Movie Reviews
Movies Reviews of which relate in one way or another to the themes and ideas explored on this site. Movies about the past or the future which relate to human rights. And movies which explore how human beings relate to each other - particularly across boundaries - such as border, gender, race and culture. Movies which deal with peace.
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Shakespeare in Love: A Case of Cultural Appropriation?
Shakespeare didn’t write Romeo and Juliet. No! Wait, what? Shakespeare didn’t write Romeo and Juliet!?? That’s right. If the fact Shakespeare set the play in fair Verona didn’t give it away, Shakespeare didn’t create the story of Romeo and Juliet. So no, Shakespeare’s first draft of Romeo and Juliet didn’t read “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter” as Shakespeare in Love portrays it. And, plot spoiler, no true-life English love of Shakespeare’s inspired the character Juliet. Nor was the war of the two houses of Verona “both alike in dignity” inspired by two playhouses duking it out for writers and audiences in London. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the…
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Italian Stories: From the Godfather to the Fortunate Pilgrim
This story is written from Australia: far from Italy. Yet for me these two places will always be connected, for I was born in one and have grown up and lived in the other. It takes some making sense of – this life spread across half a globe. Somehow the neat boxes that society creates – this country here – that country there – find no place in my heart. How can I apportion my left ventricle to one land and my right to another? There is a problem with this tale which parcels out the world in separate lands; for inside my one human body I carry stories from…
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Beginnings Old and New
It might seem odd to start an article about beginnings by talking about the end, but that’s the whole point. Our assumption is that time is linear. The beginnings are behind us, and, inexorably, we will arrive at “the end”. And culturally, much of our story telling encourages us to have the sneaking fear that our collective end will be horrible. The dystopian stories of our future – the amplified dysfunctions of our time are the common fare of movies such as Gattaca, and Elysium. Our accounts of the past also forebode bleak “end times” story as is the case in Agora. The list is endless, but includes movies such as the Planet of the Apes,…
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Agora movie – seeing ourselves through an alien past
The movie Agora (director Alejandro Amenábar) is not history, but perhaps, it rises to allegory. It is well worth watching, despite its ‘interpretative’ approach to history. It is a movie which captures deeper truths about human relationships and its fictionalized past helps us understand the challenges of our conflicted present. The struggles of Agora’s characters are enriched by Dario Marianelli’s haunting film score and the movie’s epic intellectual and scenic setting. Agora takes us to the unfamiliar world of fourth century Alexandria. It is a world being overtaken by change. Certainties of a pagan past are fading as new Christian ways of being emerge. It is a world beset with…
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Pitch Perfect 2 – Feminist Storytelling
Warning, this one has some plot spoilers. Pitch Perfect 2, is a great dose of quirky, catchy and exuberant musical fun. And just for fun here are the Barden Bellas with their re-mix of Just the Way You Are from the first Pitch Perfect movie. But this fun movie has a serious message, not far from the surface. The explicit and implicit feminist sub-texts of Pitch Perfect 2 are gracefully woven into the latest adventures and music of the Barden Bellas, an all female a capella group, for whom the label ‘misfits’ is spelled with a capital “M”. The characters of the Barden Bellas are a collective challenge to…
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Frontera Movie Review
The Frontera movie is a story about lives shattered by the US-Mexico border. The story unfolds around two families: one from the Mexican side, one from the U.S. side. Miguel (Michael Peña) crosses the border to find work to support his family, including his pregnant wife Paulina (Eva Longoria). On the other side lives a retired sheriff Roy (Ed Harris) and his wife Olivia (Amy Madigan). From the moment Miguel crosses the border everything goes wrong. As the tragedy unfolds, Olivia is shot and killed. Miguel, in the wrong place at the wrong time, is wrongly blamed. The actions of a cast of villains and fools deepen the tragedy as…
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Elysium – The Future of Human Rights is Now
Like Gattaca, the movie Elysium paints a picture of a dystopian future. Both movies explore questions of human rights and exclusion. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Elysium’s Social Justice Message Elysium is unashamedly a sci-fi action flick in mainstream Hollywood tradition. It’s heroes and villians ride in guns blazing. If that’s your thing, then you’ll enjoy the ride. If not, underneath the hero myth, it’s a movie with a serious message. It deals with economic and social extremes in our world today. The future is just a mirror to help us see the present more clearly. In that sense, its science fiction doing what science fiction does…
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The Hundred Foot Journey
The Hundred Foot Journey, plays out against a physically short distance, yet the distance that keeps the people involved apart, is vast. The movie tells the story of a meeting between two cooking cultures: Indian and French. Both are proud of their cooking traditions. An Indian family, displaced some time before to England by political violence in their home country, seeks out a new life across the channel in Europe. A chance car breakdown takes them to an idyllic French town; where they find the food ingredients with the flavours they are seeking. Their arrival sparks a competition between cooking cultures and rival restaurants. Four characters are at the heart…
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Belle
Humans are complex beings. The movie “Belle” (director Amma Assante) explores human complexity, particularly as it manifests in everyday human relationships. The movie is set in the late eighteenth century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the central character of the movie. She was born into slavery, but her father, Captain John Lindsay, was the nephew of the Lord Chief Justice William Murray (Earl of Mansfield). By this chance of fate, Dido escaped a life of slavery and was brought up instead in British high society – as part of the Lord Chief Justice’s household. The movie explores what life may…
