As everyone knows, I am a massive champion of the independent film industry, and I love supporting small, obscure films and hopefully helping spread the word of how great they are to a wider audience. There is an obscure franchise that many people have not heard of called Star Wars, and the latest film in…
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
In 1952, acclaimed writer Dambudzo Marechera was born in rural Zimbabwe. In 1955, acclaimed Greek writer and social critic Nikos Kazantzakis wrote The Last Temptation of Christ, a highly-controversial account of the life of Jesus Christ, a subversion on what has come to be accepted as Christian truth through the Biblical Gospels. In 1988, Martin…
A Ghost Story (2017)
Despite usually finding something to like in almost every film I watch, it takes quite a bit for me to absolutely adore a film. There is a set of criteria that a film needs to meet for me to consider it an utter masterpiece, and something that can definitively be called a truly incredible, moving…
The Sea of Trees (2015)
There are sad films, and then there are extremely sad films. Then there are films that can only be described as being “misery porn”, films that have the intention of creating complete and utter despair in the audience to the point where it is wholly uncomfortable. Then you get The Sea of Trees, a film…
Split (2017)
There are very few career-downfalls in cinematic history in terms of radical change of quality as notable as that of M. Night Shyamalan. The wunderkind genius behind The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable had such a promising career and then decided to squander all his potential by making a steady stream of films that ranged from…
The Other Side of Hope (2017)
It is always a challenge for any filmmaker to attempt to make a film that tackles a real-life tragedy, particularly a recent one. It is even more challenging (and impressive when it is done successfully) on the odd occasion where a filmmaker attempts to approach a particularly bleak and hopelessly despairing real-world issue through representing…
I, Olga Hepnarová (2016)
“One day you’ll pay for your laughter and my tears” – these are words spoken by the main character in I, Olga Hepnarová (Czech: Já, Olga Hepnarová), a shocking and brilliant film hailing from Tomáš Weinreb and Petr Kazda, both making their feature-length film debut with this chillingly socially-relevant psychological thriller that is based on…
Crumb (1994)
Documentary films are such an underappreciated cinematic form, mainly because around-the-clock news programming and micro-documentaries presented on television and over social media have made the idea of the innovative, long-form documentary somewhat redundant. However, the form still manages to live on despite the fact that it panders to an extremely niche audience. I am a…
Menashe (2017)
Being a parent is difficult – this is a sentiment shared by a great many films, and a subject explored countless times in various ways, across different genres throughout the years. One of the most profound meditations on this subject is Menashe, a small independent film that uses the concept of parenthood and its intersections…
A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
I honestly don’t think it is possible to ever hate a Christmas movie. Perhaps it is just the yuletide setting that fills me with jolly merriment and good cheer or the fact that Christmas films are usually defined by their well-intentioned spirit that fails to be anything less than pleasant holiday viewing. While many classics…
The Postmodern Pelican 