…well. I don’t know where to start. There have not been many films that have elicited such an extreme reaction in me as Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. First, some context – a friend and I have an annual Valentine’s Day tradition where we watch the most disturbing, controversial and transgressive films we…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
At Eternity’s Gate (2018)
The best way to start this review is with a bit of a personal anecdote. I visited New York City in 2017, and one of the destinations I was determined to go to was the Museum of Modern Art, the home to the works of many artists I have admired for years. Several of my…
Vice (2018)
2018 was an amazing year for film – I feel like I mention this every year, and perhaps my expectations are just getting lower, or films are just getting better (perhaps through the increasing prestige being attached to independent films, which are slowly growing in wider viewership through different distribution models). My list of the…
The Favourite (2018)
England in the 18th century – an era filled to the brim with stately manors and state-like manners, enormous, overflowing dresses and an abundance of appearance-altering cosmetics, allowing people to constantly reinvent themselves every morning, especially those in the upper-class who found their homes in the drawing halls and ballrooms of the wealthiest and most…
For Your Consideration (2006)
Life often tends to be filled with despair, heartbreak and melancholy. Thankfully, we have Christopher Guest to lighten the load somewhat. His films are, without question, some of the most entertaining ever made, and his trio of masterworks – Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind are all incredible achievements and stand…
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
There are few films I have anticipated as much as Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a film that is a chaotic blend of a multitude of elements I absolutely adore – a true-life biopic about an eccentric criminal, bookshops, New York in the 1990s, and of course two of my absolute acting idols, Melissa McCarthy…
Suspiria (2018)
There has been a recent trend in cinema that is both horrifying and absolutely riveting – horror films are becoming more psychologically-scarring, and feature sequences of unhinged, anarchic insanity, normally devoting the entire third act to reckless terror. Recent examples include Darren Aronofksy’s mother! and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, two extremely audacious and utterly terrifying works….
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Giovanni’s Room changed my life. In less than two hundred pages, James Baldwin managed to evoke a series of deep-rooted emotions and crafted a truly resonant story, with its explosive representation of sexuality and the crises of identity that many of us experience, and its powerful forays into the philosophy of the self, an exploration…
Made in Britain (1982)
Cinema has always been the breeding ground for fascinating and controversial stories on a number of occasions, and one area that has been of profound interest to me is that of Neo-Nazism – of course, this is more a historical fascination, but it has always been an area that has given us some tremendous films…
The Big Store (1941)
When it comes to looking at the most influential moments in cinematic comedy, one couldn’t go wrong with noting The Marx Brothers were founding fathers of the genre, with their work in the earlier days of cinema being amongst the finest ever committed to film – and having had their mainstream breakthrough just after the…
The Postmodern Pelican 