Here’s a worthwhile bet. Can Warner Bros.’ attempt to match Marvel’s success actually be successful without establishing the rest of DC’s pantheon of heroes?
Every week Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Pixels, Paper Towns, Southpaw, The Vatican Tapes, Samba, Unexpected, Big Significant Things and Phoenix.
For as long as there have been films, there have been coming of age movies and there have been high school movies. These types of film, these genres, have become so overdone, that it becomes hard for a single film to really stand out. Dope does.
“I ain’t afraid to die anymore.” Especially when you want that Oscar so bad, right Leo? Kidding.
More than 150 years after the old West faded into legend, the western genre is still very much alive and well. Slow West is the feature debut of writer-director John Maclean. Although it contains some clear watermarks of a first-time director, it is also among the more unique modern westerns in the way that it plays around with traditional western tropes and conventions.
Ever since the glory days of silent cinema, Hollywood has been criticised of running out of ideas. This is why the biopic is the perfect genre for screenwriters and directors. A typical life doesn’t neatly fit into a simple three-act structure, but by highlighting an individual’s greatest successes, and framing them in a way that makes everything else inconsequential by comparison, you can turn something as uninteresting as somebody’s life into a thrilling drama.
Whoa! Frankie Muniz? I thought he was racing cars after Malcolm in the Middle.
When Vêra Chytilová sadly passed away in March of last year, cinephiles across the world mourned the loss of a truly passionate and original filmmaker. Chytilová was the dangerous iconoclast of the Czech New Wave. Both the BFI and Second Run DVD decided that the world must know of her work outside of her nihilistic masterpiece Sedmikrasky (Daisies, 1966), and as such the BFI ran a series showing many of her films at their Southbank cinema, and Second Run released two of her films, Pasti, Pasti, Pasticky (Traps, 1998) and Fruit of Paradise (1970), on their excellent DVD line.
You probably recognize the quote “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This is more a story of the former but the latter may apply to the puppetmaster himself. Anyway, if you’ve ever taken an intro to psych class, you’ve probably ran into some mention of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
The marketing team for Paul Feig’s most recent film, Spy, should really reconsider their occupation: this was one of my first thoughts as the credits for the film rolled and I began to head for the exit. The trailers and posters for the film made it seem like little more than Paulina Blart:
Before watching Ant-Man, it would be safe to predict that the movie would be the film that destroys the foundations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a film that has suffered from well-publicised production troubles, leading many to question the artistic integrity of the directors the studio chooses to helm its projects, whose directorial vision has to be sacrificed in order to create another chapter in studio head Kevin Feige’s grand master plan. Production troubles sometimes lead to fantastic movies, but more often than not, they lead to gigantic box office flops – not even the seemingly unbeatable Marvel can overcome that, surely?
Every week Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Ant-Man, Trainwreck, Irrational Man, The Look of Silence, Mr.
At the start of Andrew Bujalski’s latest film, Results, Danny (Kevin Corrigan) entreats his wife, Christine (Elizabeth Berridge), from the street below the open window of their New York apartment to let him back into the marital home. She closes the window, so he grabs its ledge in an attempt to pull himself up to and through the plate glass barrier. Danny, who carries Corrigan’s rosaceous, wan features, brittle hair, and generous paunch (sorry, Kevin), quickly drops to the ground.
Mad Max: Fury Road, the latest from Australian director George Miller, is overtly, and perhaps primarily, an action film. The vast majority of its two hour runtime is devoted to a single unrelenting chase sequence; it both drives the narrative and provides a platform for the manic and brilliantly staged action set-pieces which will define the film for many audiences.
Let’s get this out of the way: Steve Jobs was a great salesman. That is the only positive out of a sea of negatives.