A few years ago, the shocking revelation was that Joel and Ethan Coen, the proverbial two-headed director, were splitting and pursuing independent careers after nearly thirty years of working together. Joel Coen went on to make The Tragedy of Macbeth, a formally offbeat, German Expressionism-inspired adaptation of the greatest play in the history of the…
The Circus (1928)
Sheer cinematic perfection does exist, and it comes in the form of The Circus, which is quite simply one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever produced. My reverence for Charlie Chaplin has been well-documented, and in both my personal and professional life, I tend to draw a lot of inspiration from his work. His…
Monsters and Men (2018)
As writers, there are two general guidelines that we are inclined to follow when discussing art – we are supposed to be objective as far as possible, as well as exercise enough restraint to make our arguments nuanced and detailed, using our words to explain why certain work is particularly intriguing. However, there are some…
12:08 East of Bucharest (2008)
Humour is the balm that we apply to the wounds of the past, and few filmmakers have proven this to be truer than those who formed the movement we know as the Romanian New Wave. For the past couple of decades, we have seen some truly gifted writers and directors emerging from Romania, crafting films…
Luv (1967)
Love – how does one even begin to describe it as a concept? It’s difficult enough already to fully encapsulate the feeling, so to even attempt to understand its resonance as an artistic theme is nearly impossible. It is one of the great mysteries of life and something that has been the subject of so…
The Book of Clarence (2024)
A couple of years ago, Jeymes Samuel (otherwise known as The Bullitts, under which he recorded music for several years) made a shift across the artistic aisle, going from an acclaimed musician to a film director, following the path of a small but solid group of artists who spread out into other areas in the…
Paranoid Park (2007)
In a career that has allowed him to explore various genres and stories, Gus Van Sant has proven himself to be extremely versatile at handling a diverse set of narratives, which are usually intrinsically tied to the concepts that fascinate him as a storyteller. Whether working with original material or adapting the work of others,…
The Colossus of New York (1958)
Science fiction has always been a source of an abundance of fascinating storytelling, with the idea of speculating about the future (or rewriting the past in creative ways) often resulting in stirring, captivating works in terms of both film and literature, many writers and directors positioning themselves as almost exclusively working within this genre, both…
Eileen (2023)
“It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails.” There are many fragments of sentences in Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh that are immediately striking, and the entire novel is a tightly wound, masterful examination of many different concepts and one of the most ambitious literary debuts of the past decade. Yet, this one…
The Best Films of 2023
It’s that time of year again – Hollywood is about to descend on the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where the 96th Academy Awards are being held, honouring the best in cinema from the past year. As always, this brings an end to the cinematic year, a 15-month endeavour that sees many of us travelling…
The Postmodern Pelican 