Frozen 2 (2019). Reviewed by Larry Chan

Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell in Frozen II (Walt Disney Pictures, 2019)

In 2013, Disney’s Frozen economically eclipsed all previous Disney Princess films. For those who are new visitors to Arendelle, Frozen is the tale of Elsa the Snow Queen who is gifted with an affinity for ice. After she is cast into the mountains by terrified villagers, her brave sister Anna sets out on a journey to bring her back and show her that she is not the monster everyone thinks she is. Pursued by an evil prince, Anna is cursed into everlasting ice. However, Elsa’s love warms her frozen heart and brings her back to life, and the two live happily ever after as sister and sister (and a prince with a black eye).

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The 2019 Film Matters Masoud Yazdani Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Film Scholarship Winner

Please join Film Matters in congratulating the winner of the fifth annual Masoud Yazdani Award, Katelyn Terry, for her FM 9.2 (2018) article, “Contorted Bodies: Women’s Representation in Japanese Horror Films.” Katelyn recently graduated from Keene State College, earning a degree in Film Production and Critical Studies. In an interview about her article, Katelyn acknowledged the support of her faculty mentor in crafting her Film Matters article: “My faculty mentor, Jiwon Ahn, truly pushed me through the process of this paper, asking me to look further and to never stop developing my own opinions and voice as a film scholar. With each draft I presented, she urged me to go deeper, whether it was to look into more scholarship or to watch more films. This idea of an expansion of my work and research allowed me to focus on what it was I really wanted to prove in my paper and forced me to stand out as my own film scholar.” This year’s judges were unanimously enthusiastic in their praise of Katelyn’s article. In recognition of her achievement, Katelyn will be receiving David Thomson’s The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (sixth edition).

We at Film Matters couldn’t recognize our authors with this award if not for the tireless effort of our judges each year. Many thanks, again, to:

Charlie Michael received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches at Emory University in Atlanta. In general, his work focuses on popular film and media industries with a particular focus on French and Francophone cinema. His first monograph, French Blockbusters: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Cinema, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2019; he co-edited a book with Tim Palmer, Directory of World Cinema: France (Intellect, 2013).

Alison Taylor teaches film studies and ethics at Bond University in Queensland, Australia. Her film course, “Sex, Love and the Movies,” focuses on gender representation, sexuality, and censorship across significant moments in film history. Research-wise, she’s interested in European art cinema, particularly the intersection between representations of extreme violence within otherwise ordinary, everyday settings and narratives. Her first monograph, Troubled Everyday: The Aesthetics of Violence and the Everyday in European Art Cinema, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2017. Currently, she is writing about the performance style and career of French legend, Isabelle Huppert. 

Tom Ue researches and teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature, intellectual history, and cultural studies at Dalhousie University. He is the author of Gissing, Shakespeare, and the Life of Writing (Edinburgh University Press) and George Gissing (Liverpool University Press) and the editor of George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Edinburgh University Press). Ue has held the prestigious Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship and he is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London.

Michael Benton, Humanities Professor at Bluegrass Community & Technical College, specializes in film studies, documentary, and peace and conflict studies and hosts the Bluegrass Film Society.

And a special thank you to Kelli Fuery and her students at Chapman University, who guest edited the themed issue on neglected cinemas and post-global politics that Katelyn’s article appeared in.

Each year, Film Matters honors Masoud Yazdani, founding chairman of Intellect and all-around visionary who is very much missed, by recognizing an emerging undergraduate film scholar who has published a peer-reviewed article in Film Matters the previous volume year. The winning author, selected by three individual academics based at institutions of higher education worldwide, receives a book from the field of film studies, in recognition of his/her achievement.

We will be announcing the 2020 award process just as soon as issue 10.3 (2019) is published. Please watch this space for more information about that, including a call for judges.

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Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019). Reviewed by Jason Husak

Tom Holland and Giada Benedetti in Spider-Man: Far from Home (Columbia Pictures, 2019)

Warning: Review contains full spoilers for Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far from Home.

After reviewing Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, 2018) late last year, I was convinced I couldn’t enjoy another Spider-Man film as much as I did Spiderverse. Not only was Spiderverse a perfect film by all standards, but it was also revolutionary in redefining animated and, specifically, Spider-Man films forever. As game-changing as Spiderverse was, I found it hard to place myself back into the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) version of Spider-Man when I watched the Spider-Man: Far from Home (John Watts, 2019) trailer in January. All the color, nuance and maturity that Spiderverse encapsulated was washed away for another formulaic return to the live-action world. However, after now fully watching Spider-Man: Far from Home, I can say I was completely wrong. Spider-Man: Far from Home is an excellent true to form Spider-Man film that grows out of its teenage upbringings established by Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017). With excellent performances by Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Zendaya (MJ), and especially Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio, Spider-Man: Far from Home is a superb Spider-Man film and one of the best MCU films to date. With deep and emotional character development, exploration of themes of consequence, loss, and responsibility, all choreographed with excellent special effects, Spider-Man: Far from Home establishes that it is possible to enjoy two drastically different Spider-Man stories, and both can be exceptional.

