For a film that is influenced by a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, and even begins with the stanza that inspired the title, Home from the Hill is an awfully prosaic work that really doesn’t contribute much to an already saturated field of Southern melodramas that are far more overwrought than they are impactful, and which…

Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) is more loved than she realizes – one of Poland’s rising stars, she has taken the fitness world by storm, with her knowledge of getting (and staying) in shape being coupled with her effervescent positivity, and making her a figure many people look up to, whether in one of her large-scale public…

There’s a phenomenon that occurs very rarely, but when it does, almost the entire cinematic community comes to a grinding halt, standing in awe at what we’re seeing transpiring – a film legend emerges from the shadows after years of partial or outright retirement or relative obscurity, and provides us with another glimpse into their…

Arthur Seaton (Albert Finney) is an ordinary man – he works a regular job in a local factory in working-class London, and spends his evenings and weekends in pubs and at the local picture show, where he passes the time until he has to return to work the following day. He lives a very simple…

Mona (Tanya Zabarylo) hasn’t had the easiest life so far. When she was only a child (Olivia Landuyt), her life was shaken after her mother dies in a tragic accident, which she experiences through her bereaved father, Vincent (Tom Vermeir) struggling to come to terms with such an immense loss. However, it’s not too long…

It was the iconoclastic playwright and filmmaker David Mamet that called Hollywood “a sinkhole of depraved venality”, which isn’t a sentiment exclusive to his line of thinking – throughout its storied history, the proverbial Tinseltown has been the subject of a fair amount of brutal indictments, whether from those who were soured by their fifteen…

When it comes to taking deep-dives into the careers of artists you admire, one tends to come across some of their weaker moments, but also on occasion discover new sides of their work that we didn’t realize were there. I’ve so often expressed such immense admiration for Yasujirō Ozu, and working through his filmography has…

Sergey (Boris Barkhatov) has just turned five – and despite his young age, he has grown to have a keen understanding of the world around him. However, this sentiment isn’t shared by those in his immediate surroundings, who find him to be just like any other precocious child, curious about life, long before he learns…

In an introduction accompanying the restored version of his seminal masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (French: La Règle du Jeu), Jean Renoir describes the moment he knew he made a challenging film, when he witnessed a member of the audience at the film’s premiere light a newspaper in an attempt to burn the venue…

One of the biggest problems with contemporary world cinema is that so much attention is focused on Europe and certain Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, we don’t often give enough exposure to those nations that often fall by the wayside in many discussions. India has a rich and storied cinematic history, but…