In looking at the history of women-focused cinema, there are few films that represent as seismic a shift into looking at female issues as George Cukor’s The Women, the 1939 adaptation of  Clare Boothe Luce’s revolutionary stage production of the same name. Cukor was one of the most influential directors of the Golden Age of…

Watching Taika Waititi rise from being an unheralded director of obscure independent comedies to one of the most sought-after directors working today has been an interesting experience, especially for those of us who have been devoted to his work since the earliest days of his career (the discovery of Eagle vs Shark is still one…

Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine) is a rambunctious playboy patrolling the streets of London, charming every woman he meets, and making sure that they’re fully aware of how he can be a better lover to all of them, which is often used as a defence to convince his married cohorts to take the chance to sample…

Set on the homefront, a group of soldiers are about to embark on a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, in support of the military efforts in the region. With heavy hearts, these troops are leaving behind their families for the duration of their service, each one of them promising their wives and children that…

A sub-genre of cinema that I have grown to really appreciate in the past few years are the Soviet comedies that started to be produced almost concurrently to the heightening tensions of the Cold War. I’ve explored several of them in depth, looking at how they’re the most rebellious examples of post-traumatic filmmaking, as they…

Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, Charles (Hugh Griffith), who has one of the most extensive art collections in Europe. What his high-society colleagues and admirers don’t realize is that the Bonnet family has made their fortune through forgery, with Charles being a talents artist who has learned the skills…

The Jacobs are an ordinary Upper West Side family in the mid-1990s. They’re headed by Pat (Edie Falco), the stern matriarch, and her more lenient husband Alan (John Turturro), who have to endure the challenges posed by their two daughters – Dana (Jenny Slate) has already moved out of home, but is still regularly involved…

The world was a very different place in 1970 – the Vietnam War was raging, the Cold War tensions had risen to a grotesque peak, and the world watched on tenterhooks, waiting for some sign that there would be some kind of resolution. One institution was always reliable in bringing people together – the Miss…

Juno is a very important film for several reasons, most of all for its legacy. A quaint and charming independent comedy in its own right, it worked alongside Little Miss Sunshine to inspire over a decade of imitators, films that embrace their independent spirit and more twee nature and exploit them in conjunction with the…

“How I loathe adventurous-minded boys” London in the late 1940s – the Blood and Thunder Boys are a mischievous bunch of teenage boys (and one girl) who spend their days scurrying through the bumbling streets of London, where they narrowly avoid trouble in their various misadventures. They’re bound by their sacred text, the weekly pulp…