Out of Africa

 Oscar Winners or hopefuls can be a little pompous. The academy gets a lot of stick and whilst they’ve made some shocking choices, the list of best picture winners generally isn't awful. The 1980s did see quite a few stuffy historical epics take the crown with Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor and Driving Miss Daisy winning best picture (that makes 7 of the 10 winners). Obviously, films in this list are better than others and some are less stuffy than others, but Out of Africa wins the Oscar for being the most stereotypical Oscar winning film.

Tenet

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is the only really big movie to soldier through the pandemic and be released in cinemas during the most lucrative time of the year. Others like Black Widow, No Time to Die and Mulan all were either pulled back to later in the year or released on a streaming service. Rightly or wrongly, Tenet went ahead with its release with many cinema chains banking on Nolan being so in demand people (some) will go out to their trip first cinema in half a year.

Selah and the Spades

 At Haldwell Boarding School there are five factions. Each faction plays a role within the school, for example the Prefect faction makes sure the teachers aren’t aware of the students’ partying. The main faction are the Spades, led by Selah (a superb Lovie Simone), and their main role is to supply everyone with the fun stuff (drugs and alcohol). Selah is in her final year and is looking for a successor to lead the Spades. The search is a tough one, but when Paloma (Celeste O'Connor) joins the school, Selah strikes up a friendship thinking she has found her successor. 

Artemis Fowl

 

One of the many affects of the COVID-19 pandemic was an increase in the number of movies, that would have had a cinema release, which went straight to VOD or had a shorter run in the cinemas. Artemis Fowl is one those movies that skipped the cinema and went straight to Disney’s streaming service. It was probably for the best as it has all the makings of a box office disaster for more reasons than simply being really bad. Simply being good wouldn't have saved the film as it’s part of the genre (young adult fiction) that has decreased in popularity since the Hunger Games and Twilights days, and it’s start of a franchise rather than being one that’s already established in the movie industry (plus this has been in development hell since the early 2000s).

The Invisible Man

After the lukewarm reception, both critically and financially, to The Mummy, Universal’s idea for a Dark Universe based on their horror characters of the past was put on hold before it had even begun. This included The Invisible Man in which Johnny Depp was tipped to star. However, this version of the story was left on the wayside and was picked up by Blumhouse Productions who hired Leigh Whannell to direct and rewrite the story.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

When I lived in Ealing, I used to live near an abortion clinic which found itself in the news frequently. It was often a site for anti-abortion protestors to sit outside and harass women going in making, I imagine, an incredibly difficult decision in difficult circumstances. The circumstances of each woman are going to be different woman to woman and whilst there is now a buffer zone in place the presence of those protestors mirrors a later scene in Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.

Da Five Bloods

The Vietnam war was the first televised war for Americans. Granted, Americans could see the horrors of the Second War World in newsreels, but for the first time horrific images of the victims of war was beamed directly into the home of every American with a television set. It’s one of the many reasons why the anti-war crowd was so strong and numerous and their clashes with the heavy-handed police so vicious.