A-Level Film Studies - Daniel Kallin

  Amores Perros:   Alejandro González Iñárrit u's hyperlinked canine triptych   Iñárritu's incredibly assured debut film, Amores Perros - hastily translated as Love's A Bitch in English which, in all fairness, does retain the general pun of the original, despite not being a great title - is a violent, tragic and dogmatically passionate anthology of three stories revolving around interconnected people in Mexico City, centering on a devastating car crash and a very powerful dog. The beauty of Amores Perros is that, in its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, it makes sure that everything and everyone is important; a sentiment which contrasts the disregard towards life within the film, with characters showing no compassion to their own family, or their own dogs. Mexico City is portrayed as a criminally violent dog-eat-dog world, and the biggest moments of love and compassion in the film are undermined by further context later on. That is, until the final moments of th...

  Cleo From 5 to 7: Agnes Varda's Superstitious Parisian Feminist Masterpiece Paris in the 1960s was a melting pot of groundbreaking intellectualism and cool rebellion, with the critics of the older generation becoming the forefront of the new generation, and using their love for cinema, which many developed as writers for Cahiers du Cinema , to put their existential views of the world onto film. Forerunners of this movement, come to be known as the Left Bank or French New Wave, were Jean Luc-Godard and Francois Truffaut, whose debatably pretentious musings on their resentment towards the older generation manifested itself into some of the most lauded films of all time, with films like The 400 Blows and Breathless defining a generation and pioneering revolutionary filmmaking techniques, such as shooting on location with barely any budget, or elliptical editing. Besides them, was someone who brought one of the most unique perspectives of the French New Wave: Agnes Varda. Someo...