our wired. So when something is in danger of becoming not just old but extinct, it’s only natural that they would seek to extend their longevity by latching onto something new. We could be witnessing an extinction event for one such aging institution, the daily newspaper.
Writer/director Terence Davies has released only two narrative features since the turn of the millennium, The House of Mirth and The Deep Blue Sea. Both are acclaimed pieces about a woman trapped by circumstance, which makes his dogged fascination with the poor Scottish farm girl at the center of Sunset Song perfectly understandable. He pitched the film fifteen years ago but was unable to land financial backing, shelving the project after even an open letter in The Guardian didn’t bear fruit.
There’s something strange in your neighborhood. There’s something weird, but it could be good. Who you gonna call?