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…

Appreciating and admiring an artist sometimes entails admitting that they too have their shortcomings, and not everything that they produce can be considered a masterpiece. This is unfortunately the case with Xavier Dolan, a filmmaker I hold a huge amount of reverence towards, with his films being some of the most extraordinary of the past…

At the time of its release, there were certain major film critics who called Carnal Knowledge the best film Mike Nichols had made to date – and mercifully, he would go on to have a decade that stretched into the 21st century, in which he would prove this to be quite far from the truth,…

Death has many purposes. Scientifically, it’s the ceasing of all biological functions. Philosophically, it is the process where we come to accept our inevitable fate. Socially, it is the chance for all those who knew us (whether lovers, friends or adversaries) to reflect on their relation with the deceased. These are all the primary tenets…