Irish Ways focuses on daily confrontations between the British Army and Irish Nationalists. It reveals discrimination in housing and employment, and laws permitting arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Irish nationalists. The film investigates the pervasive atmosphere of fear and mistrust - constant surveillance of neighborhoods and business districts, television advertisements encouraging citizens to report suspicious neighbors to British troops, and the commonplace bombings and shootings. Giving voice to soldiers on both sides and to ordinary citizens who must live in wartime circumstances, Irish Ways provides important background to the continuing civil war over Ireland.
Like all modern societal phenomenons, it started with a meme. This one highlighted that when there’s a mom in a Pixar film, she is almost without fail given striking curves that highlight the bottom half of her body following a minuscule waist. From Elastigirl to the skeletal Mama Imelda, the animation giant’s artists seem to have a fixation on making exaggeratedly curvy maternal characters.
Kung Fu Chit was a beautifully made, empowering short film that really spoke to me. Featured in Incluvie’s 2020 Film Festival, Kung Fu Chit tells the story of a girl who doesn’t quite fit in.
Alongside A Drowning Man, I Signed The Petition, 3 Logical Exits, and A World Not Ours, A Man Returned continues to paint a realistic portrait of the Refugee Crisis that eschews the Western gaze and stereotype. These are real portraits painted by a director with lived experience, cultural connection and an amazing eye for visuals.
Adam McKay might have been more concerned with cramming cameos than he was in this story which is a bloated criticism of the rich and famous… delivered unto us by the rich and famous.
“Ad Astra” is a film that possesses similar beats to sci-fi classics, falling into the realm of cinematic hypnotism, and pulling us in with its mysteriously intoxicating identity.
