Category: Genre: Adventure
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Ringing Bell. Dir. Masami Hata. Crunchyroll. 1978.
“Wolf! Alright, I’ve decided to be your apprentice and learn to be strong! (…) I’m sick of being a sheep, all we ever do is stand in corners and shake!” – Chirin from Ringing Bell Ringing Bell was originally released in Japanese – this article focuses on the English dub. Sanrio, the Japanese entertainment company…
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Nope. Dir. Jordan Peele. Universal Pictures. 2022
Jordan Peele’s latest film nope follows siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood in the aftermath of their father’s unexpected death. The siblings ‘We ain’t got no more problems’ is the foreboding line said by Otis Haywood moments before his untimely death and the supernatural haunting begins on the Haywood family ranch. Jordan Peele’s latest film Nope…
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The Little Prince. Dir. Mark Osborne. Paramount Pictures. 2015
“One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” In The Little Prince the depiction of foxes defies conventional animality as they generally symbolise perfidy. But The Fox here is characterised as holding pragmatic intellectual power. He is a teacher but does not hold any other forms of power,…
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Big Miracle. Dir. Ken Kwapis. Universal Pictures. 2012.
”And we ache for them cause they are so much like us”. Rachel Kramer. The film Big Miracle is a drama directed by Ken Kwapis and distributed by Universal Pictures in 2012. It is based on the book Freeing the Whales written by Tom Rose in 1989, which narrates the 1988 Operation Breakthrough to rescue…
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The Book of Life. Dir Jorge R. Gutierrez. 20th Century Fox. 2014
“I’m allergic to dying!“ -Pepe Rodriguez 20th Century Fox’s, 2014, animated feature film, The Book of Life, follows two best friends, Manolo and Joaquin, who are in love with the same woman, Maria, our independent and fiercely empathetic heroine. The married gods, Xibalba and La Muerte, exchange bets on who will win her heart first,…
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Kubo and the Two Strings. Dir. Travis Knight. Laika. 2016
Figure 1: Kubo lifted in the air by wings made of origami birds. Kubo and the Two Strings follows a boy whose life is made even more extraordinary when a perilous adventure, which his mother has tried to save him from, accidentally finds him. Kubo can tell stories using the magical music of his shamisen…
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Hoodwinked!. Dir. Edwards, Cory. Kanbar Entertainment, Blue Yonder Films. 2005.
A retelling of the folktake Little Red Riding Hood as a police procedural, using backstories to show multiple characters’ points of view.[1] Hoodwinked! follows the classic who dunnit trope, deconstructing the fable of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern twist to narrate the mystery of the Goody bandit. It entertains basic animal stereotypes to translate the…
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Epic. Dir. Chris Wedge. 20th Century Fox. 2013
The mouse encounter, experienced by characters MK and Nod in the animated film Epic, displays an inversion of the relationship between human and animal. The stereotypes that form this interconnection are depicted unusually. For example typically, and importantly not in this scene, mice are considered harmless. Inversion is done via the representation of the mouse,…
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Red River. Dir. Howard Hawks. Monterey Productions. 1948.
American expansionism and the frontier myth – the romanticisation of prosperity found in claiming the ‘wilderness’ and the forceful expansion of the American border – pillars of the Western genre [1]. From Jan Troell’s The New Land (1982), John Ford’s Wagon Master (1950) to Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush (1925); Western cinema has constantly glorified the rich…
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The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, Dir.Jay Russell, Sony Pictures Releasing, 2007, U.S.
The filmmakers of The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep present audiences with the idea that a wild, Scottish mythological creature can (a) exist, (b) be a pet, and (c) a friend, to a young boy. Angus and the water horse’s friendship makes the point that not only can dogs be ‘man’s best friend’, but…