Despite having passed away nearly a quarter of a century ago, the spectre of Stanley Kubrick lingers heavily over the contemporary film industry – either it is a case of his iconic work being references or influencing the visual and narrative style of those who are inspired by his films, or we see projects that…
Author: The Postmodern Pelican
Rhubarb (1951)
One has to wonder whether when he made his notorious quip about his preference for screen partners (“never work with children or animals”), W.C. Fields truly understood how some of the most interesting performances in film history have come from these unexpected sources. Of course, his cynicism was not unfounded, and for the most part,…
The Holdovers (2023)
There is a difference between being alone and being isolated, which is something that many of us encounter at some point in our lives. For the characters in The Holdovers, this takes on a new meaning over their Christmas break, when the majority of staff and students depart the hallowed halls of a prestigious New…
Ratcatcher (1999)
Lynne Ramsay may have not made many films (less than half a dozen in the past twenty years), but yet it has never been a question that she is one of our greatest living filmmakers, which is proof that some directors are the embodiment of choosing quality over quantity. It seems appropriate that she is…
Way Out West (1937)
By this point, it is abundantly clear that, despite casting a vast net over all forms of cinema, the one subject I am most passionate about (or at least one of them) is comedy. From the start, I have always been attracted to works of art designed to evoke laughter, since it is possible to…
The Fire Within A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022)
One principle that I try and employ daily is to live a life so unpredictable, adventurous and interesting that Werner Herzog will one day be compelled to make one of his overly dramatic but achingly beautiful (and occasionally very funny) documentaries about it. We’d all be far more interesting if we lived by such a…
School Daze (1988)
When we think about the early career of Spike Lee, the focus is usually on two of the films he made in the 1980s – She’s Gotta Have It, widely considered one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time, and the brilliant Do the Right Thing, which is one of a small handful of…
Joika (2023)
At some point in our lives, we all have a dream in which we find ourselves in a strange place without any idea of how we got there, or any indication of the way to escape, and every step forward we take makes us feel more isolated and alone. In the case of Joy Womack,…
In the Gloaming (1997)
While it is difficult to conceive of now that it has attained a level of prestige that it never had before, there was a time in which television was seen as an inferior medium – the delineation between movie stars and television actors was broad and took a lot of talent, effort and finagling to…
Rustin (2023)
One of the great unheralded heroes of the Civil Rights Movement is Bayard Rustin, who has only started to receive recognition in recent years, with his revolutionary efforts to bring equality to marginalized groups in the United States being beyond admirable, but rarely given the attention they deserved at the time. However, we have seen…
The Postmodern Pelican 