2 acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsTrinity Film Review
editor ’s letter
“Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from-you.”Alejandro
G. Iñárritu When you open this magazine, you will not see the hours spent working on it. Whether it be writing articles, editing them, or designing the issue, mak ing any magazine is a feat. However, after all the hard work and time spent on an issue, everybody comes back and does it again. I’ve always won dered why people, including myself, do this. Is it like childbirth, where you forget how painful it really is? We come back again, simply because we can’t bear not to. This magazine is fuelled by love. A love of film, a love of writing, and a desire to spread that love to as many people as possible. In this issue you will read about this love, whether it be someone’s favour ite film, a film you associate with your loved ones, or just a love for the art of film itself. I think the quote above sums up making an issue of Trinity Film Review best. There are times when working on it can take everything from you; writer’s block, cancelling plans to work on an article, or computers crashing. Times when you want to scream and give up. But we keep at it because there are films that have given us everything, and we need to share that. Our debt to cinema, and all it taught us or made us feel, fuels us forward. It’s im portant to remember our love of film, especially when we want to give up. And that’s what this issue is for. Happy Reading, Katie.
3 Trinity Film Review acknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgementsacknowledgements editor in chief: Katie McKenna design: Eve Smith subeditors: Cat Earley, Eve SmithJames Mahon Cian Donohoe Sarah Murnane Shane Mckevitt Cat Earley Sadbh Boylan Katie McKenna Eve Smith contributors:
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P6-7. A Love Letter to Cinema Cat Earley P22-24 Bonding Through Film: My You’ve Got Mail SadbhBias Boylan P8-9. Representation Done Right: The Boys in the KatieBand P10-12.MckennaTheAnatomy of Imperfection: Little Miss EveSunshineSmithP13-15.Before Sunrise: A Film with a Heart. James P16-18.MahonPsycho: Film as Conceptual Art. Cian P19-21.DonohoeEverything Will be Okay: Mid90s and The Perks of Being a Wallflower Sarah Murnane P25-7. My Guilty Pleasure: Jaws 2 Shane Mckevitt Trinity Film Review 5
toLetterLoveACinema.
I often wonder, in this case, if there is in fact a religious element to our collective appreciation here, a cos mic wonder to the knowledge that you alone hold over one century of diverse and opposing human experience. In deed, why should a being as all-pow erful as that not be regarded as a deity?
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There is a comfort to the knowledge that I am but one piece in a clouded echo of history, a sweet surrender to the fact that there is merely a piece of you inside me, but that the entirety of myself and all of my earthly experiences reside in you. There is something almost Neopla tonian in this satisfaction - a perceived relinquishment of the carnality of hu man eroticism in favour of a more ‘civilised’ appreciation of art deeply into the fantastical, and an abandonment of Cat Earley.
Trinity Film Review
the earthly emotions that lead us to cre ate art and of a higher power.
To be in love is to yearn, to be in pain, to amputate half of your soul. You have not recreated this phe nomenon for me, but rather, you have reflected it. The love I feel for you is largely born of your intimate recogni tion of the intricate beauty of human experience - that to be in love is not kinetic but katastematic, a longing for adventure is not reckless but bold, a yearning for understanding is not in fantile but universal. My love for you is not expressed through self-flagella tion, but through enjoyment, enter tainment, opportunity. A love for you is a social one, an appreciation for the talent among us and within ourselves. Although there can be no you without life, so too does life’s greatest qualities become enhanced by your presence. And, in this respect, you will find me where you have always found me: On the bridge that separates reality from fantasy,
But the continuation of this religious comparison is not one that sits quite right with me. It is a delve too deeply into the fantastical, and an abandonment of the earthly emo tions that lead us to create art in the first place. My love for you cannot be divorced from my earthly life because what is an expression of love with no humanity? It is an anaemic love with no desire, devoid of heat or longing. Your beauty is one of understanding the interconnectedness of pain and euphoria, the balanced imperfection of human affection. Cinema, I love you, but I am not in love with you.
