The Illusionist – 2010

Jacques Tati was a revolutionary in the world of comedy and there are numerous tributes to him in films and television. None is more significant than The Illusionist, a film written by Tati towards the end of his career. This film pays tribute to Tati in a number of ways, chiefly the relationship the title […]

Spirited Away – 2001

No list of great animated films is complete without Hayao Miyazaki. A master of creating fantastical world and amazing creatures, the imagination of Miyazaki is perfectly illustrated by animation. And while any number of his films could make a list of greats, there is one stand out in his repertoire and that film is Spirited […]

Kynodontas – 2009

Dogtooth is one of those movies that makes you stop and ask, “What the hell am I watching?” There are a lot of moments in viewing films that this is a bad question, but in the case of Dogtooth, it simply adds to the dangerous peculiarity of the film. Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek director […]

Mustang – 2015

Sometimes you can feel that something is going to go wrong in a movie. Mustang is the story of five teenage (mostly) girls who are trapped in their house after their oppressive grandmother and uncle decide they have disgraced the family. Eventually the girls are set up in arranged marriages since wives is the only […]

The Assassin – 2015

The Wuxia genre is fairly commonplace in Chinese cinema. The Assassin is a pretty standard martial arts film, but it offers some interesting filming techniques. Hou Hsiao-hsien uses minimal action and minimal dialogue, but his story tells an interesting tale nonetheless. He films through windows and entryways. He plants the camera and waits for the action […]

Blind Chance – 1987

Kieślowski is a master of human nature. In Blind Chance, he takes a man grieving over the death of his father and send him to catch a train. It is here that the story diverges into three separate sequences. Each one is unique and each one exploits the grief of the protagonist into doing something […]