Hong Kong is a city of a million and one stories. We encounter two of them. A mysterious killer (Leon Lai) stalks the city at night, engaging in his job as an effective hitman, eliminating various people who unfortunately fallen on the wrong side of the influential underground figures that run the city, and dictate…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
The Naked Civil Servant (1975)
Like many people, I was always aware of Quentin Crisp – he was, in his own words “one of the great stately homos of England”, and whether be his position as one of British culture’s most beloved writers and raconteurs, or his brief forays into acting from time to time (I’ll always remember his performance…
Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1975)
Benilde (Maria Amélia Matta) is an innocent young Portuguese woman who discovers something that sends everyone she knows into shock – somehow, she managed to become pregnant. Her explanation doesn’t make this news any less difficult to comprehend, as she believes that the baby was the product of divine intervention, with the young woman, who…
Euridice BA 2037 (1975)
In the quiet tranquility of a small but comfortable apartment sits Euridice (Vera Tschechowa), a young woman who has been sentenced to spend an unknown amount of time as a prisoner to an unseen entity, which constantly calls the apartment just to mock her situation and to give her false hope that she will soon…
White Collar Blues (1975)
Only bad things seem to happen to Ugo Fantozzi (Paolo Villaggio), who may just be the most unlucky man in existence. A long-suffering accountant who has worked for the enormous ItalPetrolCementThermoTextilPharmMetalChemical for over twenty years, he has hardly anything to show for it – his wife (Liù Bosisio) is far from the woman of his…
Nashville (1975)
Robert Altman made the films no one else was willing to make, and the ones very few were able to even conceive of. In his long and storied career, the director crafted films that spanned genres, nations and even the occasional dimension. His films were sometimes not even all that good, but still managed to…
Fear of Fear (1975)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder knew how to make three different kinds of films better than anything else – the comedic (Beware of a Holy Whore, Chinese Roulette), the melancholic (I Only Want You To Love Me) and the tragic (Fox and His Friends, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) – and in his extremely prolific career, nearly…
Midsommar (2019)
Turns out I didn’t learn my lesson after Hereditary. Ari Aster is clearly a director in need of some form of therapy (or perhaps a form of exorcism) if Midsommar has anything to say about it. I am not entirely sure if Midsommer is a film that I absolutely adored or vehemently despise, and I…
Primer (2004)
Budget constraints and a lack of experience should not stop anyone from making an audacious or innovative film, no matter how hard Hollywood campaigns for the idea that a bigger budget is somewhat indicative of quality. No one knows this better than Shane Carruth, whose career may only consist of two films, but remains one…
The Day of the Locust (1975)
Hollywood in the late 1930s. We are introduced to the various residents of the San Bernadino Arms, a complex that serves as the home of a variety of people related to showbusiness, or at least those who claim to be. Tod Hackett (William Atherton) is a talented visual artist who has been relegated to drawing…