Dear Cinema, I look around at my peers and regard an otherworldly pasion for you, a commitment tanta mount to religiosity, and have no choice but to wonder what has conjured this obsession - this gluttonous drive to create and consume. It seems to me on a level of psychological attachment that has become unavoidably divorced from any of your literal definitions; it becomes inevitably emotional, satiat ing a philosophical and ardent inner hunger to be understood, to be seen - and I find that I share in this. I must admit that you have always occupied a space in my life that I have found quite difficult to articulate - both as a tan gible and recognisable international industry, and as an artistic movement that has always felt so personal and in timate to me, a conceptual being that constructs the metaphorical bridge traversing reality and the fantastical.
goes on and the guests get drunker, tensions rise, and they are forced to play an all-too-revealing party game, that seems to be ripped straight out of your second ary school bully’s play-book. Growing up gay, I turned to movies hoping to see someone like myself. But instead, I saw these bluntly drawn caricatures, filled with pride and self-love, who had to go upup against cartoon ish bigots. Nothing about it felt real. I had known I didn’t belong with straight people, and these mod el-citizens and martyrs were making it very clear I didn’t
It’s easy to understand why it’s often recommended, in a sea of queer films such as Moonlight (Barry Jen kins, 2016) and Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2006), where being gay is a death sentence, Heartstopper would seem like a welcome relief. But it isn’t, in being so desperate to show a positive gay experience, it creates a fantasy, and a butt-clenchingly humiliating fantasy.
Novelist Brandon Taylor summed up the current state of gay media when he wrote that the fight for LGBT fiction is between “the mean internet homosexual socialists and the tenderqueer Heartstopper Tum blr goblins”. It seemed like gay media was trying to prove something; either that ‘we definitely don’t hate ourselves’, ‘we’re just like you nor mal people, isn’t two boys kissing so cute?’, or ‘look how hard it is to be gay, isn’t that so sad?’. It seemed impossible to find a gay movie, that actually seems to be made for gay people. And then I found it.
Representation
I invented a new drinking game, take a shot every time someone says; “Katie, you’ve got to watch Heartstop per (Euros Lynn, 2022-)”. I don’t drink when I’m told this, usually because I’m recommended Heart stopper with such sweet intentions it makes my teeth ache. So, instead I tell them I’ve already watched it, and I didn’t like it. It just didn’t feel real.
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The Boys in The Band (William Friedkin, 1970) follows a group of gay men at a birthday party. As the night
9 Trinity Film Review
Done Right. The Boys in the Band
belong with the gays either. And then I watched The Boys in the Band, with its cast of characters that vary from serial cheaters and vicious bullies to loving boyfriends and accepting friends. Their com plexity was a breath of fresh air. These characters were defined by a lot more than their sexuality. But what stood out to me the most was how this movie has noth ing to prove. It gives homosex uals something that seemed like a luxury only afforded to straight people; a film with only one thing on its agenda –messy, heartfelt, accurate representation. The Boys in the Band was the first time I knew someone else understood how I felt. In the search for ‘good’ representa tion, accuracy is often lost. When a film tries to prove something, it loses its truth and becomes a PSA. A film has nothing to prove, its only duty is to show us some thing - something funny, sad, heartfelt, scary, and most importantly something true. That’s what makes The Boys in the Band so great. The only thing it was trying to prove is; through all your mixed feelings you’re not alone and you never will be.
Katie McKenna
The opening of Little Miss Sunshine (Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, 2006) pans out from Miss California collecting her crowning prize on a screen, to eight-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin), who is seen sitting in a cellar with thick glasses on and a dumpy pigtail, mimick ing the winner’s exact movements. Her intense desire to be that revered pulls taught across her face.
I first watched Little Miss Sunshine when I was six. Dangling my stubby legs over the edge of my aunt’s red sofa, I nestled in between my brothers and cousins. Too young and exciteable, I was rarely a source of interest for them. But that day, we’d spent the afternoon coordinating a dance routine that involved the consecutive removing of twelve jumpers to the tune of Nelly’s ‘It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here’. As the film unfolded, I didn’t just relate to Olive; I thought I was her. Determined oblivi ousness in a frame slightly too big for her, and surrounded by older people who were out of step with her, I couldn’t believe how similar we were.
