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The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Through the hundred or so years of feature narrative films, The Birth of a Nation may indeed be the singularly most abhorrent work to hit such ambitiously artistic heights, as D.W. Griffith singlehandedly defines the artform with astonishing displays of intercutting and jaw-dropping set pieces, while exposing the depravity baked into the history of nationalistic…
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Delicatessen (1991)
Within Delicatessen’s grotesque, dystopian France that sees a butcher kill his neighbours to sell their meat, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro construct a meticulously expressionistic world of absurdly outlandish set pieces which, while unsettling in their Gothic visage, savour the traces of whimsy that exist on the verge of extinction.
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Blue Velvet (1986)
Blue Velvet could be read as a twisted coming-of-age film in its discovery of worlds and minds that are not what they seem, though the depths that David Lynch plunges into humanity’s psychosexual awakening, disconcerting iconography, and bold colour palettes places it in a surreal class of its own, digging through the veneer of suburban…
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Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
In the dreamy, non-linear structure of Once Upon a Time in America’s epic narrative that covers the full scope of one Jewish gangster’s life in twentieth century Manhattan, Sergio Leone deftly blends each era within a single brew of nostalgia and shame, sifting through the mythology of a nation in the midst of squandering the…
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Trafic (1971)
Trafic may not possess the sheer ambition of Jacques Tati’s previous films, but his resourcefulness remains remarkable, uncovering rich satire in recognising that the attempts of drivers trying to get somewhere while helplessly sitting in stagnant crowds of high-tech, metal boxes may be the ultimate paradox of an inept modern society.
