After Oldboy (2003) won the Grand Prix at a Cannes Film Festival presided over by a Quentin Tarantino-led jury in 2004, an overwhelming amount…
Paul Vechhiali’s origins are not unfamiliar to the global cinephilia which is attracted to his films — born in 1930, raised on classic French…
Before effective treatment was available for HIV/AIDS, many understandably sought out cures outside of conventional medicine for the illness ravaging their bodies. Louise Hay,…
The purest, and arguably most puerile, definition of auteurism necessitates a neat classification of artistic idiosyncrasies. The governing principle behind this approach is to…
The popular conception of sexuality in America has doubtless expanded since the turn of the century, but its depiction on mainstream screens somehow has…
It wasn’t his debut or even his first major work, but Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s opening credits to Tropical Malady deliver perhaps the moment that summarizes…
As much as critics have lapped up Egoyan’s description of Exotica as an “emotional striptease,” lauding the film for gradually unveiling the layers behind…
There are filmmakers so dominant that you can detect their influence in the works of other filmmakers throughout the years, around the world —…
Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell burst onto the screen in a flash of color, sparkle, and song. With no exposition, or even opening credits,…
Coming-of-age films are rarely as frank about the relationship between sex and politics as André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds. The film traces the lives of…
Violent Cop as a title stands emblematic of the far simpler film that could have been. It’s a title straight out of the rural…
How does one definitively characterize a child’s point of view? Is it by positioning it as a response to the stultifying cynicism of adulthood,…
A man, a woman, their bodies wrapped once in golden ornament, and then again in Klimt’s golden cosmos. He cradles her head and reaches…
Her mother’s letters come like intercepted radio transmissions, or echoes of prayers. In this state of relentless observation, pure receptivity, how could she not…
“Something that starts soon and looks good.” “Okay, so what’s the plot?” Anybody who has ever recommended any work of fiction has surely been…
It may seem counterintuitive to use Alfred Hitchcock’s famous quote — “Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out” — to describe…
In his expansive body of work as a playwright, Harold Pinter dissected the language of power with a scalpel. Characters speak in clipped, ambiguous…
“We know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances.” – Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That…