Category: Year: 2017
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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Dir. Jake Kasdan. Sony Pictures Releasing. 2017.
Trapped in a tropical jungle with wild animals and no allergy spray; what could possibly go wrong? Oh, and also, you are now in a different body and have to save the world. Have I mentioned the mosquitoes? The unofficial sequel to the 1955 Jumanji, titled Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle follows four children in…
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Blade Runner 2049. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Alcon Entertainment. 2017.
Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) transports us to a dystopian earth, where humans and replicants, bio-engineered humans used for slave labour, live side by side. There is a clear dichotomy within the dystopia since replicants’ entire existence is based on the premise that they are genetically coded to obey orders, rendering them docile slaves,…
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Ferdinand. Dir. Carlos Saldanha. 20th Century Studios. 2017.
Part of the core ethics depicted within Saldanha’s Ferdinand (2017) is that the exploitation of animals, whether bullfighting or meat production, is unacceptable. However, the opening scene of this film depicts the bulls as having the agency to use their power to choose to fight and vie for the attention of the matador. By representing…
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Okja. Dir. Bong Joon-ho. Netflix. 2017
There are two kinds of pigs that make an appearance in Okja; genetically modified super-pigs and greedy, corporate capitalist pigs. The slaughterhouse scene forces the viewer to dispel any false idealism surrounding the reality of the meat industry, an explicit criticism of how human exceptionalist thinking blended with modern ‘capitalist delirium’ [1] has ruined the…
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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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1922. Dir. Zak Hilditch. Netflix. 2017.
Zak Hilditch’s 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s 1922 follows the story of Wilfred James, a corn farmer living in Nebraska, who, alongside the assistance of his teenage son, Henry, conspired to murder his wife, Arlette, after a dispute about selling her recently inherited land to move to the city. The story unravels the consequences of…
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Okja. Dir. Bong Joon-ho. Netflix. 2017.
Okja[1] is a South-Korean/American film about a girl called Mija and her best friend, a ‘super pig’ called Okja. When Okja gets taken by the company who made her, the Mirando corporation, Mija leaves her idyllic mountain-top home and goes on a dark adventure, determined to find Okja and bring her back home. At the…
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A Dog’s Purpose. Dir. Lasse Hallström. Universal Pictures. 2017.
Lasse Hallström’s film A Dog’s Purpose presents the relationship between a dog and its first owner, Ethan Montgomery (Dennis Quaid as Ethan’s adult version). The intriguing question “what is the real purpose of a dog” becomes for Bailey (Josh Gad) the triggering of a number of adventures which results in the last sequence where the…
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Coco. Dir. Lee Unkrich. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2017.
Lee Unkrich’s Coco (2017) is built on similar foundations of recent Disney/Pixar releases alike Moana(2016) and The Good Dinosaur(2015); twelve year old Miguel’s (Anthony Gonzalez) dream of becoming a musician compromises his family’s ban on music and their hope for Miguel to continue the family business.[i]Yet what may feel like recognisable narrative territory, the enriched setting of traditional Mexico…