“However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at it. While there is life, there is hope.”

Eddie Redmayne graces the big screen for the first time since Les Misérables in a breathtaking performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. His ability to convey emotion is unparalleled, and his portrayal of Hawking’s story will tug at your heart.

The movie begins with Hawking’s years at Cambridge University, where he meets Jane Wilde at a campus party in a classic but not yet worn-out case of boy meets girl. From there, they seem to gravitate towards one another, their attraction magnetic but nonetheless clumsy in the ways teenage relationships have always been. They are the perfect case of opposites attracting – a brilliant physicist and a religious language major. You will fall in love with their love story, a simple but beautiful journey that builds until the moment he gets diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the age of 21. In love and faced with the fact that Stephen was given little more than two years left to live, Stephen and Jane get married in the midst of floating white rose petals.

As a married couple, the two struggle with normal family pressures alongside the added stress of Hawking’s slow deterioration. Stephen completes his doctoral thesis on his singularity theorem, which states that the universe started as a singularity and is constantly expanding. All the while, he continues in his search for the theory of everything, an equation to explain all the forces in the world. Throughout his life, Stephen’s passion for his work is one that never falters – the complexity of time perplexes him, astrology mystifies him and he never falls out of love with physics.

Stephen fights valiantly against his inevitable physical weakness, his mind never faltering, constantly churning, plotting, inventing. He falls in and out of depression as he gradually loses his ability to walk without a cane, then to eat, then to climb the stairs, then to talk. In what is perhaps the most heartbreaking scene in the movie, Stephen struggles to pull himself up the stairs alone, silently suffering as his wife and friends celebrate his success over laughter and clinking glasses.

The movie continues to follow their story as a couple through snapshots, cutting in and out of their life at various intervals, with as much as several years spanning between scenes. Their relationship is not without its bumps and bruises – what relationship ever is? – yet at the end of the day, no two people could care about each other more.

For a movie that is so character-driven, there could not be a better cast for The Theory of Everything. The most powerful scenes are those where no words are exchanged – every emotion is so clearly written on each character’s face. Your heart will break along with Jane’s, you will smile along with Stephen and you will learn to trust that no matter the obstacles in your way, “only time, whatever that may be, will tell.”

Listen Up Philip opens with an uncomfortable shot of its titular character walking down a bustling New York City street while an omniscient narrator explains that he is on his way to meet an ex-girlfriend for lunch. The shakiness of the camera makes it hard to track Philip, played by Jason Schwartzman, but his true character is revealed when he snaps at his ex for arriving late a few moments later.

With his second novel set to cement him as a notable figure in the literary scene, Philip Lewis Friedman is both a full-time writer and self-obsessed asshole. He lives with his girlfriend, Ashley Kane (Elizabeth Moss), a photographer whose success he resents even though she has carried them financially for much of their relationship. Although Philip has stifled Ashley when she has had the chance to shoot big campaigns, he jumps at the chance to take a creative opportunity himself.

After befriending Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), his literary idol, Philip takes up the older writer’s offer to move to his upstate country house indefinitely to focus on his work. With little regard for Ashley’s feelings on being left alone all summer, Philip promptly packs his bags and is gone. Moss plays Ashley very emotionally, throwing Schwartzman’s own iciness into sharper relief. The tension between the two is often hard to bear, but necessary in better understanding the existential crisis they are both going through.

Ike has been equally fond of burning bridges in his own life as his daughter Melanie (Krysten Ritter) explains, so his cheerful accusation of Philip as “selfish and unsentimental” has more of an approving ring to it than anything else. Having thrived under Ike’s counsel, Philip takes his emulation of Ike to hilarious extents, unbuttoning the collar of his Band of Outsiders oxfords just like Ike does with his own shirts.

Both men delight in buying into the cliché of the self-sufficient writer who doesn’t need company, but if that were the case, why would they feel the need to “rub two sticks together and make a fire”? Melanie, a moody character who Ritter seems to have played countless times, sees right through the bullshit and calls out the circle-jerk for what it really is.

Through his connections, Ike gets Philip a job as a creative writing instructor at a small liberal college. While keen to congratulate Philip on his new post and novel, the faculty quickly turn against him at the prompting of Yvette Dussart (Joséphine de La Baume), an academic who doesn’t find Philip deserving of his new job. Having worked for years to get to where she is, Yvette is loath to see a newcomer waltz into the college’s midst and supplant her as the youngest faculty member. Yvette’s hatred is further compounded by the fact that she recognizes Philip’s talent when reading his novels.

Predictably, the two end up in a tryst. Even more predictably, they soon separate when Yvette finds that Philip is even more insidious than she thought.

Throughout all this, we gain a better sense of what it means to have lived with a destructive artist, as Ashley struggles to pick up the pieces of her life in New York. With Ashley’s compassion towards her new cat seeming to be a more positive emotional outpouring than anything Philip has ever shown, we are truly made aware of how ridiculous he is. It is only a pity that Ashley and Melanie don’t meet to discuss how the men in their lives have hurt them.

One gripe I have is that watching this film wouldn’t encourage anyone to think that New York is the multi-cultural metropolis that it is. In a sea of white, buttoned-up actors, the few inclusions of black characters come as a slap in the face with the model, photographer, and unruly student all rising to question Philip’s authority only to be quickly put in what the film would have us believe is their place.

While taking up familiar settings in New York and a typical college campus respectively, Listen Up Philip marks a big step forward in director Alex Ross Perry’s career. Perry’s third feature film serves to debunk rather than perpetuate the myth that an artist can go through life hurting everyone they meet without facing the consequences. The audience is made to see through a fascinating display of dark misanthropic humour that if we separate the artist from their work (ahem, Woody Allen), we risk giving them free reign to ruin the lives of others.

On Oct. 7, hip-hop artist Pharrell released a new single from his latest album, G I R L, entitled “Gust of Wind”. The Daft Punk feature may be the most enticing part of this track for the majority of Pharrell fans given his prior work with the electronic duo on “Get Lucky”. One overlooked aspect of the music video, however, was the benefit of Edgar Wright’s unique directive style. Having directed cinematic successes such as The World’s End, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hot Fuzz, and Shaun of the Dead, Edgar’s resume speaks for itself.

In this article, we analyze and break down two factors in Wright’s unique directive style, which features prominently in his cinematic endeavours, and in his latest project with the music video for “Gust of Wind.”

1. Lens Flare

Edgar Wright uses this fairly common and overdone technique to an increasingly larger degree as the years go on. Not only adding style and general presentation to each of these works, but the addition of lens flare also serves functional purposes.

In Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, lens flare is mostly used unintentionally. The camera picks up the occasional flare without any meaningful addition. The main exception to this is a one-off joke in Hot Fuzz in which character Sgt. Angel is blinded by a car turning on its lights at the same time that one of the underage drinkers in a pub smiles.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a dramatic shift from this hesitance to use lens flare to using it as an obvious visual element.  Besides a few comedic exceptions, lens flare is mainly used as anticipation for upcoming action scenes with climaxes of flares at key moments within these fights. While it can be excessive at points, the use of lens flare can add to the intended comic book-inspired cinematography and editing to create a unique viewing experience.

The World’s End features the best progression and development of lens flare out of any of Wright’s works. As the movie becomes more and more hectic with an escalation of tensions heightened, consequences increased, and beverages consumed, lens flares follow suit. As in Scott Pilgrim, the technique is mainly used in action scenes early on in the film, though later scenes in the film also use this in exposition scenes as the central plot and themes begin to come to a climax.

The Gust of Wind music video uses it to a purpose similar to Scott Pilgrim in building anticipation and climax for the sections where Daft Punk is most prevalent. This is also done at some points during the first Pharrell-focused verse as an initial hint, and later as a reminder that Daft Punk is moving around off-frame and still has influence.

While there is not nearly as much time to develop as The World’s End, there is still an element of increased lens flare as the video progresses. This development is minor considering that Daft Punk never takes a long-enough segment to justify anything more significant visually, and is mainly just as a visual climax before the end of the song.

2. Staging

Staging is often used interchangeably with “blocking”, which is the position of the actors on a stage. For this section, we will look at how he uses the frame and staging to add a comedic or quirky element to a scene. Rather than look at all of his preferred actor spots, this tendency analysis will look at one specific part of his directing that is rarely done by others. He has a number of examples where people off-camera will extend hands or objects into medium close-ups. This is an odd thing to point out, but it does represent using the full capabilities of cinema to add a visual or physical element to comedy.

In Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim, the uses of objects coming into the frame are used for comedic effect. Hot Fuzz’s example is a one-off joke that adds to the seemingly nice intent of those offering him the slice of cake; even though everyone in the scene and the audience knows that the actual context of the scene is selfish in nature. Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim use this to add a way to tell the story and advance the plot in a way that is more interesting as compared to simply having a person state someone has a phone call.

This develops in The World’s End as Edgar Wright is able to expand this simple technique to fit even more purposes by having more of his fights incorporate this. Using what he learned from Scott Pilgrim in terms of fairly generic filming of close-quarters fight scenes, he is able to develop these scenes to involve more of his conventional tendencies. This has an additional benefit in making scenes feel more claustrophobic as attacks can occur at seemingly any point during chaos, seemingly at random. While this is typically done by other directors by using quick camera cuts that constantly shift, Edgar Wright is able to convey this same sense of pace and chaos without relying on disorienting the audience.

As for the Gust of Wind music video, the use of staging in this regard is done as a purely visual element without any additional effect. It does not have nearly the same influence that the other examples have on the scene as a result, and is relatively meaningless. This also differs from the previous examples in using a shot in which you can see Pharrell in his entirety rather than the medium close-ups. This contain the vocal point on the center towards him while also adding additional stimuli relevant to the song on either side.

While music videos are typically quite restricted in what a director can do with it due to the requirement of a constant song, Edgar Wright is still able to demonstrate these two tendencies in particular to show his unique style.

All in all, he manages to create interesting visuals to complement the song, which is all you can really ask for in a music video.

When I arrived at Jackson Square for the Sunday afternoon screening of Richard Linklater's Boyhood, I noticed the average age of cinema-goers to be around 105. Jokes aside, the audience was full of mature people and for good reason; impatient adolescents wouldn’t have been able to sit through the almost three-hour film despite how much the film pulls from their own lives.

As a fan of Richard Linklater’s prior work with Ethan Hawke on the Before series and having read the glowing reviews for Boyhood, I knew to expect a compelling film but I was in no way prepared for the amount that it would resonate with me.

The film was shot over 12 years with the same actors resuming their roles for one intense week of filming each year. Ellar Coltrane takes up the titular role as Mason Evans Jr., with Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei, playing Mason's sister, Samantha. The pair is watched over by their mother, Olivia, played exquisitely by Patricia Arquette, and on occasion by their absentee father, Mason Sr., played by  Hawke.

Always an experimental director, Linklater has succeeded in crafting the magnum opus that he will be remembered for. While Dazed and Confused and School of Rock are masterpieces in their own right, Boyhood is Proustian in scope and subject matter with Linklater adopting a much more somber tone in looking at the tumultuous nature of growing up in a broken home.

Unlike any of the predominantly improvised Before movies starring Hawke and Julie Delpy, Boyhood is scripted but there is an air of spontaneity to the delivery of the snappy dialogue which alone makes one want to both laugh and cry in equal measure. Much of that could be due to the fact that Linklater pieced the script together as he went along and didn’t share it in its entirety with the cast, instead electing to only give them their respective lines.

The chemistry between the two children and with their mother is impressive form the start and only gets better with time.

While familial tension and growing up has always had a place in films, it isn't done right very often. On one end of the spectrum, it can be dealt with too lightly, like in Cheaper By The Dozen. On the other, it can be grimly presented in a heavy-handed way, like in Terrence Malick's very good but self-serious Tree of Life.

Boyhood succeeds in presenting both sides of the coin. The slew of drunken deadbeat guys the mother attracts while she works her way through a masters degree can weigh you down, especially if your experience has been similar. But Ethan Hawke always appears in time to relieve the tension and is a pretty constant figure in their lives. It can be tempting to see the fun that the children have with their father and put him on a pedestal, but Linklater does a good job of revealing the frustration that the two sometimes harbor for him.

Despite the added pressure that comes with single parenting, Olivia manages to be lighthearted in her own fashion. Unwary of befouling her children's minds, she is liberal in her use of obscenities. Mason Sr.’s banter with Olivia’s mother is another bit of comic relief that works really well without discounting their personal struggles.

It is impossible to dilute the emotional breadth of the film in a concise fashion because everyone will take away something different from it. In honing in on the largely banal life of an American boy, Linklater serves up something epic that will cater to everyone.

You’ll find a bit of yourself in every character, and be reminded to treat your own family better. And that’s all that matters.

By: Sarah O'Connor

I’m the type of reader who gets sucked in by what is popular. Perhaps that makes me simple-minded, but that’s the reader I am. I don’t care if a book has gotten rave reviews or been widely reviled, I have to read it and make my own decision on it.

It did take me a while to pick up Gone Girl, though. The book was published and became popular in 2012, which was when I was starting university, so that’s where I’ll lay the blame for my late reading of the novel. It wasn’t actually until the first trailer for the film adaption came out in April 2014 that I became reacquainted with Gone Girl.

After being put on a mile-long waiting list for the book — every sane person wants to read the book before the movie — I finally got it before school started.

It sounds like a typical modern mystery: a husband comes home from work to find his house in disarray and his beautiful wife missing. The man’s hometown starts a search party for his wife, but when the husband starts acting suspicious, the town and readers begin asking if he is really as nice as he seems.

I’m a fan of mystery novels, so the clichéd description had me sighing and wondering if I was reading another dull, predictable book. But Gone Girl surprised me. Not only that, it chilled me.

The book is told in a he-said she-said kind of way; the chapters alternate between Nick, the worried husband who just wants to find his wife, and diary entries from his wife Amy, which reveal dark points in her five-year marriage that make her husband look much more suspicious than he appears.

Both Nick and Amy become unreliable narrators as the readers are exposed to two different accounts of events and people.

The mystery ends in a way that I can only say is unconventional for a novel of its genre, but it worked for me. Reviews are evenly split on Goodreads between those who enjoyed the ending and those who hated it. While I liked it, I definitely understand the hate for it. Debate has heated up once again as it has come to light that the author has rewritten the ending for the movie.

So what does this mean for the novel, for the readers, and for the story as a whole? I can’t say, but I know my mind is swimming with possibilities.

Gone Girl is a psychological roller coaster with so many twists and turns you’ll get whiplash. What begins as a predictable small-town mystery involving a young married couple becomes a dark, tangled web of deceit and second-guessing. You can take in in theatres starting Oct. 3.

Photo credit to Janelle Montague

No, don’t worry, the Marauders aren’t changing their name to the Eagles. Rather, the Ron Joyce football stadium has been home to a Disney Channel film crew for the past week.

Disney and the McMaster administration are being tight-lipped regarding production details, but a Global News article confirms that an alternative title for the film is How to Build a Better Boy and that the plot revolves around a group of teenagers and an android prototype that they’ve stolen, that turns out to be more dangerous than they were prepared for. The cast includes young Disney stars China Anne McClain, Noah Centineo, Kelli Berglund and Matt Shively.

Working under the name Paris, as crew signs around campus detail, the scene being shot revolves around a football game at a fictional McMaster High School. Allegedly, when Disney arrived on campus, they liked the McMaster name and eagle logo so much that they sought and received permission to use it, and re-wrote the script to incorporate the McMaster name.

The shoots, which have largely been happening over night, began last Friday, August 2, and are set to wrap on Friday, August 9. If the weather is uncooperative, however, this time frame is likely to be extended.

Filming on campus is typically allowed from May through August only, so as not to interrupt the regular undergraduate academic sessions. Previous films to have been shot at McMaster include American Pie sequels, Max Payne and Casino Jack.

When I was eight I saw 1939’s The Wizard of Oz for the first time. It didn’t change my life or teach me any unique lessons, but it was never boring and it wasn’t afraid to break the mold as far as cinematic standards were concerned. Last week I saw Sam Raimi’s attempt to bring me back to that far-away-from-home fantasyland, but it seemed to be two ruby slippers short of having a pair.

My main criticism of Oz the Great and Powerful is that it was afraid of taking chances. Every scene, line of dialogue and plot ‘twist’ seemed formulaic to almost an insulting degree. This movie wasn’t trying to take me back to Oz, it was taking me on a theme park ride through it, throwing cheap platitudes at me at every turn in an attempt to sell me on a newer, ‘cooler’ Oz that had younger actors and sex appeal.

Speaking of sex appeal, I found it difficult to accept the movie’s version of an ‘ugly’ witch in the form of Mila Kunis. They slapped on some thin green face point, a slightly curved nose and gave her some chin putty. She still could have won Miss Oz ‘13 with the effort they put towards her uglification.

I love James Franco as much as one man could disingenuously love a geographically-distant celebrity entity, but I feel that he only hurt his career by signing on to this emerald cash-in. This isn’t the same James that survived a rock-climbing disaster, fought Spiderman and got high with me. With his younger brother Dave getting his name into some big titles recently, including a short-lived but deserved role in Warm Bodies, it might be the dawning of a new era of Franco.

To put it simply, Oz the Great and Powerful was boring. It didn’t do the universe justice and seemed to exist for the sole purpose of setting up a new merchandise-heavy trilogy. If I had to cite any redeeming factors in the movie, it would have to be Zach Braff’s sarcasm-laden performance as Franco’s CGI helper monkey. I laughed at every other one-liner he sent my way, though the movie never really explained how Franco’s Kansas aide managed to throw his voice all the way to Oz. In that same vein, the movie didn’t explain a whole lot, such as why Michelle Williams’ character was identical to Oz’s real-world sweetheart. And it seemed like Raimi was setting us up for a different kind of “it was a dream all along” ending but chickened out halfway through directing the thing.

Frankly, that would have been better.

andrew terefenko,

production editor

Watching the opening moments of Zero Dark Thirty at Westdale Theatre is a somewhat surreal experience. Just as you are settling in amidst the mini-movie palace’s warm décor, you are confronted with the authentic sounds of shearing metal, licking flames, and anguished cries for help. Director Kathryn Bigelow begins the film with a horrific collage of phone calls from 9/11 that suddenly makes eating popcorn seem in poor taste.

Zero Dark Thirty is being marketed as “the story of history’s greatest manhunt,” and this opening sequence vividly conveys what is driving the hunters. The film follows the American operatives who pursued Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks. This elite team’s most relentless member is Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose methods soon propel the film into perilous moral territory.

We watch as Maya and her allies humiliate and brutalize their prisoners. Unsurprisingly, Zero Dark Thirty has sustained heavy criticism for glorifying torture and this controversy has clouded the film’s Oscar fortunes. In an essay recently published in the LA Times, Bigelow defended her work, claiming to “support all protests against the use of torture” and that “depiction is not endorsement.”

I remain unconvinced.

During the early waterboarding sequences, my mind kept turning to a different essay: Christopher Hitchens’ “Believe Me, It’s Torture.” For this 2008 piece in Vanity Fair, Hitchens deliberately subjected himself to waterboarding by Special Forces veterans. Bigelow conveys none of the unendurable agony that Hitchens describes. Moreover, the film completely abdicates the moral outrage underlying Hitchens’ final wish that “my experience were the only way in which the words ‘waterboard’ and ‘American’ could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) sentence.” Indeed, aside from a moment when Maya is warned not to be caught with a captive in a dog collar under the Obama administration, the film almost entirely sidesteps the ethical debate over “enhanced interrogation.”

Perhaps Bigelow is right that the film cannot be conclusively said to endorse torture. But it is certainly true that Zero Dark Thirty does not decry it either. To me, that seems almost as unnerving.

I was similarly troubled by the film’s Islamophobic undertones. With the exception of one translator, virtually all of the Middle-Eastern characters onscreen are fanatical, foolish, or corrupt.

Despite these intellectual objections, however, it is impossible to deny that Zero Dark Thirty is viscerally exciting. In the script by Mark Boal, there is much discussion of “tradecraft,” the advanced skills that are used by spies on all sides. Bigelow has evidently mastered the director’s “tradecraft” and, as in 2009’s The Hurt Locker, she builds scenes of incredible suspense. The climactic raid on bin Laden’s hideout, partially seen through the emerald glow of night-vision goggles, is particularly tension-filled.

Bigelow’s development of character, by contrast, is much less meticulous. Although we watch Maya become consumed by an Ahab-like fixation on bin Laden, we receive only fleeting glimpses of her true inner life.

Moreover, it is often ambiguous how the filmmakers intend the audience to feel towards their protagonist. Is she a hero, who defies the patriarchy and bureaucracy of the intelligence community, or is she a pathetic figure, who has been warped and exploited by this same system? Many viewers will presumably cheer Maya’s zealousness and the unrelenting pressure she places on her skeptical supervisors. I, however, felt grateful that such oversight existed to constrain Maya’s reckless, single-minded fury.

Near the end of the film, one of Maya’s foot-dragging fellow agents explains that the CIA deals in probabilities, rather than absolutes. This same sense of uncertainty pervades Zero Dark Thirty. In this respect, then, the audience’s role is similar to that of an intelligence analyst like Maya. The viewer must sort through a deluge of information, while struggling to draw tricky conclusions about torture and counter-terrorism.

When Oscar voters offer their verdict in three weeks, I know that I will be watching.

By: Cooper Long

Rarely is a film released with as much attention to detail, as much craft,or as much palm-sweat-inducing tension as Argo. Ben Affleck has done an incredible job turning the infamous “Canadian Caper” story into a masterful film. Every actor involved plays their parts perfectly.

The most impressive thing about Argo, though, is that every scene in the film means something. Every bit of dialogue and every second of film are so carefully planned that it results in an extremely solid movie that makes you think just as often as sweat.

The plot takes place in three main locations. Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, is a CIA agent sent to Iran to free six American diplomats, who are hiding out in the house of a Canadian ambassador after Iran’s citizens effectively wage war on the USA. Mendez comes up with the brilliant scheme of disguising all six of them, and himself, as a Canadian film crew scouting locations.

The second part of the movie takes place in Hollywood, and, for the most part, provides the comic relief. Makeup artist John Chambers and director Lester Seigel assist the operation by setting up a fake studio. The last part of the film takes place in Washington, DC, where Mendez’s spy agency is located; this is where the operation is organized. The fact that this film is based on a true story makes everything even crazier.

Even if you are unfamiliar with the original story you can easily follow along because every part of the film is perfectly paced.

Argo is the best movie of the year, and a serious Oscar contender. If you haven’t seen it yet, then either make your way to a theatre immediately or, in the words of Lester Seigel, “Argo fuck yourself.”

5 stars out of 5.

Alexander Sallas


Pete Travis’s Dredd is a good example of both relentless violence and the evolution of action movies. Screenwriter Alex Garland moves beyond the boundaries of the genre to bring one of the bleakest comics ever made to the screen in just fashion. John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, the creators of the comic 2000 A.D. (which first featured Judge Dredd), would surely approve.

Today’s Dredd is a reboot of the already comic-adapted Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stalonne. The old Judge Dredd got abused by critics, but it’s a classic example of the previous era of action movies built from chiselled bodies and cheesy one-liners. Today, we have 3D, CGI, and “slo-mo,” which we all remember from The Matrix. But in Dredd, slo-mo is actually a by-product of the flawed future, a city-plaguing drug that impedes order and progress. In the residential block, reminiscent of Dante’s circles of hell, Peach Trees is a hive for the narcotic. By inhaling a puffer, you experience time at a microfraction of a second. While experience may be enhanced, bodily functions take a hit. For the movie-goer, it makes for some mesmerizing shots that are as visually appealing as Zack Snyder’s 300.

Mega City 1, the municipal territory between Boston and Washington D.C., is a hellish place. Beyond the borders is a wasteland, and inside its walls is not much better. Crime is the rule of life, and Judges are the last remnants of order. They uphold and administer the law from their very bodies; they sentence  or give capital punishment at the scene of the crime. Karl Urban as Dredd is a bit hard to relate to, and as the leading Judge of the story, he is a cold, yet rational deliverer of justice.

Music can either make or break a movie, a point recently made by Josie Dye on the radio station 102.1 the Edge. Although the soundtrack doesn’t need to save Dredd, the mixture of techno, dark industrial, and death metal definitely amplifies the awesomeness that already exists. On its own, the music could be the soundtrack to a nightmare. But in Dredd it helps choreograph the action sequences as if they were inspired by slasher horror. The action genre has never been so chilling.

The terrifying Ma-Ma (played by Lena Headey), establishes herself as the rightful queen and mother of the future’s saviour and dominates her screen time with sheer force. Yet don’t be fooled, because she isn’t an inspiring heroine. Instead she represents all that is wrong with Mega City 1. Bestial, sinister and unforgiving in her stature, Ma-Ma brings the future a tormented past, overpowering the weak with stimulants and unleashing havoc on an overburdened justice system. The war in the city becomes the occasion for her personal war.

The futuristic setting of Mega City 1 represents a possible outcome of today’s society, demonstrating the connection between technology and speed that philosopher Paul Virilio talks about. Today, everything is instantaneous, and speed has become a very human quality. In Dredd even the law becomes instantaneous, rendering the judicial process arbitrary and null.

You can decide which is scarier: the fascist practice of instant justice or the apocalyptic landscape that makes it a necessity.

3 ½ / 5

- Marco Filice

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