Once you’ve been a working actor for nearly forty years, you tend to learn a few things about how Hollywood works, especially if you’ve been an insider into the industry. Very few exemplify the concept of hard work quite as much as Robin Wright, an actress who has seen every side of the industry, and…
Man on the Tracks (1957)
Many film scholars have provoked the idea of a Polish New Wave, a movement that represented a seismic shift in the cinema of a country that was hit quite hard by the burden of communism, on the same level of a number of other USSR-aligned countries. Yet, it has been questioned whether the films produced…
Interiors (1978)
From a contemporary perspective, Woody Allen is a bit of an anomaly, since he is someone who has developed into something of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to working in many different genres, but he’s still retained his distinctive authorial voice behind the camera, one being able to recognize one of his films without much…
Four Good Days (2021)
Deb (Glenn Close) seems to have her life together – she has a mildly successful job working as a beautician at a local casino, and her husband (Stephen Root) is always very supportive of her pursuits. They’re an ordinary suburban couple without much excitement in their lives – but Deb does carry a secret burden,…
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
Over the years, I’ve spoken openly about how certain female filmmakers were revolutionary, particularly those that worked in decades when film was even more dominated by men than it is today. Gender politics have been an enormous part of Hollywood culture, and it is an issue that is slowly being resolved, but not nearly fast…
Silent Wedding (2008)
The death of Joseph Stalin in 1952 was a monumental event for a number of very obvious reasons, and has been engraved into the historical canon in a multitude of ways. However, some of the most interesting stories of this fateful day aren’t found in history books, but rather through the first-hand testimonials of the…
Tokyo Twilight (1957)
It doesn’t take an expert to realize that the films of Yasujirō Ozu tend to follow familiar patterns – the majority of them focus on working-class Japanese citizens in various cities around the country, coming to terms with their own personal quandaries in the years preceding or following the Second World War, which wrought irrevocable…
Winter’s Bone (2010)
Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is a young woman living in rural Missouri. Her mother suffers from chronic illness, and her father has seemingly abandoned his family, with the suspicion being that he has returned to his life of crime. However, this turns out to be more than a problem when the family is visited by…
It Can’t Be! (1975)
Russian comedy is certainly a very strange phenomenon, for a number of reasons. The first time we encounter it, we might think that it’s a bit of a contradiction, since there is a quality of seriousness that is often associated with the country, with most of the more prominent Russian films known internationally often being…
The Human Voice (2021)
There are some artists who inspire excitement and endless anticipation when they announce a new project, regardless of what it may be. Pedro Almodóvar has been the gold standard for European filmmaking (and essentially the entire arthouse as a whole) for most of his career, which reached a crescendo in the 1990s, when he was…
The Postmodern Pelican 