Category: Year: 2010
-
Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. Dir. Susanna White. Universal Pictures. 2010.
Susanna White’s Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang (2010) introduces Mr Edelweiss as Nanny McPhee’s mischievous sidekick. Mr Edelweiss is a Jackdaw crow, a member of the Corvid species, who are known for their thieving habits. This scene is particularly interesting as the human-animal relationship portrayed causes a shift in the predicted stock characters of…
-
How to Train Your Dragon. Dir. Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders. Paramount Pictures. 2010.
Despite the movie’s title, How to Train Your Dragon does not present ‘trained’ dragons. The title insinuates the shift from foe to friend is a means of ‘training’ a dragon, when this is actually achieved through the development of a mutual understanding of the other. The film’s false equation of this mutual agreement reduces the…
-
True Grit. Dir. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Paramount Pictures. 2010.
Although the tone of True Grit (2010) is primarily light-hearted and comedic, the narrative explores dark themes of grief and revenge. After her father is murdered, fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) embarks on a journey to ensure her father’s killer is hanged for his crime, enlisting the help of infamously violent and self-serving U.S. Marshal…
-
Frozen. Dir. Adam Green. Anchor Bay Films. 2010.
Adam Green’s dramatic thriller Frozen features the return of the wolf to terrorise three friends who become stranded on a ski lift in a New England ski resort. The wolf’s homecoming becomes symbolic, in light of Robin Wood’s definition of the horror film monster, of the ‘deadly return of all that a culture both represses and oppresses’[i].…
-
Beginners. Dir. Mike Mills. Focus Features. 2010.
Beginners (2010) follows a middle-aged man named Oliver and his father’s dog, Arthur, a Jack Russell Terrier, after his father has passed from cancer. Arthur is portrayed in a very non-animalistic way. He never barks, only really making a sound when he is crying as Oliver tries to leave him at home alone. Arthur just…
-
Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Dir. Edgar Wright. Universal. 2010.
Joseph MackayMonday 16 January 2017 Scott Pilgrim vs The World, a film based on Bryan Lee O’ Malley’s six graphic novel series of the same name, is about the titular Scott attempting to win the heart of a girl named Romana Flowers – to accomplish this, he must defeat her ‘seven evil exes’. As the…