The sight of a young woman walking through the pastoral winelands of rural France remains one of the most enduring and complex images in the history of cinema, and is the foundation on which Agnès Varda builds Vagabond (French: Sans toit ni loi), which remains one of her signature films, and one that has come…
The Little Foxes (1941)
Misery loves family – and you’ll find few families whose entire existence is more propelled by sheer conflict than the Giddens, who spend their days bickering about the future, genuinely believing it is their birthright to be the embodiment of wealth and affluence, to the point of causing a range of crises within the family…
My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
As far as the canon of great romantic comedies goes, you will struggle to find any more iconic than My Best Friend’s Wedding, which has come to be viewed as one of the most effective entries into a genre that has become somewhat oversaturated to the point where it has lost the spark that made…
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus (2023)
There is a quote I adore by Friedrich Nietzsche, who boldly proclaimed that “without music, life would be a mistake” – I’ve constructed many conversations around the power of music in the past, and it bears as much relevance today as it did when the words were first spoken. To be a musician is to…
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
“Fortune smiles on the brave and spits on the coward.” Perhaps it’s a bold assertion, but Werner Herzog may be the most fearless filmmaker in the history of the medium. Very rarely have we seen any director who is so willing to put himself in the path of danger for the sake of artistic expression,…
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
The concept of a soulmate is certainly very interesting, since the idea of everyone alive having someone designated as their ideal partner, while encouraging and beautiful in theory, is logically implausible and probably just a way to comfort those who have not had luck in terms of finding a long-lasting romance. However, for the sake…
Fantastic Night (1942)
What is a dream other than a fantastical scenario that our minds create, convincing us that they are real for a very brief moment in time? We’ve seen countless works of art that look at the bizarre but universal phenomenon of dreams, whether directly or as the supplement to a larger narrative – and its…
Shirley (2024)
Growing up, I was surrounded by friends and family who were generally agnostic to the idea that there is any real difference between governmental candidates and carried a general distrust of politicians, particularly those who seemed to be driven less by serving their constituents and more the ego and agenda tacked onto whatever campaign they…
Nowhere (1997)
Queer cinema has undergone quite a journey, its sometimes surprising to remember that there was a time in which even the vaguest suggestion of queer content in a film was considered too deviant to have a place in the mainstream, and was often shoved into the arthouse or independent scene instead. Most filmmakers didn’t have…
Les Fugitifs (1986)
Crime doesn’t pay, but it certainly does make life a lot more entertaining – this seems to be the principle that Jean Lucas uses as motivation for his day-to-day life, and after being released from prison for the fourteenth time, decides that he is going to go straight – until he accidentally walks straight into…
The Postmodern Pelican 