Two for the Road is more than just a great film – it is a poignant reminder of why I love cinema. There is a quality of a story well told that just strikes harder than anything else, and with this film, Stanley Donen made something quite extraordinary – a funny, melancholy and utterly gorgeous…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Death Becomes Her (1992)
There’s something so satisfying about seeing some of the greatest performers in history duking it out in trashy but entertaining films. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford established this with the iconic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and set off a chain reaction of similarly dark and twisted female-focused films that are nothing more than perverted…
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)
“Their friendship was very sound. True, they were different – one sang. the other didn’t. Yet, they were alike” These words are some of the final spoken by Agnès Varda in her role as narrator. We have previously followed the life of two women. The one who sings is Pauline (Valérie Mairesse), otherwise known as…
Martin (1977)
George A. Romero was a filmmaker mostly associated with defining zombie films and launched a worldwide obsession with the walking dead that has lasted since his groundbreaking film The Night of the Living Dead and its innumerable sequels. However, while he may be best known for his work with this newly-minted undead, Romero’s finest moment…
The Ascent (1977)
During the Second World War, a small group of partisan soldiers and their families venture across the cold and arid landscapes of the Soviet Union, running from German soldiers who seem to have only one intention – kill every Soviet they possibly can, especially those that align themselves with the small but violent guerrilla groups…
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
We’ve come a long way in terms of art. No longer is it the realm of a select few that work meticulously to create grand pieces, but now the domain of anyone who wants to express themselves and convey a certain message. Whether or not you adhere to this subversive new way of artistic expression…
High Life (2019)
Claire Denis did something exceptionally special with High Life. She managed to overcome so many of the challenges facing the sub-genre of the space movie and effectively crafted nothing short of a masterpiece. Denis was clearly inspired by several other works, both within and outside of the genre – and this film seems to be…
Gloria Bell (2019)
Gloria Bell ends exactly as it starts – the titular character (Julianne Moore) stands on a crowded dance-floor, bathed in neon lights, dancing her heart out to a selection of the hits from a bygone era. The difference between these two scenes is the roughly two hours between them, which chronicle a time in the…
The Black Panther (1977)
A sub-genre that I have been recently exploring is that of the British true-crime thriller. These are differentiated from fictional works insofar as being equally as gritty (perhaps even more so), they tend to be a lot bleaker and arid than their most enthralling speculative counterparts. One of the most controversial of all of these…
An Average Little Man (1977)
Giovanni Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi) has worked for the government for over thirty years, running the pension office, making his impending retirement bittersweet. However, his son, Marion (Vincenzo Crocitti) is about to enter the work-force, and both his father and mother (Shelley Winters) believe it would be a good idea for their intelligent but meek son…
The Postmodern Pelican 