Evie's 'Good Film Hunting'

I love science and always have. Despite my passion for the creative side of things, the way I like to understand things has always been reductionist- simply put, I like picking things apart. This outlook drove my academics specifically into understanding how systems operate, attempting to define what is living. I know a pretty big feet, sorry I haven’t really managed to do yet. However, what began as my optimist pursuit of biology led to feelings of imposter syndrome during my second year of university. As the system churned through students, ticking off qualification boxes, I felt left behind. My initial enthusiasm turned into inadequacy. Mediocre grades didn't feel great, but ultimately submitting things I wasn't interested in or proud of was what really finished me off.  I was convinced at this point, science wasn’t a space for me.     But the great thing about me is that I am often very wrong about myself!   When returning apprehensively for my final ye...

Taste in films is subjective, and there has always been a difference between quality and likability for me. A film can be good, one I’ve enjoyed, both, or neither. Because of this established understanding, I have always enjoyed noting the good films that I did not like. A film that used to be in this collection was the romance sci-fi ‘Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind’, only removed after a third viewing when I learned to appreciate it more. Even so, I was—and still am—frustrated that I never fully enjoyed the film. I think the story should be captivating, the characters are quirky, and it attempts to examine love in a unique way; yet the film has had practically no impact on me. I want to emphasise that this is a subjective opinion that surprises me as much as it surprises the film's fans, to whom I have also expressed this. This context is relevant to understanding my excitement when I was introduced to Chad Hartigan’s ‘Little Fish’, which similarly tells a love story set...

  After a long hiatus, the blog is back!! I know you missed me I’ve been thinking about writing again for a while, but honestly, I was living with some crazy cinephiles, and we were watching films at a speed that was probably not healthy. Work by day, film viewing by night—it was  bliss . That being said, I spent more time yapping in person about whether the film we watched each evening was brilliant or a snooze fest, instead of writing it down! Now that my living situation has changed, it's the perfect time to bring back Evie’s Good Film Hunting, and what better way than to kick things off with a sad one.   The Coen brothers' ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ follows a struggling folk singer in 1960s New York, portrayed candidly by Oscar Isaac. Despite being ridiculously good-looking and having an obvious gift for writing beautifully crafted folk songs (how did the songwriters not get an Oscar nomination for this??), Llewyn’s career is mediocre at best. This resulted ...

Cate, fucking, Blanchett. I recently enjoyed a solo trip to my local cinema to see the new Todd Field psychological drama  Tár  with very high hopes. Reviews had the film very well received, many commenting on Cate Blanchett’s performance as being a career-defining one. Now, if you knew me more personally, you’d know I am, in fact, in love with Mrs Blanchett. I think she is one of the best actresses of this generation and deserves all the acclaim she receives—so, saying this, I was not surprised her performance was being praised, just excited to see it for myself. Tár  is a biopic-esque psychological drama about the classical composer Lydia Tár, who is widely considered one of the greatest living conductors, yet she is one symphony away from her career excellence. The film follows a relatively small cast, with the majority of dialogue coming from Tár, in a brutalist, eerie-looking Berlin that acts as the backdrop for her character's spiral into paranoia and erraticism. In...

Happy New Year! Only about 21 days too late, but this is my first film review of 2023. Not that I haven’t watched any new films so far—I’ve watched quite a few in fact—but this is the first time I’ve felt I have something to write. Starting off the new year with the new drama-comedy ‘Babylon’ from ‘La La Land’s Damien Chazelle. ‘Babylon’ was a turbo-charged, extravagant, three-hour-long mess. Starring icons like Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in a huge ensemble cast of actors, writers, producers, and musicians, all wrapped up in the booming movie days of the 1920s. The first act of this film included an elephant defecating, overdosing prostitutes, and a ‘Great Gatsby’-esque party combined with an ‘Eyes Wide Shut’-esque orgy, all chaotically and outrageously unfolding before the screen turns black, filling with the big red writing of ‘BABYLON’. Within this elaborate and innovative period in cinema, the story is told through the eyes of young, fame-hungry actress Nellie LaRoy, played by Rob...

Christopher Nolan’s  Interstellar . Now, this is a film I’ve been dying to see for donkey’s years, especially after I learnt who Mr Nolan was by watching  Inception , not knowing he was the same director of the  Dark Knight  films, which, as a fan of superheroes growing up, were a favourite. My only excuse for not seeing  Interstellar  was the quality of the viewing experience I wanted; it’s three hours long, set in space, and infamously has a near-perfect auditory experience. So, when I was home at Christmas with my cousin, who is only a fan of actually good films, and they heard I hadn’t seen it, it was the perfect timing to pop it on the quality TV at my parents’ house at 11:30 pm. Interstellar  follows engineer, pilot, and farmer Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, in a dystopian future where Earth is practically uninhabitable, with dust everywhere and food resources depleting rapidly. Classic space plot: he, along with a team of astronauts incl...