Two sisters, Maria (Adèle Haenel) and Suzanne (Sara Forestier) were raised in a working-class environment by their widowed father (François Damiens), a cross-country truck driver who has done his best to give his girls the best possible life, in lieu of having a mother to help guide them through some of the more challenging moments….
The Valley of the Bees (1968)
A young man called Ondřej (Petr Čepek) has grown up mainly in a brotherhood of knights, after his father sent him to enter into an order in order to atone for his sins and honour the reputation of his wealthy family, after a particularly perilous event renders him very close to death. Over the years,…
Barbarella (1968)
“Decrucify the angel, or else I’ll melt your face!” I’m not sure why Barbarella exists, but I am so glad it does. Roger Vadim, never quite considered the authority on niche subjects like “subtlety”, “decency” or “logical storytelling”, managed to make a film that somehow went from nothing more than a cheap exploitation film about…
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)
A mysterious man (Rod Steiger) roams the streets of New York City in the late 1960s. He adopts a variety of disguises – a genial Irish priest, a passionate German expatriate and a flamboyant hairstylists are amongst his more notable achievement, which he uses to coerce his way into the homes of a variety of…
The Swimmer (1968)
Frank Perry deserved a lot better than he got during his lifetime. A director whose work was always defined by an uncompromising fascination with the human condition, he directed several films that may have not received the acclaim they warranted in their initial release, but certainly could be considered ahead of their time, with Perry…
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) is a painter who lives with his wife Alma (Liv Ullmann) in the relative isolation of the Swedish countryside. They have retreated here to escape the rush of the modern world, so that Alma may spend the rest of her pregnancy in peace. However, everything is not quite as it…
Spirited Away (2001)
I’d like to break from decorum for just a moment and speak on a personal note. This review is one that I have been anxiously awaiting to write for a while now. For those of you who have followed me for a while, you’ll know that I normally commemorate milestone reviews with films that are…
Force Majeure (2014)
Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are a married Swedish couple that decide to take a short vacation in the French Alps, where they hope to spend a few days with their children (Clara Wettergren and Vincent Wettergren) skiing through the snow-white landscapes and appreciating the tranquillity of the gorgeous countryside. However,…
Mister America (2020)
Tim Heidecker plays a fictionalized version of himself, a concert promoter who has recently been acquitted from a trial in which he was accused of inadvertently killing a large portion of the guests at one of his recent events. As a result of his disillusionment with the justice system, he decides to run for District…
Emma (2020)
Literary adaptations come in many different forms – there are those that remain very close to the source material, and those that update it, whether contemporizing it or just extracting a few general themes and infusing them into a more loosely-structured version of the story. Occasionally, there are adaptations that somehow manage to do both…
The Postmodern Pelican 