Features
It is easy to be a bit cynical about the state of modern commercial filmmaking. So many of today’s wide-released movies are either remakes of a remake of a remake or star a buff white dude fighting crime (usually in a cape or police uniform). With big studios investing so much money in the big movies we see today, they cannot afford to take huge risks.
An independent filmmaker wears many different hats: director, writer, producer, investor, et cetera. Now add to this list social media manager.
The word “gritty” is often used by reviewers to describe films which portray graphic physical violence, lone wolf characters, and probably a line of coke or two. While I feel that’s accurate, my own personal definition for a gritty film differs slightly. If I describe a film as gritty, expect it to be both emotionally and physically violent and draining.
Jon Lovitz is a name most young folks don’t know or remember. He is an alumni of Saturday Night Live way back from 1985 to 1990. If you don’t know him from there then maybe you remember him as this guy.
If you ask somebody about the war films they’ve seen, the first titles that come to mind are usually large-scale epics that feature scenes of combat and violence. These films effectively depict the horrors of war. However, the level of action in some of these films can be distracting and compromise our emotional involvement with the characters once we see how quickly they can vanish, and the level of violence that can occur.
Now that the summer sun has set and winter is on the way, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the best that cinemas had to offer for those who wished to hide away from the heat in darkened screening rooms. Without further ado, here are my top five kings of summer blockbusters 2014. 5.
Chilean Filmmaker Pablo Larraín never mentioned the word Trilogy when he embarked on creating Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and No (2012), however, these three films do act as part of a whole: Larraín’s vision regarding Pinochet’s military coup of 1973 and the ensuing dictatorship. Tony Manero and Post Mortem are both grim parables of folks stuck in a moral stupor, wandering the streets of a Chile that no longer knows itself, that silently witnesses the arrest and disappearance of hundreds of people every day, violence and torture a common thing and a convenient shroud for the crimes of civilians.
What I love about Martin Scorsese is that he is a filmmaker who loves movies. Over the years his personality has taken on new dimensions as a film historian as well as a director. The movies he’s restored through his non-profit Film Foundation company has brought tons of movies that would have either gone unseen, or deteriorated without his restoration projects.
There is a difference between stark realism and good storytelling. Cinema is open to different perceptions. We, as aware audiences, ought to give more importance to the integrity of presenting the story and not its factual correctness.
There had been many films about outer space before 1968, but it was in that year that Stanley Kubrick lit the fuse leading to a powder keg that would explode 9 years later. The influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey is arguably the most influential film ever made.
Today, I’m presenting a pretty awesome mobile app, and it’s called Movie On Me. Social media has made the world a lot smaller – I have online friends in India, the U.S.
Every month, the team of Film Inquiry is posed a film-related question. This month, we were wondering about film pet peeves. Do we have any?
It’s rare that we see such a rich fertile imagination in cinema. Hayao Miyazaki didn’t create movies but fantastically textured worlds that were so unique and yet so specific to his sensibilities. Miyazaki films can’t be categorized, and that’s what makes him such a distinctive auteur.
In this internet savvy age, successfully avoiding spoilers for movies and TV shows is a talent we all wish we had. All it takes is a brief glance at Twitter after an opening day or a TV air-date to find that what you’ve been waiting to watch for ages has been spoiled before you’ve even been granted a chance to watch it. Yet these overly enthusiastic tweeters aren’t exactly the biggest threat to my enjoyment of a film, even if they do deserve a slap across the face for making me enjoy it far less; the biggest threat is the trailers for the films themselves, which increasingly spoil crucial elements of a movie before it even opens.
Oh man, hasn’t August been the craziest month? For many of us, school and uni started again, people got back from their summer holidays and had to get back to their jobs, and for me – I spent almost two weeks away from home for work (and vacation – gotta make the most of those job trips!).