The Oscars are over and now it’s time to catch up on some of those nominees. Movie theatres are expensive, especially for college students, so we’ve compiled a list of the top five must-see, binge–worthy films.
The Scoop interviewed Dr. Kevin Henderson, English and History of Film professor at Drury University, whose research and conference appearances often revolve around film studies. These are his choices with commentary.
5. Lady Bird
“It’s great when you see what goes wrong, which is someone who’s an actor/performer wants to try their hand at being a writer/director. Greta Gerwig does such a wonderful job of translating a semi-biographical part of her life into something that’s not at all just a memoir, and not at all like a lot of other movies out there. The performances are just so strong and convincing and pitched just right in terms of how it’s acted.”
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
”Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is one that I initially resisted because I thought it might be reductive, and it may be, in the way that portrays men and women and people of different races from Missouri. And then it’s kind of surprising. It’s made by someone who’s not from America, but it seems to have a good ear for dialogue and it’s certainly a great performance. Two performances at least from Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand.”
3. Call Me by Your Name
“Call Me by Your Name is living up to the spirit of independent films which was to offer an alternative to a Hollywood romantic idea that usually excludes more people, more diversity, more kinds of couples, or more notions of love than it includes. Call Me by Your Name is another one that just works on so many levels, from the directing to the storytelling. It’s an adaptation of a 2007 novel, and successfully becomes its own thing on-screen, and not just a faint reminder of what was so good about the book.
2. The Shape of Water
“All the key ingredients from the directing, the lighting, the cinematography, the costumes, the score, the construction of the screenplay work well. Like films that live beyond their own generation, [it] is just strange enough to survive. Sometimes the most enduring films are just strange films. Its unusual qualities; its blend of so many different kinds of film styles will make people come back to it for years to come.
1. Get Out
“You could talk about it in a landmark way. It has been a landmark film in otherwise 125 years of a very white gaze of Hollywood. I think it’s one of those films where all the key ingredients work and work well together, and it offers you something when you want to see it again, so that you don’t have just a one time experience, but something that is very cleverly constructed both in the format of the screenplay, but also in the subtext of race within a genre that otherwise people don’t usually enter into, whether you call it horror or psychological terror, expecting something that has many complicated things to say sociologically.”
