“One day you’ll pay for your laughter and my tears” – these are words spoken by the main character in I, Olga Hepnarová (Czech: Já, Olga Hepnarová), a shocking and brilliant film hailing from Tomáš Weinreb and Petr Kazda, both making their feature-length film debut with this chillingly socially-relevant psychological thriller that is based on…

Being a parent is difficult – this is a sentiment shared by a great many films, and a subject explored countless times in various ways, across different genres throughout the years. One of the most profound meditations on this subject is Menashe, a small independent film that uses the concept of parenthood and its intersections…

Isn’t Isabelle Huppert just the greatest actress in the world? While this may seem unprofessionally hyperbolic, I absolutely adore her, and I believe her to be one of the most extraordinary performers to ever work in cinema, due to her relentless brilliance across genres. Many have debated her finest hour, with quite a bit of…

Here’s a statement I haven’t made abundantly clear several times before: I utterly admire David Lynch. I admire how he is one of the most important filmmakers to ever live, how he helped define both surrealism and independent cinema, and how he has been a cinematic iconoclast who has broken boundaries for what is possible…

Diane Arbus was an extraordinarily talented artist, and her legacy as one of the most profoundly meaningful photographers to ever live continues to influence artists interested in humanity to this day. I know I have been inspired by Arbus, and many others have been as well. Her relentless provocation of form and content in her…

I am not someone averse to elaborate and advanced filmmaking, with blindingly spectacular special effects and an unbelievably high budget, used over a lengthy and exhausting period of production. Laborious, time-consuming and expensive filmmaking was what Hollywood was built on and continues to thrive on. However, as I have never made it a secret before,…

Who doesn’t love a good Cold War-era espionage thriller? I must admit that I am quite a devotee of the period, and I always have been fascinated by works of fiction that locate themselves within that period. John le Carré has, for a very long time, been one of the foremost figures in Cold War…

One of the reasons I admire Mike Leigh and consider him one of the greatest writers and directors of all time is the manner in which he presents reality through his films. Each of his films, while differing in tone and central plot, are exquisite meditations on reality and the problems with living in a specific…

Let me take you back many years to a time when I was a neophyte of a cinephile, and there were a few names I encountered that seemed definitive markers of audacity and notable reputation when it came to cinema. One such name was Spike Lee, who I consider to be one of the most…

I like to think of myself as someone with a relatively refined taste in cinema, and I often criticize films that rely on sentiment and emotion to make a statement. However, at the same time, I readily admit that I am essentially a sucker for a good emotional catharsis, granted the film that does the…