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Kes (1969)
The raw grit of Ken Loach’s 1960s South Yorkshire working class community bleeds through his dedication to cinematic realism in Kes, its soul-sucking structures of school and labour sapping the youthful idealism of one disillusioned teenage boy, and setting up his falcon as the sole symbol of independent freedom in this painfully oppressive world.
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2022 Oscar Predictions and Snubs
Dune looks set to sweep the technical categories and The Power of the Dog has its eyes on Best Picture for the 94th Academy Awards, but a late surge in popularity behind CODA is keeping things nail-bitingly unpredictable.
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Dekalog (1989)
For all its authentic grounding in the culture of 1980s Poland, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog remains a mystical piece of theological cinema for its complex examination of the Ten Commandments in a series of contemporary moral fables, collectively provoking deep contemplation through an omniscient perspective akin to that of an all-seeing God.
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No Sudden Move (2021)
Within this narrative of a small blackmail job wildly spinning out to a sprawling ensemble caper across 1950s Detroit, Steven Soderbergh’s off-kilter camerawork and sumptuously shady lighting gradually pulls us into a permanent stage of agitation, refusing to let us wander from the tight grip of No Sudden Move’s compelling mystery.
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A Short Film About Love (1988)
The Hitchcockian setup of an obsessive voyeur with a telescope in A Short Film About Love is very familiar, but in place of a suspenseful mystery Krzysztof Kieslowski instead absorbs us in a compelling morality play concerning two opposed yet twisted perceptions of love – the romanticisation of one-sided affection, and the complete denial of…
