Generally speaking, there are two kinds of people living under an authoritarian regime: there are those who just blindly accept that this is the way their lives have to be, and then there are those who stand up and fight in some way, even if it is only launching their own small, intimate rebellion against…
Tag: movies
The Cameraman (1928)
As a general rule of thumb, when assessing the legacy of someone within the film industry, we can usually divide them into those who worked for their place in history, and those who were shoehorned into it as a result of some forced act of popularity. In many cases, we find that some of the…
The Third Murder (2017)
There are many contemporary viewers who believe that Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the greatest living filmmakers, and someone who has made invaluable contributions to not only to the Japanese film industry, but global cinema as a whole. His gentle, human dramas have broken new ground and told bespoke stories, each one beautiful and compelling,…
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
There are few names that evoke the same kind of passionate reaction in terms of capturing the very spirit of theatricality than Tennessee Williams, who wrote his final play over forty years ago, but whose spectre still lingers in the culture. This is particularly true since his work tackles themes relating to American life, exploring…
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
At some point in the past, Thomas Pynchon expressed his desire to write a story that was centered on the insurance brokers sent to Tokyo to assess the damage caused by Godzilla after one of his many rampages. As a culture, we have a tendency to latch onto certain stories, repeating them time and again,…
Mysterious Skin (2004)
The art of provocation is one that not many filmmakers have been able to successfully achieve without coming across as overly forced. Some filmmakers court controversy as a means for artistic expression, whereas others do it because they are genuinely fascinated by the reaction from the audience and how they observe particularly unsettling stories. There…
We Used to Know Each Other (2019)
Being in love is a wonderful experience, but maintaining it is another matter entirely, which is something that the protagonists of We Used to Know Each Other have to learn for themselves. A very simple independent comedy directed by Robert G. Putka, who wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Hugo de Sousa, who also happens…
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Whenever I travel, my father undoubtedly (and mostly as a joke) states “stay out of the woods”, a warning to steer clear of those untrodden parts of any country in which evil normally tends to lurk, whether it is of our world or supernatural. Art has always been fascinated with the unknown, and I’ve often…
Mickey 17 (2025)
The question of what happens after death has plagued and fascinated the human race since we became sentient, and there are as many interpretations as there are individual stories to be told, with absolutely none of us having a more accurate opinion than anyone else. Yet, it hasn’t stopped some truly fascinating conversations around the…
The Skin of Sorrow (2010)
More than half a century before Oscar Wilde committed pen to paper in order to write The Picture of Dorian Gray, we had a similarly-themed story on behalf of the equally important literary genius Honoré de Balzac in the form of La Peau de chagrin (commonly translated as “The Magic Skin”), which is also focused…
The Postmodern Pelican 