Jean-Luc Burch Film Studies Blog

I enjoyed Jigsaw however there were several things that blatantly made no sense to me and I thought I'd list them here. Warning there will be spoilers. 1. How did he collect the bodies. Okay so just for clarification at the end of the film it is revealed that the film takes place across 2 times. The game being played 10 years ago that was not when Jigsaw was alive but also his first true game and also in the present day where a police coroner sets up an identical game to see if he can be as good as Jigsaw who was his mentor. Throughout the film we are led to believe that they are happening at the same time as after each person in the game dies a new body turns up when in reality the bodies are those of the victims of the new game who we never even see play their game. With that out the way my question is this. How did the get from the game to the open without any of the players noticing somebody dragging out the corpses? Not only this but how did he know that his game would pla...

The Return of Saw The wait for this film has been extremely long for me. Whatever possessed me to order the DVD instead of go to see this film in cinema is a mystery to me. But here I am 4 long months after the films release and I finally have my copy of Jigsaw. I have somehow justified my DVD purchase to myself by watching every last second of special features and behind the scenes interviews as well as re-watching the entire film with directors commentary, which did make me feel better about my decision. I should start by clarifying that I am a huge Saw fan and despite the gradually declining quality of the films I have remained loyal to the series, perhaps in the hopes that they would find a way to emulate the brilliance of the first film. I plan to go into quite a bit of detail here but I'll try to keep this from being too much of a drag to read. First things first I feel I should give a brief synopsis of the story of Jigsaw for those unfamiliar with the series. Th...

Less Leading Ladies According to the Center for the study of women in TV and film despite many films with female leads dominating the box office in 2017 the overall number of films with sole female leads dropped to 24% from 29% in 2016. 29% was already a shamefully low number but for it to dropeven lower is both shocking and unexpected especially when looking at all the top grossing films of 2017 such as The Last Jedi and Wonder Woman which both had female leads. So what is the cause of this? Firstly this could be down to the production. According to this  BBC article  45% of protagonists were female when at least 1 female was a writer of director. Compare that to just 20% from male directors and writers who are far more likely to sideline women to secondary characters. As well as this most women who played large roles were in their 20s and 30s whereas men were in their 30s and 40s which suggests that the sex appeal of younger women is a big part of casting pr...