The critical reception of the British heritage movies of the 1980’s and 1990’s has changed and adjusted many times over the years. Critical debate of these works has reached somewhat of a crescendo in recent years, and has become somewhat sharp and impassioned on both sides of the argument. The recent debate has also focused on much fewer films from the heritage cycle than was previously the case. One half of the debate on these films, given from a leftist perspective, is highly dismissive and critical of them, claiming that the films are conservative rhetoric for middle class audiences. The other side of the argument, the side of the conservatives, is that these films are charming, because of the very traditionalistic and conservative depictions of class and culture within them. [click to continue…]
Film Articles
Working Title films was founded in 1984 by Sarah Radclyffe (Who would later leave the company to be replaced by Eric Fellner in 1992) and Tim Bevan. The company’s first notable success was the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette, a story of a young Asian man’s battle to ‘make it’ in London during the Thatcher years. The film stars Saeed Jaffrey and features a breakthrough performance by Daniel Day Lewis and was both a critical and commercial success for the fledgling studio, picking up two BAFTA nominations, and an academy award nomination for best screenplay. [click to continue…]
Billy Elliot (2000) is one of the most celebrated examples of what has come to be known as “Soft” Realism. A movement in British cinema which became prevalent in the mid-1990’s. A movement which produced films which actively drew on the traditions of Northern working class realism, but instead of following the traditional realist approach to the letter, these films depicted characters who had ambitions to escape the harshness of their day to day existence by performing as entertainers. This approach produced box office hits such as: Brassed off (1996), The Full Monty (1997) and of course Billy Elliot. [click to continue…]
After the phenomenal financial success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, a cycle of so-called ‘Slasher’ films quickly emerged, in order to capitalise on the popularity of the formula established by Carpenter’s film and, to an extent Bob Clark’s seminal 1974 horror Black Christmas. Although the quality of these films varied greatly, the slasher formula of the late seventies and early eighties was extremely profitable, for both the big studios and independent production companies alike. Films such as Friday the 13th, The Burning, Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine and Halloween 2 all made in 1980 and 1981 grossed extremely well. By the mid-1980’s the ‘Slasher’ cycle’s output had become so generic and predictable that the genre burned itself out. [click to continue…]
