Antarctica – Raindance 2020 Review George Howarth November 14, 2020 Reviews Antarctica wears its influences on its sleeve. It's hard not to spot the tropes present in other recent coming of age films: the "girls gone bad" anarchy of Booksmart, the fraught mother-daughter relationship...
Virginia Woolf on Film Josefine Algieri July 4, 2019 Analysis, By The Book, Features In 1926, when film was still a young and emerging artform, Virginia Woolf wrote the essay 'On Cinema', considering the medium with all its possibilities and limitations. In it, she is particularly outspoken on...
Feminism vs Capitalism in Support the Girls Tom Bond June 27, 2019 Analysis, Close-Up, Features Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls is undoubtedly a feminist film, despite being set in a Hooters-esque sports bar where the staff flirt for tips in low-cut tops. Its greatness lies in how it pits its cast...
Ant-Man, the Wasp, and the MCU’s (Overdue) First Female Headliner Sarah J July 31, 2018 Analysis, Features The Marvel Cinematic Universe, of which Ant-Man and The Wasp is the latest edition, is a multifaceted one. All of the characters and worlds, ranging from the psychedelic multiple realities of Doctor Strange...
Jane Fonda in Five Acts – Filmfest München 2018 Review Josefine Algieri July 2, 2018 Reviews Susanne Lacy’s documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts offers an intimate and emotional portrait of the multi-faceted actress turned activist in the eponymous five acts, each named after the person who held the...
Sofia – Cannes 2018 Review Tom Bond May 23, 2018 Reviews It’s rare to leave the cinema wishing a 90-minute film was longer, but Meryem Benm'Barek’s Sofia shows enough promise to demand a more substantial story. She wastes no time getting into the action, going...
Why Tangled Is Disney’s Most Feminist Film Phil W. Bayles November 30, 2016 Analysis, Features, Opinion It’s fair to say that Disney is on something of a roll at the moment. The House of Mouse’s output has been so consistently spectacular of late that some critics have decreed we are living in the “Second...
Short of the Week – Domestic Policy Phil W. Bayles October 17, 2016 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/177713990 In just a few short weeks, America could elect its first ever female president. This should be a cause for celebration; a golden time in politics and a long-overdue victory...
Are Gender-Swapped Remakes Bad for Cinema? Sian Brett August 19, 2016 Analysis, Features, Opinion 2 Comments In the wake of the Ghostbusters reboot there have been a spate of announcements of gender-swapped remakes. Rebel Wilson is set to star in a new version of the 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and a new...
Why Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland Is Really About Female Empowerment Ellen Dwyer May 25, 2016 Features, Nostalgia, Second Chance Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad? Alice: I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are. Nearly 150 years after Lewis Carroll published Alice’s Adventures in...
Top 20 Films of 2015: 2. Mad Max: Fury Road Tom Bond December 30, 2015 Analysis, Features, Top 10 Mad Max: Fury Road is undoubtedly one of the best action blockbusters of 2015. It’s also one of the most progressive, subversive and openly political films to reach such a mass audience in recent memory. It...
Hollywood’s Age Problem Sian Brett September 23, 2015 Analysis, Features, Opinion The release of Some Kind of Beautiful on 25th September sees a 62 year-old Pierce Brosnan paired with both Jessica Alba and Salma Hayek – 34 and 49 years old respectively. This kind of gendered age gap...
Trainwreck and Talking Bodies: Are Jokes About Periods the New Feminist Film Revolution? David Brake August 19, 2015 Analysis, Features, Opinion About halfway through Amy Schumer's breakout debut Trainwreck, her protagonist (also named Amy) explains to her sister that she's terrified of falling for her romantic lead because, in her experience of...
Blazing the Fury Road: Rise of the Feminist Action Hero Madeline Joint June 25, 2015 Analysis, Features, Opinion Well, Fury Road is pretty exciting, huh? No really. In a whole bunch of cultural ways, it's pretty goddamn exciting. Its female protagonist Furiosa, played by the frighteningly brilliant Charlize Theron, is...
The Book of Life – Review Tom Bond October 26, 2014 Reviews The Book of Life makes an intriguing attempt at exploring gender stereotypes, but often ends up reinforcing them. Maria (Saldana) ticks a few painfully clichéd feminist heroine boxes, but mostly she is never...