There are few genres that can be more wildly entertaining than a well-made action film, since despite not always being at the forefront of good writing and mostly depending on spectacle long before the storyline, there’s something profoundly appealing about seeing a few carefully curated explosions and fight scenes, almost as if they pander to…

There are some positions in the film industry that are pivotal to entire genres, but yet very rarely receive the credit they deserve, both in terms of accolades and general recognition as being the lifeblood of the medium. Stunt performers have been an integral part of Hollywood since its inception, and with the exception of…

Many artists have tried to construct an image of the future, and whether taking a more idealistic or unsettling stance, it has led to some tremendously entertaining and insightful films. It may not be easy to view Mad Max as a film set in the future, primarily because it was made with a shoestring budget….

In a world that is stricken with poverty, there are seemingly only two ways to escape: through hard work, or sheer force. In the case of the protagonist in Monkey Man, a blend of the two seems to be the best option. In his directorial debut, Dev Patel crafts a film that has a lot…

We live in a cinematic landscape where profitability supersedes originality, and studios tend to go for what is tried and tested more than platforming exciting new stories or concepts that have never been done before, under the misguided belief that audiences only appreciate what is familiar to them. A filmmaker who has worked relatively hard…

History has always been ingrained in cinema in some form – whether retellings of the past or merely works set within specific periods, there has always been a strong sense of urgency when it comes to exploring the past to some degree. Historical films take many different forms, but one that I have personally grown…

The film industry has always had an obsession with the concept of spectacles – there is nothing quite as entertaining as a well-made, big-budget blockbuster, and while they have mostly defaulted to genres such as science fiction and superhero stories in recent years, there was a time when the biggest source of inspiration for these…

The cinematic landscape could truly benefit from having more directors like Nida Manzoor. We don’t often witness the immediate birth of such a promising young voice that emerges with little fanfare, but immediately is established as an essential talent that will define their generation of visual storytellers. In her feature directorial debut, after a few…

Part of the appeal of the New Hollywood movement was the tendency to push boundaries in a way that didn’t exist previously. If you look at the body of work produced during this time from a distance, you can see two broad categories of the films that were most successful – there were those that…

As is often the case with most great literature, the premise of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not original to the Bard, but rather taken from an ancient text, which he carefully appropriated to creatively hide the fact that this story of revenge and violence was not his own work (although the semantics of such situations…