You simply can’t look at the work of Yasujirō Ozu and not discuss the impact of the Second World War on the stories he told. He was a filmmaker that may have rarely addressed the war directly, but rather crafted stories that were situated around the time, focusing on the social and cultural changes brought…
The Munsters (2022)
They often say that comedians are very adept at horror, since they understand the dark places from which humour comes from better than most. However, we can also invert this idea and see whether it is applicable from the other way around – can those more well-versed in horror make effective comedies? One person who…
Un chant d’amour (1950)
Despite running at a diminutive duration of 26 minutes, Un chant d’amour remains one of the most important films in the history of experimental cinema. The only official directorial effort by esteemed French author and playwright Jean Genet, who undertook an impressive but dangerous challenge of telling a story centred around queer issues, it is…
The Woman King (2022)
Every year, when confronted with a flurry of remakes, reboots and revivals, someone will doubtlessly express the fact that Hollywood is running out of ideas, and that blockbusters are not allowed to be original anymore, or else they will struggle to turn a profit. Obviously, this is not a delusion, since we’ve seen so many…
Fearless (1993)
Art has always been interested in examining a few fundamental themes – love, death, family and the meaning of life are essentially the main ideas that have persisted for about as long as art has been produced, regardless of the medium. We can group these themes under the general category of the human condition, which…
Don’t Worry Darling (2022)
As David Lynch once famously said about suburban life “I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath”, which is a quote that is often brought out when any work of literature is produced in which an artist is looking at the broken promises of…
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
“Hogue lived and died here in the desert, and I’m sure Hell will never be too hot for him” There are many filmmakers that we associate with New Hollywood, the artist who defined the movement away from very traditional forms of storytelling, to more subversive, provocative and daring, which set the standard for several generations…
Chameleon Street (1989)
How does one begin to describe William Douglas Street Jr. in a way that makes sense? Perhaps the first person we should ask is “The Chameleon” himself – but it’s very likely he’d not be able to answer it either, since his entire life has seemingly been committed to taking on numerous personalities, all of…
The Things We Say, The Things We Do (2020)
Nothing has been more actively explored in the history of literature quite as much as the concept of love. Whether it be on stage or the printed page, or delivered by way of images on screen or sounds that come from musical instruments, the elusive idea of romance has been the primary theme for countless…
Kansas City Princess (1934)
There’s something so appealing about comedies produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood, particularly those made in the Pre-Code era, a time in which artistic expression within the film industry was driven by the simple but effective adage of “anything goes” – and few films demonstrate this with more elegance or nuance than Kansas City…
The Postmodern Pelican 