Category: Country: US
-
Doctor Dolittle. Dir. Betty Thomas. 20th-Century Fox. 1998.
Representation of animals in Betty Thomas’s Doctor Dolittle The animal presence in Doctor Dolittle (1998) is extremely intriguing, using impressive CGI and a vast spectrum of species to depict a humanistic side to animals that was, until then, uncommon in film. Eddie Murphy’s character, John Dolittle, provides audiences with an identity crisis: family man vs…
-
The Horse Whisperer. Dir. Robert Redford. Touchstone Pictures. 1998.
Representation of Animals in the Horse Whisperer Robert Redford directs and stars in the novel adaptation, The Horse Whisperer (1998). Set between the conflicting environments of urban New York and the rural countryside of Montana, we witness a family fall apart following a tragic accident. Whilst out riding, the film’s young protagonist and her friend come into collision…
-
Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Dir. Benh Zeitlin. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 2012.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is set in Bathtub, a poor and very ethnically-mixed community in the Louisiana Bayou separated from other civilisation by a levee, a backdrop which conjures up the still fresh memory of Hurricane Katrina. The global warming induced flooding of the area and all that ensues are focalised through the imagination of the…
-
Godzilla. Dir. Ishirō Honda. Toho. 1954.
Synopsis “If we continue to test nuclear weapons, another Godzilla may arise.” The closing line of Honda’s Godzilla, emphasised by a prolonged close-up of the speaker’s face, is proudly overt in its political overtones. Produced in the wake of the 1945 bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Godzilla’s use of an indestructible, prehistoric creature as a metaphor for nuclear warfare…
-
Where the Wild Things Are. Dir. Spike Jonze. Warner Bros. 2009.
In Spike Jonze’s 2009 film Where the Wild Things Are, wildness reigns. Max, a ‘wild’ young boy with an active imagination, is able to connect with his dog but has difficulty doing so with other people, including his mother and sister. Upset that his mother is paying more attention to her new boyfriend, Max puts…
-
A Bug’s Life. Dir. John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. Disney Pixar. 1998.
A Bug’s Life follows an ant colony in their struggle to keep the peace and tradition of providing food for their oppressors, the grasshoppers. Moments before they arrive to collect the offering, protagonist Flik accidentally causes the food to fall into a river thus leaving the ants with no offering and greatly angering the grasshoppers.…
-
Blade Runner. Dir. Ridley Scott. Warner Bros. 1982.
Dystopian L.A. 2019 Blade Runner (1982) takes place in a futuristic and dystopian Los Angeles. Heavy industrialisation has caused great damage to Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystem, wiping out most of the planet’s animal species. ‘Replicants’, androids visually identical to humans, are engineered to perform manual work on off-world colonies. Their use is banned on Earth, where…
-
Planet of the Apes. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox. 1968.
Evolutionary Reversal in Planet of the Apes Planet of the Apes (1968) brilliantly satirizes the process by which humans simultaneously invented the concept of the “animal kingdom” and appointed themselves to its highest position. Adapting Pierre Boulle’s celebrated novel, Monkey Planet (1963), director Franklin J. Schaffner and screenwriters Rod Serling and Michael Wilson use the speculative licence of the…
-
Brave. Dir. Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell. Disney-Pixar. 2012.
The Disney-Pixar film, Brave (2012), directed by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell, is a computer-animated film set in Medieval Scotland featuring Merida, a skilled archer and princess, who is determined to seek freedom from the cultural duties and responsibilities enforced upon her. As the story unfolds, Merida’s mother, Queen Elinor, announces a kingdom-wide competition amongst…
-
The Ghost and the Darkness. Dir. Stephen Hopkins. Constellation Entertainment. 1996.
Film Poster for The Ghost and the Darkness URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/Ghostandthedarkness.jpg This film is a retelling of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo – the published journal of John Henry Patterson. He was an Irish engineer and soldier (played by Val Kilmer), who is sent to Africa to help build the British railway from Mombasa to Uganda (572…