Why We Fight (US, France, Canada, UK, Denmark, 2005)

This film focuses on why the US invaded Iraq from the claim it was involved in 9/11 to Bush’s statement that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that ‘watershed’ attack. However it contextualises these years by explaining America’s neo-colonialist project throughout the 20th century and bookends the film with Eisenhower’s swansong speech as President [...]

Red Riding Trilogy (UK, 2009)

Being a bloke whose formative years were before Gazza cried at the 1990 World Cup Finals, tears are something that are a foreign land to me (except when my dad died). So when I found a tear trickling down my cheek at the end of the final part of this trilogy, based on four David [...]

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di bicyclette, Italy, 1948)

What happens when you watch a ‘classic’ movie – and there are not a lot that are more ‘classic’ than Bicycle Thieves – and you think ‘that was good’;  ‘good’ is not  good enough for ‘classic’. The ‘good’ reaction was the first I had nearly 30 years ago, when I saw the film twice; in [...]

Representing the war in Iraq

NB This is extracted from Image and Representation (Palgrave, 2nd edition, 2009), pp.268-71 and includes spoilers
Unlike during the Vietnam War, when Hollywood barely noted the war’s existence in its films, the conflict in Iraq, which started with the (primarily) American-British invasion in 2003, saw many films released on the subject. Most of these films were, [...]

The Hurt Locker (US, 2008)

As the critical response has suggested, this is an impressive war film about Iraq. Stylistically similar to the hyper-real visual style seen in Cloverfield (US, 2008), it uses extreme handheld shake to signify ‘thereness’. If you’re filming defusing an unexploded bomb the niceties of framing and composition are going out of the window. The cinematographer [...]