Something that anyone who watches the perpetual ebb and flow of cinema and how certain films are received in comparison to others will discover over time is that, given the space and patience, just about any genre can be redefined in some way. Just a couple of decades ago, we emerged from a period where…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Cream (2021)
The theme of a lonely individual finding themselves through their love of food, which serves as a replacement for their crippling loneliness, has been massively appropriated by modern cinema, with the motif of the fiercely independent young person using more traditional cravings to stand in for their inability to maintain a relationship constantly serving as…
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Society is filled with an abundance of popular myths, which make it very clear that regardless of how far we believe we have been able to go in terms of technological innovation and sophisticated cultural thought, we are always going to default to believing in the most inane and deranged theories, solely because of how…
Yojimbo (1961)
Several years ago, it was boldly stated that every work of American cinema from the last sixty years can be traced to John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers in some way or another, which sounds reductive until we realize just how influential that film was, and how its spectre still lingers heavily over a lot of…
Longlegs (2024)
A common trend for the past decade or two has been to proclaim at least one film every year as somehow the most terrifying ever made – it is a marketing tactic based around a small sample size, and done to stir interest and draw audiences into the cinema. Yet, very rarely do we find…
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
In the pantheon of great comedy films, few have stood the test of time quite as well as The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, which is quite remarkable considering how many would consider it to represent a sub-genre that is rarely known for its timeless qualities or ability to challenge audiences, but…
Amour Fou (2014)
One of the more unconventional tragic figures in the history of literature is Heinrich von Kleist, a marginally well-known poet and writer whose most notable contribution to the culture was actually his suicide – not necessarily the act itself, but the journey he took towards ultimately ending his life, which was well-documented as being a…
Down in ‘Arkansaw’ (1938)
If there is any value in revisiting low-budget cinema from the earliest days of Hollywood, it would be the fact that so many of them are driven by a sense of pure joy, we can’t help be entertained – and while it may seem dismissive, the majority of the most effective works in this regard…
Thelma (2024)
As the well-worn adage goes, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. The story of Thelma Post is certainly a fascinating one – after falling victim to a phone scam that robbed her of $10,000 of her savings, 93-year-old retiree Thelma chose to not simply allow the perpetrators to get away with such a despicable…
Perfumed Nightmare (1977)
Every country has a small set of filmmakers who are usually cited as being the canonical representatives of their cinematic culture. Whether this is through the stories they tell or their revolutionary techniques, we often find these filmmakers are amongst the most important of their respective generations. As far as cinema of the Philippines tends…
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