There are some mysteries that I don’t think we’ll ever truly know the answers to – who built Stonehenge? What is the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? However, perhaps the question that has troubled me the most recently is this: who was demented enough to approve the making of Les Visiteurs?…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)
Once you’re a canonical stalwart of the film industry, one’s entire career is open for analysis, with the earliest works of some of the greatest directors in history being quite fascinating, if only for the sake of seeing where their style originates. When he was hired to direct an adaptation of Alice Doesn’t Live Here…
Family Romance, LLC (2020)
Yuichi (Yuichi Ishii) is a mild-mannered entrepreneur whose business is gradually becoming quite a formidable force in contemporary Tokyo. His job description is simple: he pretends to be people for a living. He calls his company “Family Romance”, where he and his colleague (Takashi Nakatani) spend their days completing contractual obligations by a variety of…
Judex (1963)
Whatever it was that compelled Georges Franju to make Judex, it worked out remarkably well, as he put together one of the most fascinating crime films of the 1960s, and a work that still holds up as a remarkable piece of alternative French filmmaking that essentially defined the director’s entire career and made him one…
Irma la Douce (1963)
Billy Wilder could do absolutely anything – his versatility as a director made him a perfect fit for any kind of film. However, despite taking numerous forays into different genres, he did tend to understand where his strengths lay, and while there isn’t a single kind of film that defines him as an artist, some…
Shock Corridor (1963)
Samuel Fuller’s status as one of the most divisive filmmakers to ever work in the medium is certainly not unearned – a great deal of his work consisted of complex character-studies that were socially-charged and executed with a perceived lack of subtlety, which ultimately makes them either fascinating works of powerfully rugged artistry or imperfect…
Contempt (1963)
I’m not quite sure what Jean-Luc Godard was trying to achieve with Contempt (French: Le Mépris), but if it was to make a good film, he didn’t quite reach that goal. My own challenges with Godard are well-documented, but I’ve always admired his gall as a filmmaker, and someone who essentially helped define postwar European…
The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (1963)
When discussing postmodernism from a contemporary cultural standpoint, we tend to look at it as the expression of artistic chaos, where the rules of art are subverted in favour of more bizarre or unconventional works that seek to challenge what creativity should strive to be. However, what is often forgotten is that postmodernism didn’t start…
Palm Springs (2020)
Palm Springs is the kind of film that reminds us that unique cinema is still very much possible. One of the most wildly original works of filmmaking of the past few years, a piece that blends science fiction, romance and comedy in sometimes surprising ways, Max Barbakow’s directorial debut is quite an achievement – and…
The Secret Garden (1993)
At the turn of the twentieth century, a young girl named Mary (Kate Maberly) is orphaned when her wealthy Indian colonialist parents are killed in an earthquake. Her last remaining relative is Lord Craven (John Lynch), an aloof nobleman who is still mourning the death of his wife years before. Mary is placed in the…
The Postmodern Pelican 