Film Matters Magazine

Part of me was truly hopeful that Michael Gracey’s Better Man (2024) would be a box office hit. It did not seem like it necessarily went unnoticed. There was plenty of buzz in online film spaces after the trailer first came out. After all, it was difficult to simply gloss over a musical biopic about British pop star Robbie Williams except he is a CGI Planet of the Apes style monkey, even if it was about somebody that most people in the U.S. (myself included) had never heard of. When I saw that trailer, I had a feeling in my gut that we had an instant classic on our hands, and no one could see it yet. My friends all thought I was crazy. Maybe I am just starved for things that dare to stand out in the current cinematic landscape, or maybe I am just easily pleased. Whatever the case, I took a friend (one of the doubters) to see it opening weekend and both of us were blown away.

In 2011, a narcissistic pre-teen Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) graced the silver screen alongside the tumultuous Heffley family in David Bowers’s surprisingly timeless Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. A film that by no means possesses a notable deal of pre-release hype or expectations of high-art cinema, Rodrick Rules completely steamrolled the initial Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a sequel. Rodrick Rules is exactly what you would expect from a comedic, young-adult adaptation film; and yet, the film somehow persists as a cinematic embodiment of youth culture, cringey jokes and all.

I’m not a fan of Dune 2.

William Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist has been heralded as one of the scariest movies of all time. Even now, fifty years after its release, it consistently tops lists and polls on the subject and is frequently discussed as a lingering, disturbing film that epitomized the Satanic Panic of the 70s and 80s. The combination of Friedkin’s esteemed directing, Jack Nitzsche’s spine-tingling score, haunting performances from stars, and grotesque special effects garnered critical and audience acclaim and an Academy nomination for Best Picture (The Exorcist). To suggest The Exorcist is anything other than a masterpiece of religious horror is nigh blasphemy, but I’d like to propose a comedic interpretation of the film as a metaphor for the purest horror in every woman’s life: puberty.

Most people are familiar with John Hughes’s modern classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), a narrative with the moral of taking your time and enjoying all of life’s pleasures. The film follows high school senior Ferris Bueller who convinces his two friends, Cameron and Sloane, to skip school and spend the day exploring Chicago. The narrative can be summarized by Ferris’s most famous quote in the film, “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it” (Hughes, 1986, 00:04:36). However, this quote can be interpreted through different understandings, such as a critique of the capitalist tunnel vision focused on social climbing, overlooking the small pleasures of life Ferris urges viewers to enjoy. An against the grain reading provides insight into the anti-capitalist worldview the film embraces. This perspective can be seen in the visual style and narrative throughout the film. Many elements in the film convey these anti-capitalist ideals, such as the red Ferrari, a consumerist product worshipped by Cameron’s father due to its price and status, and its destruction at the end. The Ferrari can be seen as an allegory for the inevitable downfall of capitalism and consumerism, with Cameron’s acceptance of its destruction echoing the realization the lower-class will have, recognizing the triviality of capitalism the children realize throughout the film. A vitally important scene to arrive at this understanding is the scene in which Ferris and his friends attend a high-class restaurant, highlighting the film’s anti-capitalist ideals. Through the presentation and staging of characters, this scene depicts a rejection of capitalism due to its subjective class categorizations and the ease with which capitalist rule can be subverted, conveying the film’s anti-capitalist ideals.

The first time I watched Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009), I was devastated. I was anticipating grit, but I wasn’t anticipating a film that would make me feel complicit in its discomfort. Critics praised its gritty realism and the trance-like debut of Katie Jarvis, but Fish Tank never made it across to mainstream success—and I understand why. This is not the dreamt-up London, nor the reborn one—it is an encircling maze of concrete and compromise.