There are many contemporary viewers who believe that Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the greatest living filmmakers, and someone who has made invaluable contributions to not only to the Japanese film industry, but global cinema as a whole. His gentle, human dramas have broken new ground and told bespoke stories, each one beautiful and compelling,…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
There are few names that evoke the same kind of passionate reaction in terms of capturing the very spirit of theatricality than Tennessee Williams, who wrote his final play over forty years ago, but whose spectre still lingers in the culture. This is particularly true since his work tackles themes relating to American life, exploring…
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
At some point in the past, Thomas Pynchon expressed his desire to write a story that was centered on the insurance brokers sent to Tokyo to assess the damage caused by Godzilla after one of his many rampages. As a culture, we have a tendency to latch onto certain stories, repeating them time and again,…
Mysterious Skin (2004)
The art of provocation is one that not many filmmakers have been able to successfully achieve without coming across as overly forced. Some filmmakers court controversy as a means for artistic expression, whereas others do it because they are genuinely fascinated by the reaction from the audience and how they observe particularly unsettling stories. There…
We Used to Know Each Other (2019)
Being in love is a wonderful experience, but maintaining it is another matter entirely, which is something that the protagonists of We Used to Know Each Other have to learn for themselves. A very simple independent comedy directed by Robert G. Putka, who wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Hugo de Sousa, who also happens…
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Whenever I travel, my father undoubtedly (and mostly as a joke) states “stay out of the woods”, a warning to steer clear of those untrodden parts of any country in which evil normally tends to lurk, whether it is of our world or supernatural. Art has always been fascinated with the unknown, and I’ve often…
Mickey 17 (2025)
The question of what happens after death has plagued and fascinated the human race since we became sentient, and there are as many interpretations as there are individual stories to be told, with absolutely none of us having a more accurate opinion than anyone else. Yet, it hasn’t stopped some truly fascinating conversations around the…
The Skin of Sorrow (2010)
More than half a century before Oscar Wilde committed pen to paper in order to write The Picture of Dorian Gray, we had a similarly-themed story on behalf of the equally important literary genius Honoré de Balzac in the form of La Peau de chagrin (commonly translated as “The Magic Skin”), which is also focused…
In God We Tru$t (1980)
Nothing has been simultaneously more beneficial and harmful to the growth of humanity than money – our voyage from bartering systems in the early days of civilization to the present day has been fascinating, and we have seen many revolutions emerge, both literal and figurative, over the way money is used within society, and it…
Coup de Chance (2023)
There was a time when life had a few certainties – the sun would rise in the morning, the tide would flow in and out, and Woody Allen would release a film almost every year, like clockwork. For reasons that are quite obvious surrounding his personal life, the latter has essentially ceased, and in the…
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