Sergey (Boris Barkhatov) has just turned five – and despite his young age, he has grown to have a keen understanding of the world around him. However, this sentiment isn’t shared by those in his immediate surroundings, who find him to be just like any other precocious child, curious about life, long before he learns…
Extra Ordinary (2020)
Somewhere in working-class Ireland resides Rose (Maeve Higgins), a quiet young woman who runs a small driving school, being a valuable but otherwise forgettable member of the local community. However, this hasn’t always been her life – prior to settling into this banal but comfortable existence, Rose worked with her father (Risteárd Cooper), a celebrated…
Kajillionaire (2020)
Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) has only known peculiarity – named after a homeless man who came into a large fortune, her life has been anything but conventional. It doesn’t help that her parents (Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger) have made a living as con artists, with their livelihood coming in fleecing any unsuspecting victim,…
Johnny Stecchino (1991)
Dante (Roberto Benigni) is a man who knows how to have a good time, even if he doesn’t always realize it. He primarily works as a volunteer bus driver for mentally-handicapped adults, and earns a living scamming the government for insurance benefits, falsely claiming to have suffered an accident that left him partially disabled and…
The Rules of the Game (1939)
In an introduction accompanying the restored version of his seminal masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (French: La Règle du Jeu), Jean Renoir describes the moment he knew he made a challenging film, when he witnessed a member of the audience at the film’s premiere light a newspaper in an attempt to burn the venue…
Despair (1978)
“The perfect murder is the one where the victim did it” For all his idiosyncrasies, we can never accuse Rainer Werner Fassbinder for being unoriginal, as evident by many of his most unique and often divisive works. His only English-language film stands as one of his most interesting achievements – and in it, he’s working…
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)
Based on his lengthy career in comedy, the concept of pushing the envelope has come to be synonymous with Sacha Baron Cohen, and has made him both an oddly beloved figure, and someone reviled by those who are not attuned to his peculiar sense of humour. From his breakout in the early 2000s, he established…
On the Rocks (2020)
With the exception of one or two, the films of Sofia Coppola tend to arrive more as a whisper than they do with a bang, which is very much what we have come to expect from someone whose work is impelled more by description than discussion. They emerge quietly, rather than bursting onto the scene,…
The Cloud-Capped Star (1960)
One of the biggest problems with contemporary world cinema is that so much attention is focused on Europe and certain Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, we don’t often give enough exposure to those nations that often fall by the wayside in many discussions. India has a rich and storied cinematic history, but…
Wild River (1960)
The pure poetry lingering beneath Wild River is not to be underestimated, and should be addressed almost immediately when discussing a film that seems to be far more overpowering than we’d expect from looking at it on a purely superficial level. By the time he made it, Elia Kazan didn’t really have to prove anything…
The Postmodern Pelican 