Ridley Scott’s 2021 film The Last Duel really tries to convince its audience that it is a feminist film. The story is centered around the rape of Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer), and it recounts this event from three perspectives. First, the husband Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), then the …
The Souvenir (2019, dir. Joanna Hogg) is a different take on what it means to love someone with a substance addiction. The film follows Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a privileged young filmmaker who falls for Antony (Tom Burke), a functioning heroin addict. Mar 8, 2022
I can say with confidence that 1932’s Rain is a film that changed my viewing habits forever, encouraging me to delve deeper into 1930s Hollywood and discover the tough, smart women at its heart. Mar 8, 2022
Lucile Hadzihalilovic导演的作品《纯真》（2004）讲述的是以艾瑞斯（Zoé Auclair）和比安卡（Bérangère Haubruge）为代表的一群少女的故事。 Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s film Innocence (2004) tells the story of a group of girls represented by Iris (Zoé Auclair) and Bianca (Bérangère Haubruge). Mar 8, 2022
Amy March is a pain. Even her creator, Louisa May Alcott, more or less describes her as such in her much-loved novel, Little Women. The novel follows the four March sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy – as they come of age in Concord, Massachusetts. Mar 8, 2022
Director Jane Campion regularly champions female protagonists in her work, situating her characters, such as Ada McGrath (The Piano, 1993), Frannie Avery (In The Cut, 2003), or Robin Griffin (Top of the Lake, 2013) in hostile environments. Mar 8, 2022
Greta Gerwig seems to have been the woman in film of the past decade. Starting out as an actress and writer, she has fully morphed into a writer-director with her solo cinematic debut Lady Bird (2017). Mar 8, 2022
I was 11 when I first saw Jennifer’s Body (2009), and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. As I got older, I realized there were other films that also use the young woman becoming monstrous as a metaphor for coming of age – Ginger Snaps …
David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s hugely successful crime novel, Gone Girl, starring Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne, arguably created a domino effect in female focused narratives, especially in the crime genre. Mar 8, 2022
Even if you haven’t watched Taken (2008, dir. Pierre Morel), either of its two sequels or seen the meme it inspired, you are likely to be dimly aware of the film’s premise. Mar 8, 2022
Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film, Promising Young Woman, was marketed as “a #MeToo rape revenge thriller with bite”. However, if you’re expecting a cathartic rape revenge thriller with violent vigilante justice, Promising Young Woman will “bite” you. This film both subverts the conventional representation of trauma, causing a phoenix-like moment in …
Prano Bailey-Bond has gained international attention for her first long feature film, Censor (2021), a dark and gritty horror about the strong relationship between cinema and the human mind. Grown on a diet of Twin Peaks, in the depth of a strange Welsh community, Bailey-Bond has always brought to life …
Hi readers! I’m Yvonne Wang, Founder and Chief Editor of The Film Dispatch. I have a broad range of film genre interests: sci-fi, actions, suspense films. Romance and Rom-coms? Yeah probably. Oddly, I always prefer romance/rom-com TV dramas than films because I feel human emotions and relationships involving romantic love …
When we decided to write a short article about one of our favourite films, I decided to write about Amadeus (Forman, 1984), an adaptation of the play by Peter Shaffer about the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and Mozart’s eventual death. Feb 19, 2022
Personally, I don’t find it cliché when people refer to the ‘magic’ of movies because my goal when watching a movie is to be bewitched. I want to fall under the spell of the screen, to forget the outside world and even – if possible – my own name. Every …
Possibly my favourite film of all time is Atonement, Joe Wright’s 2007 adaptation of my favourite book of all time by Ian McEwan. It is the stunningly heart-breaking tale of a young girl making an irreversible mistake that will ruin the lives of her sister and her lover forever. The …
The nominees for the 75th BAFTA Film Awards were announced Thursday 3rd February 2022, with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts revealing their selections for the best of film from 2021. Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune (2020) led the pack with 11 nominations, including Best Film and Adapted …
The poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who wrote ‘Man, live poetically’ at a time of poverty and sickness, exhorted us to search for the poetry of life, whether we are in a state of mediocrity or we have already achieved so much that we have nothing more to strive for. Feb 14, …
