family
After School, directed by Alec Tibaldi and written by Tibaldi and co-writer Anne Berkowitz, is a film where the deserved praise goes to the technical crew over the story-line and talent. The film stars Piper De Palma and Ruby Modine as sisters Addie and Xandra in this short drama. Instead of a dramatic story, the film feels like a story about dramatic people.
I am a huge Pixar fan and Finding Nemo is one of my favourite films, so I was thrilled to know a sequel was being made. However, I was a little reticient. Toy Story 2 & 3 were remarkable sequels to be sure, but they are unique in cinema, Pixar also made Cars 2.
Usually, I’m not a fan of the ‘comedy’ genre of film. I find that ninety-five percent of the time, it’s filled with bland, repetitive plot lines that all crack the same sort of jokes: either helpless characters struggling with awkwardness, or more slapstick physical comedy.
What happens when two performance artists grow up, get married and have kids? Their kids become part of their art, of course. This is the story of Caleb and Camille and their two children whom they affectionately dubbed “Child A” (Annie) and “Child B” (Baxter).
I was on holiday with two of my closest friends last week. Amidst the flow of beer, the puffing of cigarettes and the non-stop giggling, the conversation turned to our grandmothers. We talked about how our grandmothers had grown up in such a different time to ourselves, how we are (as women) afforded things that our grandmothers would never have been.
People often tend to demarcate their lives by coordinating them with macro-narratives. For instance, the segment of your life that took place during the George W. Bush administration, or the Vietnam war.
With only four movies to his name so far, and with features ranging in genre from coming-of-age dramas (Mud) to quasi-science fiction (Take Shelter), Jeff Nichols’ films have at least one thing in common (other than that they all star Michael Shannon): they are all intimate productions, both in style and in their focus on the tight-knit relationships around us. Often set in the American South where Nichols himself grew up, his films deal with familial struggles and upsets in usually uneventful communities.
Is it possible for a contemporary America drama dealing with grief not be referred to using the “post-9/11” prefix? Louder Than Bombs charts the emotional complexities of a middle-class New York family as a retrospective article about their deceased war photographer mother/wife is published in the New York Times, resurfacing their most base fragilities. There is nothing in the film that remotely refers back to that harrowing event in American history, yet for many audiences it’s embedded in the subtext – New Yorkers who are confused how to react after this unexpected turbulent event in their lives.
A subtle yet intriguing glimpse at family built on celebrity, One More Time spins a much darker story into a lighthearted drama. Indie earmarks set the tone of the film, as the dialogue-driven character study deftly navigates each family member’s individual flaws while also allowing for a lasting bond with the audience. Pepper in the oddball charm of its male star alongside a borderline Gen X female protagonist, and the foundation is set for a well-crafted, yet easy-on-the-emotions watch.
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:
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.
Ryan and Amy are sitting nervously on a sofa in a nondescript room. A doctor addresses them, “Mr and Mrs Green, I’m sorry, it’s not good news”. The doctor continues to tell them that their one year old son’s chemotherapy has not worked.
As a director, Atom Egoyan has increasingly shifted away from the emotionally raw content of his beloved 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter in favour of seedier, pulpier material that film suggested he had emotionally matured away from. Egoyan’s love of trash cinema informed his earlier work, but after showcasing his potential to make a drama film divorced of genre pretensions, the fact he is still preoccupied with putting an unwarranted arthouse inflection on such material feels like wasted potential. How to make trash cinema out of human tragedy without being offensive He manages to attract the attention of A-list casts and find his way back into the official selection of the Cannes official selection with most releases, purely on the strength of his earlier work, not out of a desire to honour his current sub-De Palma mindset.
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.
Films deal with universal emotions such as love, hate, or sadness. Some deal specifically with grief, whether it be a lover moving on, a friendship ending, or the loss of a parent. Two films in recent years, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014) and Meadowland (2015), have dealt with the loss of a young child and the effect on the parents.