Little Miss Sunshine lodged itself into favourite film status in the back of my mind. I assumed my kid brain had just related to the circumstances more than because of any intelligence in the film’s construction. But on a recent rewatch, I was struck by the smartness of Michael Arndt’s debut screenplay. As John Truby unpacked in his seminal text ‘The Anatomy of a Story’, all characters should be a var iation of the same central moral dilemma. He argues it is a mistake to think of every personality as a separate island. This is what Arndt does so well: he draws each character from the same thematic network.
In the case of Little Miss Sunshine, all of the characters hold overtly rigid concepts about winning. The family patriarch, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is a washed-up self-help guru who preaches about a com plex process to avoid being a loser. His wife’s brother, Frank (Steve Carrell), is staying with the family after a failed suicide attempt. Richard insists to Olive that Frank is a loser because he ‘gave up on himself’. In his eyes, not winning is never an option. Frank, how ever, holds winning only as a past reality and
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The Anatomy ofImperfection.
As a result, Little Miss Sunshine is more than a product of the individuals with in its web. As Arndt has said, the family unit is also essentially the film’s main pro tagonist. Each character is introduced with equal weight in the film’s opening sequence
What makes Little Miss Sunshine so good?
All of them define success against a measureless barometer of oth er people. For Dwayne it’s getting away from his family; for Frank, it’s his unrequited lover running off with the second-best Proust scholar; and for Richard, it’s the followers that he expects to have at the end of his program. Olive start ed doing the pageants because she loved the act of doing them, but the at titudes around her come to make her feel that winning is the only accept able reality.This is where Grandpa (Alan Arkin) comes in. While he first appears to be comic relief in the charismatic form of Alan Arkin, with his abundant ‘fuck yous’ and heroin snorting, he comes to symbo-lise the wise freedom that comes with fully embracing the present. The film’s most touching scene has an incredible performance from a teary-eyed Olive, worrying that competing will put her at risk of fulfilling her dad’s low opinion of losers. With the breezy but firm encouragement that I think we all crave, Grandpa tells her that losers are only people that are so afraid of not winning that they don’t even try. He doesn’t care about the external view of others. Having been kicked out of his luxury care home for his frequent sex and drug use, he clearly isn’t living the most sustainable way of life. But Grandpa becomes emblematic of the self-assured difference of the film’s underdog values that come to win out in the end.
Trinity Film Review
frequently stresses that he was once the preeminent Proust scholar in America. Olive’s brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence until he’s old enough to join aviation school. For him, winning is a fixed point in the future.
12 Eve Smith
The tragic beauty of Olive’s character was her slow realisation that the world might not perceive her as she thinks it does. And like me with my less inappropriate, but still incredibly weird, jumper routine, the apex of the film takes aim at the sexualisation of children in beauty pag eants, with Olive dancing suggestive ly to Super Freak. Arndt’s script flits on the periphery of saying that just wanting something isn’t enough: the world also has to want it for you. But on the climactic cusp of letting these dominant values win, the family steps in to protect her. They all know what it’s like to lose something integral to their identity, and so in dancing on stage with her, the outrage of her dis turbing dance is turned on its head to
Little Miss Sunshine (Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, 2006)
Evolving like one giant organism, they eventually come together from their dysfunction to support each other.
Being the youngest in a family is hard. The only thing you can do is look to these peo ple who are bungling through life just as much as you are. It is only as I get older that I realise how lit tle my brothers understood how much I looked up to them. When I watched Little Miss Sunshine as a child, I might not have fully under stood the poignancy that bisects Olive’s reality, but I was deeply aware of the love pulsing through the film’s core. Ultimately, that’s what Little Miss Sunshine comes to conclude: you can’t change what happens to you, but you can be there to show the people you love that regardless of whether they win or lose, they will always matter.
industry as whole. In showing Ol ive there is ultimately no ‘winning’ way to be, her sense of self is pro tected.
1995). This low-budget indie mod ern love story, shot over a day and night in Vienna, is simply mesmer ic. It is not the most technically as tounding film, nor does it critically engage with the most prescient issues in our society. No, but it has a natu ral realism, a spontaneity, a heart, that makes watching it a breath-taking ex perience. If you couldn’t tell already, it is definitively my favourite film. The plot is almost absurdly sim ple. Two young people, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Deply) meet on a train going through Aus tria as they are both heading home, one to the US and the other to Par is. They connect and after some con vincing by Hawke’s character, they get off at Vienna’s station and walk the city throughout the day and into the night. They converse about the profound and mundane equally, with the pretentiousness of youth.
