A man named Józef (Jan Nowicki) is on a train heading to a remote location. His destination is a mental institution, and his reason for finding himself there is to visit his father, Jakub (Tadeusz Kondrat), who is on the verge of death. Far from being the rehabilitation centre the protagonist expected it to be,…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Wild Rose (2019)
Dreams and ambitions are very important to each and every one of us, no matter what they are. All of us has, at some point, yearned to achieve something, and even if we didn’t do anything in particular to work towards that dream, they remained a motivating factor in our lives. Wild Rose is a…
Otherhood (2019)
Mother’s Day – the day that many of us use to celebrate the women in our lives who have taken on the immense responsibility of motherhood, and to remind them of exactly what they mean to us. However, three individuals feel very differently of the purpose of this specific day – mild-mannered but overbearing Gillian…
Paths of Glory (1957)
Before he became the concept-obsessed perfectionist we revere him as today, Stanley Kubrick was a filmmaker concerned primarily with smaller stories that focused on more human subjects, operating on a much more intimate scale. However, his first foray into more ambitious filmmaking occurred at the nexus between his more gritty, low-budget stage and the period…
The Wicker Man (1973)
There are few films that have amassed quite as intense a following as The Wicker Man, the darkly comical horror by debut director Robin Hardy, who instantly forged a path for himself as someone of great significance in the canon of horror history, even if this film was his only notable work. A gloriously dark…
Sleeper (1973)
Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) goes into the hospital for a routine operation, which turns out to not be a success. However, instead of dying, he is cryogenically frozen and is woken up in the year 2173, two centuries later. Not only does he have to overcome the shock of being thrust into the future so…
Day for Night (1973)
“Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive” These words are spoken by the character of Ferrand, the central character of François Truffaut’s gorgeous film, Day for Night (French: La Nuit américaine)….
Touki Bouki (1973)
Mory (Magaye Niang) is a young man living in rural Senegal, where he is known widely throughout the village for a few key qualities: his motorcycle adorned with a cow skull, his casual disregard for authority and his ambitions to get out of Senegal and make a life for himself elsewhere, leaving behind a relatively…
Serenity (2019)
NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Should you decide to watch this tragedy of a film, beware that there is a certain plot development that just can’t be avoided when talking about this trash masterpiece. Towards the beginning of Serenity, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is in a bar. He is talking to some of his compatriots…
Ray & Liz (2019)
A few years ago, I went through a period of intense interest in the work of Diane Arbus, captivated by her ability to capture reality in a way that was most beautiful but grotesque, simple but layered with meaning, all portrayed through the most gorgeous photographs I’d ever seen, which spoke to me unlike anything…
The Postmodern Pelican 