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Thomas Cruz, Author of FM 10.1 (2019) Article “The Stigmatization of Queer Black Women in Television”

Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley‎) in Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013-)

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Thomas Cruz: The article discusses the harmful portrayals of queer black women in television. The idea for the article came to me while I was enrolled in the class, African Americans in American Film and Television. Learning about the history of racist and stereotypical portrayals of black people in various types of media encouraged me to analyze current media outlets to see how much of these ideas still exist within our society today. I found that a lot of them still exist in portrayals of queer black women. They are often punished or made out to look like criminals or sexual deviants simply because of their sexuality.

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Anne Billingsley, Author of FM 10.1 (2019) Article “Rediscovering Paris, Rediscovering Identity: An Exploration of Sounds and Voice in Cléo from 5 to 7”

Cléo from 5 to 7 (Ciné Tamaris, 1962). The Criterion Collection

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Anne Billingsley: My article explores the internal perspective of Cléo in Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) as shown through camera and sound devices. I focused on the use of camera and sound combined because there are not many articles regarding sound and this film, which made finding resources difficult, but which ultimately brought a hopefully fresh perspective to the film’s techniques.

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Announcing Stolen (2020) L.A. Premiere

Stolen (2020)

What would it be like if your child disappeared one day?

What would it be like to have everyone call your grief a lie?

What would it be like to pick up the shattered pieces, and begin to move on?

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, North Korean spies purportedly kidnapped Japanese citizens for reasons never made clear. And while this is now a thing of the past, something that happened generations ago, an important question about humanity still lingers: why is it that we treat these headlines as just words until they significantly affect us?

Stolen is about just such a headline. But it’s told from the perspective of the family that loses a boy to such a kidnapping. A modern re-imagining of these true accounts, director Taka Tsubota’s indie film explores how the incendiary nature of media exacerbates the lives of an already grieving family, and how they are reduced to tools or mere talking points among pundits, politicians, and laypeople. The sad truth of the matter is that we love thy neighbor only if it bodes well us.

Stolen, then, is about shedding a light on what is otherwise just a headline, on the family that may otherwise just be a talking point, on the humanity that lies beneath a trove of inhumanity or, at best, negligence. It is about each of the family members dealing with this loss in their own way, despite the political and diplomatic debate that their son’s disappearance sparks on the international level.

This is a film that will be released worldwide through Amazon Prime, and for those residing in Los Angeles, an L.A. premiere will be held at the Japanese American National Museum on February 7, 2020. Join the director and everyone who worked tirelessly on this indie Japanese film to engage in a story about a tragedy most may not have heard of. Something real, intimate, and human. Something that may otherwise just be a headline.

Stolen trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JU1w5oUdkc

Get your tickets here: https://stolen2020.eventbrite.com

Follow @fortune8official on Instagram for the latest information. 

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Chamberlain Staub, Author of FM 10.1 (2019) Article “Manipulating the Masses with Modernism: The Weapon of Abstraction”

The colorful abstract work, Komposition in Blau (1935), was able to sneak past censorship in Germany

Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.

Chamberlain Staub: “Manipulating the Masses with Modernism: The Weapon of Abstraction” analyzes the different reactions to avant-garde throughout history. The article focuses on how Hitler, Stalin, and Castro created guidelines for censorship and implemented cultural watchdogs to enforce the regimes’ ideologies through the arts while monitoring the content being created. It also outlines how certain avant-garde filmmakers found creative ways to avoid censorship.

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My Man Godfrey (1936). Reviewed by Film Matters Fall 2019 Editorial Board

Contributors: Nic Connole, Julia Desmond, Andrew Doss, Candyce Edwards, Trey Gurley, Sherita Jackson, Jessica Kernan, Joshua Puckett, Anna Standridge, Tylen Watts, Anya Ekaterina, and Andrew Steven Williford.

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FM 10.1 (2019) Announcement

Film Matters is pleased to announce, officially, the release of issue 10.1, our first issue of 2019!

In this issue, you will find these peer-reviewed feature articles:

A guest-edited dossier — Fake News — by Amanda Ann Klein (East Carolina University):

As well as book, film, and DVD/Blu-ray reviews by:  Evan Amaral, Catherine Traci Colson, Alexis Dickerson, Lily C. Frame, Matt Johnson, Alexandria Rose Moore, Andrew P. Nielsen, Ashley R. Pickett, Cheyenne Puga, Ashley R. Spillane, Karl Watkins, Andrew Ryan Wentz, Adam Wiener, and Emmett Williams.

For more details about this issue, please visit: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/fm/2019/00000010/00000001

We’re always looking for new undergraduate authors! So if you are interested in publishing, get in touch with us today.

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Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Reviewed by Benjamin Bergstrom

Blade Runner 2049 (Columbia Pictures, 2017)

Blade Runner (1982) serves as one of the pillars of a dystopian future and science fiction cinema that was popular in the 1980s. Now in the 2010s, the 80s have made a resurgent comeback in the form of remakes like the Terminator and Transformers franchises and reimaginings like Netflix’s Stranger Things. Blade Runner joins these other 80s classics in this cultural trend with its sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Unfortunately, 2049 both surpasses and falls short of its own expectations. In this review, I will not be mentioning the original film when possible. I personally don’t believe that a film should be constantly compared to its sequels or predecessors as I feel this blinds myself to biases. Additionally, the original film has several different edits and it is difficult to pick the “right” cut. And, finally, while the original Blade Runner contains plot points that do tie into the sequel, you can still watch Blade Runner 2049 without watching the original and understand the plot.

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