There are moments when I genuinely start to believe Max Ophüls may have just been the greatest filmmaker in the history of French cinema, and perhaps even beyond that. These don’t even necessarily occur in the immediate aftermath of watching one of his films, but rather whenever one of the evocative memories of his work…

We are living in an era where queer stories are not only becoming more widespread, they’re actively emerging as some of the most poignant works in contemporary cinema. One of the fundamental signs that a certain kind of story is starting to be readily embraced by a viewership wider than the niche audience that they…

Despite having departed over a decade ago, the spirit of the wonderful Éric Rohmer remains alive and well in many young filmmakers, especially those from his native France that have inherited his legacy of telling beautifully human stories centred on ordinary people as they navigate any number of themes, ranging from romance to the most…

Harry (Matthew James Morrison) is a young doctor who has chosen to spend a weekend in Berlin, taking a break from the hustle and bustle of his native London. He spends the time engaging in anonymous sexual encounters, punctuated with intense sessions at any of the local nightclubs that he can find. It’s on the…

While we can easily see the roots of his distinctive traits in even the earliest works in his career, Alfred Hitchcock was not immediately the Master of Suspense, spending some time as a director-for-hire on a number of projects that we now know are fortunate to bear his name, even after having made a few…

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for not thinking too much of Our Souls at Night, based on the premise and the general tone of the film. The adaptation of the novel by Kent Haruf, directed by Ritesh Batra, is not necessarily the most revolutionary piece of filmmaking, functioning as a solid, endearing romantic drama…

At the perfect intersection between screwball comedy and romantic melodrama resides People Will Talk, a daring and provocative film by the legendary Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was operating at his creative peak around this time, having just redefined the Golden Age of Hollywood with the iconic All About Eve, as well as a range of…

Once you spend a considerable amount of time with Leos Carax and his films, you start to realize that he is not a director all that interested in playing by the rules, preferring to entirely dismantle the art of filmmaking on both the narrative and visual level, while still retaining a sense of control and…

After nearly a decade of making small, intimate independent dramas that bordered on outright horror, it seemed inevitable that Josephine Decker would make something that veered towards populist filmmaking. Mercifully, her first foray into the realm of the mainstream was one that actually seemed very fitting for the director, in the form of The Sky…

One of the benefits of being a notoriously prolific artist is that there are occasions where one has very little choice but to step out of their comfort zone. John Ford’s name often evokes one of two images – classical westerns, or intense character-driven dramas. It doesn’t often lead one to think of gentle romantic…