As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold – but what happens when this concept is placed in the careful hands of a filmmaker known for his warmth and candour? This is only one of the many fascinating elements of La Poison, the hilarious and exuberant dark comedy by French master Sacha Guitry,…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
After Love (2021)
When it comes to romance, the only concept art seems to be invested in more than people falling in love is that of people falling out of it – and while After Love may not necessarily focus entirely on a woman ceasing to have feelings for her deceased husband, it does question her motivations to…
Rear Window (1954)
By the time he reached the middle of the 1950s, Alfred Hitchcock was already undeniably a well-established filmmaker who had easily earned his place in the canon of great cinematic artists. No one had been able to make films that were both as artistically-resonant and profoundly mainstream as him, which is essentially what has kept…
Titane (2021)
Like the rest of the world, I was both shocked and entranced by Raw, the directorial debut of Julia Ducournau, who immediately established herself as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary horror when she stepped behind the camera to tell the story of a young woman who discovers that she is acquiring a…
Caprice (1986)
Few veteran filmmakers have had a more sudden ascent to acclaim than Joanna Hogg. Most would have come to have known her through her magnificent The Souvenir duology, which won her many new admirers. For those with an ear to the ground in terms of British independent cinema, she would be familiar as the director…
Save the Tiger (1973)
In terms of filmmaking, the 1970s was a revolutionary period for a number of reasons. The era, which has often been referred to under the general term of the New Hollywood movement, brought about an entirely new generation of filmmakers, whose youthful voices and unique perspectives contributed to a seismic shift in how stories were…
The Harder They Fall (2021)
There aren’t many genres that have been revived, reinvented and rebooted quite as much as the western, with its long and storied history going all the way back to the earliest days of motion picture filmmaking, and persisting in some form or another for as long as audiences have been going to the movies. Far…
Never Gonna Snow Again (2021)
While it may take a while to fully understand what is being said in Never Gonna Snow Again (Polish: Śniegu już nigdy nie będzie), we can tell from the first mysterious moments that this film is going to be quite an adventure. The story of an enigmatic masseur who travels from rural Ukraine to the…
Johnny Guitar (1954)
The western genre is a peculiar one – most of the time, it produces films that are mostly enjoyed by devotees to the genre, with those who may not be enamoured with it normally keeping their distance. Yet, it’s one of the few instances where every entry into the genre that is classified as a…
The Blazing Sun (1954)
As arguably the greatest African filmmaker to ever work in the medium (or at least one of them), Youseff Chahine left behind an enormously intimidating legacy, albeit one that is always a pleasure to explore. His canonical masterpiece is almost universally considered to be his homage to film noir in Cairo Station, which remains his…
The Postmodern Pelican 