Category: Imaginary Animals: No
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The Little Prince. Dir. Mark Osborne. Paramount Pictures. 2015
The Little Prince uses the animated medium of a children’s film to reconfigure the representation of the snake. A ‘common trope’ also applied here, is to present snakes as a certain bringer of death. The image of a reptile being posed as ‘cold-hearted aggressor’ is familiar as it goes back to Adam and Eve –…
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The Platform (El Hoyo). Dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. Festival Films & Netflix. 2019
Of course, it is odd to gaze from social isolation into absolute claustrophobia while still in a lockdown: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s twisted dystopian Sci-Fi thriller El Hoyo (in international release The Platform) is about being trapped in a large concrete construction that resembles a maintenance hole. It is also about social hierarchies constructed as a result:…
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Turner and Hooch. Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Touchstone Pictures. 1989.
Charles Darwin once stated ‘It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog’. [1] In the case of Turner and Hooch (1989), Hooch’s love for Turner and vice versa takes its time and only arises onside the development of a perfect police office-police dog understanding and partnership.…
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The Mask. Dir. Charles Russell. New Line Cinema. 1994.
The Mask[1] is a screwball gangster-comedy starring Jim Carrey as Stanley Ipkiss, a timid bank clerk who finds a Norse mask which turns him into a bold, charismatic and lustful character, much different to his usual self. The portrayal of his pet dog Milo, as well as the cartoon animal characters that share similarities with…
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Raw. Dir. Julia Ducournau. Focus World. 2017.
When Julia Ducournau’s debut feature film Raw (2017) was shown at Toronto’s Film Festival, paramedics were called to the scene after cinema-goers fainted during the screening. Raw tells the story of highly gifted 16-year-old vegetarian, Justine (Garance Marillier) and her journey into a merciless and dangerously seductive world during her first week of veterinary school. During a gruesome hazing ritual,…
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The Platform (El Hoyo). Dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. Festival Films & Netflix. 2019
In the twisted dystopian science fiction movie “The Platform,” inmates of a vertically piled up prison, with two inmates on each floor, fight for bare survival due to the lack of food for the entire population. An extensive buffet of the finest hearty and sweet food travels, from top to bottom through the middle of…
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The Prince of Egypt. Dir. Brenda Chapman, Simon Wells, Steve Hickner. DreamWorks Pictures. 1998.
Following the life of Moses, The Prince of Egypt tells an adaption of the story of the Book of Exodus. In the opening scene of this animated musical, the audience are introduced to Ancient Egyptian culture as a significant importance is placed on their religion through the enormous statues of their gods. These gods, specifically…
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Crimson Peak. Dir. Guillermo Del Toro. Legendary. 2015.
“It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all” Guillermo Del Toro’s gothic romance Crimson Peak is a carefully designed visual masterpiece that centres around American heiress Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring author who becomes romantically involved with English baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) when he visits New York seeking investment…