Andrei Gennadievitch (Vitaliy Khaev) just wanted to eat his dinner in peace. A police officer who is respected (perhaps even feared) by his peers, he leads what appears to be a highly-principled life, based on a strong set of morals instilled in him from an early age. However, this afternoon turns out to be something…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Uncle Frank (2020)
Beth (Sophia Lillis) is an impressionable young woman starting college in New York City, which is just about as far as she can get, both physically and mentally, from her hometown, the small working-class hamlet of Creekville, South Carolina, where the spectre of the past still lingers, despite being well into the 1970s. As a…
9 to 5 (1980)
Has there ever been a film that better encapsulate’s William Congreve’s oft-quoted quip that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” more than the timeless classic 9 to 5? If there was ever a film that could be considered a definitive work of feminism on screen, you’d do worse than to name Colin Higgins’…
A Place in the Sun (1951)
The world of art has often made a point of exploring the concept referred to as a “national novel”, which is defined as a work of literature that embodies every aspect of that country, encompassing both its history and present culture, and touching on many issues that are faced by their citizens, condensing them into…
Marius and Jeannette (1997)
“This is a movie dedicated to all those common but great proletarians” These are the final words spoken by the narrator towards the end of Marius and Jeannette (French: Marius et Jeannette), director Robert Guédiguian’s gloriously triumphant ode to the unimpeachable beauty of modern romance. It is a perfect summary of the previous ninety minutes,…
The Boys in the Band (2020)
When it was announced a few years ago that Joe Mantello, an actor and director known for his electrifying stage productions, would be mounting a revival of Mart Crowley’s powerful play The Boys in the Band, the response was divisive – it’s a text that has carried great significance over the past half a century,…
Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
I’m not sure what any of us expected from Hillbilly Elegy, but if it was a good film, it seems to have been something of a tall order, and one that simply could not be met in any conceivable way by a film that seems, more than anything else, entirely unnecessary to begin with. Naturally,…
School for Scoundrels (1960)
It goes without saying that comedy is very subjective, and that what is funny for one individual may not be the same for another. As a result, a great deal of comedy tends to struggle to be carried over geographical and temporal boundaries, which often results in films that are beloved at first, but tend…
Proxima (2020)
A lot is simmering below the surface of Proxima, the daring space drama (which doesn’t actually show the proverbial “final frontier” at all, one of several fascinating directorial decisions made in the creation of this film) from Alice Winocour, who plucks a number of timely, incredibly relevant themes and throws them together into what can…
Elmer Gantry (1960)
When composing the canon of great American films, there is one in particular that occupies a very strange space – Elmer Gantry is a film mostly remembered for the dynamic performance given by Burt Lancaster, who was already one of the industry’s most interesting leading actors, and very little else. Richard Brooks was a filmmaker…
The Postmodern Pelican 