There aren’t many filmmakers whose work regularly, and often without fail, leave the viewer absolutely speechless. Ken Russell is one such filmmaker – throughout his prolific career that found him working on both sides of the Atlantic, the director managed to showcase a perverse set of talents that could bewilder even the most deranged artists….
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)
While we can easily see the roots of his distinctive traits in even the earliest works in his career, Alfred Hitchcock was not immediately the Master of Suspense, spending some time as a director-for-hire on a number of projects that we now know are fortunate to bear his name, even after having made a few…
Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)
Richard Linklater has gone from a director of entertaining but conventional fare, to someone whose work has become so incredible, nearly every new work he produces is seen as an event, especially for those who adhere to his very peculiar brand of off-kilter humour that is often drawn from his experiences as someone who grew…
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
How do you begin to describe My Cousin Vinny without veering too close to either side of the extreme? One of the many comedies produced by Hollywood every year that essentially follows the same structure of taking a major star or two, placing them in an unexpected situation (which may or may not included entirely…
C’mon C’mon (2021)
Slow cinema is an art form that very few filmmakers are able to master. Mike Mills is one of the elite group that have managed to build a career around carefully-measured, intricately-woven stories that take their time. They are certainly an acquired taste, since his films don’t immediately announce themselves as the most bombastic productions,…
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
As one of history’s greatest minds, Albert Einstein had many incredible ideas. One of his most famous statements comes in his 1935 collection of writings, The World As I See It, where the iconoclast boldly states “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the…
The African Queen (1951)
In a time when his contemporaries were more concerned with “serious” cinema that had a deeper message, John Huston was committed to occasionally taking a break just to have some fun, which resulted in him sporadically producing some of the most entertaining films to ever be made during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Undeniably, he…
Steel Magnolias (1989)
They say it takes a village to raise a child – and this has rarely been more clear than in Steel Magnolias, playwright Robert Harling’s tender love letter to his late sister, and the women in his community that orbited around his family in the years surrounding her untimely death. The film adaptation of the…
The Browning Version (1951)
The Browning Version is a text written for everyone who has regrets, especially those relating to never putting in the effort to fit in. Terence Ratigan’s fascinating drama has been celebrated for its raw understanding of the human condition, as facilitated through the story of an ailing schoolteacher who realizes in his final days before…
All or Nothing (2002)
No one captures the human condition quite like Mike Leigh – regardless of whether we’re looking at his days as one of the pioneers of the “angry young men” movement that branched off from kitchen-sink realism, or his ascent to become one of the elder statesmen of British cinema, there has always been a fiery…
The Postmodern Pelican 