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Eastern Promises (2007)
Even as David Cronenberg drifts away from explicit body horror and towards suspenseful crime drama in Eastern Promises, his camera never wavers from bloody acts of carnal violence, nor does it falter in its study of those symbolic tattoos which mark the skin of gangsters with their personal histories, mutilating their identities to fit the…
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A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
Edward Yang’s mastery over cinematic realism is absolutely essential to the heartrending authenticity of A Brighter Summer Day, carefully examining the overlooked tragedies of Taiwan’s modern history through a lens that seeks genuine understanding of its aching sorrow, and exploring the many facets of its social strife in virtually every frame.
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Light Sleeper (1992)
The guilty paradox of lamenting New York City’s moral decay while actively contributing to its degradation as a drug dealer eats away at insomniac John LeTour in Light Sleeper, and within Paul Schrader’s complex character study of shame and atonement, it evolves into a self-aware melancholy, reconsidering the unsavoury direction his life has taken.
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Young Mr Lincoln (1939)
The ripples of history that would go on to generate monumental waves can be felt all through Young Mr Lincoln, where John Ford turns the future president’s origins as a judicious Illinoisian lawyer into a historical fable, offering us insight into the storytelling traditions and legal battles that have shaped an entire nation’s values of…
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Mon Oncle d’Amerique (1980)
There is certainly some awe-inspiring beauty lost in an anthropological study of human nature as intensive as Mon Oncle d’Amerique, and yet in the formal cohesion of such unconventional motifs, collaged narrative threads, and punctuative editing, Alain Resnais devises a truly compelling piece of dense, intellectual poetry, dedicated to our most unifying quirks and habits.
