Constructed as part of the dramaturgical structure of the play Black Brecht: what if Brecht were black?, presented by Coletivo Legítima Defesa in 2019, this film/video-intervention makes use of editing, internet content and the powerful sound performance of Roberta Estrela D 'Allow to expose the plunder of the territories of the Global South by the countries of the Global North.
I came across Urchin by chance and decided to watch it because of the title. It made me think of the spiky animal that lives at the bottom of the ocean, and the old Dickensian novels, where an urchin was an orphaned, homeless child in shaggy and dirty clothes.
It only seems to prove that when the company had their backs against the wall and needed an all pleasing, generic movie that had to make up for The Last Jedi, they chose to sacrifice almost everything that made their main protagonist interesting and that made her stand out as the strong female character that a generation of young movie goers was supposed to look up to. Instead, we were left with a Rey that was so much less than she could have been. And I guess that’s the real story of Rey and The Rise of Skywalker; they could have been so much more, but they were just more of the same.
"WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?!!!!" "EVERYTHING!!!!!" This is but one of a multitude of highly emphatic questions, and subsequent answers, being asked in the newest feature film from one of the current masters of horror, Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Us" and "Nope"). I must give Peele credit in that he continues to push the boundaries of specific genres and their associated tropes in order to provide what ends up amounting to subtly then jarringly intense, yet still character and story-driven, cinema that speaks more to indie stylings than mainstream.
If a movie about a strange and crazy day is commercially successful, why not recycle it and double the kookiness quotient? That seems to be the logic behind this followup to Freaky Friday.
We chat with Penelope Lawson about her short film, The Dinner Party, her experience founding her own production company, and fun cinema.
