Tag: HAR: Food

  • Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!. Dir. By. Peter Lord. Columbia Pictures. 2012.

    Aardman never shy away from the ludicrous. So when a crew of incompetent pirates endeavour for protagonist The Pirate Captain to win the Pirate of the Year Award by relying on the commercial value of his prized dodo companion Polly (who should have been extinct for 150 years and is believed to be a parrot)…

  • Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.

    Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.

    Released in 2007, during the surge of penguin movies, Surf’s Up is a unique animated mockumentary exploring how penguins are the ‘real’ inventors of the worldwide sport, surfing. A documentary crew (ironically, Brannon and Buck cast themselves) follow the journey of Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), a Rockhopper penguin from Antarctica who dreams of becoming a…

  • Blade Runner 2049. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Alcon Entertainment. 2017.

    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,…

  • 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…

  • Okja. Dir. Bong Joon-ho. Netflix. 2017

    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…

  • A Christmas Carol. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2009.

    ‘Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’ [1] Guide dogs have been a symbol of…

  • Penguin Bloom. Dir. Glendyn Ivin. Netflix, Inc. 2021.

    Penguin Bloom. Dir. Glendyn Ivin. Netflix, Inc. 2021.

    Inspired by true events, Penguin Bloom tells the story of Sam Bloom, a mother and wife who became paralysed after a serious accident.  As she struggles through a difficult recovery, a small miracle occurs, a magpie called Penguin enters the Bloom family, changing the course of their lives forever. This scruffy looking creature builds an…

  • Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Dir. Jim Stenstrum. Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. 1998.

    Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island[1] is subversive both in terms of subverting what you’d expect from a typical Scooby outing (substituting criminals in masks with genuine monsters) and subverting ideas of what it truly means to be villainous. Immortal werecats Simone and Lena (fig. 1) sacrificed their souls to their cat god to exact revenge against…

  • The Simpsons Movie. Dir. David Silverman. 20th Century Fox. 2007.

    Why does everything I whip leave me? – Homer Simpson, The Simpsons Movie The Simpsons Movie is characterised by imprisonment vs agency – the central plot revolves around the incarceration of the town of Springfield using a giant glass dome as a punishment for environmental damage – therefore it seems only right to extend the…

  • The Good Dinosaur. Dir. Peter Sohn. Disney Pixar. 2015.

    Ever wondered what life would be like if dinosaurs never became extinct? Well, you’ll never have to wonder again thanks to The Good Dinosaur. In this alternate world human-animal relationships are reversed as the dinosaurs are civilised and positioned above humans hierarchically. In doing so, this film evokes questions surrounding the ethics of human practices…