Too many great movies, too little time. That’s the universal problem for all cinephiles all around the world. There is no shortcut in terms of picking good movies to watch, but one thing you can do is to avoid Hollywood major productions, keep your mind open, set your eyes on other parts of the world and most of all, not… Read more »
In general, the 80s are not regarded as a decade of “fine film arts,” cinematographic mastership, or, in general, great movies. The cliché goes: Those films are dull, superficial, and weak on content. The 80s marked a significant shift in the Hollywood film industry. The “blockbuster era” with big franchises that were made to attract huge audiences started to replace… Read more »
Life, let alone show business, is full of strange stories. Surely one of the stranger ones, certainly within the post-studio Hollywood era, would be that of Terrence Malick. Born in Waco, Texas in 1943, the son of an oilman, he is a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar who double majored in philosophy and journalism and ended up teaching at MIT. Well then,… Read more »
One of the most difficult things for a screenwriter is to master the art of dialogue. If you suppress much of the information, things might be unexplained in the story, and if you put too much information in the dialogue, it will be seen as exaggerated or the audience may think you’re delivering to them everything on a silver platter…. Read more »
Macbeth was in the fortunate position of not being able to sleep most nights, something the juvenile adolescents of Elm Street could only hope for. The dream world for these unfortunate souls is inhabited by a fedora wearing dream stalker, scratching around in the deepest recesses of the slumbering mind, ready to tear and claw his way through the amorous… Read more »
Every year, hundreds of films in a multitude of genres are released. With so many films on offer, it is easy to miss out on smaller, independent, less successful or less publicised films. The 2016 box office was dominated by blockbusters, sequels, and franchises, with the top ten most successful films of the year falling into these same categories. This… Read more »
Brazilian cinema is rich in themes, although many people think it is usually reduced to violence and poverty. The truth is that many directors are unable to make their work commercially available, a few can manage to go through the funnel, going beyond film festivals. There is a mass of Brazilian intellectuals who despise the genre cinema, teachers of film… Read more »
Titles are sometimes the trickiest thing about filmmaking. A name that’s too blunt often draws the ridicule of the moviegoing masses (perfect example: Sharknado), while one that’s too abstract usually results in subpar box office numbers (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind immediately comes to, well … mind.) Finding a happy medium between the pointlessly generic (The Job, for example,… Read more »
My feelings about Oliver Stone and his work have varied more than any other filmmaker. In my younger and far more vulnerable narrow-minded years, he was my intellectual hero. I was very much into Bill Hicks then; I believed there was a greater truth to things and that men such as Hicks and Stone exposed them. When I became older… Read more »
The horror genre, since the beginning of time, has been a constant escape for its viewers. Through the decades there have been classic films that haunt our dreams and even over the top cheese fests that make us laugh. Horror is that genre that critics love to say will come and go but fans remain loyal to and support for… Read more »
To spare the reader some time, this intro will be kept short as this is very familiar territory for many. Whether they are films that are either too harshly talked about, or not even talked about at all, here they are: 10 more films audiences and readers should consider looking into. And for the ones that people usually aren’t fond… Read more »
There is a moment late in “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s ferociously vivid account of the evacuation of over 300,000 cornered British soldiers from France during World War II, when a man accepts that he is going to die. He’s a naval commander named Bolton and since he’s played by Kenneth Branagh, every word he speaks carries a calm dignity that would… Read more »
For many, the term ‘sci-fi’ evokes images of giant spaceships and laser beams; the mind races to “Beam me up, Scotty” or, “May the force be with you”. But when sci-fi comes back down to earth, or focuses on elements of human psychology, things can grow rather sinister. Listed below are ten unusually dark science fiction films that deserve your… Read more »
The Wachowskis burst onto the scene in the late 90s with creative and cool genre mishmashes that garnered them critical acclaim and the admiration of film fans across the globe. Of course, that didn’t last long as the middle and later part of their career was met with the complete opposite. Whatever your opinion of the duo or their films,… Read more »
Some of the most fascinating films and stories force us to ponder over what happened. Instead of the movie asking a question, these films make us ask questions because the answer is so elusive. It can be easy to conflate films with a question and films with answers as the same thing, but it is important to remember the films… Read more »
10 Great Social Commentary Movies That Reflect Contemporary Society
At its most fundamental essence, cinema is a representation of our lives. The grandiosity of an image on a movie screen can encourage us to laugh, move us to cry, or just stare in wonder as a foray of colors, shapes, and sounds culminate together to create…something new. When we watch a film, we choose to enter through a door… Read more »
21 August 2017 | Features, Film Lists