1995)Linklater,(RichardSunriseBefore
Before Sunrise: A Film with a Heart.
Richard Linklater has the unique ability to make any topic watchable. From Dazed and Confused (Rich ard Linklater, 1994) to Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014), his films all have the same distinct emotional poignancy that leaves the audience with the strange contradictory feel ings of sadness and hope. The sad ness originates from the fact that the film is over; our time with his com plex, fully-realised, multi-dimen sional characters, is finished. The hope is derived from the enduring uplifting effect intrinsic to Linklat er’s tone. There is a sense that you, like the actors in the film, have un dergone a profound transformation – learned something truthful that you can take into your everyday life. These conflicting emotions are embodied in their purest form in the first of the ‘Before’ trilogies, Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater,
13 Trinity Film Review
They dance, they drink, they talk to strangers. All of it is underlined by the probability that they will most likely never see each other again - this is a brief in terlude before both go on with their separate lives. What truly makes the film is the dialogue. It is almost impossible to sustain a feature length film narrative, when composed only of conversations between two people without it seeming fatuous and artificial. Yet Linklater and his screenplay partner Kim Krizan, construct something deeply real. They capture the exte rior confidence of Jesse as a young man, willing to try and fail in asking Céline to go with him. Yet they also highlight his interior uncertainty - his awkward attempt to brush Céline’s hair on the tram as they travel the streets of Vienna, or his stuttering attempts at kiss ing her on the Ferris wheel as it looks down on the city. Similarly with Céline, as a highly intelligent independ ent woman, who talks about the urge to rebel against the dominant political system, yet correspond ingly admits to a need to love and be loved. More significant is how naturally the connection between them develops, how they become more hon est and transparent with each other as the night pro gresses. It is no surprise then to find that a level of con trolled improvisation was used in certain scenes— the script always open to being rewritten. Such innate flu ency can only be evident in a creative process open to imagination and impulse – ultimately every scene
1995)Linklater,(RichardSunriseBefore
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either of them being aware is beautifully realised. It seems such a vividly real mo ment, that it is almost as if we as viewers are intrud ing by watching. We are secret voyeurs. Fundamen tally, the unstructured, freeing aesthetic of the whole film stems from the sensibility of its director. Ulti mately, the fact that Richard Linklater is the direc tor of a film makes it automatically worth watching.
Before 1995)(RichardSunriseLinklater,
James Mahon
Trinity Film Review
I have tried my best to convince you of the brilliance of Before Sunrise. On all aspects, from direction, script writing, acting – it combines to create an intimately personal film experience. All I can say is please watch it.
feels as if it develops from the next, as water flows down a river. However, the chemistry be tween Hawke and Deply underpins the whole film. Hawke has been quoted as say ing that playing the role of Jesse was as close to playing himself. His off-beat charisma, natural enthusiasm and energet ic humour pour out of every sentence Jesse speaks. Deply, conversely, manifests the latent idealism of being young. Her intellectual capabilities pro vide the most engaging conversation about the film – her desire to go beyond the bourgeois lifestyle of her parents and her belief that she will have an actual impact on the world. It is the nat ural realism in herent in Linklat er as a director that supports the whole film. His movies have the distinct, uncanny sensation of be ing onecretlybothence.itandlookingitandwithrealstraighttransplantedoutoftheworld.Shotsuchfluidityseamlessness,isnotacameraatHawkeDeply,ratherisus,theaudiTheshotofofthemseadmiringanotherwithout
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Although it is undeniable that Hitchcock was some sort of master craftsman - akin to an Ital ian master of the High Renaissance, whose works were characterised by their experiments in symmetry and perspective; utterly ornamen tal, signifying nothing; nothing beyond prestige the work afforded to its commissioner. There is a precisiness, talent even, but ulti mate plainness. It is, for a reason, an education in art history begins (and doesn’t end) with Da Vinci
Hitchcock is not the ‘final boss’ of cinema, but the opposite. He represents the convergence of two modes of the medium; he is where entertainment ends and cinema begins. An education in cinema should start with Hitch cock and end with Gaspar Noé. Verhoeven is the heir to Hitch cock, in that, while his films (shar
While many cinéastes swear that he is, unequivocally, the great est director that has ever lived. Hitchcock - a man who is brand be fore he is a director - is nothing of this nature. Hitchcock is pulp more than prestige. Not in the realm of Bergman, or Fellini, or Wellesmore De Palma and Verhoeven.
