“Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate” There have been many notable quips based on the concept of fame over the years, but the one above by Emily Dickinson (whose own interactions with public life and her efforts to recede into as much obscurity as she could as a notable figure are fascinating…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Charley’s Aunt (1941)
As far as sociological history goes, nothing says more about a culture and its history than the humour that was popular at the time. Humour is one of the few tools that is both timeless and intrinsically tied to a particular point in the past, and as we see in many instances, the best way…
Oh, Canada (2024)
There is a theory that, should a filmmaker have a long enough career, they will at some point make a film about themselves. For some, this comes towards the start of their career, in the form of ambitious coming-of-age stories where they use their limited knowledge and paltry life experience to tell energetic, compelling stories….
Le Week-End (2013)
Anyone who has ever been in any kind of romantic relationship will undoubtedly know that it takes work to be a committed partner and more than a few loving companionships are built on a foundation of trust, virtue and honesty, as well as the ability to be with one another through whatever challenges may be…
Shampoo (1975)
Few directors defined the 1970s quite like Hal Ashby, mainly because nearly his entire career (or rather the aspects that are most memorable about it), were contained in this decade – prior to his directorial debut with The Landlord, we was an acclaimed editor, and his later output after Being There paled in comparison to…
MaXXXine (2024)
In a conclusion to what has proven to be one of the most singularly peculiar, and some would argue wholeheartedly unnecessary, film trilogies in recent memory, Ti West has produced MaXXXine, a film that brings an end to a series of films in which the self-styled 21st-century schlockmaster experiments with different styles of horror, following…
Land Without Bread (1933)
Where does one even start with a discussion on Land Without Bread, the ambitious and deeply unnerving documentary by Luis Buñuel? This isn’t to suggest that this is the kind of unimpeachable masterpiece that renders the viewer speechless (although this is certainly not untrue, for reasons we will discuss momentarily – it is one of…
Next Door (2021)
In his directorial debut, Daniel Brühl asks his audience a series of fascinating questions, none of which have any clear answers. Playing a fictionalized version of himself (or at least a Spanish-German actor named Daniel, who has found relative success in both Europe and the United States), Brühl is telling the story of Berlin through…
The Mask (1994)
There are few premises more wonderfully simple but effective than that of The Mask, a remnant of another world that appears in our own, and whoever finds it is impelled to wear it, being transformed into an eccentric but potentially dangerous being, depending on the person who wears it. Created by Doug Mahnke for DC…
And God Created Woman (1956)
There came a point in cinema history where certain filmmakers simply just decided to go against the advice of censors, and instead of following their strict code of what was supposedly acceptable on screen, most of them simply disregarded these standards and started to go in their direction. Roger Vadim has quite a notorious reputation…
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