drama
The subheading on one of the posters for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 claims that “People change. Greeks don’t.” Yet, what made the original film so dynamic and engaging is exactly that:
Many of you have seen the classic, fairy tale love stories in films. There is a princess who lives with a curse that was cast on her by an evil witch. The only way she can be free from this curse is by finding true love.
There are few novels considered “unfilmable” that haven’t been translated to the big screen. High-Rise, director Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G Ballard’s cult 1975 sci-fi novel, is the rare movie adaptation that doesn’t feel like it has been adapted, so peculiar and distinctive to the director is the increasing foregoing of narrative in favour of societally depraved surrealism.
Searching For Hell is an international exploration of infernal places around the world, with a loose but entertaining concept of what hell is. In five segments, the audience visits the site of the deepest recorded excavation into the earth in Serbia, the tourist town of Hell, Michigan, a house designed to reconstruct the Buddhist conception of hell according to tenth-century writer Ojoyoshu, the toxic sulphur mines of Indonesia, and the chaotic capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each vignette has its own style, varying from the carnivalesque to the dialectic to the observational, and the decision to release the documentary online through the Virtual Reality Cinema (VRC) app Cineveo can only add to its dreamlike, haunting quality.
The opening of Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha is intense. A few seconds in, we are staring eye to eye with Krisha, the titular character (Krisha Fairchild). She is looking at us, and we are looking right back.
Like all social groups, people with disability have been portrayed in diverse ways in Hollywood, from stereotypical representations in horror to genuine inspirations in melodramas. Disability is represented as a metaphor through imagery or characters’ features, or as a direct subject within the narrative. The entire concept of genre is recycled from elements within society, and the relevant features of each specifically labels the disabled into a certain character type.
Stand By Me is one of my favorite movies, I could watch it a hundred times without getting bored. I have watched it in different phases of my life, through various perspectives. Every time I watch it, I learn a new detail that I had not noticed the before.
Accurately reflecting teenage experience in film is no mean feat, and there aren’t many filmmakers to achieve it like John Hughes. Born in Michigan in 1950, Hughes described himself as a “quiet kid” who loved The Beatles. Aged 12, he and his family moved to the Chicago suburb Northbrook in Illinois.
Theeb is an excellent film from this past year, and I’m afraid the precious few people will make it out to see it due to the lack of distribution. Had it not been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year, I probably would have never come across this little gem. Theeb is set in 1916 toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, in a province known as Hijaz (around Saudi Arabia and Medina) where two brothers, who hail from a family nomads, escort a British soldier with a mysterious wooden box to the Ottomon railway.
Iceland is slowly becoming one of the planet’s leading cinematic nations, with many directors realising that the country’s desolate landscape is the perfect fit for sci-fi. Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott have both shot there recently, whereas the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was filming there last autumn.
A remake of the 1969 Italian-French film La Piscine and partly inspired by David Hockney’s ‘Swimming Pool’ painting, A Bigger Splash is the fourth feature film from Luca Guadagnino, and has already made significant waves with critics and audiences alike (sorry for the absolutely appropriate pun). Starring Tilda Swinton as rockstar Marianne recovering from throat surgery, and Matthias Schoenaerts as her ever-loving albeit boring boyfriend Paul, the two of them aim to escape life to an idyllic Italian island in the middle of the Mediterranean. No phones, no work, no interruptions.
Even though he hails from a nation renowned for its take on exploitation cinema, director John Hillcoat has repeatedly proven himself to be far more interested with the archetypes of American genre films. His international breakthrough feature, 2006’s The Proposition, was the perfect marriage of the sensibilities of Ozploitation and the most hard-boiled Westerns; for a country with no major cinema heritage, it suggested Hillcoat was a director who could put his nation firmly on the world cinema map. Instead of continuing this distinctive subversion of genre with his subsequent films, Hillcoat has become increasingly formulaic.
The most damaging and offensive cliché in films that explore colonialism and its effects on indigenous nations is the notion of the noble savage, as well as the white savior. Approaching this film the inevitable trepidations set in, but were soon quelled, as Embrace of the Serpent proved to be simultaneously intelligent and willfully authentic. Director Ciro Guerra film adheres to territorial formalism without subverting the cultural atmosphere and originality.
There is a moment about halfway through Brooklyn when Saoirse Ronan’s character is shown as a distant speck in a giant field of green grass, as if lost amongst the lush vegetation. The moment comes soon after she has decided to go visit her mother in Ireland after a loss in the family; though not immediately apparent, it foreshadows her soon-to-come inner conflict, which will make her question where she truly belongs. Such a gorgeous and symbolic shot is representative of much of Brooklyn, which is far deeper than its relatively straightforward subject matter would imply.
I love the TV show Dad’s Army. Originally aired between 1968 and 1977, it is a show that remains hugely popular to this day, and I can watch it every Saturday night on BBC Two and listen to the radio version every Monday morning on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Like all incredible BBC comedies, it makes up a part of the British psyche and its characters and catchphrases are legendary.