You don’t have to be a horror fan to be well acquainted with some of the 20th century’s classic slasher movie music. Even if you’ve never sat through Psycho, you could probably immediately recognise the…
Children’s fantasy has become a lucrative global industry, and duly producers are plumbing all kinds of magical authors. Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree is only the latest children’s classic destined…
The idea of a war hero is still strong in the UK and in the other Allied countries. War memorials are a central feature of the regular commemoration services, Churchill is regularly rolled out in biographical…
The latest corner of World War II to be dramatised for the big screen is small. Cramped, even. In Fury, starring Brad Pitt and Shia leBeouf, we follow the story of five American soldiers, a crew serving…
Laura Poitras’s much-anticipated Citizenfour is now on general release. A documentary about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film provides an admirable summary of the issues raised by the beginnings…
In the fall of 2010, as The Walking Dead was about to debut on TV, I launched my Media Genres: Zombies course at the University of Baltimore and examined what that horror subgenre reflects about our culture…
2010’s Animal Kingdom – one of many films to benefit from the legacies of the Whitlam government.
EPA/Simon Mein/Sony Pictures
Filmmakers and audiences – indeed Australian arts and screen culture more broadly – owe a deep debt of gratitude to Gough Whitlam and the government he led. Although the foundations had been laid by Whitlam’s…
In a production office far, far away someone has decided to turn the 1970s BBC sitcom Dad’s Army into a film. Its cast features some of Britain’s finest acting talent – and Catherine Zeta-Jones. But this…
David Fincher’s film shows the desolation of failed suburban promises.
Twentieth Century Fox
The film Gone Girl (2014) is dividing critics along gender lines. Men see it as a gripping, fresh thriller while women have expressed alarm over a range of issues. Chief in recent days is criticism of…
Movies such as Matrix Revolutions are explicit about their desire to make us think.
AAP Image/Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow Films
Showbusiness is about entertainment, right? Film-going should be fun. We want to laugh or squeal or sigh as emotion arises in us when the music swells and the camera zooms in for an extreme close up…
Benedict Cumberbatch helps turn Alan Turing into a flesh-and-blood hero.
Studio Canal
The Alan Turing story brings us face-to-face with many contrasts. None is more striking than that between this week’s red-carpet Gala premiere of The Imitation Game at the BFI London Film Festival, with…
Light levels in film have markedly declined from 1935.
Mirjaleed Biteng
Lighting is a fundamental property of cinema. So called “writing in light”, photographed images, whether live-action or cell animation, need illumination. It is the most essential part of a cinematographer’s…
It was a matinee screening in a small town in Massachusetts. I’d stayed for the credits, feeling an odd need to confirm that I’d heard Dido on the soundtrack. Only one other person had been in the cinema…
Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. So said Elmore Leonard, prolific author of westerns, short stories and crime novels. He died last…
The road to light, camera, action.
Bill McKelvie/Shutterstock
The current independence referendum presents the film-making community in Scotland with an unprecedented opportunity to develop a film culture befitting a modern nation state. They should seize it without…
Did watching 101 Dalmatians instill you with a burning desire to fill your home with dozens of monochrome puppies? A new study suggests that may often be the case. The research suggests that all those…
Gay activists took up the cause of a group of Welsh miners.
Pathé Production UK & Ireland
In a largely unknown aspect of the 1984-5 Miners’ strike, gay activists from London gave much needed help to an embattled South Wales community. Their story is told in Pride, a film released in the UK…
Venezuala criticised Hollywood of saying president Nicolas Maduro wants a biological bomb.
EPA/Miraflores Palace
Cultural imperialism is alive and well. The desire of successive governments of the United States to destabilise governments in Latin America that are too far left for Washington’s taste is well and truly…
Abortion isn’t just a plot device in Obvious Child.
Chris Teague
The recently released Obvious Child has been dubbed the first “abortion rom-com”. Donna, played by Jenny Slate, is a 20-something Brooklyn comedian pregnant after a post-breakup one-night-stand. She even…
The vampire stars of What We Do In The Shadows, a new New Zealand film released today.
Kane Skellar/Madmen Films
Yes, some vampires like to live in looming, crumbling, cobwebby castles. But some, the vampires of What We Do in the Shadows, a New Zealand film released today, like to live in flats in Wellington. This…