film history
Miracle on 34th Street is a magical film about believing in Christmas spirit; premiering in 1947, it is still wonderfully enjoyable today.
Most films follow a straightforward style of editing, yet here are 10 that chose to break the mold, and were successful in doing so.
Reality television might be a norm today, yet in past generations it didn’t exist; looking back, though, we can see its beginnings in film.
In Our “Nominated Film You May Have Missed”, we reflect on films that received Oscar nominations in the past, but have been forgotten, or little seen. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a classic, delving into themes of patriotism, government corruption, and the power of democracy.
Our relationship with extraterrestrials has been a bumpy ride to say the least, but why is Hollywood so fascinated with them? Who has contributed to this ever-changing portrayal of extraterrestrials? And what are the many faces of alien life?
When I was younger and just starting to get into classic film, I found a copy of The General at a local DVD store. Watching it later, I still remember the exact moment when I was captivated by Buster Keaton’s unique charm and screen presence. In the film’s first extended action sequence, Keaton is chasing after a troupe of Union soldiers who had infiltrated and stolen his train, and in a series of fast-paced, whirring motions, he narrowly escapes one mishap after another.
For Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, the artist was inextricably joined to his society, both its benefits and its ills. Tarkovsky defined these colloquies between society and an individual artist as “dialectics of personality.” In other words, individual development was indefinably caught-up within personal and distant interactions with a society.
‘So Bad They’re Good’ movies are a thing now. Movie list websites are awash with them. Troll 2 is often the high-watermark, and it appears that most of these no-budget horrors tend to be of American origin.
About midway through Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature 1962 film debut of Ivan’s Childhood, in the midst of a Russian battlefield field torn asunder during World II, a cross is backlit by a setting sun. The cross is obscured in shadow and yet its beauty remains. A spiritual man, Tarkovsky was never afraid to ask questions about spiritual matters.
As a person who came of age in the 1980s, I was lucky enough to witness some incredible cultural, societal and artistic developments. The fall of the Berlin Wall, for example. Chernobyl.
We have plenty of excellent and notable films about women in wartime, but their narratives are all too familiar. Often the female protagonist is waiting for the return of her husband or lover, or she is grieving at sending her sons off to war (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Private Peaceful). Sometimes, the war itself exploits and manipulates the nature of our protagonists leading them to betray their country (Rome Open City, to name but one).
German expressionism was an art movement that began life around 1910 emerging in architecture, theatre and art. Expressionism art typically presented the world from a subjected view and thus attempted to show a distorted view of this world to evoke a mood or idea. The emotional meaning of the object is what mattered to the artist and not the physical reality.
In the brilliant and insightful documentary A History of Horror, British writer and actor Mark Gatiss explores the horror genre throughout many countries. While discussing British horror cinema of the 1960’s, Gatiss uses the term ‘folk horror’ to describe a short but very curious subgenre. The films that make up this genre are unmistakably British and owe a large debt to the trail blazers of horror cinema in Britain:
The words “North Korean cinema” have traditionally invoked images of staid, humourless propaganda movies each more concerned with exalting the virtues of the nation’s glorious leaders than sculpting cohesive narratives. For those who have looked into the films emanating from the secretive Asian country it is possible to conclude that, in some instances, this description is rather unnervingly accurate. Many of these stereotypes exist for a reason.
Ever since Jaws hoovered millions of bathers off the hot sandy beaches and into the cinemas in 1975, the Summer Movie Season has been the defacto launch pad for the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of each year. Along with Christmastime, the summer window between May and the end of August is where you would traditionally find the mega-budget sequels and franchises whipping audiences into a deranged frenzy with coffer-drainingly expensive promotional campaigns. So what was Batman vs Superman: