Joel Blackledge
Birmingham
As seen in:
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The Architectural Review,
Novara Media,
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Harpo Marxist
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Articles by Joel Blackledge
The Best Films I Saw in 2023
As is now tradition, here is a ranked list of my favourite films I saw for the first time this year.
The Best Films I Saw in 2022
Here are my favourite 15 films I saw for the first time this year. Increased from the usual top 10 because we all deserve more out of life.
Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 9.2, 2022
Welcome to issue 9.2 of [in]Transition, which features seven pieces of peer-reviewed videographic work on the following topics: U.S. lifestyle television and the racist histories beneath some of its surfaces; a sensuous exploration of the films of French-Senegalese writer-director Alain Gomis; the persistent figure of the cinematic woman artist; a career trajectory investigation of U.K. actor Alan Bates, centering on one of his movie roles in particular; the nostalgia and disenchantment of...
Like There’s No Tomorrow
In a tone as somber as that of the films it analyzes, Joel Blackledge’s video essay frames 21st century science-fiction cinema as a perpetual leap 'forward into the past, when somehow things were better'. What provide the engine for this recursive motion, Blackledge argues, are a sweeping nostalgia for the pre-global digital world and a disenchantment with futurity. The opening excerpt from Blade Runner 2049 (2017) establishes an obvious entry point to the argument.
Will Netflix and Disney Destroy the Soul of Cinema?
As the UK opened up from lockdown, 2021 was the year the film industry anxiously asked the big question: would we go back to the cinema? Looking back on the year in film, another question springs to mind: with cinemas imperilled, why is it so hard to find an original film in them? Reboots and sequels dominated in horror (Halloween Kills, Candyman), action (The Suicide Squad, Godzilla vs Kong), and Disney’s ouroboric self-plunder (Cruella, Jungle Cruise).
Young British Filmmakers Are Throwing Out the Kitchen Sink
What does the UK’s politically progressive film culture look like? For a long time, the left’s answer has been social realism. Naturalistic and miserabilist, this is the semi-official British national cinema. But while that’s a proud and important heritage – including such gems as Vera Drake, This is England and Fish Tank – is it time to move on? As a British institution, social realism has its roots in documentaries and the ‘kitchen sink’ theatre of the 1950s.
The World’s More Full of Weeping Than You Can Understand
© Warner Bros/Dreamworks “I am convinced that there is not a god.” – Douglas Adams, novelist “A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.” – Alan Perlis, computer scientist Millions have starved to death. As sea levels creep further inland, pregnancies of the privileged survivors are licensed by the state. Robots are the servile class, made to satisfy the economic and sexual needs of humans.
The Middle Distance
Sometimes I play the game of “which film would you choose to live in?” If each film recreates the world in its own way, which parallel universe suits you best and why? I’m drawn to the warm hedonism of The Thin Man, the dashing mischief of Trouble in Paradise, or even the gentle rhythms of the world according to Ozu. The game I play less often is “which film do you already live in?” Which captures your interior life more acutely than any other? My answer would be the 2014 horror movie It Follows.
Two decades on Waterworld remains a mad, fascinating folly
After an altered version of the Universal ident shows the world’s continents receding slowly into the blue mass of the oceans, Waterworld launches us into a future where the polar icecaps have melted and the landmasses have been submerged. Here the entire world is one big body of water, and every man is an island. Our protagonist’s particular island is his modified trimaran, which we first see in an aerial zoom that emphasises its extreme isolation in a sea of blue.
Creed II review – Doesn’t punch as hard without Coogler in its corner
Michael B Jordan returns as Adonis Creed in this overly sentimental and uninspired rehash of Rocky IV. Following on from no fewer than six Rocky films, 2015’s Creed was the best possible example of how to revitalise a long-running franchise. Approaching a familiar story through a new lens, the struggles and triumphs of Adonis Creed (Michael D Jordan) were bolstered by Ryan Coogler’s technical precision and touching specificity when it came to the film’s snapshots of black culture.
How Twelve Monkeys built on the legacy of La Jetée and Vertigo
Sometimes a retread of an older film can be more than a remake. Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys is one such film. It is perhaps best described as a response, if only because it is already building on an echo and feels part of wider creative continuity that travels back several decades. Said response is to Chris Marker’s 1962 short ‘photo-roman’ La Jetée, and the echo is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
On the Side of the Disease & Not the Cure
Sony Pictures Classics “I am listening to what fear teaches.” —Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer Looking at the representation of illness in cinema, two genres dominate: melodrama and horror. Though their differences may be obvious, both tend to conform to a therapeutic narrative whereby illness is understood, treated, and either defeated or proven fatal. This is the essence of medical discourse; disease is both identifiable and undesirable.
