Occasion: Friday night fun night Anticipation: Medium Overall Rating: In its desperation to stop global warming, humankind has triggered an ice age, wiping out virtually all life on earth. A few survivors have sought shelter onboard the Snowpiercer, a train powered by a perpetual motion engine, on an infinite loop around the world. The Snowpiercer is a […]
The following is an essay written by Virginia Streit as part of course work for her Master of Communication degree. The brief was to use a work of fiction to explore our uneasy relationship with technology. With its strong environmental message and anti-consumerism theme, Pixar’s 2008 robot romance WALL-E appears at first to be a […]
Occasion: Ladies’ Night Out Anticipation: Medium (I come and go with Wes Anderson movies) Overall Rating: Perched gloriously atop mountain peaks in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the primary setting of a fanciful tale of a young boy, Zero (Revolori) and his mentor and friend, Gustave (Fiennes). Framed for a murder he […]
Occasion: Movie with the folks Anticipation: Medium Overall Rating: Wadjda is a complex and deeply personal look at what it is to be female in Saudi Arabia. Eleven year old Wadjda (Mohammed) seems out of place in the confines of the culture she has been raised in. Sneaker-wearing, often unveiled and incredibly entrepreneurial, she has only one […]
Occasion: Alone at home during a storm Anticipation: Medium Overall Rating: Insidious begins simply and perhaps even a little formulaic: a young family moves into a new home. There is a creepy attic, a troubled child, things hiding in the shadows, an absent husband (Wilson) leaving his exhausted wife (Byrne) alone during the day. […]
Occasion: Friday Film with Friends (as part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival) Anticipation: Medium Overall Rating: Set in hyper-styled 1950s Normandy, France, Populaire‘s heroine Rose (François) has two choices in life: get married or become a secretary. The film is a simplistic and perhaps naive treatment of a woman’s lot in […]
Occasion: Friday Film with Friends Anticipation: Medium Overall Rating: It is 1985 and the AIDS epidemic is sweeping through America. The disease is primarily associated with homosexuals and junkies, so when Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) is told he has contracted HIV and has 30 days to live, he initially refuses to accept the diagnosis. However […]
