If you can’t trust your friends and family, who can you trust? This is a question posed by Mohammad Rasoulof in The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Persian: دانهی انجیر معابد), an astonishing work that follows a few days in the life of a seemingly ordinary family in Tehran. Their patriarch has just been given…
Category: thriller
Babygirl (2024)
We all crave power in some way or another – it is hardwired into our nature to desire some kind of dominance, even if it is only to a very small degree. The philosophical reasons for having such impulses are inconclusive. Still, it is certain to be the result of shifting dynamics of power, and…
Juror #2 (2024)
We are living in an era where every film is either an expensive, massively audacious endeavour or a more intimate undertaking where a lower budget and more scarce resources are no longer seen as an obstacle, but rather a cause for celebration as the craft becomes more accessible. Unfortunately, this means that the mid-level budget…
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
While we all recognize his extraordinary gifts as a filmmaker across many different genres, we don’t often appreciate Alfred Hitchcock’s prowess as a wartime filmmaker, a fact that has been surprisingly erased from a lot of celebratory praises that have been heaped on him in his capacity as possibly the finest director in the history…
Conclave (2024)
Society consists of several different factions into which we all fit, even if we don’t realize it or even actively strive to be completely detached from any classification, with some being more mysterious than others. For well over a thousand years, one of the most intriguing sections of society has been the leadership of the…
Woman of the Hour (2024)
As a species, we are generally fascinated by the concept of criminality – even if we would not personally engage in any malicious acts, and attempt to get by without ever coming across these insidious people, there is something quite enticing about stories of those who cross the moral event horizon and decide to seal…
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
When Todd Phillips announced that he intended to make a film based on the classic DC supervillain The Joker, there was a collective sense of skepticism and sincere incredulity towards a filmmaker known more for irreverent, broad comedies that usually aimed for the low-hanging fruit and developed a reputation for their simplicity. He was the…
Bad Genius (2024)
For as long as we have been placing value on academic results and viewing them as the ultimate indication of success as far as scholastic achievement, there have been conversations around whether something such as ethical cheating can exist – is it possible that going against the honour system presented by every academic institution can…
Trap (2024)
It’s been roughly a decade since M. Night Shyamalan released The Visit and essentially became respectable again, regaining a sense of acclaim that he earned earlier in his career when he was proclaimed a wunderkind based on his promising debut. He lost this status gradually over time after a run of notoriously awful films that…
Suspicion (1941)
While he was only officially crowned as the Master of Suspense midway through his career, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most effective thrillers was made relatively early in his career. Suspicion (based on the novel Before the Fact by Anthony Berkeley Cox), which the director crafted alongside a writing team consisting of Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison…
The Postmodern Pelican 