When it comes to discussing films that take a very strange approach to their premises, The Housemaid (Korean: 하녀) sits perched comfortably at the very top. It is the apex predator of psychological thrillers of its era, an intrepid meta-commentary on social issues that boldly goes where very few films would dare to go, especially…
Pasolini (2014)
“I think to scandalize is a right, to be scandalized is a pleasure, and those who refuse to be scandalized are moralists.” Like many of his statements throughout the years, the words above have come to define Pier Paolo Pasolini as an artist. A filmmaker and writer who I myself have had difficult feelings towards,…
The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)
When playwright Radha Blank didn’t see people like her reflected on screen, she decided to take matters into her own hands, rather than waiting around to see a story like hers produced. Independent cinema tends to allow for this kind of intrepid risk, and while many such filmmakers tend to fade into obscurity after initially…
Eternal Beauty (2020)
Jane (Sally Hawkins) has not led the most pleasant life. When she was younger, she was victim to the malice of others, most notably being left at the altar after her husband-to-be abandoned her at the last minute, which comes almost concurrently to her time as a participant in local beauty pageants. She has now…
An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (1977)
“I wonder, will we really be able to, in dozens of years, to laugh and shed senile tears over these days? Then the earth will swallow us up, and our names will be obscured with fog” There are many ways to describe An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (Russian: Неоконченная пьеса для механического пианино) –…
Three Colours: Blue (1993)
When he set out to make his bold trilogy of films that touched on the human condition, Krzysztof Kieślowski was quite right in realizing that the path towards this isn’t through overly ambitious explorations of every aspect of our existence, but rather intricate, intimate dramas that centre on ordinary people living their lives and coming…
Dick Johnson is Dead (2020)
Death is inevitable – this is a fact we all learn quite early on in our lives, and it’s something that we all have to come to terms with in some way. However, this hasn’t stopped countless people throughout history from attempting to delay death in some way – whether through trying to prolong their…
Pigs and Battleships (1961)
You can’t ever accuse Shohei Imamura of not delivering precisely what he promised throughout his career. When venturing into a film with the striking title of Pigs and Battleships (Japanese: 豚と軍艦), you’d easily be forgiven for thinking this is somewhat allegorical, functioning as a metaphorical reference to something embedded in the film. The surprise that…
Hocus Pocus (1993)
I recently wrote about revisiting Barry Sonnenfeld’s adaptations of The Addams Family for the first time since I was much younger, and what wonderful experiences they were, especially since they hold up so wonderfully all these years later, so the nostalgia is not misguided or ill-conceived. Conversely, I had a look at Hocus Pocus again,…
Too Late Blues (1961)
The trouble with trying to work through the careers of your favourite artists is that you’re bound to find some failures here and there, which can be quite a disconcerting experience if you’re not careful. This applies very heavily to John Cassavetes, a true iconoclast of independent cinema, so much that his early career was…
The Postmodern Pelican 