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and not, say, Klimt or Egon Schiele. No, Hitchcock is rather entertainment for entertainment’s sake- a cultural barometer, rather than a prevailing wind; a proph et, rather than a God. This is not to diminish his achievements, of which there are many, but to dis pel the ‘impregnability’ of Hitch cock’s oeuvre, to lay bare the na ture of his work, and most cru cially advocate for Hitchcock’s liberation from this pretension which he, himself, might object to.
Hitchcock is a lie.
Psycho: Film as Conceptual Art
Psycho has had an ut terly unquantifiable influ ence on the art of cinema as a film that, aside from the obvious example of gialla and its American counterpart - the slasher
Psycho Hitchcock,(Alfred1960)
Trinity Film Review
ing the same interest as Hitchcock in refracting sexuality, iden tity, etc.,) are masterfully crafted, they are nevertheless fiercely limited compared to their competitors in Europe (discounting Verhoeven’s latest release, Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021.)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), for one, is high ly entertaining - a masterwork of the horror genre, but still held to its limitations; it finds strength in its formula, and merely gestures to something beyond itself. The film, of course, centres on an encounter between Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and a motel proprietor, Norman Bates (An thony Perkins) in what develops into bloody murder, at the hands of Norman, motivated by his negative Oedipus complex. The film is a masterful filtering of sexual anxiety, corruptibility, identity through the medium, but stopping there - not transcendental, nor revelatory of something larg er than itself, and makes no particular comment on either.
At the risk of sounding like a contrarian, I found it nearly im possible to take most of Hitchcock’s films any more seriously than his direct progeny - the slasher. (Indeed, compare Fassbind er’s Martha (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1974) to Rear Window (Alfred Hitchock, 1954) and it is transparent who is the more painfully serious and completely uncompromising artist.)
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In Hitchcock, there is a particular pathos, eroti cism, and excellence in reflecting horror, but a seeming lack of a sense of artistic vigour, hence his self-admitted boredom with directing. Although, there is no question that Hitch cock’s films indubitably provide something, and his countless imitators of various stripes prove this. In fact, like it or not, there is no denying that Psy cho (1960) - a film that arguably represents the auteur at his most sub versive, daring, and un compromising - is simply one of the most influ ential films of all-time.
Nóe is a notable example, who transgresses formality, respect ability and expectation with uncompromised artistic vision.
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grates strangely on one’s ears. Through the rhetorical, conven tional, and, in a word, reassur ing sadism of American films, Hitchcock sometimes makes you hear, over the victim’s terrified screams, the true cry of joy that does not deceive you - his own.”
film - has been paid tribute (and anti-tribute) to in superior films ranging from Fassbinder’s directori al debut Love Is Colder Than Death (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969) to De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980) or Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion (Ken Russell, 1984.) André Bazin, is of a similar persua sion, understanding Hitchcock’s shortcomings, but appreciating mastery of the format and ability to entertain, stating that “a point of iro ny touching his entire oeuvre is the reminder of a certain between-thelines reading of the scenario by those who can see beyond the most obvi ous effects. Nonetheless, at times this marvellously oiled mechanism
Cian Donohoe
It is true, also, that Hitch cock’s greatest films, chiefly Psy cho and Vertigo, are only partly his, but also belong to those that interpret them. Hitchcock, much like, the Italian masters of the High Renaissance, has a remarka ble ability to elevate his otherwise artistically timid films to some thing they are not - conceptual art.
