ZooScope

Category: Article Type: Full

  • White Dog. Dir. Samuel Fuller. Paramount Pictures. 1982.

    Sam Fuller’s final Hollywood film, White Dog (1982), is based on Romain Gary’s 1970 ‘nonfiction’ novel of the same name and tells the story of aspiring actress Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol), who after accidentally hitting and injuring him with her car, adopts a seemingly lovable white German shepherd. The plot is complicated when, after two…

  • The Witch. Dir. Robert Eggers. A24. 2015.

    Robert Eggers’s 2015 independent horror film The Witch encounters human-animal relations in reference to a manmade issue – religion and the occult. I argue that such a representation of humans living alongside animals in the context of a restricted, puritanical environment of their own making exists because of how the characters decide to build their own isolation.…

  • Noah. Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Paramount Pictures. 2014.

    God says to Noah: Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.…

  • Zootopia. Dir. Byron Howard and Rich Moore. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2016.

    Dreams can be powerful things; and to Judy Hopps, no dream is greater than becoming Zootopia’s first rabbit police officer. After years of chasing her goal however, Judy discovers that maybe her dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Finding herself in a world dominated by bigger, stronger animals; Judy faces discrimination as she…

  • The Wild. Dir. Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams. Buena Vista Pictures. 2006.

    The Wild YouTube video of the film’s theatrical trailer: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE3mEgqqlCM> ‘Start spreading the newspaper.’ Disney’s 2006 animation, The Wild, by first-time director and ex-special effects artist Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, is a family comedy film centred on a group of zoo animals: Samson the lion, Bridget the giraffe, Nigel the koala and Larry the anaconda. Along with their…

  • Racing Stripes. Dir. Frederik Du Chau. Warner Bros. 2005.

    Racing stripes (Frederik Du Chau 2005) is an American sports comedy which centres on the glamourous and wealthy sport of horseracing in Kentucky. However the film does this through a comedic twist. The film has a bildungsroman performance narrative and follows the journey of a young girl and her unconventional mount Stripes, a zebra. After a…

  • A Matter of Loaf and Death. Dir. Nick Park. BBC. 2008.

    Beloved characters Wallace and his side-kick canine Gromit return for another film, and this time they are running Top Bun, a brand new bakery. Business is booming for the duo, but a serial killer is on the loose, killing all the bakers in town. While Gromit begins to fear for the pair’s safety, Wallace is…

  • Bee Movie. Dir. Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith. DreamWorks. 2007.

    This textbook human thinking opens Bee Movie [2], an animation which follows the film’s aptly alliteratively named protagonist, Barry B. Benson, an aspiring bee, on his search for individuality in a conformist bee society that has worked non-stop for ‘27 million years’. Barry, disillusioned at the thought of working for the rest of his life…

  • Aladdin. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Disney Studios. 1992.

    Ron Clements’ and John Muskers’, Aladdin (1992) [1]  follows the life of a poor street dweller and his sidekick monkey, Abu in the fictional city of Agrabah. After being coerced into entering the subterranean ‘cave of wonders’ by the villain Jafar and his accomplice parrot, Iago, Aladdin retrieves a magic lamp containing a genie. With the…

  • Two Brothers . Dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud. Universal Studios. 2004.

    ean-Jacques Annaud transports us to the richly beautiful Cambodian jungle in the early 1920s , where two tiger cubs, Sangha and Kumal, are born to their stable and loving family unit. Their playful brotherly bond creates many adventures until violence and greed removes the two from the wild and forces them into the human domain…