I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but… I’ll never understand the truth about you. Never. These haunting lines, spoken by Marlon Brando, ring out like a cacophony of unconventional truthfulness in Last Tango in Paris, a film that left me almost entirely speechless, unable to articulate my thoughts precisely (this…

I’m a connoisseur of roads. I’ve been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world” These are the haunting final words of My Own Private Idaho, spoken by the tragic protagonist of the film, Mike Waters (River Phoenix). My Own Private Idaho is a film about…

There are few names that have evoked the concept of “revolutionary auteur” quite like Michael Haneke – throughout his career, Haneke has pushed the boundaries of cinema, making audacious and often extremely shocking films about the human condition, showing the smallest nuances of society and the problems that individuals face within harsh socio-political and economic…

Sometimes the most cathartic way of representing tragedy is through artistic expression, and very few events have inspired people from across the world to express their sorrow and pity quite as much as the Holocaust. For over half a century now, artists have produced novels, non-fiction works, artworks and films to try and convey the…

Two of the major cornerstones of cinema are romance and death, and very often filmmakers blend the two themes in the pursuit of making relatable statements on both of these inevitable, highly-resonant concepts. However, the concept of love has never been as inextricably honest in its relationship to our eventual demise than in  Ildikó Enyedi’s…

It goes without saying that it takes a masterful artist to reflect the dark nuances of humanity in a way that is endearing, hilarious and entertaining, but not dismissive of the subject at hand. Martin McDonagh, through both his extraordinary theatre work as well as his wonderful films, is one such artist, and with his…

In his career that lasted nearly fifty years, Robert Altman directed over three dozen films, and while many of them have gone on to become iconic works of New Hollywood filmmaking, such a prolific career often leads to some films that are less than perfect, and sometimes even far too polarizing to stand alongside some…

Independent cinema, as I have noted on multiple occasions, only grows exponentially as a movement every year, with budgets getting lower as concepts get higher. One name has always stood out in the modern independent cinema landscape for a number of reasons, Alex Ross Perry. A filmmaker who appears, on the surface, to be just…