There are very few reasons to not find Rabbit Hole to be an incredibly compelling and worthwhile film. Coming in at a neat 91-minutes, John Cameron Mitchell has turned the acclaimed stage play by David Lindsay-Abaire into a powerful drama about grief that hits hard and leaves us reeling in emotions in how it explores…

What is most interesting about the films of Éric Rohmer is that they are simultaneously beautifully simple, but somehow manage to still compress multitudes of ideas and themes into the most straightforward representation of life the viewer is bound to see, derived from his work alongside many other French filmmakers that set out to reflect…

A brief personal story to preface this review – when watching The Remains of the Day recently, I was struck by memories of a very particular time in my life, probably somewhere in primary school. Whenever the question would come up in class about what we wanted to be when we grow up, my classmates’…

Daddy Nostalgia is the kind of film that has value we don’t realize until we’re nearly done. Bertrand Tavernier was a profoundly gifted filmmaker, a multi-generational French storyteller that could weave together the most complex plots into some of the most profoundly moving testaments to the human condition. However, this film in particular is one…

When looking at any form of postcolonial literature written by an author that is part of a previously marginalized group, we can see some degree of “writing back”, whereby they are constructing works that not only describe their experiences or those of their ancestors, but also serve a discursive function, commenting on the issues that…

“The day’s clear reality dissolved into the even clearer images of memory that appeared before my eyes with the strength of a true stream of events.” These profound words occur towards the middle of Wild Strawberries (Swedish: Smultronstället), one of the many unimpeachable masterpieces handcrafted by the incredible Ingmar Bergman, produced at a time in…

Somewhere on the other side of Paris sits the small neighbourhood of Porte des Lilas (“Port of Lilacs”), in which many of the city’s working-class citizens reside, making it their home after a long day’s work. Two of its residents in particular are the focus – L’Artiste (Georges Brassens) is a penniless musician who makes…

Stockholm in the 1980s seems like a wonderful place – except to seventh graders Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin), who haven’t ever quite fit in – but it’s not like they put in much effort anyway. Instead of following the mainstream fashions and pursuing popular interests, the two girls instead decide to embrace…

There was a crossover period somewhere in the mid-1950s, where the Golden Age of Hollywood came into collision with the earliest pioneers of New Hollywood – we weren’t quite at the point where it made sense to consider these young, burgeoning revolutionaries as being the next shining stars of the industry, but there was some…

There’s a certain faction of the filmgoing community that absolutely idolizes Hong Sang-soo, whose work has reflected a keen sense of understanding the human condition, so much that it has come to singularly define him, all the while some of his contemporaries have risen to more worldwide acclaim, outside of the niche arthouse of which…