Music is the universal language, the common thread that connects us under a unified humanity, transcending cultural, geographical and temporal boundaries and speaking directly to our souls in a way that everyone unquestionably understands. Some of the greatest works of literature began their lives as songs or strummed, featuring stories of star-crossed lovers or perilous…
Tag: film
Repo Man (1984)
Some filmmakers are destined to produce work over a longer period of time, their presence being evergreen and consistent year after year, and then some find themselves having a much shorter tenure at the top, but where they burn brighter and with more energy than many of their peers. There was a time when Alex…
H is for Hawk (2025)
For nearly a decade, I worked in a bookstore, and from the beginning of my time there until I left a few years ago, there was a particular book that seemed extremely popular for reasons no one could ever explain to me. It proved to be a puzzling exercise in trying to determine exactly why…
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
There is a reason why the 1920s are considered one of the best decades for French art – it was a renaissance of sorts in all areas, including literature, visual arts and music. Cinema was not lagging far behind, and while Hollywood was making the most substantial leap towards it becoming one of the primary…
The Outfit (2022)
Tailors, cutters and seamsters are professions that very few seem to notice until their services are required, despite them being the foundation of society in many ways; their clients usually run the gamut from politicians to everyday workers who employ them in an effort to look as good as they possibly can, whether it be…
I Swear (2025)
We all fight our own individual battles, some being more visible than others. One of the great injustices of human existence is that the combination of our inherent lack of patience and desire to categorise people into need compartments will always be the reason many are forced to experience the isolation that comes with dealing…
Eagles of the Republic (2025)
There is only one subject that the film industry loves above all others: itself. There is seemingly nothing that energises a filmmaker more than telling a story set within the world of cinema, and whether through deep reverence or merciless lampooning (or some combination of them both), there is something about the metafictional nature of…
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
As far as influential figures in the history of cinema go, there are few individuals more interesting and impressive than Ida Lupino, one of the few people whose reputation as a pioneer is not hyperbolic praise, but an objective fact drawn from her groundbreaking work on both sides of the camera. During a time when…
Die My Love (2025)
“When routine bites hard and ambitions are low And resentment rides high, but emotions won’t grow And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads” These haunting words are undoubtedly familiar to many of us, as they’re the first lines of Joy Division’s generation-defining masterpiece “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which is quite possibly the greatest…
His and Hers (1961)
For some, the concept of domestic bliss is an ideal to which they are willing to work, while for others, it is nothing more than a myth perpetuated by decades of cultural lecturing and blatant marketing, which the nuclear family was seen as the ultimate aspiration, and anything less was seen as a sign of…
The Postmodern Pelican 