1990s

Martin Scorsese feels surprisingly right at home in the vibrant, passionate yearning of The Age of Innocence, as he deftly tracks his camera through opulent mansions and flows from shot to shot in delicate long dissolves, presenting to us an invitation to interpret this era through a lens of subjective, impressionistic memory.

Where one might expect to find an intelligent, sharply-dressed detective at the centre of this neo-noir, the Coen Brothers instead give us the opposite – a bearded man dressed in sandals, baggy shorts, and a robe, stuck in the hippie movement that has long since grown out of fashion. In the world of The Big…

The partnership of Gilbert & Sullivan becomes a rich historical canvas upon which Mike Leigh grafts reflections of his own creative processes in Topsy-Turvy, and yet in its gloriously lavish interiors and the depth of the ensemble’s great talents, it also becomes an ode to those artists who can put aside their egos to share…

Run Lola Run is a showcase of remarkable rapid-fire editing and energetic camerawork, but just as compelling is Tom Twyker’s segmented formal structure, attacking questions of fatalism and free will across three alternate timelines of a single thrilling narrative.

Though Lynne Ramsay’s vision of working-class 1970s Scotland in ‘Ratcatcher’ is an infested cesspool of garbage bags, nits, and rodents, her hypnotic editing offers a tint of whimsical delicacy to these otherwise harsh environments.

Without a voice to bridge the gap between her mind and the exterior world, it is instead Ada’s music which becomes her purest form of communication in The Piano, carrying a rich, full-bodied expression of the Scotswoman’s restless soul through the beaches, forests, and colonies of 19th century New Zealand.