I was recently talking to a friend, and I mentioned that there are few words that are more profoundly striking at the end of a film than “Directed by Stanley Kubrick” because naturally, you’d have just been through a period of great existential manipulation, as was par for the course for a man who relished…

Judith Hearne (Maggie Smith) is an Irish spinster who has recently taken occupancy in a small boarding house in Dublin. A profoundly lonely woman, she has been forced to be constantly on the move due to her diminishing funds, and the fact that her career as a piano teacher is hardly enough to sustain her,…

Like any given year during the peak of his filmmaking, 1976 was quite a busy year for Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This year, in particular, bears significance because three of his most notable films were all released then, each one of them extremely different in genre, story and even quality. Amongst the films he produced in…

You can say quite a lot about Derek Jarman. You can accuse him of being a reckless cinematic provocateur, as well as hailing him as an artistic stalwart, a filmmaker and visual artist that approached tricky subjects such as human sexuality in relation to society in a time when it wasn’t entirely easy to get…

“In the end, people are emotions. Emotions are gullible and forceful. Precious, cheap and alluring. And I long for them now“ These are the words appearing, via voice-over narration, towards the end of Hong Sang-soo’s Grass (Korean: 풀잎들), a subtle, meditative film that sees the South Korean maestro revisiting many common themes in his distinctive…

Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker) leaves his Brooklyn home behind in 1953, heading to Greenwich Village, which (according to our protagonist) harbours “fame and fortune”, with his perceived destiny to become an actor. Over the course of a few months, the young man finds himself hopelessly out of his depth, but nonetheless resilient and resourceful, doing…

A woman on the verge of a complete breakdown takes the stage every night, and battles her personal demons, channelling her trauma into her performance, hoping that somehow she will be able to convey some iota of truth. John Cassavetes certainly knew how to construct a compelling story from the most simple of premises, as…

“Their friendship was very sound. True, they were different – one sang. the other didn’t. Yet, they were alike” These words are some of the final spoken by Agnès Varda in her role as narrator. We have previously followed the life of two women. The one who sings is Pauline (Valérie Mairesse), otherwise known as…

Giovanni Vivaldi (Alberto Sordi) has worked for the government for over thirty years, running the pension office, making his impending retirement bittersweet. However, his son, Marion (Vincenzo Crocitti) is about to enter the work-force, and both his father and mother (Shelley Winters) believe it would be a good idea for their intelligent but meek son…

Claud Langham (Dirk Bogarde) is an extremely unlikable man – a ferocious prosecution lawyer, his latest case is that of Kevin Woodford (David Warner), a young ex-soldier discharged and put on trial for a mercy killing of an older man, asserting that it was an act of compassion. Claud’s personal life seems to be just…