Here’s a lesson: it pays off to be a bit sceptical from time to time, because if you blindly trust a film based on what it appears to be, you’re occasionally going to find that you’ve been deceived the whole time, and not always in a particularly clever way. Based on the title and the…
Miss Juneteenth (2020)
Nobody has understood the pain of holding onto broken dreams quite like Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), who was well on her way to success during her teenage years, particularly after winning the regional Miss Juneteenth pageant, which is known to afford the winners a full scholarship to the university of their choice, and thus afford…
Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Nestled in a humble hilltop home reside Shingo Ogata (So Yamamura), an elderly businessman heading towards retirement and his wife, Yasuko (Teruko Nagaoka). The couple has been married for decades, and have settled into their golden years, living with their son, Shuichi (Ken Uehara) and his young wife, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara), who is growing accustomed…
Babyteeth (2020)
Milla (Eliza Scanlen) is a precocious teenage girl who has struggled to fit in most of her life, always being something of an outsider. She has been quietly battling cancer for a while and has recently relapsed, making the need for an even more aggressive form of treatment to take over her life. This causes…
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
If you long for something that occurred at the perfect intersection between sanctimonious morality tale and harrowing existential horror, you’d probably find Roger Corman’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death delivers exactly what you’re looking for. To describe this film is to attempt to put a saddle on one of…
Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
The Savages are an ordinary couple resides in an unassuming house in London, where Myra (Kim Stanley) works as a medium, conducting weekly séances for a variety of people who come from far and wide to sample from her apparent brilliance. Her husband, Billy (Richard Attenborough) struggles to keep his wife under control, with her…
Father Goose (1964)
The Second World War rages across the Pacific, as Commander Houghton (Trevor Howard) does his best to protect his Allied forces during the Japanese invasion. He employs a number of lookouts on a variety of the surrounding islands, to alert the army to the movement of the Japanese military by watching for enemy planes. He…
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Nobody makes movies like Mario Bava – this is a fact that I used to be very thankful for, since I understood the appeal of Bava’s work, but could never quite get on board with the effusive praise cinephiles layered on him, constantly being reluctant to embrace him, because while his work was certainly unique,…
Welcome, Or No Trespassing (1964)
Kostya (Viktor Kosykh) is a rebellious young boy who finds himself constantly at odds with everyone around him. Presumably to keep him out of trouble, he’s sent to a communist pioneer camp for children, where he gallivants with his fellow campers, much to the chagrin of Comrade Dynin (Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev), the over-strict head counsellor who…
Down with Love (2003)
New York City, 1962 – the Swinging Sixties have yet to make their way across the pond from London, meaning that society was still run by prim and proper, family-style values. The arrival of Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) signals quite a significant change. Her humble roots are in Maine, where she gradually put together a…
The Postmodern Pelican 