In the vast landscape of romantic cinema, no one did it better than Luchino Visconti, whose career was populated by achingly beautiful stories of love, usually set to the backdrop of fascinating historical events, making his films multilayered explorations of the human spirit in its various forms. One of his finest achievements, albeit one that…

As one of the formative voices in the New Hollywood movement, Paul Mazursky had quite a distinct style, which he carefully constructed through a series of melancholy comedies throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Some of them, such as Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Enemies: A Love Story, are very personal to the director, while others…

There’s something so charming about Italian comedy, even those films that are not necessarily all that original. They’re often made with such wonderful sensitivity, we can’t help but be beguiled by the endearing nature of these stories. It helps a lot that many of the greatest ones were made by directors who were fully-fledged artists…

The Pre-Code era brought us many daring and provocative projects, featuring subject matter that would not stand a chance at making its way into mainstream film after the Hayes Code was established in the mid-1930s, which essentially sought to censor anything even mildly against the conservative principles of Joseph Breen and his very strict opinion…

Any lover of the Golden Era of Hollywood will doubtlessly be aware of the concept known as “the Lubitsch Touch”, in reference to the esteemed director Ernst Lubitsch, who remains one of the most important and accessible directors from this period. There aren’t any easy ways to describe this particular quality – those who worked…

“The sad and lonely days of my youth come back to me as the autumn winds blow” The concept of autumn lingers very heavily throughout She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (Japanese: 野菊の如き君なりき), the fascinating account of a lost love, as curated by Keisuke Kinoshita, one of the most unheralded masters of early Japanese cinema….

When one thinks of Sir David Lean, we don’t normally associate him with breezy, lovable romantic comedies, despite the fact that he directed arguably the greatest screen romance ever committed to film in the form of Brief Encounter. Most of his career was defined by epic historical dramas and literary adaptations that were as lavish…

Somewhere deep in The World to Come, there is a great film, the problem is that it never manages to get to that point. Mona Fastvold, in her directorial debut, made a film that is visually astonishing, but narratively paltry, every emotion feeling empty and the structure seeming like an afterthought. Not a necessarily bad…

There’s a ferry heading from Greece to Italy, transporting citizens from both countries between them, as usual. On one particular trip, the ferry is servicing two specific individuals – Victor (Vasilis Magouliotis ), is a former professional diver who has grown too old and slightly unfit to be fully in control of his craft. Matthias…

As a film-going population, especially those of us who have a bit more of a critical eye when approaching art, cinema is most celebrated when it is ambitious and unexpected, showing an originality that allows it to stake its claim as something that has never been done before, or at least not done in that…