Tag: Life
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5 Films: Biopic
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Mark Twain The biopic distinguishes itself from a period drama by taking inspiration from real people, serving the same purpose as a biography. These often take liberties with the truth, but the facts serve as a grounding…
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World Film: 8½ (1963)
★★★★ The notion of a midlife crisis is a cliché in a man’s life. It’s a time of finding a younger partner, getting a sports car, and trying your damn best to hide the fact that your body is starting to show its many trips around the sun. This cliché does as a disservice to…
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World Film: Shoplifters (2018)
★★★★ It’s fair to say that most people living on the margins of society don’t wind up as filmmakers. Yet there are plenty of films that tackle poverty and the lives of those who live in it. While I’m sure some come at it from personal experience, my guess would be most are by and…
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World Film: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023)
★★★ Art is an indulgence, not only of artist but of the patrons who choose to spend their time engaging with the art. When it comes to film, the amount of time it takes to view is the one thing in the artist’s hands. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of films that last several…
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5 Films: Road Movie
The journey, not the arrival matters. T.S. Elliot While any genre, from post-apocalyptic sci-fi (e.g. Mad Max 2) to the Western (e.g. Stagecoach), can take the form of a road movie, the genre is a slice-of-life that emphasises the journey over the destination. The journey could be one of personal or spiritual growth, but it…
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World Film: Another Round (2020)
★★★★ In our modern secular society, the notion of sin has been transformed away from spiritual to the physical. This is clearest in our modern language moderating hedonism, with article after article talking about the negative health effects of food and drink on our bodies. In an age where we can exercise freedom of choice,…
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Jules (2023)
★★★★ Science fiction is at its best when it’s able to explore something about who we are – either as people or as a society – with its fantastical premise merely a device to explore an aspect of the human condition. Jules is a story of an elderly man whose life is interrupted by an…
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World Film: The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
★★★★ Australia is currently facing a major food-related crisis related the cost of living. It’s not that we can’t get grow or buy enough food, but the costs associated with both are pushing some people into skipping meals. What we have are problems related to growing inequality. While this is a problem, it’s a better…
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023)
★★★★ After discovering an old co-worker is dying of cancer, the geriatric Harold Fry (Jim Broadbent) decides the best thing he can do for her is give her hope by walking across England to visit her. His decision is made spur-of-the-moment much to the chagrin of his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton). As he walks along…
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World Film: Roma (2018)
★★★★ I often think about the Pink Floyd lyric from Breathe: “all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.” Life, for the most part, is quite mundane. What great or terrible things that happen that shape our society don’t really happen through us, or even to us. Cinema to…
A Random Walk Through Film History 