In The Father, his ambitious adaptation of his own stage play, Florian Zeller created one of the most heartbreaking films of the past few years, a strikingly beautiful ode to memory told through the eyes of someone who is on the verge of losing his entire perspective on reality. It was already a peculiar situation…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Ladro lui, ladra lei (1958)
When it comes to Italian comedy, the 1950s were a watershed moments, since this was the era in-between the height of the Italian neo-realist movement, and the peak of Commedia d’Italiana, both of which were pivotal moments in cinema history that left an indelible impression on global film in the decades that followed. There wasn’t…
Vertigo (1958)
Most of the time, I tend to avoid discussing situations where a film has achieved the status of being considered one of the greatest of all times, because it would normally come down to reiterating many of the same points that others have made about why this particular work deserves the title, or it will…
Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
Johnny Triton (Edward G. Robinson) has earned a living as a marginally famous mentalist, performing to mildly-amused nightclub crowds, who marvel at his supposed skillfulness at telling their future, which he does through logic and educated guessing. However, he has recently come to discover that he is indeed able to get visions of the future,…
Bianca (1983)
There are few artists who seem to love the sound of their voice more than Nanni Moretti, who has made a series of films in which he not only directs stories that focus on his own individual quandaries as a filmmaker, but also positions himself in the central role on many occasions. However, unlike some…
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
It’s not often that we witness history being made in the form of a new director almost immediately establishing themselves as a future master of the medium. Shaka King is a young filmmaker who seems to be well on his way to defining cinema in his own unique way, as made abundantly clear by Judas…
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)
Everybody loves Éric Rohmer – or at least everyone who has an appreciation for the simple things in life and how it is reflected in art. Throughout his prolific career (which stretched from the earliest days of the French New Wave, to the middle of the contemporary era). One of the most important French directors…
Minari (2020)
The immigrant experience is certainly not a subject that has been neglected by art, with many works of literature over the past two centuries focusing on the process of leaving one’s homeland in search of a better life elsewhere. There’s a reason these stories resonate with such ferocity – they’re sincere and relatable, since every…
The Paper Chase (1973)
James Hart (Timothy Bottoms) has steady plans for the future, and the conviction to work towards it, choosing to pursue a career in law, which means that he has a long road towards becoming an expert in the field ahead of him. He manages to get into a law programme at Harvard, which he soon…
Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
War films take many different forms, so to classify them as some homogenous mass (normally restricted to the specific war being shown), is one of cinema’s biggest challenges, at least on the part of those who tend to see them all as being part-and-parcel of the same ideas. Like any genre, there has been a…
The Postmodern Pelican 