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Everything Will Be Okay:
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Mid90s and The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Coming of age is a strange gen re, because it wants the audience to romanticise adulthood. As Ewen McGregor states at the beginning of Trainspotting, “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a fami ly. Choose a fucking big television”, adulthood is often not desirable. To become an adult is to give in. To lose who you are as a young adult with ‘dreams’ and ‘aspirations’, and instead fit into a fixed position in society, with a boring job and begin life. Despite a coming of age movie generally centres around tweens and teenagers, who embark on large character arcs where a process of ‘growing up’ is observed. These stories are where the characters transition from childhood to adult hood. This is represented in different ways, some positive and some neg ative. These movies tell the teenagers watching them that everything will be okay, and that growing up is not only inevitable but exciting. There are two films that I be lieve capture this core essence of a coming of age movie perfectly. They are Mid90s (Jonah Hill, 2018) and The Perks of Being a Wallflow
er (Stephen Chbosky, 2012). Both films deal with two different perspec tives on childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, but are equally poign ant, interesting and heart-warming. Mid90s is a coming of age film based on Jonah Hill’s own experienc es growing up in California in the Mid-90s. The film follows twelve year old Stevie (Sunny Suljic), an awkward young boy with little social interac tion. While dealing with problems at home, such as his brother’s inces sant bullying, he befriends a group of skateboarders. This group is much older than he is, ranging from fifteen to seventeen. They take Stevie under their wing, teaching him to skateboard and exposing him to a world of drugs, sex, alcohol and responsibilities. Each character in the group is developed in a slightly different way which al lows for an interesting exploration of different perspectives on adulthood. The setting of this film is central to its coming of age plot. While the plot revolves around ex ploring, growing up, and transition ing from childhood, to adolescence to adulthood. The movie also relies
The second movie that captures the romanticisation of adulthood well is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This film centres around Charlie (Lo gan Lerman), a fifteen year old boy starting his first year in high school. Charlie had spent the last year in a mental health facility, and it is obvi ous that he is different compared to his peers. He nonetheless befriends a group of senior high school stu dents. They quickly become close friends, however Charlie is con sistently left alone as his friends are
(Mid90s, Jonah Hill, 2018)
an undertone of discomfort as the activities Stevie engages in are far beyond his years. In this way Hill captures the childhood desire to be a teenager perfectly. The au dience seeing the perspective of Stevie feels that same desire to be treated as an adult, and not a child.
on a heavy dose of nostalgia as well. The characters look like they could be pulled out of a Big Brother maga zinephotoshoot, with baggy haphaz ard clothes. The movie is shot mainly in shades of yellow and sepia, which gives it a nostalgic vibe that matches the perception of the 1990s perfectly.
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Hill masters the classic coming of age archetype. He encapsulates the awk wardness of the in-between years be tween childhood and adolescence. This is primarily through the ex ploration of Stevie as a character and the journey he goes on. Stevie is twelve, and wants to be perceived as autonomous by his family who still see him as a child. He is drawn to his new friends as they see him as the teenager he believes he is. This leads to an interesting conflict in the film, as the audience is both happy for Stevie, however, there is constantly
Sarah Murnane
older and are beginning to start the next chapter in their lives as adults as Charlie watches from the side-lines. The film is set in the 1980s, and the cinematography and styling reflects this. In a similar way to Mid90s, nostalgia is used to create a romantic and pillowy atmosphere. What par ticularly stands out about this movie is the dialogue. The char acters are teenagers, yet they are prone to come out with deep and interesting intro spections about life and the world around them. Howev er, this does not pull the audience out of the film, but instead creates an interesting balance between fiction and realism. The dia logue helps create an idyllic version of being an adolescent and dealing with the problems that come with this. In other words, coming of age movies cannot be too serious and maintain an air of ‘everything will be alright in the end’, and The Perks of Being a
Wall(ThePerksofBeingaWallflower,StevenChbosky2012)
flower uses its dialogue to achieve this. This leads on to the second element which makes this a great coming of age movie, which is how it talks about adulthood. By the end of the film, Charlie is excited and ready for the future. His friends who have moved on to college, live exponentially bet ter lives than when they were in high school. It shows how adulthood allows the characters to gain true freedom for the first time. They must Now that they can go out into the world and be their true selves. It is cheesy. Yet it is an ex perience that most people go through when they leave their small home towns for a college in a different city or sometimes country. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the perfect coming age movie because it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling of hope at the end.
