masculinity
Ying & Yang is empowering and heartbreaking, giving a window into the messed up mind of a man deciding his own fate.
Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail has been accused of everything from misogyny to being capitalist propaganda – Julia Smith thinks otherwise.
Martin Scorsese’s career so far spans five decades – which films of his should you start exploring first? This is an in-depth guide to his amazing work!
Wakefield is an introspective and interesting examination into a man who willingly decides to isolate himself from his family and the world.
Although before production considered “too lurid and disgusting”, The Silence of the Lambs is still highly influential to this day. Here are ten reasons why.
You’re Killing Me Susana doesn’t adhere to almost any of the rom-com genre’s stereotypes, yet its static characters cause it to stumble.
Nora Ephron had some very strange ideas about feminism and femininity, and today we pick apart You’ve Got Mail to prove it.
Closet Monster is a movie that fluently balances drama and humor, but the very essence within its message is one of defiant and radical hope.
Frank & Lola is an original look at a romantic relationship affected by past sexual abuse, and is presented in a mezmorizing noir tone.
The New Man is a fascinating insight into modern fatherhood, male identity, cultural expectation and the torturous path of late parenthood.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations with each week being a different theme. This week’s theme is the films of American director Don Siegel. Beginning his cinematic career making montage sequences for Warner Bros (most notably the opening of Casablanca), Don Siegel is quite an influential American auteur, redefining the sci-fi and crime thriller genres throughout his lengthy career.
Recently, I spoke with filmmaker Phil Giordano. Originally from Staten Island, New York, he elected to take the NYU’s Directing Program in Singapore, which is where he lives today. In 2010 he released the controversial short film The Empty Playgound, about a man struggling with inner-demons who tries to abduct a young girl from a playground.
One of the most poisonous societal ideals is that of masculinity. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of one’s manhood. But there is much terribly wrong with convincing boys and young men that their masculinity is marked by not showing emotion, never admitting to any abuse they may have experienced, or forcing them into a space where they feel their only option is physical violence versus confronting their rawest emotions.
Chevalier is the uncomplicated story of six men on a diving expedition in the Aegean sea, and how their competitiveness is almost the undoing of all of them. Named as Best Film at the London Film Festival in 2015, it is an extraordinary film and one that is unmissable for anyone who enjoys a deeply disturbing comedy. Despite having no female characters, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Greek comedy speaks from an authoritative feminist voice, forcing hyper-masculinity under the microscope with hysterical consequences.
Sexism in film has been a topic of discussion since the rise of feminism, and in particular, since Laura Mulvey’s 1970’s research into ‘the male gaze’ in cinema. Fortunately, modern films are slowly but surely making a conscious effort to break down stereotypical gender roles and tired one-dimensional characters, but when it comes to the classics, many of the limited and restricted archetypes we try to move away from today are showcased in these films. This year, Alfred Hitchc*ck’s mystery thriller Vertigo was voted the greatest film of all time by a BFI poll.