The 1980s: When American suburbia went bonkers
American suburbia has rarely been a place of contentment on screen. It’s so regularly entwined with the American Dream – a region of trimmed lawns, barbecues, men in fedoras and smiling apron-clad women – that it’s always seemed ripe for parody. There’s no longer anything revolutionary about a film set in suburbia where – shock horror! – its inhabitants are miserable.
A Prayer Before Dawn ★★★★ review
A brutal yet poetic look into the violent world of a Thai prison that has you occasionally peaking through your fingers. Joe Cole plays a boxer who gets banged up abroad in this harrowing and poetic prison drama. In a sea of intricately-tattooed brown bodies, a broad, freckled Englishman stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. In the storied tradition of the prison film, A Prayer Before Dawn sees a young reprobate from Liverpool thrown into the big house.
Discover the human drama of this post-apocalyptic sci-fi
For much of the duration of Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, middle-aged Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) believes himself to be the last living person on Earth – but Zac was already a loner, even before the so-called ‘Effect’ that put him in this post-apocalyptic state of extreme solitude.
Willy Vlautin on the art of working class storytelling
The American novelist and former Richmond Fontaine frontman discusses the latest adaptation of his work, Lean on Pete. Willy Vlautin has written five novels, two of which, ‘The Motel Life’ and ‘Lean on Pete’, have been adapted for the screen. The author and musician has cited John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver and William Kennedy as influences, and his tender but harrowing stories of working class life have received widespread acclaim.
How subtitles change the way we watch movies
Slowly casting off their association with dense and inaccessible art cinema, subtitles have become the translation norm for Western audiences. Yet sometimes the most powerful subtitles are the ones that aren’t there. Leaving non-English dialogue untranslated has long been a way to ‘Other’ certain characters and cultures, damning them to irrelevance or impenetrability.
A powerful new film defends the practice of whaling
“In the North Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Scotland lie the Faroe Islands. Home to 48,000 descendants of vikings, this small nation has always relied on the seas for its livelihood.” After these introductory lines, Mike Day’s documentary cuts to stunning panoramic shots of the remote Faroe Islands, then to sea waters running red with whale blood in the aftermath of the one of the Faroese’ oldest traditions – the whale hunt.
‘An infuriatingly bland and unnecessary remake’
Eli Roth and Bruce Willis combine forces for a frustratingly bland remake of Michael Winner’s vigilante classic. For seemingly promoting retributive violence, vigilantism and the right to bear arms, the controversial Charles Bronson-fronted Death Wish franchise holds a negative reputation it undoubtedly deserves.
Journeyman review – ‘A heartfelt tale of physical recovery’
Paddy Considine writes, directs and stars in this hard-hitting drama about a boxer who’s dealt an unexpected blow. As with its pugilist hero, Paddy Considine’s second feature as writer and director is scrappy, appealing and wins the day not with a knockout, but scrapes through on points. Middle-weight mainstay Matty Burton (Considine) is a father, husband and perma-grinning gent – a little at odds with the knowingly vulgar world of British boxing.
John Boorman on Kubrick, Connery and the lost Lord of The Rings script
The legendary British director of Deliverance, Excalibur and Zardoz looks back over his extraordinary career. Eclectic doesn’t even begin to describe director John Boorman’s body of work. A career that began in TV journalism quickly took the leap across the pond to deliver a one-two punch of breathtakingly assured masterpieces with actor Lee Marvin in the form of Point Blank and Hell in the Pacific.
How When We Were Kings enshrined Muhammad Ali’s legacy
An unearthly tension runs through When We Were Kings. Paid five million dollars each, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman are flown to Zaire (now The Democratic Republic of the Congo) to fight for the heavyweight title of the world. Only the brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was willing to put up the money for the fight and Don King, the infamous fight promoter, was happy to do business. State violence hangs around the edges of the frame and the impending monsoon’s fill the air with heavy electricity.
Jupiter’s Moon review – ‘Weirdo sci-fi swiftly falls to pieces’
Take away all the camera-swirling and giddiness and you’re left with an empty sci-fi shell. Bravura technique trumps narrative coherence in this garbled modern demigod saga from Hungary. It’s hard to think of a more blatant Hollywood begging letter than Kornél Mundruczó’s weirdo, self-serious genre mash-up, Jupiter’s Moon, which played in competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
Miracle Mile is an apocalyptic thriller that’s more relevant than ever
Miracle Mile is championed by devoted fans, but has escaped being lumped in with other sci-fi films from the 1980s. That uniqueness is what has made it a true cult film. It hinges on one of the most startling tonal switches ever captured on screen.
