The Golden Age of Hollywood is filled with stories of the fascinating individuals that made it such a curiously interesting time to be alive, allowing future generations to live through these often scintillating (and sometimes even vaguely implausible) parables that are often told through rose-tinted glasses, almost as if to imply the industry was far…

There are some that consider A Hen in the Wind (Japanese: 風の中の牝鶏) to be one of the more minor efforts in the notoriously prolific career of Yasujirō Ozu – and while it is easy to adhere to this belief based on the scope of the film (considering how this was the final film he made…

Nothing signals tenacity more than a filmmaker doing whatever possible to get their film made. This is applicable to Fei Mu, whose film Spring in a Small Town (Chinese: 小城之春) was a labour of love in every definition of the term. Not being given much resources on which to construct this film, and seemingly being…

As one of the most notoriously prolific directors of his generation, Hong Sang-soo is someone that is consistently managing to defy expectations and find new stories to tell. A surface-level glance at the films he has made over the years might lead the untrained eye to assume that he peddles in the near-derogatory sub-genre of…

Despite reigning supreme as one of the most sought-after directors during the Golden Age of Hollywood as a result of his enormous versatility of a filmmaker, Frank Borzage has been continuously under-appreciated in recent years, with his films not receiving as much attention as those of his contemporaries that have held a more significant cultural…

There comes a point in everyone’s life whereby we feel as if we are simply floating through it – the world doesn’t make much sense, and we are simply just beings existing for a brief moment before perishing. While this is a nihilistic view, it is one that has been at the forefront of a…

When it comes to determining the importance of making films, one has to sometimes wonder if it is occasionally enough to just record people in their natural habitat, and still find meaning in their everyday lives. Many filmmakers have endeavoured to answer this question, and one of the most recent examples of this theory in…

As one of the more fascinating cinematic movements of the 20th century, Italian neo-realism underwent quite a transformation over time, with some of the most effective works being produced in the years following the end of the Second World War, when the focus of many filmmakers shifted from passive views of the Italian way of…

There is something about John Irving’s books that are so profoundly cinematic, despite them being works that are often quite intimate and internal. He’s become quite a cherished writer in terms of putting together stories that are deeply sentimental, but still have a jagged edge to them, which hints at much deeper meaning lurking just…

Few directors have been able to produce work that feel as urgent as that of Sidney Lumet. Whether satirical or sobering, his films were always imbued with a sense of immediacy, which assisted massively in defining him as one of the great masters of the industry. In this regard, we can look towards The Verdict…