bullying
Better Days often feels like an extremely bleak after-school special. But thanks to remarkable performances, it’s worth sticking with to the bitter end.
Better Days is a mostly earnest drama that plods through bullying, academic stress, murder and tragedy, retaining a fittingly bleak and dolorous tone.
Balloon is a short film that will lend different meanings to a wide variety of viewers, yet one feels it may draw in the wrong crowd.
Teacher is a weighty insight into today’s bullying, masked by the layout of a thriller and a performance by David Dastmalchian.
Beneath the surface of this 2016 action comedy are surprising examinations of sexual harassment, homophobia and bullying – is it worth a second look?
We were able to talk with Deborah Haywood, writer and director of the film about bullying called Pin Cushion.
For sheer distinctiveness of vision, and for the visceral portrayal of how it feels to be bullied, director Deborah Haywood deserves plaudits for Pin Cushion.
After spending three years in post-production purgatory, Friend Request arrives in US cinemas – and is certainly not worth the wait.
Before I Fall is a young adult adaptation that manages to stand apart from the rest, presenting a lavishly told thriller about high schoolers.
Carrie is a movie inspired by one of Stephen King’s first novels, a dark story mixed with dramatic notes, where all the uncertainties and fears of adolescence, such as the problem of being different in a society that does not forgive, are transformed into anger and the desire for revenge. The movie was directed by Brian De Palma in 1976, but I believe it is a timeless story; indeed there have been many remakes, the last one in 2013 by Kimberly Peirce, setting it in a modern context. De Palma’s film, which can be considered a cult classic, shows the daily life of teenagers at an American high school and explores the theme of bullying deeply, adding some gory scenes towards the end.
A great director can elevate a movie that is nothing short of trash cinema into something masterful. Throughout his career, Orson Welles repeatedly chose projects (most notably Touch of Evil) as a challenge to see whether he could make a good movie out of source material that was far closer to the gutter than the stars. A cursory glance at some of the best directors of all time, from Welles and Alfred Hitchc*ck to David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh more recently, reads like a list of directors who enjoy cinema at its silliest, yet are such technically skilled filmmakers with a clear love for genre filmmaking that their movies are only ever laughable in a knowing way.
