A sub-genre of cinema that I have grown to really appreciate in the past few years are the Soviet comedies that started to be produced almost concurrently to the heightening tensions of the Cold War. I’ve explored several of them in depth, looking at how they’re the most rebellious examples of post-traumatic filmmaking, as they…
How to Steal a Million (1966)
Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, Charles (Hugh Griffith), who has one of the most extensive art collections in Europe. What his high-society colleagues and admirers don’t realize is that the Bonnet family has made their fortune through forgery, with Charles being a talents artist who has learned the skills…
A Man and a Woman (1966)
A chance encounter on weekend at their children’s boarding school introduces Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a daredevil racecar driver and Anne (Anouk Aimée), a script supervisor, to each other, and begins a fascinating friendship that sees them becoming quite close over the course of a few weeks. Both of them had been widowed not long prior…
The Face of Another (1966)
“There are monsters who act like people, and people who act like monsters” The Japanese New Wave brought attention to many fantastic filmmakers who were afforded the opportunity to tell their subversive stories through venturing beyond the confines of what many of their more formalist (but no less influential) compatriot forerunners had defined as being…
Chained for Life (2019)
A European auteur (known only here as “Herr Director”) is making his English-language debut, with a film entitled The Undesirables, an overwrought melodrama about deformed patients in a facility, who are all falsely promised the chance to have their lives improved by a sinister doctor, who hides many secrets about his institution from those under…
Landline (2017)
The Jacobs are an ordinary Upper West Side family in the mid-1990s. They’re headed by Pat (Edie Falco), the stern matriarch, and her more lenient husband Alan (John Turturro), who have to endure the challenges posed by their two daughters – Dana (Jenny Slate) has already moved out of home, but is still regularly involved…
Misbehaviour (2020)
The world was a very different place in 1970 – the Vietnam War was raging, the Cold War tensions had risen to a grotesque peak, and the world watched on tenterhooks, waiting for some sign that there would be some kind of resolution. One institution was always reliable in bringing people together – the Miss…
The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966)
“The road begins and the journey is already over” Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Hawks and the Sparrows (Italian: Uccellacci e uccellini) is a film built from a fundamentally contradictory perspective – a comedy that is far bleaker than most films made during this time, and a neo-realist masterpiece that has frequent flights of fancy into…
Come Drink with Me (1966)
The wuxia genre is one that has flourished into one of the most beloved forms of filmmaking, albeit one that can occasionally be considered a bit overwhelming to those looking to get into this form of entertainment, as the vast wealth of entries into the martial arts genre being amongst the densest in all of…
Torn Curtain (1966)
Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) and his fiancée Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews) find themselves on a luxurious vacation in Northwest Europe, staying in some of the most luxurious hotels and eating at the most expensive restaurants money can buy. The caveat is that Michael is a world-renowned physicist and an expert on nuclear warfare, having been…
The Postmodern Pelican 