Inside Cinema - Shorts 41-50

 

We are off to high school in Episode 41 Classic Lit to Teen Hit presented by Rhianna Dhillon. So obviously we start with 1995's Clueless, that modern adaptation of Emma. I think I might have seen most of these dramas, from She's All That to Ten Things I Hate About You (that clever modern reworking of The Taming of the Shrew), Cruel Intentions, Get Over It (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and She's the Man (Twelfth Night). 

I thought we might get a better list on Episode 42's Summer Holidays from Guy Lodge. They start all a bit flimsy with The Inbetweener's Movie, Grease and Spring Breakers. Then a flash through some others until a better section with Moonrise Kingdom, Call Me By Your Name, Us, and The Talented Mr Ripley. But we are told summer holidays can also be frightening i.e. those last two above, Hostel, Deliverance and of course Jaws. Thank goodness A Bigger Splash gets a mention, for high class script and acting.  

A more light-hearted Episode 43 about beauty pageants in films is Beauty Queen Dreams by Beth Webb. (Who thinks up these genres?) Some quite decent films include Little Miss Sunshine, Misbehaviour, Drop Dead Gorgeous (I actually have it on record) and Miss Congeniality. I thought a reference to "underdogs are not meant to be aspirational" was spot on. But some sports movies also feature (why?) and Slumdog Millionaire? But it's the equally unconventional people around the contestants that make these movies.

Episode 44 is actually called Inside Cinemas narrated by Catherine Bray. She asks us "what's the most dramatic place you can set a scene in a movie. Especially in the dark inside a cinema (auditorium)". Who knew there were so many, especially those horror films where the darkness hides the violence. So yes, we are in the audience for Sliver and Cinema Paradiso (on my list to see) and finally Sunset Boulevard, my next DVD to watch.

David Lynch is the subject for Episode 45 Lynchian Nightmares by Mike Muncer. All his big films are here. There seems to be nothing out of the ordinary at the beginning of these movies, but "nothing is as quite s it seems". An understatement. Normal thrillers and dramas become something else entirely. I still cannot get over the ending to Mulholland Drive. If we see a fairly mundane scene in a diner, and one of the characters starts to relate a nightmare, we brace ourselves for what come next. So here is Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Wild at Heart. All now classics. At the end of this episode we see clips from films that have Lynchian elements such as Get Out, Donny Darko and the creepy Black Swan.

What is  Rosamund Pike doing as the face of Episode 46 The Rashomon Effect presented by Jessica Kiang. We hear about those instances when an event is given contradictory interpretations. We are told this started with the 1950 film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa. The stories the characters of these films tell must all be lies and we see lots of examples including Pike's Gone Girl. I just love unreliable narrators. "Cinematic truth is dead".

In Asian movies of the past, the female star was always in the background. But Episode 47 The Dragon Lady from Zing T S Jeng proves this is no longer the case. She starts with the the 1932 movie Daughter of the Dragon starring Anna May Wong the first Chinese American actress of note. But then for decades no other such film. Until 1985 and Year of the Dragon.  More modern films where Asian stars come to the front include The Farewell, Charlie's Angels, Crazy Rich Asians, Lucky Grandma (actually looks interesting) and then Michelle Yeo in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and others. Lucy Liu is the face of this episode from Kill Bill Volume 1. 

Doesn't everyone love a villain? But some are really obnoxious in Episode 48 Cinema Jerks by Leslie Byron Pitt. We see quite a lot of Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) in Jaws, William Atherton as Walter Peck in Ghostbusters and lots more. But we need them to get their comeuppance, and they do.

Hurrah for Episode 49 Pubs on Film presented by Lou Thomas. It was amazing to see that directors such as Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Terence Davies had so many scenes in pubs in their films. We also see clips from wonderful films such as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Trainspotting, Kes, An American Werewolf in London (a fearful place for a stranger) and of course Withnail and I. Edgar Wright showed us pubs in all three of his trilogy: Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. We may have seen lost of fights, but it's really a place to have fun.

The last for this particular post is Episode 50 and Witches on Film from Elizabeth Sankey. I liked the introduction with The Craft from 1996, but this is followed by all sorts of different characters. From 1942's I Married a Witch starring Veronika Lake, to all the Harry Potter films, and of course The Witches of Eastwick and Practical Magic. So are all films about witches so light-hearted? Even the horror of The Love Witch is a comedy. The most obvious serious movie is 2015's The Witch written and directed by Robert Eggers and starring Anya Taylor-Joy in her very first feature. One to check out.