In terms of coming of age movies that will reignite your excitement for adult hood, these are two of the best out there.
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MyFilm:You’ve GotMail Bias.
(You’ve
Bonding Through
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I can never give a direct an swer when someone asks me what my favourite film is. I usually have to list an array of titles, which al ternate depending on the time of day, weather, distance from the equator, position of Mercury, etc, etc. However, despite the constant ly-changing roster, an inherent bias always ensures 1998’s You’ve Got Mail has a spot on the list. You’ve Got Mail – helmed by romcom royalty Nora Ephron- reunites Sleepless in Seattle (1993) leads Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in a positively saccharine concoc tion that I just can’t get enough of. As the name suggests, You’ve Got Mail is a nostalgic capsule of the late 1990s, capturing a time when romance could blossom on the “over-30s chatroom”, and the biggest threat to small, independ ent bookstores was larger, less-in dependent bookstores. It’s a sickly sweet by-the-books romantic com edy that’s dated in a mostly-charm ing way, though even I’ll concede that it probably isn’t the pinnacle of cinema. It’s always included in
my list of favourite films, not because I think it’s a master piece, but because, for me, it’s synonymous with winter nights and time spent with my sister mother. The first time that I can remem ber ‘watching’ You’ve Got Mail, the combination of my fleeting fiveyear-old attention span and disin terest in romance meant that I paid little heed to what was going on. It was a rare Irish winter that saw a significant snowfall, which had fas cinated my sister and I for about an hour before we shuffled back inside with rosy cheeks and tired eyes. In an act of appeasement, my mother Got Mail, Nora Ephron, 1998)
over the film’s emotional cli max, and drifting off to sleep as Harry Nilsson’s cover of Over the Rainbow crooned over the closing scene. My memo ries of our collective viewings far predate any recollection of the plot, and while hind sight allows me to see the pos itive in that, I can’t say I always had the same sentimentality.
er produced a novel treat of hot chocolate, and planted us in front of the television to recuperate and acquaint ourselves with You’ve Got Mail. My memory of the film itself is sketchy, and I’m not sure I under stood what was going on or, indeed, cared to- but it made for perfectly acceptable background noise in very good company, and I consid ered it an evening well spent.This was to be the first of many viewings of You’ve Got Mail with my mother and sister, as it became the default source of entertainment for dark evenings when it was too wild to venture out. I can’t recall when I actually began to pay attention to the plot itself, or even con sider it with a criticalsomewhatlens. I do, incessantlyasbyfullybeingrememberpopcorn.microwavenibblingbesidemyroomourblanketupberidlyhowever,icalsomewhathowever,critlens.Ido,vivrememcozyingunderainlivingwithsisterme,atIplayshushedmymotherIprattled
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Trinity Film Review
In my more capricious teenage years- naturally, in con tractually-obligated defiance of my mother and sister- I grew tired of constantly seeing Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks schmooze it up on screen. ‘You always watch this!’ I moaned accusingly when my mother fired up the DVD play er yet again, having tem porarily fallen out of love with the 90s charm of You’ve Got Mail because it simply wasn’t cool enough for my teenage self. Heaven forbid, of course, that I enjoy some thing that both my mother and my sister liked; if any thing, at this point I was strongly biased against the rom com. I bemoaned its constant reappearance, and
(You’ve Got Mail, Nora Ephron, 1998)
vehemently denied gaining any sort of enjoyment from it. Fortu nately for me, my mother and sister didn’t really listen to my complain ing, and we all watched it anyway.
Sadbh Boylan
inimitable sense of warmth. It isand will always be - one of my fa vourite films, courtesy of the bank of pleasant memories and familial ties that I simply cannot separate from it.
