This year, I have finally take the leap directly into Peter Greenaway’s career, and exploring his films have been a truly rewarding experience. There is nary a friend, relative or co-worker that has not been on the receiving end of my adoration-fueled lamentations of Drowning by Numbers, a film that changed my perspective on literature…

Bad Boy Bubby by Rolf de Heer has everything – cat murder, spoken-word punk rock, chocolate eclairs and pervasive bagpipe bands. I have seen my fair share of strange, offbeat films in my time, but not even I could consider myself prepared for Bad Boy Bubby, which I can only attest to being one of…

History was a lot more violent and vicious than our high school classes would have led us to believe. The brutal and twisted nature of the past has rarely been better explored than in Nelson Pereira Dos Santos’ sordid and perverted dark comedy, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Portuguese: Como Era Gostoso o Meu…

“Paranoia’s the garlic in life’s kitchen, right: you can never have too much” This humorous but ominous sentiment appears in Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Bleeding Edge. Considering how defiant Pynchon’s work is to the screen (to date, only having a single official adaptation, the brilliant Inherent Vice in 2014, although some may argue that Alex Ross…

I love cinematic iconoclasts, and there have been few filmmakers that I admirer more in this regard than John Waters, whose unhinged audacity has made him a controversial figure, as well as someone I am deeply in admiration of. From the sheer unhinged insanity of Pink Flamingos to the enduring brilliance of Hairspray, Waters has…

Before he made one of the year’s most terrifying films, Hereditary, Ari Aster was honing his craft in short-form filmmaking, crafting smaller films that may not have much in terms of duration, but certainly do have some interesting ideas. I decided to explore some of Aster’s short films in an attempt to decipher the complex…

I remember once discussing with a friend the fact that there is virtually no way to make an original adaptation of Hamlet that hasn’t been done before, as it seems the core of the story has pervaded the artistic landscape in a way that is almost indelible, inspiring countless works that derive something from the…

That was…something. I cannot recall ever having seen a film quite like Drowning by Numbers, a subversive, sometimes perverse comedy from only the most unconventionally brilliant of auteurs, Peter Greenaway, one of the true cinematic anarchists, who possesses almost chaotically towering talents, as evident by this very odd film that is wholly unapologetic in its…

Addiction is never an easy subject to represent in fiction because in order to convey the life of an addict, the artist behind the work needs to somehow capture the blissful euphoria as well as the fear and terror that come with being an addict. Danny Boyle, in 1996, made one of the seminal representations…