Tag: Romance
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The Book of Life. Dir Jorge R. Gutierrez. 20th Century Fox. 2014
“I’m allergic to dying!“ -Pepe Rodriguez 20th Century Fox’s, 2014, animated feature film, The Book of Life, follows two best friends, Manolo and Joaquin, who are in love with the same woman, Maria, our independent and fiercely empathetic heroine. The married gods, Xibalba and La Muerte, exchange bets on who will win her heart first,…
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Red River. Dir. Howard Hawks. Monterey Productions. 1948.
American expansionism and the frontier myth – the romanticisation of prosperity found in claiming the ‘wilderness’ and the forceful expansion of the American border – pillars of the Western genre [1]. From Jan Troell’s The New Land (1982), John Ford’s Wagon Master (1950) to Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush (1925); Western cinema has constantly glorified the rich…
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Focus Features. 2004.
Figure 1 Memories are the foundations for the complexity of individuals. We are created by the experiences we face, and to delve into the past is to delve into the system of our personal construction. According to Bowman (2004, p. 85), themes of memory in film generate emotion because, instinctively, to lose our memory equates…
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Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World. Dir. Tom Ellery and Bradley Raymond. Walt Disney Home Video. 1998.
In Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, Pocahontas voyages to England with John Rolfe, an English diplomat. She must stop the villainous Governor Ratcliffe’s manipulation of King James and prevent the King from declaring war on the Native Americans. As expected in a Disney film, she just happens to fall in love with Rolfe…
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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)…
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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…
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Pocahontas. Dir. Eric Goldberg and Mike Gabriel. The Walt Disney Company. 1995.
In Pocahontas, the animosity between Meeko, the Native American raccoon and Percy, the English pug is a microcosm of the conflict between the Native and English humans. The animals are comic foils, providing family-friendly slapstick relief from human violence. However, the inclusion of animals adds meaning beyond just comedic value. The animals and humans both…
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Crimson Peak. Dir. Guillermo Del Toro. Legendary. 2015.
“It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all” Guillermo Del Toro’s gothic romance Crimson Peak is a carefully designed visual masterpiece that centres around American heiress Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), an aspiring author who becomes romantically involved with English baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) when he visits New York seeking investment…