I must start this out with a confession: I am someone who is prone to hyperbole. It will worm its way into my everyday interactions. In fact, one might say that I am liberal with my hyperbolicity— non-literal exaggerations can be found in the way I discuss, describe, act, and recount; in the way I exist.
However, when it comes to hyperbole, there is no place I use it more than in my descriptions of films. “It’s the most fun ever”, I might say about a movie that’s pretty fun, but the most ever? Probably not. However, in 2018 there was one film that was the receiving end of more hyperbole than any other: Bohemian Rhapsody.
This hyperbole was exclusively negative. Some descriptions I threw around included “the worst”, “actual trash”, “fully awful”, and “scum on the bottom of my shoes”. In an informal year in review I even went so far as to express my wish to strike it from history, calling it “cultural cancer masquerading as a film”. I’ll admit that the last one is probably one step too far, cancer is no laughing matter.
Then again, neither is Bohemian Rhapsody.
On January 22nd, 2019, the nominations for the 91st Academy Awards were announced, and… I am pretty shocked by them. Roma leading the pack with 10 nominations, including two acting nods, Timothee Chalamet left out, and Bradley Cooper snubbed in the Director category in favor of a foreign language film, one of two on the list! However, even after all the buzz and promotion, the one that shocked me the most was the fact that even with just 8 nominees for Best Picture this year, Black Panther was on the list.
There’s a scene early in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange where Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and his gang of “droogs” run into a rival gang midway through engaging in an evening of “ultra-violence”. Alex and the droogs stop what they’re doing (raping a group of women) and fight the rival gang. While the scene unfolded, I couldn’t help but think of a of a quote from the seminal Australia young-adult novel, Tomorrow When the War Began. It reads:
The 80s. An era of big hair, big shoulders, and big movies. This decade produced many of the classics we know and love today: The Goonies, Footloose and Die Hard, just to name a few. However, one of the most famous movies of the time is also my bête noire.
The year: 1993 and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park revolutionises special effects in cinema. Cinema-going audiences flock to see dinosaurs live and breathe again, right before their very eyes. The film remained the highest-grossing film of all time until 1997 when James Cameron’s Titanic stole its crown, but the influence felt by Jurassic Park has continued to be felt to this very day.