genre
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is focused on the works of genre director Joe Dante.
In a 2013 interview, renowned director Steven Spielberg warned of what he called a coming “implosion” regarding summer blockbuster films. Due to Hollywood’s over-reliance on the summer box office, Spielberg believed that blockbusters constrained in this time frame would undergo drastic price changes to set them on top. In an interview, he stated that at some point “you’re gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.
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.
“These men who bust their asses work like dogs. And I believe in them, but every day they hurt. They get old, they peel back…
Film Noir stems back to the earlier days of Hollywood, starting with the Humphrey Bogart classic The Maltese Falcon in 1941. This film, the first from cinema great John Huston, established many of the trademarks we associate with the sub-genre today. The term Film Noir literally means “black film” and refers to how dark and shadowy the films tend to be.
Cinema is one of the few areas of modern life where the word ‘cult’ can conjure up positive connotations: more Rocky Horror and Fight Club than Charles Manson. Screenings of ‘cult’ films gather huge, enthusiastic crowds and each have their own strange rituals and practices, such as the hilarious habit of spoon-throwing during showings of The Room.
In this installment of How To Analyze Movies we discuss our understanding of story and genre, and how to use it to analyze film!