A tagline for the play and subsequent film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County reads “misery loves family”. The theme of dysfunctional families is not foreign to cinema – there have been some truly memorable instances of troubled families in cinema – some of them hilarious, some of them depressingly sad. I am not…

Sometimes the most touching films come in the smallest packages. One recent film I saw that I found truly wonderful is Santa Claus Has Blues Eyes (French: Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus), a charming and lovely little film that may not technically qualify as a short film, but clocking in at just under…

I am not entirely sure what drove me to watch this film, other than a brief recommendation and a strange curiosity to watch a film that I had only known the existence of for about 10 minutes prior to watching it. Perhaps it was the run-time (clocking in at just less than an hour), or…

It has not been a secret that two authors I absolutely adore are Thomas Pynchon and Franz Kafka. There are a number of reasons why I love them, but one is how they create an uneasy sense of paranoia, and their use of their main characters being an individual in an unforgiving world. There have…

Cinema has the ability to do two things, amongst others – the first is to serve as a reflection of the period and society that it takes place in, and the second is to attempt to change hearts and minds about a certain issue. There have certainly been very many films that go beyond the…

I truly believe that 1999 was one of the best years in cinema history. In that one year, we saw a plethora of talents, new and veteran, making films that made 1999 one of the most extraordinary periods for cinema – we had David Fincher creating the iconic Fight Club, M. Night Shyamalan breaking through…

There is a moment in Endless Poetry (Spanish: Poesía sin fin) where Pequeñita (Julia Avendaño), one of the main characters’ girlfriends with dwarfism, encounters someone equally in stature to her – the stranger simply says “You are small. I am small. Together we can grow” – this is one of the most touching moments I…

What is there to say about There Will Be Blood? It has been a decade since it was released, and it is still, by far, the greatest film of the twenty-first century. I am not simply saying this because I am a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson – in fact, There Will Be Blood…

I think Mrs Dalloway is one of the greatest books ever written – extraordinary in its approach to looking at humanity, with a keen sense of humour and a unique structure. It seems to be a book that is pretty much unfilmable, because most of what I liked about Mrs Dalloway can only be garnered…

I recently read Virginia Woolf’s beautiful, poignant and highly influential novel, Mrs. Dalloway, and needless to say I adored it. I am firmly in the school of fans of Postmodern literature, so to read an undeniably Modernist novel such as Mrs. Dalloway allows for one to see where the likes of David Foster Wallace, Don…