Features
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations. Each week has a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations!
It’s critical that media show that all people belong. However, very few films in the United States are made by and about ethnic minorities.
Whenever I watch a Nicholas Cage movie I feel myself expecting to see a certain eccentricity in his performance. His over the top outbursts or erratic body movements distance away from more serious tones and instead cross over into that of slapstick comedy. Cage’s acting has always entertained me, yet my ironic enjoyment often makes it hard to take his characters seriously.
Set in 1630, Robert Eggers’ The Witch follows a family banished from a Puritan community and forced to live, isolated and penniless, in a remote woodlands shack. Soon, malevolent forces begin to molest the kids and infect the goat, and the family is engulfed in a maelstrom of religious hysteria and occultist magic. With its deeply unsettling atmosphere and frenzied performances, The Witch has (not undeservedly) become one of the most acclaimed horror films of the new millennium, with many critics praising its attention to detail and the slow-burning tension of its narrative (as well as its mascot:
Concerning remakes in modern cinematic environments, there is a strong dominance during recent years involving large companies and production studios to provide audiences with an extensive range of remakes and indistinguishable plots and storylines with the twist of live action appearances. Speculations regarding Disney in particular are most prominent in terms of feature film announcements, with approximately 16 possible films arriving in the future that focus on existing narratives and characters. There are different approaches to this that Disney are experimenting on, from remaking the same story faithfully, adapting a different spin to the classics or even creating long awaited sequels – such as Mary Poppins Returns, set for release Dec 2018.
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 underrated horror films from the 1980’s.
A while ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the members of the legendary band Green Jelly, Matt Groopie. I had originally planned on speaking with Matt about the small Canadian tour that Green Jelly had taken in the beginning of May, but my plans changed quickly after experiencing what I considered to be one of the most entertaining live shows I had ever seen. That being said, I should make it clear that I’ve been to hundreds of shows and concerts.
Another month’s gone by, one in which we published another great bunch of excellent articles! We reviewed a ton of movies, like Despite The Falling Snow, California High, Sing Street, Captain America and Jane Got A Gun. We recommended great Australian genre films, silent films, and women-directed horror films, and published about how we humans can fall in love with artificial intelligence, and how that’s portrayed in film.
It’s Space Jam Week! Everybody get up, it’s time to slam now. We got a real jam goin’ down.
It’s Space Jam week! Anyone familiar with voice acting will immediately recognize the name Mel Blanc. For decades, Blanc popularized the art of voice through many iconic cartoons, among them including, of course, nearly every major original Looney Tunes character.
It’s Space Jam week! We currently live in an age where sequels are determined by the success of a film’s opening weekend, announced on the morning after a healthy weekend gross is reported. Heck, in some cases, films get sequels before they are even released to success in the first place; but for every Guardians of the Galaxy that would happily boast it would return, you have a Last Witch Hunter with a broken ego and a failed franchise.
Varda Bar-Kar’s latest documentary Big Voice follows the lives of a Santa Monica school choir over the course of a year, under the instruction of their inspirational yet no-nonsense teacher. Mr Huls, teacher extraordinaire, is an intriguing character – full of passion and with motivation to make the choir bigger and better than ever before. Whilst Mr Huls is certainly the driving force in the documentary, it is Bar-Kar’s interviews with the students which are arguably most interesting.
Hey, it’s Space Jam Week! Among totems of ’90s nostalgia, few remain as prominent and present in 2016 as Space Jam. The film was Warner Brother’s attempt to turn Michael Jordan’s cultural capital cinematic, as well as the first use of their iconic stable of cartoon characters in a feature since the compilation films of the ’80s.
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 Silent Films from the 1920’s that are worth seeking out.
One annoying trend nowadays is for people to mix their genuine reactions to a film with the hype and varied opinions of others, judging it not on its content, but what you thought it was going to be. Quentin Tarantino flipped heads last year with The Hateful Eight, a considerably slower but angrier entry into his filmography, which caused anger amongst many filmgoers who were expecting another Spaghetti Western tribute that mixed modern music and quick-paced action. This highlights the problem with auteur theory and the reliance of marketing in the current movie climate, where many movie marketeers either must spoil an entire film within the trailer to gain the audience’s confidence to go see it or mismarket a film because they’re unsure on how to sell a unique/niche product to a broad audience.