“We thought it was a normal hotel” Five people find themselves in a mysterious hotel somewhere in the French countryside. Alissa (Nicole Hiss) and her husband Max Thor (Henri Garcin) are a young couple on holiday. They are joined by Stein (Michael Lonsdale), a fiercely passionate academic who strikes up a friendship with Max, who…
The House That Screamed (1969)
Horror is a genre that has produced just as many iconic figures as it has thrust audacious filmmakers into obscurity, regardless of the quality of their work. A figure that grapples the line between these two is Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, a director who may have only made two theatrical films, but did so in such…
Kes (1969)
Billy Casper (David Bradley) is a young man growing up in the rural suburbs of working-class England. Raised by a single mother, and bullied by his older brother, Billy has never quite fit in and has struggled to find the same sense of belonging his peers at his school seem to share. Seemingly experiencing an…
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969)
In Shinjuku City, one of Tokyo’s many neighbourhoods resides a small bookshop run by a genial elderly author (Moichi Tanabe). The bane of his existence, as he soon learns, is a young man named Birdy Hilltop (Tadanori Yokoo), a petty criminal who has chosen this particular establishment as the base for his latest series of…
Cactus Flower (1969)
Dr Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) is a successful dentist who leads quite an exciting life – his practice is successful, and he has amassed enough wealth to live a comfortable life. This helps him satiate his playboy tendencies, with his refusal to settle down, even in his middle age, being a distinct quality of him,…
Saint Laurent (2014)
Yves Saint Laurent was not only a legendary fashion designer, but also an artistic icon who changed the way we view an industry normally perceived as not being aligned with some of the more popular creative fields – he may not have made the impact some more traditional artists may have, but his contributions to…
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Margot (Nicole Kidman) is a renowned writer who has been delighting audiences for years through her short stories and books. What her readers don’t know is that her work is not purely fictional, which a great deal of it being derived from her own personal life, and the lives of her family, who slowly realize…
The Best Films of 2019
As expected, 2019 brought an incredible end to a decade that saw so much change in regards to the film industry, both in terms of the stories told and the people telling them. Independent cinema finally began to earn the acclaim it deserved, with films like Moonlight, Birdman, Spotlight and 12 Years a Slave winning…
Little Women (2019)
One of the most unexpected, but no less pleasant, surprises of recent years was the realization that not only is Greta Gerwig a tremendous actress, but she’s also got all the qualities of a great director as well. Her first solo directorial effort, Lady Bird, has often been considered one of the best films of…
Uncut Gems (2019)
When it comes to insatiable tension, no one seems better suited to engage in a rare form of artistic anarchy quite like Josh and Benny Safdie, who continue to establish themselves as firm constituents of the future of filmmaking and directors who are well on their way to defining the current era of cinematic storytelling….
The Postmodern Pelican 