In order to have good taste, you need to have an appreciation for bad taste – this sentiment was originally pioneered by cinematic agent provocateur John Waters and has been the driving force behind his career, and while he is undeniably the driving force behind the movement towards more boundary-pushing filmmaking, he has been tethered…
A Night at the Opera (1935)
What I tend to appreciate the most about comedies produced during Hollywood’s Golden Era is their remarkable simplicity – there was very little need for high-concept stories or films that were entirely original or frequently experimental. We have seemingly lost the ability to acknowledge that the more simple a joke, the more effective it is…
My Love, Don’t Cross That River (2014)
For as long as it has been a subject that artists and philosophers alike have explored, the ideal version of love is growing old with someone, spending your entire life in their company and having your entire future defined by the person you consider your soulmate. This is a pleasant and beautiful idea, but one…
The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
We’ve seen numerous attempts to revitalize the Western genre, whether it be the gleefully deranged spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, the acidic revisionist westerns that contained an excessive amount of violence in the 1970s, or the move towards more hyper-realistic depictions of the frontier in more recent years. There’s merit to all of these, and…
Amsterdam (2022)
There is a very simple but unspoken rule when it comes to putting together a film – if a director is going to make the audience spend more than two hours with their work, they have to at least make it worth our while, especially if it is an original work and not one based…
Le Dîner de Cons (1998)
When it comes to exploring a country and its culture, I subscribe to the belief that everything that we need to know about a nation and its people can be found in its comedy since humour is both a universal language, but also something that is often quite specific, whether it is to a specific…
Blackberry (2023)
Every era, as well as the generation that came of age during that time, has something intrinsically tied to that period that becomes an iconic part of the culture, but yet disappears without a trace, being a remnant of the past fondly remembered by those who were present for its invention, while remaining inexplicable to…
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
We often tend to think of the Golden Age of Hollywood as being quite a rigid era for filmmaking, where risks were not taken and films were made along very narrow guidelines, based on what could be shown on screen, as decided by the censors whose only reason for existence was to impinge on the…
No Man’s Land (2001)
One of the most common tropes we find in much of contemporary media is the odd couple scenario, in which two individuals who are diametrically opposed find themselves in a situation where they have to find some way to get along, and in the process forge an unlikely friendship that neither of them imagined was…
O Pátio das Cantigas (1942)
1942 is considered one of the most undeniably notable years for Portuguese cinema, specifically due to the release of two films in particular, which stand as being historically relevant in looking at how the film developed in the country. The first was Aniki-Bóbó, which was the directorial debut of the legendary Manoel de Oliveira, whose…
The Postmodern Pelican 