*Spoilers Ahead for Mulholland Drive (2001) It opens with a background of deep, theatrical purple – a backdrop that is clearly artificially imposed. In the …
25 Years of Mulholland Drive: Recalling Hollywood’s False Promises
Essays
An Opening Guide into Avant-Garde Cinema
Introduction For most with a more than moderate interest in film, particularly experimentation, surrealism and the avant-garde occupy this discomforting and inaccessible figure. The general …
Making the Case for AI in Art
Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018) by Obvious, an early work of AI generated art “Don’t criticise what you can’t understand.” – Bob Dylan (1964) …
La Haine (1995): A Commentary on Systemic State Violence and its Consequences
Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995) is an unflinching commentary on police brutality, racial inequality, and the alienation of marginalised youth within France. Set over 24 …
The Lost Grammar of Emotion in Film: Why Modern Audiences Take Melodramas Less Seriously
Earlier this year, I caught a re-release of Luchino Visconti’s family saga, Rocco and His Brothers (1960) at BFI Southbank. While I thoroughly enjoyed the …
The Last Dance (2024)
Death is a common theme we often encounter in films, but what about the procedure that follows a person’s death? They are usually overlooked as …
Salt of the Earth (1954): The Ultimate Red Scare Counter-Narrative
Edward Lahner looks back on Herbert J Biberman’s Salt of the Earth, telling the remarkable tale of its production and reception history from the McCarthy …
Gummo (1997)
Anya Somwaiya reviews Korine’s debut feature, Gummo, a mood board for the decades that followed. Scotch taped wall bacon. Albinos and drunkards. Girls with noeyebrows …
On Melodrama, and Why It Must Endure
Aryan Tauqeer discusses the position of the melodrama in the contemporary cinema landscape, the political history of the genre in Old Hollywood and how the …
A Tale of Two Decades: Cinematic Conversation between Jonze and Coppola
Oscar McFie Lyons draws the connections between Spike Jonze’s Her and Sofia Coppala’s Lost in Translation, unearthing what the interplay between the once married pair …