Film Matters - Volume 12, Issue 3, 2021

This article examines Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse through an analysis of realism in animated film. The plot of the film is concerned with the collision of multiple universes, and thus the narrative brings together different realities, each of which subscribe to a different animation style. Defining ‘reality’ in an animated film challenges the traditional divide between realism and formalism in film theory, which relies on photorealism as the benchmark of reproducing reality. Newer media theories introduce a transmedia approach to realism that are concerned with the fidelity of an adaptation to its source material. With these tools, we can see how Spider-Verse’s aesthetics heighten the narrative impact.

This article explores pretrauma cinema as a genre and discusses the concept using WALL-E as an example. The essay defines Kaplan’s theory of pretrauma cinema, outlines the potential failings, and explains how WALL-E showcases the anxieties society has about the planet’s future, through mass consumerism, global warming, and mass waste.

Gregg Araki is an independent filmmaker who is best known for his low budget, independent cult films that contributed to the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s. As an Asian American filmmaker, Araki faces criticism due to his lack of overt Asian American representation. However, by inclusion of an Asian American star, his Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy features progressive representation of queer Asian American men, empowering them by allowing them to explore their sexuality freely without being held back by binary representation or stereotypes.

This article explores the relation between Karel Reisz's 1958 film We Are the Lambeth Boys and the aims set in the first Free Cinema manifesto. The article focuses on three expressions in the manifesto: the “belief in freedom [and] in the importance of people,” the notion that “the image speaks. Sound amplifies and comments,” and the closing statement, “an attitude means a style. A style means an attitude.” Drawing on textual analysis, critical interpretations, and historical context, the author assesses the extent to which these aims are met by the film’s production and style.

The depiction of political movements or politicized groups through cinema too often emphasizes their material demands and current social reality, neglecting the subconscious, internal desires of the group. To outline the effectiveness of “neo-documentary” films in portraying collective struggle, this essay will examine Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) which focuses on Wilhelm Reich and the loose movement for sexual liberation inspired by his ideas. This movement had collective subconscious desires and motivations which manifest themselves externally through lifestyle choices, artistic or political actions. The members of the movement also had internal realities, repression, and trauma for example, that they wished to avoid or fight against. For a holistic cinematic representation, both the internal and external realities must be represented, and ultimately synthesized. Matsumoto Toshio’s “neo-documentary” theory solves this problem. “Neo-documentary” is a spiritual successor to surrealism, but with an expanded notion of the internal-external synthesis that the surrealists outlined. Using surrealist techniques to depict internal realities, and documentary form to depict external realities, Matsumoto described a new kind of cinema which would encompass both worlds, destabilizing the boundary between the two.

The Walt Disney Company is immensely influential around the globe, but in the near future, the world’s largest film market will reside in China rather than the United States. It is thus important to examine how Disney’s 1998 Mulan and its 2020 remake contribute to the advancement and oppression of Chinese/Americans within Hollywood. This paper will compare both films by analyzing each film’s casts and crews, reception in the global film market, critical responses, treatment of racial and gender identity within each narrative, and the sociohistorical contexts in which the films were produced.

Jonás Cuarón’s Desierto remaps the us-them binary by vacillating across Latinx migrant and white citizen viewpoints at the Mexico–United States border. Liminal spaces in the film reorient nationalistic perspectives and xenophobic tensions revolving around national belonging. Taking a transnational and intersubjective analytical approach to film studies, this essay investigates how the global era displaces migrant, citizen, and spectator alike. Cuarón’s intersubjective vision of the modern transnational world presents an empathic way to perceive and experience cross-border disputes.

Siegfried Kracauer’s “The Mass Ornament” is a foundational text of the early twentieth century, detailing a predominant visual structure echoed in the New Objectivity and cinematic German Expressionist movements. The mass ornament which Kracauer defines consists of human bodies arranged in spectacular geometric patterns, often through showgirls in dance routines. This visual structure utilizes the human body as something inherently machinelike, de-individualizing the participants. The musical numbers of Busby Berkeley in 1930s Hollywood pushed the ornament to its foremost cinematic potential, demonstrating not only the unique spectacle of this modernist visual arrangement, but the potential for it to harness voyeurist and nationalist fervor.

“White Saviors Get Gold Trophies: Colorblind Racism and Film Award Culture” analyzes the cultural “text” of Green Book’s Best Picture acceptance speech at the 2019 Academy Awards to expose the neoliberal, colorblind mode of racism that infects the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the American film industry at large.

The Romanian New Wave is intensely focused on Romania’s history and identity. There is a self-reflexiveness in these films, an awareness of communism’s lingering shadow. Police, Adjective’s examination of the Romanian police force from the inside offers a harsh outlook on the Romanian bureaucracy. Pororoca, on the other hand, examines the police from the point of view of an average citizen, and its ending gives us a dark vision of a society in which we cannot hope for justice. These two films provide us with a frame of reference for understanding the Romanian New Wave and its attitude toward the Romanian Police.

Review of: Children’s Books on the Big Screen, Meghann Meeusen (2020)

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 192pp.,

ISBN: 9781496828651 (pbk), $30.00, ISBN: 9781496828644 (hbk), $99.00

Review of: Making Worlds: Affect and Collectivity in Contemporary European Cinema, Claudia Breger (2020)

New York: Columbia University Press, 344pp., ISBN: 9780231194198 (pbk), $35.00, ISBN: 9780231194181 (hbk), $105.00

Review of: It Follows, Joshua Grimm (2018)

Liverpool: Auteur Publishing in partnership with Liverpool University Press, 120pp.,

ISBN: 9781911325581 (pbk), $15.00, ISBN: 9781911325598 (ebk), $14.99

Review of: Harrison Ford: Masculinity and Stardom in Hollywood, Virginia Luzón-Aguado (2020)

London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 315 pp., ISBN: 9781788310925 (hbk), $114.00, ISBN: 9781350152441 (ebk), $103.50

Review of: Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and Self-Reliance at the Cinema, Catherine Wheatley (2019)

London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 307pp., ISBN: 9781350191358 (pbk), $35.96, ISBN: 9781788310253 (hbk), $108.00