This is a continuation of “Beyond Hollywood’s Mafia” with more great gangster films from around the world. There’s a rich tapestry in this field to draw from, as films influence filmmakers, writers and directors making more and more fascinating movies about crime. Some directors may have already appeared in the first list, but all these titles are new and differ, one way or another from the first installment, enjoy!
Did you ever think about your favorite film couple? We sure did. This month, the Film Inquiry team was asked which is their favorite couple in film.
In an article entitled “Why It’s Important to Make More Diverse LGBT Films,” fellow Film Inquiry writer Cherokee Seebalack lamented: “Where are all the LGBT romcoms at?” Where, indeed.
John Legend and Common’s powerful performance of Best Original Song nominee, “Glory,” and brave acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the Oscar ceremony last week. That song was a resonant soul/hip-hop combo that captured the atmosphere of its source film well: Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a historical drama about Martin Luther King and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
An epidemic spreads within a 1969 all-girls school. All the young women are suffering from random fits of fainting. One of the more clever girls, Lydia, seeks to discover the truth behind these odd happenings.
With the blockbuster success of Fifty Shades of Grey in cinemas worldwide, many pundits are claiming that this marks a new era for “sex positive” movies – and much more importantly, the basic idea of a woman being as sexually open as her male counterparts not being a source of cinematic shame, but one of pride. It has only been two decades since what I dub the “unofficial Michael Douglas misogyny trilogy” of Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and Disclosure hit cinemas, films that (like Fifty Shades) were successful due to their frankness of sexuality. Yet those movies were inherently misogynist in suggesting that women were mentally unstable, or just plain evil for daring to be as open about their sexuality as men.
Back in January Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9, Elysium and the forthcoming Chappie posted online some intriguing fan/concept art for an as-yet-announced project related to the now floundering Alien franchise. The art featured some very intriguing illustrations of not only Sigourney Weaver as an almost fully evolved Ripley/xenomorph hybrid but also Michael Biehn as a battle scarred Corporal Hicks. At the time nobody knew what they were for:
Every week Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: Chappie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Unfinished Business.
Cult films are difficult to define, as they vary in scope, themes, genre and in just about every other way. Despite these ambiguities, it is demonstrable that the revered Roger Ebert once got the definition entirely wrong. Avatar just isn’t cool enough In his review of Avatar, Ebert described the film as an “event” that was “predestined to launch a cult.
Fifty Shades Of Grey, it’s not often that so few words can spark so great a societal reaction. And to be honest, it is because of this very reason that I went to watch this film. I didn’t read the books, I didn’t care to.
As a rule, I recommend any movie that Simon Pegg is in…except for Run, Fatboy, Run. That movie was abysmal, but this movie looks exceptional.
“Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify.” The average life of the white collar worker is, from sunrise to sunset, an endless escapade of chores, professional obligations, and miscellaneous daily tasks, from the big decisions we have to make (college, job, spouse, etc.
From ideation to financing, distribution to production, the movie industry is just that, an industry. Let’s take a peek behind the projectors and movie screens at all facets of the films, and the people behind them, that we love. Let’s check out the links for this week.
Before being sent to maximum security prison for fraud, James King seeks the help of Darnell Lewis to survive prison. Darnell, of course, is not a thug but desperate people are a great source of income. Through this training King learns sad dog, the art of being so pathetic that no one will violate you…