The Crawthorne State Mental Hospital is an institution that specializes in housing and treating children with mental handicaps. It’s run by the stern but dedicated Dr Clark (Burt Lancaster), a serious doctor who does his best to care for the children put under his care. He soon finds himself dealing with a new set of…

The Hirayamas are an ordinary family living in Tokyo. Wataru (Shin Saburi) is the patriarch, who has provided for his family in his capacity as a highly-respected businessman that has made many friends along the way and has positioned him as a trusted voice for numerous people seeking help with their own individual problems, whether…

Luce is a film I truly don’t care for. No matter how much effort I put into revisiting this film, mainly since it has been hailed as some modern masterpiece, can convince me that it’s anything other than plainly mediocre, and the appeal surrounding it continues to evade me. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted…

“He may be a servant, but he’s also a human” These words occur at a crucial moment in The Servant, the first of three collaborations between acclaimed playwright Harold Pinter and exiled American director Joseph Losey. They may appear to be an obvious, perhaps even painfully gauche, sentiment – but they happen almost concurrently to…

The cinema of Mike Leigh has always been something I’ve been so deeply fascinated by, with his work being pivotal in my development to truly appreciate the art of filmmaking. One of the first encounters I had with Leigh was when I stumbled upon Vera Drake just after its initial release. Too young to fully…

Nestled comfortably in Northern Italy is the industrial town of Ravenna, which is home to many factories and large-scale businesses, all of which take advantage of whatever natural resources they can get from this region, which they feel compelled to exploit as far as they can. The wife of one of the managers is Giuliana…

Nobody has understood the pain of holding onto broken dreams quite like Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), who was well on her way to success during her teenage years, particularly after winning the regional Miss Juneteenth pageant, which is known to afford the winners a full scholarship to the university of their choice, and thus afford…

Nestled in a humble hilltop home reside Shingo Ogata (So Yamamura), an elderly businessman heading towards retirement and his wife, Yasuko (Teruko Nagaoka). The couple has been married for decades, and have settled into their golden years, living with their son, Shuichi (Ken Uehara) and his young wife, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara), who is growing accustomed…

Milla (Eliza Scanlen) is a precocious teenage girl who has struggled to fit in most of her life, always being something of an outsider. She has been quietly battling cancer for a while and has recently relapsed, making the need for an even more aggressive form of treatment to take over her life. This causes…

Frank Fogle (John Hawkes) has just lost his wife after a long battle with cancer. Before she passed on, she left Frank with one last task – to take a trip to her native Ireland with their son to scatter her ashes over a river that holds some significance to her. The problem is that…