The Big Picture Magazine
Brutal drama and cheeky humor, with a dash of 00s fashion, Mean Girls (2004) as the typical dramatic comedy has aged well with its animated narcissists. Much of the early 2000s still echoes with “fetch”, “you can’t sit with us” and “on Wednesday we wear pink”. Mean Girls is one of those movies that has melted […]
When we think of films addressing devastation and disaster, graphic imagery replete with dramatic plotlines are what first come to mind. From tension-filled, post-apocalyptic sci-fi to explosion-ridden war films, the theme of suffering becomes upscaled and unrealistic. Films that carry the highest emotional impact of destruction tend to be subtle and artistically experimental, like Schindler’s […]
To Mifune Rikiya 11 June 2021, 6.30 p.m. – the opening of a small retrospective of ten films dedicated to the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune at the Japanese Cultural Institute in Cologne, Germany. It may not look like a big event, but for me it is the culmination of a long and highly emotional […]
We’re all opening up, ready to get back to it – doin’ the things that we want to. Like the Lou Reed song: It reminds me of the movies Marty made about New York Those frank and brutal movies that are so brilliant Fool for love, meet the raging bull They’re very inspirational, I love […]
Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015) teases out the drama in an explosive news investigation. It is genuine, focusing on both personal reconciliation over a harsh reality and societal corruption. The plot progression of the film is gradual. The introduction is tedious as all the information is gathered, which makes the ending all the more poignant. The story starts […]
“It is sad to be a woman,” says the protagonist Ogin (Ineko Arima) in Kinuyo Tanaka’s Love Under the Crucifix (Ogin-sama, Japan, 1962) while watching a woman on her way to the execution site. The woman has refused to be the concubine of Hideyoshi, Japan’s ruler in the late sixteenth century, which is the historical […]
Do the Right Thing (1989), a provocative piece set in 1980s Brooklyn, is an audacious directorial dive into the underlying forces of racial tensions. Bound to stimulate generations of heated discussions, Spike Lee’s film retains its resonance even decades after the film first appeared on screen. It is a film that screams and roars, startling and […]
This quarantine provided the time to finally view Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991), originally shot by director J. Lee Thompson (1962) and based on John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners (1957). The innocent 90s-child in me can’t help but happily recall the iconic Simpsons spoof, “Cape Feare,” with Sideshow Bob tied under the family’s […]
Imagine a giant city floating in space, built not by one species, but a thousand; not as part of a master project planned this way from the outset, but evolving over time to accommodate the needs, desires and cultures of disparate worlds; always in close quarters, always disseminating knowledge throughout a bricolage of cosmic society. […]