Film is one of the main forms of entertainment for the public during holidays. There are always some films more suitable for a certain group to watch on a particular holiday. Naturally, there are also films inappropriate to a holiday! Spoilers ahead. Feb 14, 2022
Streaming services give cinephiles and casual viewers access to thousands of films across every genre. If you’re willing to subscribe to several, you can see a wide cross-section of titles. Browsing the endless selection can take as long as actually watching a film for some. But it’s those times when …
One of the most influential yet most overlooked aspects of film ideology is the psychological perspective. Several people that I briefly interviewed described a common experience of having a highly unpredictable emotional state. They tend to show empathy and identify themselves as the character within a particular film. More importantly, …
From a professional perspective, A Monster Calls (2016) may not be a masterpiece. But, I am going to praise it highly. The film follows Conor (Lewis MacDougall), a young boy whose mother has been diagnosed with a terminal illness but finds comfort in a tree monster. This film is relatable …
The Color of Pomegranates is a 1969 Armenian film directed by Sergei Parajanov. The film, which depicts the story of an eighteenth-century Armenian troubadour, is not biographical but a poem about the poet’s images. The film uses lots of symbolism and metaphor to depict 18th century Armenia and the poet’s …
In Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (2010), an old man dies and his lamb is left to die alone under a tree. The tree is then cut down as a prop for a festival. Finally, the wood is burnt to make charcoal which is then distributed to many households …
Nearly a hundred years ago, a muscular young actor-director named Buster Keaton risked his life and limb to entertain moviegoers in his film Sherlock Jr (1924). The film follows a movie projectionist that dreams himself into a film. Today, it still thrills. I found myself saying: ‘HOW did they do …
The 2015 documentary The Wolfpack follows the Angulo brothers living in New York City. What sets the Angulo brothers apart from other kids in their neighbourhood is that they have never left it. Their father – Oscar Angulo – controls when and if they leave the apartment so intensely that, …
The ‘parallel’ in the title of Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas) (2021) is confounding. Although we do see the stories of two mothers, their individual maternal trajectories are anything but parallel. Feb 14, 2022
Aurel’s Josep (2020) biographically maps the life of Josep Bartolí, Catalan political cartoonist and unionist, through the memories of Serge: an ex-Gendarne camp guard, who interacted with Bartolí during his time as a refugee in a French concentration camp. Serge’s voiced memories are interpreted by his grandson’s attentive imagination so …
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) is an artistic masterpiece. From Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung’s acting, to the lighting and composition of the frames, the film is elaborately composed to render the elegance of Eastern beauty and, at the same time, sadness. Feb 14, 2022
Adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short story Barn Burning, Burning (2018), the seventh work by Korean director Lee Chang-dong is another example of his unique film style. Feb 14, 2022
Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (2021) is a hilarious yet extremely concerning portrayal of where society seems to be headed amid extreme polarization of politics, the threat of climate change, and distrust of the government. Feb 14, 2022
Last week, I was in a campus café holding the largest chocolate brownie I’d ever seen. It was so large, I wasn’t sure whether to attempt eating it or, get planning permission to build on it. Suddenly, it occurred to me that seeing a film is like going on a …
Many people would consider Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film The Room as the absolute worst film of all time. With it’s horrible editing, unnecessary sex scenes that are way too long, out of focus filming, untrained acting, and an inability to ever close the door when someone leaves a room, there …
Since it debuted in 2009, Community has been an underrated show. Airing on a Thursday night on NBC, directly after three landmark American sitcoms: The Office, Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock, Community always struggled to make its mark. To this day, there are people that base their entire personalities …
While studying film at university, instead of being grateful for my Eastern/Central European perspective, I often worried that my cinephilia felt different, looked different, and even sounded different from my peers. I struggled with what cinephilia was to me and what it should be according to how I saw it …
