One of the wonderful by-products of early film noir and gangster storytelling is that the viewer learns an abundance of new terms and concepts that may have gone out of fashion, but remain eternal, preserved in the cinema that was designed to entertain audiences of yesteryear, but have somehow managed to remain relevant until the…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
The Silent Twins (2022)
For several decades, the story of June and Jennifer Gibbons has been the subject of a lot of conversation, with their mysterious lives being the source of an enormous amount of analysis as behavioural psychologists, linguists and a range of other investigators tried to determine the root of their condition that caused them to go…
Bus Stop (1956)
I’m not one who is typically known to lament the Golden Age of Hollywood in a way that discredits the current state of the industry, since there is a lot of value in any era of cinema, and those who complain about how the “good old days” of filmmaking are behind us are often quite…
Wendell & Wild (2022)
“Everyone has demons…mine just have names” It always feels like a major event when a beloved and acclaimed auteur returns to filmmaking after a lengthy break. Whether it was a case of reneging on a previously-announced retirement, or the fact that they couldn’t acquire either inspiration or financial means to make another film for a…
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
When a director has as wide and varied a career as Woody Allen (where he was essentially directing one film a year at his peak), we often find that there is an enormous debate about what their best film is, which is not made any easier when they show such a remarkable aptitude at every…
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Ruben Östlund is one of our greatest living filmmakers, and someone whose artistic integrity and profound curiosity as a storyteller have allowed him to explore a wide range of complex themes. From his early works that were steeped heavily in social realism, to his depiction of a marriage in trouble in Force Majeure (his breakthrough…
Going in Style (1979)
Growing old is certainly not for the faint of heart, which we have seen addressed on countless occasions in a range of films, many of which focus on how challenging it is to reach an advanced age in a society that sometimes neglects its senior citizens. Few films have been able to capture the experience…
About Schmidt (2002)
As far as universally-resonant themes go, few are more challenging to talk about than ageing and death. These are two of life’s most notable inevitabilities, and while not everyone gets the opportunity to grow old, we all age and learn vital lessons along the way. So many artists have discussed the topic in their work…
The Paradine Case (1947)
One of the more interesting anecdotal facts about The Paradine Case is that, at the time of its production, it was considered extraordinarily expensive, with the cost to produce this film being close to that of Gone with the Wind, the gold standard for epic-scale filmmaking. Where this money went is anyone’s guess, since the…
X (2022)
Recently, we’ve seen the emergence of the sub-genre that is affectionately known as “elevated horror”, which is precisely what the name suggests – attempts to take one of the most popular genres in the history of cinema and infuse it with layers of deeper meanings and poignant allusions to reality that somehow gives it artistic…
The Postmodern Pelican 