victoria from 5 to 7 | fashion, film, lit, more

Get Out  is a sharp and humorous social thriller with a succinct plot and plenty of tension telling the story of Chris Washington who, on a visit to his white girlfriend's family home, finds himself in the centre of a kidnapping plot and must escape the overwhelmingly white country estate and return to freedom. The film is a particularly incisive criticism of the remnants of slavery and seemingly minute instances of racism amongst America's white liberals, exposing the ways in which America is anything but "post-racial". In line with the succinctness of the plot (hurrah for a film plot that doesn't overrun by approximately 45 minutes!), the film employs the symbol of the deer to quickly convey these differing relationships to race beneath the facade of acceptance and equality. Spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you haven't seen Get Out yet (and if you haven't seen it yet, why not?). Throughout the course of the film, the deer is a recurrin...

I, nearly 11 years late, have just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close . The novel tells the story of generational trauma and the process of grieving as Oskar Schnell, the nine year old protagonist, mourns the loss of his father in the 9/11 terrorist attack. Similarly, his grandparents struggle with the legacy of the Dresden firebombing during World War II. The text mixes different narrative voices, photography and experimental visual storytelling techniques in order to convey the emotion of traumatic loss and grief. When reading the reviews of the text, it became clear to me that one particular question kept recurring: why use the visual storytelling techniques at all? what to they contribute to the text and why would Foer use them? 9/11 in particular, but other traumatic cultural events too, come with a unique kind of visual iconography. Additionally, images survive where witness testimony doesn't - often these events a...

What is cinema but one big illusion? This is the question the   Now You See Me   franchise seeks to answer as despite appearing as a facile and flat-though-thrilling blockbuster it engages with the ideas of illusion and trickery at the core of cinematic history. Firstly, I wholeheartedly agree with the general critical consensus about these films: both of these films have excellent opening acts, full of rich visuals & excellent dialogue from a stellar team of actors, but ultimately fall apart in their final acts, which are underwhelming and often confusing. Secondly, however, I think there’s something more going on  – maybe there’s a card hidden up someone’s sleeve here. Woody Harrelson has a card up his sleeve in  Now You See Me 2 The whole point of these films, I would contend, is not some lofty ideal or critical approach to something – what they are is an intensely fun exploration of what cinema can trick us into believing, a depiction of the thr...

So, long story short: A Cure for Wellness was sickeningly awful. And not in a good, repulsive kind of way. But if you want some genuine reflections on what was wrong and what was right and what could have been, then read on. From  A Cure for Wellness  (Verbinski, 2017) shows Volmer twice reflected and refracted. Firstly, through the glass of a sensory deprivation chamber and further reflected in the water of said chamber To briefly summarise the plot, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent by the company board to retrieve the CEO from a mysterious spa retreat come cult in the Swiss Alps. All is not how it seems, however, and Lockhart becomes embroiled in a rescue attempt/investigative mission to 1) retrieve the boss and 2) uncover the secrets of the retreat.  The primary problem with A Cure for Wellness is just how ambitious it is in its storytelling. After going to see the film, what became clear upon discussion was just how discordant all of the ideas and plots we...