ZooScope

Category: Country: UK

  • Arrival. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures. 2016.

    When I think of science fiction films, I immediately think of two things: aliens and explosions. Arrival plays with these expectations of the genre, asking the viewer to look at aliens in a way they’re not used to. Taking Villeneuve’s vision of the alien to be a non-human creature, it is appropriate to categorise the aliens in Arrival as…

  • Wuthering Heights. Dir. Andrea Arnold. Curzon Artificial Eye. 2011.

    Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 romance/tragedy novel Wuthering Heights highlights the desolate and savage nature of the moors in which the love story takes place, and the violent nature of those who live within them (notably Heathcliff). This wildness is conveyed to the audience through the use of animals, particularly violence against…

  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Dir. Mike Newell. Warner Bros. 2005.

    In Mike Newell’s ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, dragons are portrayed as symbols of the overriding danger that follows Harry throughout the film. This is made particularly apparent during Harry’s chase with a Hungarian Horntail in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. In this scene, Newell’s use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds…

  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Dir. Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones. EMI Films. 1975.

    This iconic scene fully exemplifies the film’s absurdist representation of the violence of the crusades, particularly the disproportionate violence of the Western invaders. It explores this using the similarly lopsided power-dynamic of the animal-human relationship, the surreal treatment of which exposes the arbitrary hegemony, and divine mission of the white Christian crusaders as a lie.…

  • Alice in Wonderland. Dir. Tim Burton. Walt Disney Pictures. 2010.

    The film draws on the viewer’s knowledge of the Disney original in the tea party scene, making it a ruin of what it once was, and presenting the Hatter as even more ‘mad’. He is seen for the first time in a close up shot, slowly looking up towards the camera, vacantly staring into the…

  • 28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 2002.

    You wouldn’t expect one of British cinema’s most poignant and idyllic moments to lie in the centre of a post-apocalyptic horror film, yet it does. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later cuts in the melancholy scene at its centre, with four wild horses providing respite for the film’s central four characters by subverting the film’s primary genre…

  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dir. Chris Columbus. Warner Bros. 2002.

    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets utilizes horror film narratives and their depiction of monstrous animals in order to reveal a deeper complex message regarding human-animal relationships. The franchise’s reliance on Ophidiophobia acts to highlight the negative animalisation assigned to animals such as snakes, whilst the treatment of the Basilisk by humans in the film…

  • The Fox and the Child. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Pathé. 2007.

    Luc Jacquet’s The Fox and the Child depicts an unnamed girl (Bertille Noël-Bruneau) exploring the French countryside and following its animal inhabitants. She develops an obsession with the titular fox and it becomes more trusting, but the girl disastrously oversteps the boundary and attempts to make the wild animal her pet. The film is interested in binaries…

  • Black Swan. Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 2010.

    The movie Black Swan could be assigned to a psychological horror movie that was directed by Aronofsky and released in 2010. The film deals with the main protagonist Nina who is a promising ballet-dancer but at the same time very childish, shy and submissive. To be chosen for the lead role of “Swan Lake”, she…

  • The Fox and the Child. Dir. Luc Jacquet. Pathé. 2007.

    When asked in an interview how he approached making The Fox and the Child (2007) following the popularity of The March of the Penguins (2005), French director Luc Jacquet replied: I went into my childhood; into a memory I have of having looked into the eyes of a wild fox when I was a kid. I also noticed that…