grief
2016. A year that will live in infamy. A year shaken by unexpected celebrity deaths, an unnerving election cycle, and unsuspecting twists waiting around every corner.
A Monster Calls is an entertaining and beautifully presented fantasy, which also imbues deeper universal themes of grief and loss.
Manchester by the Sea is a subtle, nuanced story of loss and grief, brought to life through restrained direction and powerful performances.
Sometimes when a movie starts off slow, it picks up and has a good pay off in the end which makes the slow and boring parts forgivable. That’s not the case for Detours, written by Mara Lesemann and directed by Robert McCaskill. The film stars Tara Westwood and Carlo Fiorletta with cameo appearances by Paul Sorvino and Phyllis Somerville.
“Sure, I’ll see you again before either of us knows it”. It’s a sentiment resonating with most of us after the passing of a loved one. This line opens the beautiful, bleak, January Hymn, written and directed by Katherine Canty.
This little gem of a film won the Nora Ephron Prize at this year’s Tribeca film festival, which is awarded to recognise the work of female writers or directors whose film is making its North American premiere at the festival, and it’s easy to see why. Adult Life Skills is based on writer/director Rachel Tunnard’s short film Emotional Fuse Box and centres on the character of Anna (Jodie Whittaker). Anna is approaching her 30th birthday and struggling to cope with recent life events, which are gently revealed to us throughout the film via flashbacks and Anna’s visual manifestations of the past as she attempts to live in the here and now.
Jin Mo-young’s debut documentary feature, My Love, Don’t Cross That River, is extremely touching, and from solely watching the trailer of this South-Korean film, you can see why. Released for the festival circuit in 2014, Jin shows us a 98-year-old Jo Byeong-man and 89-year-old Kang Kye-yeol, who’d been married for 76 years. Jin filmed the elderly couple in their mountain village home in Hoengsong County, Gangwon Province for 15 months.
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.
Two years after his ex-wife disappeared, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) get an invitation to a dinner party his ex-wife is throwing out of the blue. The couple is hesitant, the invitation is too elaborately fancy, and it all feels slightly off, especially after such a long time of complete silence. On their way to the party, they hit a coyote, which Will kills out of mercy.
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.
In Britain we have only just heard of Amy Schumer. But even having seen none of her work and only the rare interview I knew I would love this lady, and when I spotted Trainwreck on the horizon I got very excited. Then, I backtracked.
Before it had even stepped into the ring, Southpaw was dead on arrival. After all, although boxing isn’t the sport that has generated the most movies, it is the sport that has generated the most beloved cinematic classics – from Rocky and Raging Bull to the more recent likes of Million Dollar Baby and The Fighter. At the screening I attended, I was far more likely to greet it as an unwelcome entry to the boxing movie pantheon, due to the fact that the last trailer before the movie started was for Creed, the new Rocky spin-off that benefits from having Sylvester Stallone yet again reprising his most iconic role.
When the Oscar nominations rolled in on Thursday, perhaps the biggest surprise – other than the snubs for Selma – were the six nods including Best Picture and Best Actor for American Sniper, a movie which few expected to be in the running after getting no attention from the Golden Globes or BAFTAs. There was an even bigger surprise a few days later, when it was announced that the film drew in a stunning $89 million in its opening weekend, which is more than most of last year’s summer blockbusters. The Iraq War drama snuck up on the awards race out of nowhere, and shattered January box office records beyond all expectation.
“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of The Babadook”. The mainstream horror genre is in a bad state at the moment. In the wake of the success of Paranormal Activity, Hollywood studios are taking advantage of the huge financial potential of the genre, and the fact that you can spend very little money on a horror film and make a huge profit off of teenage audiences.
Every year when Oscar season rolls around I become an increasingly cynical person. I stop enjoying the movies I’m watching and instead start to tick off the list of tropes I see in a game I like to call “Oscar-bait Bingo.” In the coming months, cinema screens worldwide will be treated to my two least favorite Oscar-baiting sub-genres: