Joker is not your typical superhero film. It is a beautiful and dark cinematic comment on what Pankaj Mishra has termed “The Age of Anger (2017).” Easily, Joker, is the best film I have seen this year. It is too easy to say that something is a work of genius, but there is definitely something of genius pervading this movie. As someone interested in society and politics, in the events and movements that are shaping the world around us, I would put Joker on an essential viewing list. So, if you are at a loose end before Christmas, this film comes with my highest recommendation.
Robert the Bruce
It didn’t take a genius to then suspect there was a political reason why such a film wouldn’t be appearing in this chain’s Scottish cinemas. And before you go thinking this is the stuff of conspiracy theory and tinfoil hats, this has happened before. Ahead of the launch of the Outlander series in the UK – just in time for the 2014 independence referendum, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, approached Sony, asking it to delay the series’ release until after the referendum. Cameron understood well the power of entertainment media to sway public opinion.
William Wallace is Seven Feet Tall
This “common man” was never in the original chronicles of the Scottish Wars of Independence. History was written by the elite for the benefit of the elite, it never had the common man and woman in mind – they were always unimportant. The medieval chroniclers went into lurid detail when describing the deaths of knights on the battlefield, they seldom mentioned the village women who were raped and murdered or the peasant farmers conscripted as archer fodder.
‘I, Daniel Blake’ Left me Bawling
Loach has rammed a wedge into the great divide of the cinema-going public; with the right writing the film off as an exaggeration, and the left gushing like loved-up teenagers.
Another Hollywood Whitewash
As ever, Twitter was all lights, camera, action from the start. Very quickly the tag #OscarsSoWhite morphed to encapsulate the wider frame of American society with the harder hitting tag #BlackOscarsMatter, echoing the entire drama playing out on the streets and highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Absurd ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ Argument
Invariably these pubescent fantasies include some slim dolly bird in distress, who upon the completion of the good guy’s mission wraps herself around him and they both ride out into the sunset. Sadly this spank bank material is never about the girl.
Wreck-It Ralph: A Theodicy Out of the Mouths of Babes
Follow @UrFhasaidh Don’t laugh. It isn’t every day I watch a children’s movie, but for a couple of reasons I have made an exception for Wreck-It Ralph. Someone special in my life loves kids’ movies, and I have a thing for retro video games, so this was a film I was going to see eventually, … Continue reading Wreck-It Ralph: A Theodicy Out of the Mouths of Babes
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