ZooScope

Tag: Feature Length

  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Dir. Matt Reeves. 20th Century Fox. 2014.

    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Dir. Matt Reeves. 20thCentury Fox. 2014 ‘Now, they may have got their hands on some of our guns. But that does not make them men. They are animals!’ – Dreyfus Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) is the second film in the 20thCentury Fox reboot of…

  • Twelve Monkeys. Dir. Terry Gilliam. Universal Pictures . 1996.

    Twelve Monkeys begins: human beings whoop and rattle in cages, buried deep underground. Wild animals roam free in the streets; in the churches, on top of this underground prison. But who dug the hole? The animals or the human… …beings? The deadly virus which forced the survivors to flee underground came from the animals. But the…

  • They Shall Not Grow Old. Dir. Peter Jackson. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.. 2018.

    Not often is a film’s purpose so clearly stated in its title, yet Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old1(TSNGO) is a documentary with meticulous dedication to preserving the stories of those who fought in World War One. Framed by black and white footage of pre-war conscription and the return home from combat, the documentary’s centre is…

  • The Wizard of Oz. Dir. Victor Fleming, King Vidor, George Cukor, Richard Thorpe, Norman Taurog. MGM. 1939.

    The Wizard of Oz is about a small-town girl in the big city–the Emerald City. Dorothy lives on a farm in Kansas with her dog Toto. When she is knocked unconscious during a hurricane, she wakes up to find herself in the magical world of Oz, filled with a myriad of unusual creatures. She must travel…

  • Enemy. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. E1 Films. 2013.

    Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy follows Adam, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a history professor, disillusioned with life and suffering from a feeling of social malaise, and Anthony, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a wannabe actor who regularly cheats on his pregnant wife. Adam sees Anthony as an extra in a movie and becomes obsessed with him. Anthony is eventually killed…

  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Dir. David Yates. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2016.

    Courage, nerve, chivalry, the makings of a true her- oh? This story is about a Hufflepuff? Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne) is not from Gryffindor, he bears no lightning scar, and he is well beyond the teenage wizard angst of the Harry Potter series. Instead of a Chosen One, our hero is a… Magizoologist. We meet…

  • Toy Story. Dir. John Lasseter. Pixar. 1995.

    ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ is the catchphrase of Pixar’s first computer-generated feature-length film, Toy Story (1995), and this perfectly captures the relationships within the film; including those between the group of toys the plot centres around. The film follows the lives of these toys, in which the mix of human and animal characters come to…

  • Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox. 2014.

    On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne receives an unexpected phone call from his neighbour, who has spotted his indoor pet cat wandering outside the house. When Nick returns, not only does he discover that his cat has been misplaced, but his wife, Amy has disappeared too. Leaving a staged crime scene…

  • Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. Dir. Andy Serkis. Netflix. 2018.

    The film ‘Mowgli’ is a recent adaptation by Andy Serkis of the beloved Kipling story ‘The Jungle Book’. It is a fantasy adventure film and a beautifully aesthetic hybrid of live-action, CGI and motion picture that remains true to the original story in its exploration of the darker elements of the tale that follow the…

  • Arrival. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Paramount Pictures. 2016.

    When I think of science fiction films, I immediately think of two things: aliens and explosions. Arrival plays with these expectations of the genre, asking the viewer to look at aliens in a way they’re not used to. Taking Villeneuve’s vision of the alien to be a non-human creature, it is appropriate to categorise the aliens in Arrival as…