Film Inquiry’s Best Articles of October
November has reared its head, and that means it’s starting to get seriously cold (or seriously hot, depending on where you are) outside. We hope everyone enjoyed Halloween – did you watch anything good to celebrate it, and who did you dress up as, if you did?
October was a great month for Film Inquiry, we published nearly 70 great articles, and we announced that Maria Giese is joining us to keep the world up to date on the unfolding EEOC investigation, and report on Hollywood’s response to the action. Her first article will follow later this week! We also published many film reviews, articles on foreign film, we published our first entry into our Film Theory resource, and a bunch of new Beginner’s Guides.
In case you missed them, here are our favorite articles of October 2015, in no particular order!
Film Inquiry Podcast #2: Back to Back To The Future Part 1
Welcome to the second episode of our monthly film podcast, the still tentatively titled “Film Inquiry Podcast”. Each episode features myself (Alex Lines) as I’m joined by two of our writers each month to tackle a different film and all the questions and angles that arise from breaking down these films. To celebrate the recent hullabaloo around the 30th Anniversary of the original Back to the Future film, we decided to look back at the trilogy as a whole and wonder why they are so universally loved still. […]
Listen to our second podcast here.
The Beginner’s Guide: John Ford, Director
When asked about who his favourite American directors were, Orson Welles replied: “I prefer the old masters; by which I mean: John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.” Ford is often painted as a contradictory fellow, hard to pin down. But his body of cinematic work – and to him, directing movies was a “job of work” – tells a different story. His films present a cohesive whole, a clear vision of the world with each new film in dialogue with the ones that came before. […]
Read Ryan Gumbley’s Beginner’s Guide
The Art of Film – 10 Shots That Are Like Paintings
The link between film and art is well-documented, especially how filmmakers are influenced and inspired by their favourite artists and paintings. One of the best and most famous examples is Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, where many scenes imitate classical paintings from the 1700s. […]
Read the rest of Stephanie Robertson’s article here
All Hail MACBETH: A Galvanic, Blood-Soaked Rendition of Shakespeare
Most of us are familiar with the story of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a story so prevalent that people will not utter the name of ‘the Scottish play’ whilst in the theatre, as by ancient tradition it is said to be cursed. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it is a tale of one man’s hunger for power in a tyrannical society, and how he is pushed further and further down a descending path of hopelessness and insanity by his wife, a group of witches, and his own consciousness. […]
Read the rest of Rachael Sampson’s review here
The Need For A New Baseline – Women In Film: Past, Present, Future
Historically, women have been excluded from mostly everything important in society. The first country to give women the right to vote (unconditionally) was New Zealand in 1893, but it wasn’t until 1920 that the U.S. gave all women the right to vote, and not until 1928 that the U.K. allowed all women to vote, under the same conditions as men. For the U.S. and the U.K., that’s less than a hundred years ago. As far as history goes, that’s a tiny amount of time. Organic change of cultural norms and values takes more time than that. […]
Read the rest of the Editor’s Letter here
Staff Inquiry: Death Scenes That Make You SQUIRM
It’s October, so things are getting pretty spooky here at Film Inquiry HQ. Pretty sure I saw a ghost in the water cooler the other day. We don’t have a water cooler, but that’s neither here nor there (though it does lead me to suspect that the water cooler itself was the ghost). During this festive time of year, the internet is lousy with lists of favorite or underseen horror films, so we decided to go in a different direction. […]
Read the rest of this Halloween-inspired Staff Inquiry here!
BRIDGE OF SPIES: Steven Spielberg’s Dreary Tale of Optimism
Bridge of Spies is not what I would call a happy film. Gray snow envelopes the dilapidated East German cityscape and we find Tom Hanks‘s character interacting with others primarily in poorly lit, often dank rooms. Nearly all of the characters are entirely self-interested with blinders positioned perfectly to block out the undesired effects their actions can have on others. […]
Read the rest of Jay Ledbetter’s review here
Film Theory Basics: Laura Mulvey – The Male Gaze Theory
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain, best known for her essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Her theories are influenced by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan (by using their ideologies as “political weapons”) whilst also including psychoanalysis and feminism in her works. Mulvey is predominantly known for her theory regarding sexual objectification on women in the media, more commonly known as The Male Gaze” theory. […]
Read the rest of Rachael Sampson’s article here
What Will THE HATEFUL EIGHT Sound Like? An Analysis of Composer Morricone’s Work
Closely approaching Quentin Tarantino’s new film The Hateful Eight arises expectations not only because of the name he has created for himself, but also because we are aware of the repeating pattern of collaborators in his films. But this piece is not about the cast of the film nor about Tarantino’s specific style. It is about the collaborators behind the scene, specifically on his first time collaboration with Ennio Morricone as a composer of the film’s original soundtrack. […]
Read the rest of Manca Perko’s article here
SUFFRAGETTE: A Gritty and Bold Re-telling of History
Suffragette has been grabbing the attention of the media and public long before it was even released. First, there were rumours that there were to be no women of colour in the film (this is true). Then there was the at best ignorant, at worst painfully offensive campaign led by Meryl Streep and the rest of the cast, featuring photos of them wearing t-shirts stating‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave’. Then finally, there was the controversy of security guards aggressively dragging and manhandling women’s rights protesters off the red carpet at the film’s premiere. […]
Read the rest of Becky Kukla’s review here
What were your favorite articles this month? Let us know in the comments, and we’d also love to hear it if you have any suggestions.
(top image: Children of Men – source: Universal Pictures)
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