A slightly more mature per spective allowed me to accept two things. Firstly, that my taste was not so refined that I was above en joying You’ve Got Mail. The second, and crucial conclusion, was that my mother and sister’s enjoyment didn’t leave me with a bias against I at all, but a bias towards it. It was my shared experience of enjoying the film with them, after all, that drove me to repeat viewings, and continues to do so. You’ve Got Mail may not be a technical triumph- al though I have come to appreciate its finer points, including palpable chemistry between the romantic leads and a wistful soundtrack- but the memories I have of watching it year after year with my mother and my sister have infused it with an
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Having moved to Dublin this year as in-person college resumed, I’ve spent far fewer winter evenings at my family home. It’s easy to feel a little disconnected and I, like an yone who has experienced the pang of homesickness, often find that the smaller, quietermoments are the ones missed most. Fortunately for me, I have a well-loved DVD copy of You’ve Got Mail at my im mediate disposal. On a particularly miserable day, all I need is to load it up, and I’m transported back to a snowy evening in 2006, with my mother and my sister in quiet mutual agreement that watching You’ve Got Mail and drinking hot chocolate is, indeed, an evening well spent. As far as film bias es go, I’d say that’s pretty justified.
Pleasure.GuiltyMy
pop-cultural footprint. In some respects, their exclusion is war ranted. Jaws 3 (Joe Alves, 1983) joined the likes of Amityville 3-D (Richard Fleischer, 1983) and Friday the 13th Part 3 (Steve Miner, 1982) as one of countless films in the early-mid 80s that
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) is widely regarded as one of the greatest thrillers of all time. De spite its trio of sequels, it’s re membered as a solitary cinemat ic achievement, its successors boasting little more than a foot note beneath its unprecedented
25 Trinity Film Review
Jaws 21978)Szwarc,Jeannot2(Jaws
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looked to shame lessly cash in on 3-D’s resurgence in popularity; the shlocky, campy fun of these thehailedis,sephThefourthofnotwithstanding,filmscourse.Thefilm,Jaws:Revenge(JoSargent,1987)quiterightly,asoneofworstsequels
Helmed by a relatively unknown di rector in Jeannot Szwarc, Jaws 2 was a box of fice hit; when its initial theatrical run ended, it was the most successful sequel of all time. Its critical reception, however, was mixed at best. Maligned as little more than a cheap imitation of Jaws, the picture has been unfair ly left to languish as one of many “bad” fol low ups to classic films. films. Nevertheless, if one can cast aside the insurmountable bar set by its predecessor, Jaws 2 proves to be an extremely entertaining summer thrill ride in its own right. Roy Scheider reprises his role as Chief Brody, with the film chronicling his efforts to convince town officials that there is another shark terrorizing Amity Island. Concurrently, the film follows a group of teenagers, joined by Brody’s youngest son brought reluctantly along by his brother, as they embark on an ill-advised sailing trip into the shark-harboring waters.
of all time. However, the outlier amongst the Jaws sequels, one that is undeservedly coalesced with the shortcomings of its suc cessors, is Jaws 2 ( Jeannot Szwarc, 1978).
Scheider’s interactions with Mayor Vaughn
(Jaws 2 Jeannot Szwarc, 1978)
Shane McKevitt
Trinity Film Review
(Murray Hamilton) and the town council are excellent: “I know what a shark looks like because I’ve seen one up close. And you better do something about this one, because I don’t intend to go through that hell again!” Scheider’s impas sioned delivery of lines like Nevertheless, Brody’s conflict with the Mayor is an angle that could have been explored much further; one can’t help but feel Scheider’s performance is hampered by the narrative’s obligation to its teenage cast. The gang of wisecracking teens getting picked off one by one by the shark often resembles a slasher flick, sometimes making for an awkward juxtaposition with the film’s more grounded elements. Nevertheless, there are some magnif icent scenes contained within the film’s lesser half, particularly the shark attack on Eddie (Gary Du bin) and Tina (Ann Dusenberry). Tina’s reaction to the attack, as well as her petrified state when she is rescued, is remarkably well performed. Thus, even when Jaws 2 relies on a formulaic structure, it man ages to balance typical genre tropes with both standout performances and extremely well-executed se quences.Despite its issues, Jaws 2’s sun baked, summer fun makes it easy to forgive its flaws. It isn’t a per fect movie; once you recognize that, it’s impossible not to have fun with it. In the end, that’s what the appeal of the film the film comes down to, fun. Is it as good as Jaws? No, of course not, but few films are. Never theless, if there’s one thing it does do better than the origi nal, it’s the tagline: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…
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