Pitcher's Film Blog

Film Studies / Jamie Pitcher / 27.09.2017 The short film ‘Soft’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og1w2KrEgVg ) opens with a boy (later revealed to be called Scott) being beaten senseless by a group of youths, the entirety of this short opening scene was filmed with a low resolution camera, most likely with a mobile phone (I’ll get into more detail about its significance as this review proceeds). Shortly after this scene, the father is introduced, this character is very interesting as he somewhat embodies the concept of vulnerability after he too is attacked by the same group of youths, (again this scene is also filmed using a low resolution camera); Scott’s father later discovers Scott’s (very visible) facial injuries and continues to state (hypocritically) that as a grown man you should not back away from a fight, you should instead stand up for yourself. This quite obvious implication of what a masculine figure should be greatly contradicts how the Scott’s father reacted when ...

This may be absolutely terrible but at least I tried.

The Film, ‘Free Fire’ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Fire ) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDQPlzzp1k ) was directed by Ben Wheatly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wheatley ), it received a rating of 4/5 by ‘The Guardian’ and was initially released on the 6 th of April 2017. The film itself features an illegal gun sale being made by an anonymous party to the IRA, the general plot is that something goes wrong and the entire situation deteriorates, this leads to the directors interpretation of what an actual gun fight would look like. It is quite easy to see, even early on in the film that the director was trying for something new, through his own independent research he learned that most gun fights aren’t at all like those featured in most thrillers/action movies, instead most shots fired actually miss or just (slightly) injure the targets being fired upon, by throwing in slight comedic qualities with the overall tension of a gun fight, ‘Free Fire’ was born. The fi...

The short films, ‘Ralph’ and ‘Get off my Land’, whilst being completely different stories convey similar themes that can be easily interpreted by the audience. ‘Ralph’ tells the (short) story of a male teenager, aptly named Ralph. He has recently arrived in Paris, a large, confusing city where a variety of areas are made out to be quite badly kept, requiring all forms of maintenance and cleaning; graffiti lines the walls of buildings and streets alike, suggesting themes of rebellious youth and the romance of art .He has come equipped with a rather large suit case (which ultimately serves more as an obstacle throughout the story) and the phone number of a girl named ‘Claire’. As the story develops we learn that the phone number is in fact wrong, leaving Ralph in an entirely alien environment with no apparent way of communicating with the locals. At this early point in the story we can already see that Ralph can best be described as ‘a fish out of water’; he has rushed into a new set...