What Sunk The Pirates Of The Caribbean?
Jack Sparrow – sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow – is back. Pirates of the Caribbean returns this month for the franchise’s fifth film in 15 years, with the malleable moniker Salazar’s Revenge or Dead Men...
Kelly Reichardt’s Uncertain Roads
Vignettes are nothing new in independent cinema. One of America's unsung treasures, Kelly Reichardt, recently made her own contribution to the subgenre with Certain Women, a film composed of three...
Images of Insanity: How Polanski Disrupts Gender in Cul-De-Sac
On an island, anything can happen. Isolated geographically, they form spaces separate from the rest of society where new rules apply and existing norms can be challenged and disrupted. It’s been this way...
La La Land and the Question of Authorship in Film
Damien Chazelle's nostalgic musical La La Land puts its behind-the-scenes artists to full use, creating poetic and fanciful imagery and prompting the question of who the author of a film really is. It's a...
Moonlight And The Performativity Of Masculinity
Barry Jenkins' Moonlight explores the life of Chiron - a black gay man in a rough Miami neighbourhood - across three periods in his life. He's taken in by a well-meaning couple (played by Mahershala Ali and...
Choosing Life: Optimism In The Films Of Danny Boyle
T2 Trainspotting is a gritty drama dealing with the harshness of middle-age in a left-behind society. Its characters must deal with past sins, including betrayal, aggravated assault, self-loathing and drug...
Perfect Partnerships From La La Land To The Classic Hollywood Musical
Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have been dominating the cinema - and critics' prize lists - in recent weeks with their little-known musical La La Land, which has just equalled the all-time record for Academy...
His Girl Friday: The Original Gender-Swapped Remake
This summer the film world was temporarily rocked by, of all things, a new Ghostbusters film. For many people it was a long overdue win for better representation in film, and a chance to see that rarest of...
How The Classic Hollywood Musical Influenced La La Land
Garlanded with seven Golden Globes and 11 BAFTA nominations, generating some serious Oscar buzz and collecting rave reviews, La La Land is the hottest ticket in town. A joyful Hollywood-set picture and a...
The Western Gaze in Black Orpheus
Barack Obama is not a fan of Black Orpheus. In his memoir Dreams of My Father, the outgoing President recalls that it was his mother’s favourite film, but when she took him to see it, he "suddenly realised...
Martin Scorsese and the Fragility Of Masculinity
Men are weak-minded, egocentric and, for the most part, doomed to fail. For the past four decades of his career, Martin Scorsese has mined his way through the male psyche, warts and all. To some, he may be...
The Royal Tenenbaums And The Art Of Tragicomedy
A father abandons his family. He lies, cheats and betrays them, spending most of the family fortune. When present, he’s cruel: blunt and caustic with his children, putting them down in painful moments and...
Ghost Dog and Jim Jarmusch’s Weird Outsiders
Mixing hip-hop flair with the samurai ethos, arthouse cool with wild action sequences, and Forest Whitaker with a bunch of birds, Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai couldn’t be a stranger,...
Punch-Drunk Love: Adam Sandler’s Redemption
To say that Adam Sandler has been poorly received by critics over the years would be something of an understatement. Jack and Jill currently holds the record for the most Razzie awards won in a single night,...
Processing Kurosawa’s Dreams
Is Akira Kurosawa the greatest filmmaker of all time? There have certainly been crazier claims than that. Such unimpeachable masterpieces as Drunken Angel, Rashômon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood,...