The Wandering Earth: China’s 2019 Box Office Sensation By early 2019, one of the biggest surprises at the global box office was not a major Hollywood franchise but a homegrown Chinese blockbuster. While films like Glass and The Lego Movie 2 struggled to hit lofty expectations worldwide, several high-performing foreign-language releases filled gaps in the … Read more

Cruel Intentions (1999) Director: Roger Kumble Screenwriter: Roger Kumble Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Louise Fletcher, Joshua Jackson Review: Released in 1999 and adapted from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th-century novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Cruel Intentions reimagines a classic tale of manipulation and desire within the insulated world of an … Read more

This article was written exclusively for The Film Magazine by Lucas Hill-Paul. Birds of Passage (2018) Directors: Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra Screenwriters: Maria Camila Arias & Jacques Toulemonde Vidal Starring: Carmiña Martínez, Natalia Reyes, José Acosta, Jhon Narváez In Birds of Passage, Colombian filmmakers Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego turn their attention toward the … Read more

Fighting With My Family (2019) Director: Stephen Merchant Screenwriter: Stephen Merchant Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson Stephen Merchant’s Fighting With My Family is an earnest, warmly human portrait of a young woman pursuing a dream in the theatrical, larger-than-life world of professional wrestling. Rather than attempting to … Read more

The Rise of the Female Action Hero: A History A door is kicked in, splinters fly, and a lone figure steps through the smoke. Once, that figure was almost always a man delivering a blunt one-liner before walking away. For decades, action cinema celebrated explosions, brawn and machismo, and women were rarely imagined as the … Read more

I’ve been explicit about my views on Green Book. It is a well-crafted film that fits the mold of what the Academy has tended to reward in recent years: polished performances, crowd-pleasing sentiment, and a narrative that seeks reconciliation rather than provocation. There is nothing technically wrong with those qualities. Yet the film’s thematic choices … Read more

The 91st Academy Awards were held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on 24 February 2019. The show sought to move past pre-ceremony controversies and tensions and instead focused on a televised evening full of music, humor and the presentation of all 24 competitive awards during the broadcast. The ceremony included standout performances, memorable … Read more

There are only eight nominees for the Best Picture Academy Award at the 2019 Oscars (down from nine the previous year). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences—the body responsible for nominating these films—faced heavy criticism over this year’s selections. From controversies surrounding the production of Bohemian Rhapsody to debates over the politics and … Read more

Every year the Oscars honor outstanding achievements in animated filmmaking, and the winner in this category often becomes a widely recognized classic. In 2019 five exceptional animated features competed for Best Animated Feature, representing a range of styles and storytelling approaches: the powerhouse studios Disney and Pixar, the singular vision of Wes Anderson, the elegant … Read more

It often feels like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets the Oscar nominations wrong. Ask anyone on social media, read the press or stop a passerby on the street and you’ll likely hear disagreement with at least one choice. The spotlight this year has focused as much on behind-the-scenes decisions — a … Read more