Journeyman - first look review
Paddy Considine’s second feature as director is powered by a clutch of big, bold and unabashedly emotional performances. As with its pugilist hero, Paddy Considine’s second feature as writer and director is scrappy, appealing and wins the day not with a knockout, but scrapes a victory on points. Middle-weight mainstay Matty Burton (Considine) is a father, husband and perma-grinning gent, a little at odds with the vulgar and brash world of British boxing.
Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets review
It’s called Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets, but what that evocative title actually refers to is a vast galactic colony comprising numerous alien districts, which Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevigne smash and shoot their way through en route to uncovering the truth about a mysterious extinct planet.
David Lynch: The Art Life review
The cult filmmaker reflects on his remarkable career in this compelling docu-portrait. “Every time you do something like painting – or whatever – you go with ideas, and sometimes the past can conjure those ideas and colour them. Even if they’re new ideas, the past colours them.” The speaker is the Montana-born writer, director and artist David Lynch, and even though we can see him sitting, smoking furiously, before a condenser mic, he is silent, as the interview is presented in voiceover.
Is Nil by Mouth the bleakest kitchen-sink drama ever made?
Few genres are more recognisably British than the kitchen-sink drama. Since Shelagh Delaney’s play ‘A Taste of Honey’ was adapted in 1961, the genre has become a mainstay of cinema and television in the UK. Typically comprising the impoverished residents of council estates and half-forgotten towns, with Delaney’s Salford famously becoming a symbol of postwar desolation, the kitchen-sink drama makes misery its backdrop and the working class its dramatis personae.
Alien: Covenant review
Ridley Scott could keep doing this for years. And he probably will. There’s a scene in Alien: Covenant where Michael Fassbender’s duty-bound synthetic, Walter, is lectured on the philosophy of creation. The speech is delivered by another main character whose identity we won’t spoil here, but really it’s director Ridley Scott doing the talking.
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki review
Director Juho Kuosmanen is one to keep an eye on. This handsome second feature from Juho Kuosmanen is based in part on the true story of a Finnish boxer who briefly achieved national celebrity in the 1960s following a World Featherweight title bout. That Olli Ma?ki lost the biggest fight of his career to a superior American opponent – and in pretty humiliating fashion at that – is of little interest to the director, and with good reason.
Watch this exclusive clip from your new favourite boxing movie
It’s a boxing movie, Jim, but not as we know it. Every since it yomped to victory in the Un Certain Regard strand at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Juho Kuosmanen’s The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki has been stealing hearts across the globe. The film concerns Finland’s attempt at global boxing supremacy via the gloved paws of one Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) – perhaps one of the most avuncular and midl-mannered pugilists every to set foot on the circuit.
Is this the most authentic boxing movie ever made?
About Little White Lies Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies. Editorial Design
Life review
You’ll have forgotten it by the time you touch down in the cinema lobby. Mars attacks in this underpowered creature feature with a crew of A-listers trapped on the International Space Station. As the success of Star Wars in 1977 opened up a new frontier of science fiction, ranging from the nasty Alien to the cuddly ET, so the box office conquest of Gravity, The Martian and, yes, New Star Wars has persuaded the studios to return to the skies.
David Lynch’s TV commercials are even weirder than his films
“Bullshit” is what David Lynch thinks about product placement. Yet the American filmmaker has shot more than 30 commercials over the course of his career, from perfume ads to public service announcements. “I do commercials to make money,” he remarked in a 2008 interview, “but I always say, every time I learn something: efficiency of saying something, and new technologies.” With that in mind, here are the best of the bunch.
It looks like we’re getting a second Alien movie this year...
So far the trailers for Life, the upcoming sci-fi thriller from Daniel “Child 44” Espinosa, have been unforthcoming as far as plot details are concerned. We know that a crew aboard a space station discover something dangerous, and struggle to contain the crisis and thus survive the ordeal. So far, it’s all looking rather familiar. This new red band trailer continues to ramp up the mystery while providing some clarity along the way.
Certain Women review
Director Kelly Reichardt returns with another brilliantly understated study of love and desire. When you see Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women the first thing you’ll want to do when you leave the cinema is purchase and eat a big ol’ hamburger. In the third of three hushed anecdotes concerning the everyday struggles of a clutch of Montanian women, Kristen Stewart’s wayfaring supply teacher has to erotically scarf down a plate of diner food prior to an all-night drive across the state.
What an exhibition of fantastical utopias drawn by Bartlett graduates says about urban space
The captivating images of these speculative projects have more in common with art than architecture, but the Urban Tales exhibition nevertheless challenges our view of the city Hosted at London’s Carousel, Urban Tales explores the role of narrative architecture in expanding the parameters of how we conceptualise fictional futures.
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