“Modernity must not make us lose our Africanity” Senegal in the 1970s. The nation has just declared independence from the French, and have chosen to create their own government to rule over the people in the African way, establishing a fiercely proud politician as the President, and employing a range of businessmen and influential thinkers…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Barry Lyndon (1975)
I was recently talking to a friend, and I mentioned that there are few words that are more profoundly striking at the end of a film than “Directed by Stanley Kubrick” because naturally, you’d have just been through a period of great existential manipulation, as was par for the course for a man who relished…
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
Phillip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is patiently waiting inside a hotel room. The famous detective is now older, more grizzled and has a certain world-weariness that only comes with decades of dealing with the most sordid and deplorable of individuals, being a servant to the deviants and an ally to the law enforcement. He is approached…
Coonskin (1975)
Ralph Bakshi is renowned for The Lord of the Rings, revered for Wizards and infamous for Fritz the Cat. Yet, none of these films can be called his masterpiece, which is reserved strictly and without any hesitation for Coonskin, his magnum opus, a film of such undeniable brilliance, its relative obscurity (salvaged only by its…
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Before he was the cinematic stalwart he is seen as today, the creator of such inventive and brilliant visual odysseys such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Life of Pi, Ang Lee was just another young Taiwanese filmmaker crafting intimate dramas that portrayed his home country and its rapidly changing social and cultural situations…
Spotlight on a Murderer (1961)
Upon viewing Spotlight on a Murderer (French: Pleins feux sur l’assassin), I realized something – no matter how original the idea, or how gorgeous the visual aesthetic, a film means nothing if it isn’t executed well. Georges Franju will forever have his name engraved in the canon of great artists purely because of his brilliant…
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
Judith Hearne (Maggie Smith) is an Irish spinster who has recently taken occupancy in a small boarding house in Dublin. A profoundly lonely woman, she has been forced to be constantly on the move due to her diminishing funds, and the fact that her career as a piano teacher is hardly enough to sustain her,…
Greta (2019)
Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young woman who has recently moved to New York City, finds an abandoned bag on the subway. She decides to return it to its rightful owner, who turns out to be Greta (Isabelle Huppert), a friendly French piano teacher who is very grateful to the younger woman for her act…
Anima (2019)
I don’t normally review short films or visual albums unless they are particularly noteworthy, and my two previous forays into this realm of filmmaking – namely Child Gambino’s groundbreaking video for “This Is America” and Mike Mills’ extraordinary visual album he made in collaboration with The National, I Am Easy to Find – were astonishing…
The Marquise of O (1976)
A film set in Italy, filmed in German and made by a French director – The Marquise of O is an anomaly of a film, but in the best way possible. Éric Rohmer was a director whose output throughout his career was nothing short of extraordinary, both in the stories he told and how he…
The Postmodern Pelican 