Posts

Noel

-
Image
Noel - A Sweet Christmas Tale   An innocent and kind-hearted young man, Noel still believes in Father Christmas. After his Nana dies, he must cope with her death while holding onto his beliefs as he encounters the frivolousness and bitterness of first love, in a story that is both a coming-of-age story and, at the same time, not one. Christmas is probably the most celebrated holiday all around the world and, because of that, it’s probably the holiday with the most stories associated with it. Stories to make us feel warm in the cold winter nights. With Noel, Matthew Reynolds takes a dip at this sea of sweet and youthful stories to tell his own Christmas tale. But is he able to enchant us with his holiday fable?   Noel feels like a departure from Reynolds’s previous work, dominated by a corrosive satire. It’s a film filled to the brim with sweetness and naiveté, carefully baked into a warm Christmas pudding of a film. However, although with a naïve sugar coating, that doesn’t me
Post a Comment
Read more

On Modern American Horror

-
Image
The Three Faces of Modern American Horror – A Reflection on Horror   We have entered the spooky month of October and, to celebrate this scary season, I would like to reflect on the current state of the genre of cinematic horror. More specifically, I would like to reflect on Modern American Horror and its recent tendencies. Horror is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating genres of cinema and this is because it’s the genre that reflects most directly the concerns of people in a determined time and culture. An example of this is the dominance of horror films in the ’50s and '60s that dealt, one way or the other, with issues related to the nuclear threat and the Red Scare, both associated with the Cold War – examples of this are The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Tarantula (1955), both tapping into the general paranoia of American society of the period. Horror films tap directly into people’s fears and that’s why they are so effective and interesting. In this s
Post a Comment
Read more

Frances Ha

-
Image
Why Frances Halladay is one of the most relatable film characters ever written (and maybe one of the most inspiring)  Frances Halladay is a 27-year-old woman living in New York. She was born in Sacramento, California, and she moved to NYC in the hopes of starting an artistic career as a dancer. She is light-hearted, funny and quirky. She is herself, yet, strangely, she is also all of us. Life seems to be putting her on the ropes, as everything bad that could happen to her always happens, from being "fired" from the Christmas show she was supposed to do to tripping as she is running to get some cash to pay for dinner with the cool boy she met. Not only that, but everyone else, including her best friend Sophie, seems to be getting on with their lives. Life really doesn't seem to be her thing, but is it really the thing for anyone? "I'm tired", she says, "I am always so tired" - and we can't help but connect with her when she utters those wor
Post a Comment
Read more

Shopping Bag 2

-
Image
Shopping Bag 2: Back in Business - Back and Better than Ever!  "Our least worst film yet!", the tagline boldly states, preparing us for the wild ride that we are about to embark - a truly dementedly self-aware and entertaining one. Matthew Reynolds truly shows his directorial capacity in this corrosive crime comedy that has all the right amount of quirkiness and over-the-topness to make a perfect storm of entertainment and witty commentary that will leave you out of breath from laughter, all brilliantly condensed into a 40-minute short. If the two previous films of Some Guys with a Camera that I reviewed were outstanding achievements of zero-budget cinema, this is the crowning jewel of the incredible efforts by these young filmmakers from Liverpool. It's sleazy and absurd cinematic exploitation at its best, and it's such a joy to watch.  After spending 10 years in jail, Sergeant Ian Lynch finds that the world has changed a lot - new technology, Brexit, Climate
Post a Comment
Read more

Brokaback Mountain/God's Own Country

-
Image
Brokeback Mountain and God's Own Country - Two Moments in Gay Liberation  Two romances between two men in the isolation of nature. One in the 1960s in the mountains of Wyoming, the other in the modern days on the hills of Yorkshire. Two similar stories, two different periods, two different outcomes. Brokeback Mountain and  God's Own Country are two films whose similarities are undeniable and they reveal and reflect two different moments in the history of gay liberation, and this is what I'll be trying to get at in this article. It's important to point out the fact that these two stories are about working-class people, which are the ones whose stories most reflect the social oppression of society. Through these two stories and the comparison between the two, we are able to understand the differences between the two periods they are set in and how gay liberation has progressed through the years. In Brokeback Mountain , we start when Ennis and Jack - played, respect
Post a Comment
Read more

