The Guardians of the Galaxy – whose protagonists are a morally-gray motley crew – could be seen as a satire of the classic hero tradition.
BagoGames/Flickr
A. David Lewis, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
A beautiful assassin. A superstrong thug. A star-lost child of the ‘80s. A sentient tree. A gun-toting raccoon. Meet the morally gray protagonists of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the film that raked…
Lord of the Rings 6.
Mark Pokorny/Warner Bros Pictures
In 1937 a fairy tale about a reluctant hero with hairy feet was published by a tweedy English academic called JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit was an instant success – and its mighty sequel The Lord of the Rings…
The latest Hunger Games film, Mockingjay – Part 1, is topping the international box office. Although it’s a Hollywood blockbuster aimed at young adults, it presents potentially quite subversive ideas of…
There have been some strange conflicts in history. The War of Jenkins Ear, which lasted from 1739 to 1748, resulted in the death of thousands. It started when Robert Jenkins, a merchant seaman, had his…
The next James Bond film – the 24th in the series that began with Dr No in 1962 – is to be called Spectre. Although the plot remains a closely-guarded secret, the name reveals more than it lets on. Spectre…
Critics write the obituaries for Australian films the weekend they’re released. Is there a better way to understand the industry?
AAP Image/Cameron Oliver
By all reports the Australian cinema is dead. Left for dust by the noisy distractions of big budget movie franchises and the smaller diversions of teeny shiny devices. All you can see in any direction…
Not unlike the bear himself, the film Paddington has had a long and bumpy ride to the big screen. Paddington’s movie, like the character, unwittingly left a marmalade smeared paw print on the delicate…
In 1984, British LGBT rights groups worked on behalf of striking miners.
Flickr
The film Pride, which won the Queer Palm Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is based on the true story of what seems to be a rare occurrence in human history: two oppressed groups (in this case…
Timothy Spall plays the British painter Joseph Turner in Mike Leigh’s latest film, Mr Turner.
Transmission Films
The work of art is that mysterious process that transforms pigment and canvas into an object of great beauty. Depicting that moment of creative inspiration has been a challenge for filmmakers since the…
One of the first WW1 films. Yes, really.
Breve Storia del Cinema
Most people probably have an image of World War I derived as much from popular culture as from school textbooks, especially in this centenary year. It is the image of hopelessly naïve soldier-victims marching…
District Thai: A pro-democracy Thai student protests using the salute from the film.
Rungroj Yongrit/EPA
Thailand’s prime minister, General Prayut Chan-ocha, has a problem on his hands. You may be surprised to learn that this problem is in the form of a teen fantasy film – The Hunger Games. Imagine Obama…
The housemate sitcom encounters vampires.
Metrodome
Vampire films come in cycles. After the recent successes of the Twilight franchise and seven seasons of True Blood, comes the parody mockumentary, co-written and co-directed by Jemaine Clement, one half…
Benedict Cumberbatch brings to life Turing’s amazing mental engagement with his machine.
STUDIOCANAL
Movies about mathematicians are rare, the problem being that the real action is all in the head. At first sight, maths doesn’t quite have the cinematic potential of a car chase or a romantic love story…
Interstellar has been praised for its attempt to make the “hard science” of astrophysics both accessible and exciting to a popular audience. Through cutting-edge special effects, it takes audiences on…
Got a problem with your script? This man, script consultant Robert McKee, can save it.
AAP Image/dmcpr media
If you’ve seen Brian Cox playing Robert McKee in the 2002 film Adaptation, you probably know what a script consultant does. Following in the footsteps of other internationally-renowned script consultants…
Miles Teller as Andrew and J.K. Simmons as Fletcher in the pursuit of peak performance, in Whiplash.
Photo by Daniel McFadden, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Whiplash, the new film written and directed by American Damien Chazelle, is billed as a drama about an ambitious young drummer and his terrifying teacher. The older teacher is said to “discover” the 19…
Sharon Stone, in Basic Instinct, dramatised the catastrophic actions of a clever yet unhinged woman.
EPA/ Peter Foley
Mental illness and women’s sexuality are frequently aligned – on screen and off. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, pathologised women’s sexuality. Indeed his definition of a woman as someone…
In Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey plays the protagonist, Cooper, who wears many hats: everyman farmer, laconic space hero, grieving father.
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
At about the midway point of Interstellar, a spacecraft descends into the atmosphere of a pristine white planet. Gliding downwards, the tip of the craft brushes against a cloud, and the cloud shatters…
Apparently, Jane Austen needs updating. Yet again. She’s a stranger to the 21st-century world. Her novels need rewriting for a modern readership, and this is what The Austen Project aims to do to get younger…
Carolina Muñoz Marin, an amateur kickboxer from Costa Rica, is featured in “Meet the Mormons.”
Intellectual Reserve, Inc.
In October the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released its new documentary Meet the Mormons to wide theatrical distribution. The film depicts the lives of six individuals – two women and four…