Two weary souls are making their way through life. One of them is Richard (John Hawkes), who has recently separated from his wife and has to share custody with their two sons (Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff), who are wayward young men who are distant from their father, who is struggling to come to terms…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
In serene suburban Los Angeles reside an ordinary family. They’re led by the rugged but well-meaning Gideon (Paul Butler) and his wife, Suzie (Mary Alice), who have two grown children (Richard Brooks and Carl Lumbly), who have offspring of their own. Their lives are, on the surface, the definition of traditional – they attend church,…
Kings & Queen (2004)
There are certain qualities embedded in the films of Arnaud Desplechin that show him as a director whose films often touch on very real issues, but the one that perhaps stands out the most is his incredible ability to look at the human condition in very different ways, focusing on the trials and tribulations of…
Around the Sun (2020)
A beautiful chateau stands somewhere in picturesque Normandy. Despite gradually deteriorating, it still retains its grandeur and majesty, which is exactly what brings two strangers to the isolated grounds one quaint afternoon. Bernard (Gethin Anthony) is a location scout sent to France to find a location for his film company to use as both a…
Il Sorpasso (1962)
Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a young law student who decides to spend Ferragosto, a national holiday in celebration of Emperor Augustus, studying for his upcoming legal examinations, planning to make use of the quietness of his surroundings to get some work done. This is quickly disrupted when, but pure accident, he encounters Bruno (Vittoria Gassman),…
My Favorite Season (1993)
Émilie (Catherine Deneuve) and Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) are middle-aged siblings that live radically different lives. She is a successful lawyer who is in an unhappy marriage with her legal partner (Jean-Pierre Bouvier), who are together only for the sake of their children (Chiara Mastroianni and Anthony Prada), who are now adults in their own right…
David and Lisa (1962)
Something that has become quite apparent as I’ve worked through the career of Frank Perry in order to shed light on him as one of the most underpraised American masters, is that as he progressed in the industry, he became a better filmmaker. His first films were slightly weaker and far less-interesting that some of…
When Pigs Fly (1993)
Set in an indeterminate location somewhere in a seaside region of America, we’re introduced to Marty (Alfred Molina), a former jazz musician who has now lost his way, and has ended up wasting the best years of his life soaked in alcohol and teaching children how to play the piano. However, despite his sad existence,…
Teenage Yakuza (1962)
Seijun Suzuki is a filmmaker whose work has always impressed and terrified me in equal measure – while his methods as a director seem perfectly-calibrated to the abstract approach that has become acceptable in the Japanese film industry in the past few decades, looking at his work from the perspective of the time in which…
Bacurau (2020)
Not since Alejandro Jodorowsky made El Topo in 1970 has there been a western film as beautifully deranged as Bacurau, the incredibly audacious collaboration between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, who work together to evoke the spirit of the dormant acid westerns that never fully manifested as a feasible area of filmmaking in their…
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