Synonyms

-
Image
Synonyms – A Frustrated Wanderer   A wandering man walks on the streets of Paris. He repeats words and their synonyms to himself, almost like a prayer. We watch this man. Who is he? Where is he going? What is he looking for? A deeply thought-provoking journey, Synonyms follows a man filled by frustration: frustrated identity, frustrated nationality, frustrated masculinity. Nadav Lapid, through this film, exposes bare the struggles that he and so many other people faced with his identity and questions the basis of nationality and traditional masculinity. He does this by creating an alternative younger version of himself – a wanderer of nations – and that’s the man that we see. Through this, we feel more intensely the inner turmoil inside this young man struggling with ideals of nationalism and masculinity. This is a frustrated young man looking for something that he isn’t able to find – a frustrated wanderer looking for the ideal nation.  We are introduced to this wanderer wh
Post a Comment
Read more

Capernaum

-
Image
Capernaum - Is there hope in a world of chaos?  Buildings piled over each other in a chaotic pattern. A disordered world. A world where humanity has been forsaken in favor of greed. A world of chaos and disorder - that's what the titular world " capharnaum " means. This is what we see in this film. A world where children are exploited by those who should be protecting them. With an attentive and watchful eye, Nadine Labaki guides us through this heartbreaking world, never flinching at showing us its broken reality. Through a harrowing vision, she makes us question: How can a child grow in a world like this? A  world that doesn't show them love. A world that abuses them. A world that doesn't recognize their existence. A world dominated by an archaic definition of nation. A world of chaos. How can they grow up and become good human beings if everything that they face constant abuse? How can they grow up if all they know is pain and chaos? How can they grow up?
Post a Comment
Read more

Films watched this year

  • 1917 (2019) directed by Sam Mendes
  • 9 to 5 (1980) directed by Colin Higgins
  • A Place in the Sun (1951) directed by George Stevens
  • Adults in the Room (2019) directed by COsta~Gavras
  • Bacurau (2019) directed by Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho
  • Bait (2019) directed by Mark Jenkin
  • Bombshell (2019) directed by Jay Roach
  • By the Grace of God (2019) directed by François Ozon
  • Female Trouble (1974) directed by John Waters
  • Flames of Passion (1989) directed by Richard Kwietniowski
  • For Sama (2019) directed by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts
  • Ford v Ferrari (2019) directed by James Mangold
  • From Here to Eternity (1953) directed by Fred Zinnemann
  • GUO4 (2019) directed by Peter Strickland
  • I Confess (1953) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
  • Invisible Life (2019) directed by Karim Aïnouz
  • Jojo Rabbit (2019) directed by Taika Waititi
  • Jubilee (1978) directed by Derek Jarman
  • Little Women (1933) directed by George Cukor
  • Little Women (1949) directed by Mervyn LeRoy
  • Little Women (1994) directed by Gillian Armstrong
  • Little Women (2019) directed by Greta Gerwig
  • Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018) directed by Bi Gan
  • Looking for Langston (1989) directed by Isaac Julien
  • Monos (2019) directed by Alejandro Landes
  • Mosquito (2020) directed by João Nuno Pinto
  • Network (1976) directed by Sidney Lumet
  • O Fantasma (2000) directed by João Pedro Rodrigues
  • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) directed by Céline Sciamma
  • Red River (1948) directed by Howard Hawks
  • Richard Jewell (2019) directed by Clint Eastwood
  • Shadow (2018) Zhang Yimou
  • The Farewell (2019) directed by Lulu Wang
  • The Hunger (1983) directed by Tony Scott
  • The Leopard (1963) directed by Luchino Visconti
  • The Lighthouse (2019) directed by Robert Eggers
  • The Nightingale (2018) directed by Jennifer Kent
  • The Souvenir (2019) directed by Joanna Hogg
  • The Wild Goose Lake (2019) directed by Diao Yi'nan
  • Thelma & Louise (1991) directed by Ridley Scott
  • Un Chant D'Amour (1950) directed by Jean Genet
  • Uncut Gems (2019) directed by Benny and Josh Safdie