Foreign films have the unique ability to introduce their alien audience to a new culture, landscape, language and film tradition. Great foreign films transcend traditional films when the audience is not only absorbed in the narrative, but also in the nuances that only foreign films can offer. Where these films can fall flat to an international audience is when the unfamiliar becomes a distraction. The unconventionality of a film from a different nation can diverge attention from the narrative, however captivating the story might be.
If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly looking for reasons to procrastinate. If you’ve already watched all of “House of Cards”, “Jessica Jones” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” you do not have to look any further for new material. Here are the best six things you should watch next on your respective streaming services:
Disney’s latest animated feature film, “Zootopia,” aims for depth and meaning and succeeds. However, by contradicting its own message at times, it doesn’t quite reach the status of animated titans like “Toy Story,” “Wall-E” or “Inside Out.”
The Amherst men’s tennis team demonstrated its strength this week with a midweek win against Skidmore College and then a victory over NESCAC rival Bates on Saturday to move to 12-4 overall. However, Amherst was defeated by No. 2 Bowdoin the next day to finish the week with a devastating 9-0 loss.
Amherst began the week with a win, taking down Skidmore with a score of 6-3 to move to 11-4 overall.
The Amherst women’s outdoor track and field team placed third overall at the nine-team Amherst Spring Fling Invitational Saturday afternoon at Pratt Field.
Senior Victoria Hensley sprinted to a second-place finish in the 400-meter dash with a time of 59.48 and a fifth-place finish in the 200-meter dash with a mark of 26.86. The purple and white earned 16 points in the 800-meter run with a first-place finish from Leonie Rauls ’18 (2:20.32), a fourth-place finish from Keelin Moehl ’16 (2:21.37) and a fifth place finish from Kaeli Mathias ’18 (2:22.08).
Mother Nature may have cooled the Amherst air with a recent cold front, but she was no match for the women’s lacrosse team’s hot streak. This week the purple and white went 2-1 against their NESCAC opponents, defeating Wesleyan and Colby before falling to Connecticut College. With these results, their record now stands at 8-2 for the season (5-2 NESCAC).
In a frigid midweek game on Wednesday against Wesleyan, the purple and white claimed a 10-5 win over their NESCAC rival.Amherst was strong out of the gate with a goal from Rachel Passarelli ’16 to set the tone.
There is probably no premise in existence more charged with contradictory politics and moral ambiguity than that of a war film. Many directors and screenwriters know that embracing this complexity may hamper the accessibility of the film and choose to evade it through different methods. Some, like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” focus on the individual soldier and the slow, steady bloom of his seething madness amidst the amoral chaos of the battlefield.
