Art loves a crisis. There’s something about a person (or several) being in peril that inherently fascinates us and keeps us coming back, especially when it is in relation to the movies – from horror to action, comedy to melodrama, people facing adversity is the foundation of the film industry in one way or the…
Medea (1969)
We can divide the career of Pier Paolo Pasolini into various eras, based on both the specific stories he was focusing on, and the motivations behind telling them. His adaptations were the most interesting, and regardless of whether the director was making something faithful to the source material, or transposing these themes onto a more…
The Batman (2022)
There comes a point where one needs to ask how many times can the same story be told before it becomes stale? In the past two decades, we have been witness to no less than three different instances of attempting to retell the Batman story, with this number growing even larger if we consider animated…
UHF (1989)
One of the more bizarre occurrences that we see from time to time is when a studio greenlights a film that is supposed to serve as nothing but a star vehicle for someone experiencing a degree of immense popularity at a particular moment, and instead of becoming sordid and uninteresting affairs, actually turn to be…
Mr. Peek-a-Boo (1951)
Some are blessed with the ability to fly, others the capacity to become invisible. Léon Dutilleul (Bourvil) has discovered that he can walk through walls, a skill that he initially enjoys, since it offers him the opportunity to essentially do whatever he desires, with everyone around him being entirely bewildered by this newfound ability, especially…
The River (1951)
Jean Renoir is one of a few artists who can easily lay claim to being one of the finest filmmakers of any generation – his work stretched across the decades, and saw the director tackle every conceivable side of society through his elegant, fascinating works. One of his most interesting qualities was his ability to…
Flee (2021)
There are many ways to look at life, but perhaps the most effective way to describe it is that we exist to tell our stories in various forms, since we all have individual journeys that make for profoundly moving narratives when we look at it from an outside perspective. In this regard, one of the…
Inside Daisy Clover (1965)
As they say, there’s no business like showbusiness – and no one will remind you of this fact faster than those working within the entertainment industry, whether for better or worse. Hollywood has had a preoccupation with telling stories about itself on numerous occasions, almost from the time it came into being – and over…
Three Months (2022)
When it comes to looking at a film about important issues, we have to make a difficult decision in our adjudication – can subpar writing be redeemed through good intentions? This is a question we often have to ask, with the general consensus depending on both how effective the supposedly poorer writing is in contrast…
Ikiru (1952)
Ikiru (Japanese: 生きる) isn’t a film so much as it is a deeply moving voyage to the heart of the human condition, told through a fervent form of compassion rarely found in even the most empathetic works of cinema. Praising Akira Kurosawa for being a gifted filmmaker is the same as calling Mozart a talented…
The Postmodern Pelican 