Sue Torres
Bio
Is there any other reason to live to change the world?
Stories (72/0)
How the Marvel Cinematic Universe has helped me grieve
I’m going to explain to you why the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is my happy place in a moment but first I need to tell you about something sad. My grandmother died from Covid-19 complications on Good Friday and it’s the first time I have really experienced the true pain of losing a loved one. Monica had been my only grandparent since I was five years old; she was a Grade A, god-tier grandma and here I was, in my flat in London, having to come to terms with her death alone, with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to leave lockdown to say goodbye at the funeral in two weeks’ time.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
The greatest decade in cinema history?
Since motion pictures first arrived in the late 19th Century, each new decade has heralded movements and styles that influenced the development of cinema. The 1940s and ‘50s constituted peak periods for US film noir, for example, while the convention-upturning French New Wave blossomed in the 1960s. Both of these genres made a big impact on cinematic storytelling, but which decade tipped the axis of the motion picture medium in the most profound ways?
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
Pink Flamingos: The most outrageous film ever made?
John Waters’ legendary underground classic, Pink Flamingos, was made in 1972, but it wasn’t until 1989 that a brave video distributor submitted it to the British Board of Film Classification, in the hope it might receive the official rating that would allow it to be stocked in high street shops. The BBFC agreed to grant Pink Flamingos an 18 certificate, but only on the condition that three minutes of footage were cut from five outrageous scenes.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
What makes the ultimate film soundtrack?
he snaking rhythm and ripple of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); the pastoral atmospheres of Days of Heaven (1978); the icy tension of The Thing (1982); the elegiac beauty of Once Upon a Time in America (1984); the swelling heartstrings of Cinema Paradiso (1988)… the prolific film scores of Italian maestro Ennio Morricone not only elevate classic scenes onscreen; they seem to live with us beyond them, in surround sound. The news of Morricone’s death this week, aged 91, bears a particular emotional weight, so vast was his repertoire (around 500 scores), and so intimate its connection with countless listeners. In the 2019 book Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, he said that “Most of the time, people experience the music in a film as a subconscious suggestion… In other words, music manages to show what is not visible, to work against the dialogue or, even more, tell a story that the images do not reveal”. What makes a truly great film soundtrack might be a perennial question – but Morricone left us with timeless responses, across a multitude of genres.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
Grease 2: The flop that became a surprise hit
When Grease was released in cinemas in 1978, its producers were all too aware of the power of a sequel. Although the musical would go on to become the highest grossing film of that year, it was beaten at the box office in its opening weekend by Jaws 2 – the follow-up to Spielberg’s hugely successful shark-attack horror. By then, film-goers were growing accustomed to successful movies spawning sequels, and Hollywood was relying on them to hook in an audience already sold on the original. A few years earlier, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II – which won the Academy Award for best picture – suggested that sequels could even improve on the original.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
The Wanderers: The forgotten great coming-of-age film
ou know the sort of film, don’t you? Imbued with nostalgia, full of teenage boys at burger joints and diners and in wide-finned cars, donning white T-shirts and pomaded hair. The plots tend to revolve around the guys getting into mischief of some kind, chasing girls, bickering, and forming deep friendships; typically, these films are set against a joyous soundtrack of doo-wop and rock’n’roll oldies.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
Why we no longer need superheroes
As you watch the new series of Amazon’s darkly comic superhero drama The Boys, you are compelled to reflect on what it means to be a hero and what, if any, meaning it has these days. In The Boys, which is adapted from the mid-2000s comic book series of the same name, the ‘supes’ (heroes with superpowers, all twisted derivatives of classic figures like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, but by other names), far from being shining examples of nobility and courage, are mainly power-drunk self-regarding sociopaths. The ‘boys’ of the title are a gang of weakly human vigilantes who skulk around in the shadows trying to assassinate them.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
How teen movies became hooked on classic literature
It’s been 10 years since the celebrated teen comedy Easy A was released in cinemas. A knowing riff on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s seminal 19th-Century novel The Scarlet Letter, it translated its tragic tale of public shaming into an incongruously peppy 21st-Century high school comedy, with Emma Stone as Olive, a teen who, like Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, finds herself branded a harlot by her intolerant peers – but unlike Prynne, decides to lean into the persona.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
How Nashville captured the turbulence of 1970s America
Nashville, Tennessee is a storied city. It’s home to the Grand Ole Opry, the major ‘you’ve made it, kid’ live venue for country stars, and is widely thought of as the major incubator of country music in the United States. It was 45 years ago when Robert Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury cast their eye on the city as a backdrop to their 1975 film of the same name. Within an expansive near three-hour running time, they combined a realistic – if heightened – vision of the country music capital with their thoughts on a turbulent political era in the US, sewing their impressions of the star-spangled, hairsprayed, patriotic heartland into a ragged tapestry, and one that was beginning to fray at its edges.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom review: ‘Chadwick Boseman soars’
When Chadwick Boseman first appears on screen in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, it feels like a stab in the heart. Boseman’s death in August from colon cancer at the age of 43 still seems that shocking. It’s a sign of his artistry that before long we can put that real-life tragedy aside and see him as Levee, the troubled young musician at the centre of this exciting, trenchant film version of the August Wilson play.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
News of the World is 'a beautifully old-fashioned Western'
Lovely is not the first word you'd usually associate with a Western, but it suits News of the World, a film with tenderness at its core despite its adventures and action. Tom Hanks gives a heartfelt but unsentimental performance as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Confederate veteran of the US Civil War. He reluctantly takes a 10-year-old girl across Texas to her aunt and uncle, after she had been captured and raised for six years by a Kiowa tribe that murdered her parents.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks
The painful truths about motherhood exposed
"He'll bulldoze your life, destroy your relationships, and when he's got you completely to himself: he'll destroy you. It's what he does," says a wizened older lady to another woman, who, in a strange series of events, has had a baby literally drop into her arms.
By Sue Torres2 years ago in Geeks