Tag: HAR: Animal Agency
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Water for Elephants. Dir. Francis Lawrence. 20th Century Fox. 2011.
Water for Elephants (Dir. Francis Lawrence, 2011), based on the novel of the same name, is a story about a young man Jacob (Robert Pattinson) who joins a travelling circus and is unsurprisingly about confinement and freedom. It’s brimming with animals from horses to lions to the star of the show, Rosie the elephant, all of…
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A Cat’s Life (‘Une Vie de Chat’). Dir. Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. Gebeka Films. 2010.
A Cat in Paris (‘Une Vie de Chat’, 2010) is a charmingly funny, aesthetically beautiful and surprisingly thrilling French animated film, directed by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. [1] The film tells the story of Dino, a Parisian cat who leads a double life. By day he is a comforting and playful pet to a…
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Tarzan. Dir. Kevin Lima, Chris Buck. Disney. 1999.
Tarzan-Two Worlds Tarzan is best characterised by the title of the film’s opening song Two Worlds, sang by Phil Collins. This is the story of flora and fauna, represented by gorillas, colliding with mankind in Disney’s 1999 classic. The film sees an orphaned human baby in Africa adopted into an ape family by a Gorilla mother. The…
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White Fang. Dir. Randal Kleiser. Buena Vista Studios. 1991.
Baring his teeth to a Grizzly Bear on its hind legs, White Fang- a hybridised wolf-dog, forsakes his life to defend a young boy, Jack Conroy. Jack’s endures a perilous journey across Alaskan terrain to discover his Father’s claim during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, and an orphaned wolf-dog puppy whose trust renders him a…
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Stalker. Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky. Mosfilm. 1979.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s science-fiction film, Stalker (1979), is marked by depression, desolation and barren wastelands.[1] The film’s loose narrative follows three men into The Zone, a disturbingly conscious and supernatural area of nuclear disaster. Whilst there, the eponymous Stalker encounters a black dog at various points on the journey. As the Stalker waits for his wife in the bar,…
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The Lobster. Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos. Picturehouse Entertainment. 2015.
The Lobster is a modern parable in which societal norms are completely called into question by absurdity of form. In the not too distant, or not too past, world of The Lobster, single people are sent to a hotel in which they must find a mate in 45 days or otherwise be turned into an animal of…
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Charlotte’s Web. Dir. Gary Winick. Paramount Pictures. 2006.
Based on the classic children’s story by E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web (2006) follows the journey of a runty piglet, Wilbur (Dominic Scott Kay), saved by the farmer’s daughter Fern (Dakota Fanning) and raised on the nearby farm. Wilbur remains friendless until he meets Charlotte (Julia Roberts), the spider who lives in the barn. Although initially…
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The Grey. Dir. Joe Carnahan. Inferno. 2012.
‘You are going to die. That is what’s happening.’ After spending five monotonous weeks working as a hired wolf exterminator ‘doing some of that sniper shit’[i] at an oil refinery in Alaska, near suicidal John Ottoway (Liam Neeson) boards a plane bound for home, along with his fellow men ‘unfit for mankind.’[ii] When their flight clashes violently…
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The Birds. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures. 1963.
The Birds (1963) is undoubtedly a horror film because it contains a deep sense of the uncanny, a term Freud coins as something that is terrifying because it is familiar.[i] The Birds contains many pockets of fear and gruesome imagery throughout the film. Hitchcock’s use of human bodies being pecked at by birds are an example of the…
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The Artist. Dir. Michel Hazanavicius. Warner Brothers. 2011.
Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller and Uggie the dog in The Artist The Artist (2011) is a remarkable modern day silent film that explores the transformation of silent movies into talking pictures in 1920s Hollywood. This change in cinema style affects the lives of both the famous silent movie actor George Valentin…