Blog
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Argentine Dogma: Dogo Argentinos and Bombón, El Perro (2004)
While preparing this article, I learnt that the national animal of Argentina is a small, rust-coloured bird called the rufous hornero. At first glance, it might seem an unassuming representative for a country in possession of such a complex culture. This is a nation whose history can be traced through numerous indigenous civilisations and pre-Columbian…
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Turtles All the Way Down: Marine Conservation and The Red Turtle (2016)
Those who know me best probably assume that, of all the films released to general audiences in 2017, Guillermo del Toro’s Academy Award-winning The Shape of Water surely secures the top spot in my heart. Not so. It was pipped at the post, remarkably, by another film about a human protagonist forming a romantic relationship…
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Tykes in Flight: Social Mobility and Falconry in Kes (1969)
The recent release of H is for Hawk (2025) has encouraged me to revisit Ken Loach’s Kes (1969), an extraordinarily empathetic production that needs little introduction. As well as helping to cement British social realism as one of the country’s most significant cultural movements, Loach’s body of work provides UK cinema with a degree of…
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Comic Cryptids and Eco-Sustainability in Sasquatch Sunset (2024)
I’ve always had a soft spot for cryptozoology, the pseudoscientific field of fascination with unsubstantiated creatures. Who can resist the romantic allure of the Loch Ness Monster that supposedly dwells in the Scottish Highlands, the chupacabra of Hispanic America, or Point Pleasant’s own Mothman? Cryptozoology’s marriage of ‘kryptós’ and ‘logos,’ translated directly to ‘hidden knowledge,’…
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Capturing Animals in Motion
Have you seen this image before? If you have, it’s almost certainly because someone has attempted to illustrate an example of early photographic motion to you. These distinct silhouettes of a galloping horse are what we first call to mind when we think of cinema’s birth. Before we imagine Louis Le Prince’s family at a…
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Frankenstein (2025) and Vegetarian Monstrosity
Guillermo del Toro loves monsters. If there is any connective thread that runs through the director’s work, it is the very-same that the zealous Frankenstein uses to stitch together the patchwork flesh of his own creation. Whereas the latter would become horrified by the monstrous appearance of his life’s work, del Toro hopes to enthral…
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Welcome to Creature Features
This is a blog dedicated to exploring representations of animal welfare on screen. Thank you so much for finding it and taking a look! Rather than holding off until I have a range of articles and posts to start off with, I’ve decided to stick up the piece of writing that inspired me to set…
Creature Features: Animal Welfare on Screen 