Tag: Lobster

Bait. Dir. Mark Jenkin. British Film Institute. 2019.

Core to Mark Jenkin’s 2019 film, Bait, is a narrative depicting the gentrification of the coastal land and community in Cornwall. Following Martin, a local fisherman, Jenkin’s film emphasises how the tourism industry alienates and disenfranchises localised heritage and livelihoods. Martin’s job is central to this. The fish and lobsters that he catches serve as…

19th January 2023
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)…

20th January 2022
The Platform (El Hoyo). Dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. Festival Films & Netflix. 2019

Of course, it is odd to gaze from social isolation into absolute claustrophobia while still in a lockdown: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s twisted dystopian Sci-Fi thriller El Hoyo (in international release The Platform) is about being trapped in a large concrete construction that resembles a maintenance hole. It is also about social hierarchies constructed as a result:…

5th February 2021
Shrek 2. Dir. Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon. DreamWorks. 2004.

The second film in the Shrek franchise, Shrek 2 focuses on a pair of ogres, Shrek and Fiona, and their life as newlyweds: it’s time to meet the in-laws. Fiona’s human parents, King Harold and Queen Lilian, are unpleasantly surprised by the fact their daughter and her husband are ogres, and their marriage has a few magical…

20th May 2018
Aladdin. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Disney Studios. 1992.

Ron Clements’ and John Muskers’, Aladdin (1992) [1] follows the life of a poor street dweller and his sidekick monkey, Abu in the fictional city of Agrabah. After being coerced into entering the subterranean ‘cave of wonders’ by the villain Jafar and his accomplice parrot, Iago, Aladdin retrieves a magic lamp containing a genie. With the…

16th January 2017
Shaun the Sheep The Movie. Dir. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak. Studiocanal. 2015.

Restaurant scene Starzak and Burton challenge our perceptions of human and animal intelligence in Shaun the Sheep The Movie. Aardman excel in casting the animals as intelligent and exasperated by humans, meanwhile humans are portrayed as less so, and oblivious to animal antics happening directly in front of them. The scene in which the sheep dine…

16th January 2017
Shaun the Sheep The Movie. Dir. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak. Studiocanal. 2015.

Shaun the Sheep The Movie trailer Following his introduction in Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave, the woolly star, Shaun the Sheep, received his own spin off show creatively named Shaun the Sheep. Nearing the 20th anniversary of the nation’s introduction to him, the eponymous sheep was given his own movie. Shaun the Sheep The Movie follows the antics…

16th January 2017
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…

25th January 2016
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…

20th January 2015