Tag: Family

  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dir. Alfonso Cuarón. Warner Bros. 2004.

    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Official Trailer [i] In 2004, Warner Bros. unveiled the third Harry Potter instalment, blessing the film franchise with the innovative, ingenious, and cinematically distinctive director Alfonso Cuarón. Back at Hogwarts for their third year, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert…

  • We Bought a Zoo. Dir. Cameron Crowe. 20th Century Fox. 2011.

    We Bought a Zoo is a film loosely based on a memoir of the same name by Benjamin Mee which describes his purchase and restoration of the failing Dartmoor Wildlife Park – subsequently renamed Dartmoor Zoological Park – in preparation for its reopening. In the film, the death of Benjamin’s wife has led to a…

  • Happy Feet. Dir. George Miller. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2006.

    The Warner Bros. Pictures (2006) film Happy Feet tells the heart-warming tale of Mumble (Elijah Wood), a dancing emperor penguin who is a little different from the rest of his kind.[1] Mumble becomes an outcast in his own community because unlike every emperor penguin before him he is unable to sing. His talents lie elsewhere in the form…

  • Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures. 1995.

    Based on Dick King Smith’s “The Sheep Pig”, Babe is the story of a young pig that is taken in by sheep dogs and the farmer Hoggett who eventually becomes a sheep herder himself. At the beginning of the film we first meet Babe in a pig farm where the pigs are shipped to meat factories.…

  • Flicka. Dir. Michael Mayer. 20th Century Fox. 2006.

    Flicka is a film partially based on the novel My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara written in the 1940’s. This movie however, is set in the 21st century and the main character is not a boy, but a girl by the name of Katherine “Katy” McLaughlin. This gender change from book to movie could be…

  • Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure. Dir. Darrell Rooney and Jeannine Roussel. Walt Disney. 2001.

    In this sequel to Lady and the Tramp, the story of Lady’s and Tramp’s rambunctious young pup, Scamp is followed. Scamp desperately wants to be free to run, play, chew, and to not follow the strict rules imposed upon him through family life. In search of the adventure he wants, Scamp runs away from home…

  • Happy Feet. Dir. George Miller. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2006.

    Happy Feet (Dir. George Miller, 2006) is a film normally associated with the representation of environmental issues, encouraging environmental awareness and consciousness of the animals worldwide affected by human actions. It also presents the theme of individuality, with the main character Mumble shunned for being different but eventually accepted into the penguin community after he is…

  • Alice in Wonderland. Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. Walt Disney Studios. 1951.

    ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a 1951 animated musical about a young girl, named Alice (Kathryn Beaumont), who follows a white rabbit in a waistcoat (Bill Thompson), down his rabbit hole, to fall into a fantastical world where she must overcome constant confusion and bewilderment, as this world becomes ‘curiouser and curiouser’. She meets a myriad…

  • How to Train Your Dragon. Dir. Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders. Paramount Pictures. 2010.

    Dreamworks’s 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon tells the story of Hiccup, a Viking whose village is regularly attacked by dragons. Due to his physical weakness and lack of fighting skills Hiccup is an outsider in his village, the others not recognizing his high intellect and inventiveness as useful. Yearning for recognition and acceptance, Hiccup joins…

  • Stuart Little. Dir. Rob Minkoff. Columbia Pictures. 1999.

    Columbia Pictures’ Stuart Little (1999) follows the Little family’s adoption of an anthropomorphic mouse, Stuart, whose debonair mannerisms and soaring intelligence allow the family to embrace him as an addition to their brood. Whilst Eleanor and Frederick Little’s son George does not conceal his initial doubts regarding the adoption of a rodent, the film presents the notion…